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The scream with which he met his death is still etched on this soldier’s face as those on the tank roll into future battles of a war that, in 1980, was expected to last only a week—a war that has already cost both sides more than a million casualties. For this young warrior, the war is over. But for how many more tomorrows will his brothers and his enemies spill each others blood?
Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, iron-fisted head of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and supreme commander of the Iraqi armed forces is clearly a worried man. “If I go, everybody goes, even if it means World War III.” Anxious talk from a man who, four years ago, declared his determination to “bomb the mullahs into sanity” and rid the Persian Gulf of “that lunatic Khomeini.”1 Indeed, when Saddam Hussein launched his combined ground and air attack on Iran in September 1980, experts *n many quarters regarded Iraqi success as inevitable. Certain analysts went so far as to predict that the Iraqi blitzkrieg would crush Iranian resistance within a week, two at most.
But instead of a swift war of maneuver, the contest between Iran and Iraq has turned into something more like a medieval siege, with the Iraqi Army now hunkered behind a massive artificial moat, husbanding its battered manpower and digging in against the hordes from the east. The Iraqi Air Force sallies forth occasionally to keep the Iranians off balance, but, so far, the air effort has had little impact on the fighting.
A costly war of attrition was clearly not what Saddam Hussein had in mind in 1980, and certainly not anything like the one now raging on his own territory. What was thought to have been a low-risk effort turned into a colossal slugging match with the very survival of Iraq, its president, and his party at stake.
Why, then, did Iraq start the war? From a geopolitical viewpoint, episodic fighting between the region’s competing Mesopotamian and Persian powers has characterized the area’s history for millenia. Looking eastward from atop Baghdad’s minarets in 1979, Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants saw in tumultuous revolutionary Iran a very, real threat to their own power—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a troublemaker expelled from Iraq less than a year before, had returned as militant head of state. While in Paris, Khomeini had listed the Shah, the United States, and Saddam Hussein as his three “mortal enemies.”2 Now, within weeks of his triumphant return, Teheran street mobs were chanting for the execution of the Ba’ath party leaders and the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq.3
Iraqi Fears: In a region long famous for its eye-for-an- eye justice, Saddam Hussein knew perfectly well that Khomeini was a man with scores to settle. One of the cleric’s two sons had been mysteriously murdered in Iraq in 1977. Saddam Hussein personally ordered the execution of Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric in the spring of 1980.4 Upon his ascension to power, Khomeini wasted no time announcing his intentions. The government of Iraq, he declared ominously, “belongs in the dustbin of history.”5
His fellow revolutionaries, President Bani-Sadr and Foreign Minister Gotzbadeh (who would both later turn against Khomeini), publicly swore Iran’s commitment to overthrow Saddam Hussein.6 At the same time Khomeini was denouncing the United States as the “Great Satan,” Teheran street mobs were calling Iraq a “U. S. puppet.”7 The same day “students” seized the U. S. embassy, the Iraqi embassy, too, was stormed and a senior Iraqi official was kidnapped.8
Iraqi Resentments: While the Teheran revolutionaries were giving Baghdad every reason to fear the worst, the Iraqis were also nursing a good case of resentment. Land-
locked, save for a 40-mile beachhead on the Persian Gulf, Iraq had long disputed access and transit rights to the gulf through the Shatt al-Arab waterway. But the Iranians had consistently rejected Iraqi claims to the entire river, arguing instead, and with some justification, that the border between the two countries should divide the river in half, providing each side with a usable shipping channel.
To make this point with the unyielding Iraqis, the Shah, in 1969 and throughout the early 1970s, provided massive aid to the rebellious Kurds of northeastern Iraq. This support eventually tied down the better part of an Iraqi field army. By 1975, with a crippling civil war on their hands, the Iraqis felt compelled to make a deal. They agreed to split control of the Shatt al-Arab down the middle, along a line following the channel’s deepest point. In return, the Shah agreed to end his support of the Kurds, whose insurrection promptly collapsed.
Codified in the 1975 Algiers Accord, Saddam Hussein had signed this agreement of necessity for the Iraqi side. For a deeply nationalist Ba’athist, giving up even this fraction of the greater “Arab nation” was about the same as ceding Palestine to the Israelis.
Khomeini added further insult by rejecting the humiliating 1975 deal and claiming the entire Shatt al-Arab, effectively cutting off Iraq’s single port of Basra from the Persian Gulf. Pressure from the former Shah was one thing, but absurd claims from the upstart Khomeini were quite another. Saddam Hussein countered by denouncing the original 1975 Algiers deal and once again laying claim to the entire waterway.9
Iraqi Ambitions: No Arab leader had risen to claim the fallen mantle of the charismatic Gamel Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabic nationalism. Only the Ba’ath party, thought the Baghdad leadership, remained true to this vision. And unlike the backsliding Egyptians, who lost all moral suasion in the Arab camp by signing a separate treaty with the Israelis, only the Iraqis remained truly committed to a united Arab front in the face of militant Zionism. Khomeini’s promise to march two million of his followers through Baghdad on their way to Jerusalem directly challenged these Iraqi designs for leadership of the Arab world.
As Saddam Hussein looked with a hungry eye at the Iranian province of Khuzestan, he saw in its seizure a golden opportunity to realize a number of complementary objectives. First, returning its largely Arabic-speaking population to the Arab fold would be a supreme act in the cause of pan-Arabism. The achievement could well catapult the Baghdad Ba’athists to the moral leadership of the Arab world.
Second, taking Khuzestan would humble the insolent challengers in Teheran. Bani-Sadr had claimed that Arab nationalism, of exactly the sort extolled by the Iraqi Ba’athists, was a Western innovation inimical to Islam (which did not recognize national or ethnic borders). Bani- Sadr was saying, in effect, that Iraqi nationalism was hardly better than Zionism. This caused an apoplectic reaction in Baghdad.
Third, taking Khuzestan would not only stand as fit
cal prize worth taking. Its massive oil reserves would add to Iraqi assets and detract from Iran’s, placing Iraq second only to Saudi Arabia among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) producers.
Seizure of the Shatt al-Arab would solve the access dispute at one stroke, expanding Iraqi frontage on the gulf tenfold, again, at Iran’s expense. For a Baghdad leadership torn by these conflicting fears, resentments, and ambitions, which were in many respects shared by Persian Gulf neighbors to the south and west, the view east presented tempting opportunities.
Iraqi Overconfidence: For all of Khomeini’s tough talk, Saddam Hussein and his generals could enumerate a number of Iranian weaknesses:
^ Khomeini did not appear to be firmly entrenched in power. Factions ranging from the Communist Tudeh party on the left to former monarchists on the right plotted and schemed. The clerics themselves were deeply divided between extremists and moderates, as evidenced by open clashes in July 1980 between supporters of the relatively moderate Bani-Sadr and zealots of the extremist clergy.10
- Iranian society itself was fractured. The middle class, which had profited so handsomely and in so many ways from the Shah’s rule, appeared hardly prepared to shed blood on Khomeini’s behalf. Kurds in northwest Iran were once again vying for the very sort of autonomy sure to precipitate schisms elsewhere (the Baluchis in eastern Iran, for example).11 An unemployment rate of almost 50% also indicated that Iranian society was in a parlous state of near anarchy.
- The armed forces, on which the Shah had lavished money and privilege, contained elements actively opposed to Khomeini. Between June and August 1980, at least three military coups were reportedly uncovered, leading to
an announced purge of the officer corps.12 Khomeini appeared to be saddled with an unreliable and disaffected officer corps—one just as likely to turn against him as to fight the Iraqis.
► The United States, in the throes of the hostage crisis, had clamped an embargo on the flow of spare parts to Iran, upon which the U. S.-equipped Iranian armed forces were so dependent.13 The Iraqis calculated that much of Iran’s military hardware had been reduced to inoperative junk for want of spare parts.
The Iraqis relied on the advantages of surprise and the devastating potential of hundreds of first-line modem weapons. The Iraqis confidently expected a well-timed blow would shatter Khomeini’s fragile regime, forcing the old man to sue for peace on Iraqi terms, or perhaps even forcing him out of power completely.
Even so, the decision to attack was not made overnight. Although serious border clashes punctuated the escalating war of words, it was not until late September—barely a month before November rains would make campaigning difficult—that five of Iraq’s 12 divisions were launched against four understrength Iranian Army divisions posted along the Khuzestan frontier.14 Attacking so late in the dry season underscored the limited nature of the Iraqi’s initial war aims.
The offensive, begun on 22 September 1980, marked the formal beginning of a seesaw war that was never expected to last four years, and which can now be divided roughly into five phases: the initial Iraqi assault, the loss of momentum, the first Iranian counteroffensives, a war of attrition, and an increasingly desperate Iraqi search for a way to break the deadlock.
The Initial Iraqi Assault: The Iraqi spearheads easily brushed aside Iranian border posts, and Iraqi forces plunged inland almost 50 miles in the first few days. But things went badly for the Iraqis almost from the beginning. Surprise air strikes failed to destroy the Iranian Air Force on the ground. The Shah had invested heavily in massive concrete shelters, many of which were designed to withstand direct hits from 1,000-pound bombs. The Iranians had learned from the Egyptians, whose unprotected aircraft were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force at the outset of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Iraqis, unable to strike directly at the Iranian planes in their shelters, were forced to bomb runways. These were repaired within hours, and on the second day of the war, the Iranian Air Force was flying limited counterstrikes.15
Moreover, the Iraqi division commanders quickly discovered that they were fighting not one Iranian Army, but three separate ground forces: the understrength but relatively well-equipped divisions of the regular army, units of the hastily mustered Revolutionary Guards (the “Pas-
daran”), and Khomeini’s “Army of Twenty Million” (the “Baseeji”).
Not only were the Iranians found in greater strength than anticipated, they were far from demoralized. The regular army, eager to regain the prestige lost by the stigma of its long association with the Shah, did not fold at the first shock. The Pasdaran and Baseeji made up in revolutionary zeal what they lacked in equipment and training. There were early reports of Pasdaran troops dressed in burial shrouds, standing fast in the face of overwhelming Iraqi superiority.16 The Iraqis were unnerved by the Iranians’ tenacity.
Iranian resistance stiffened markedly as Iraqi forces closed around the key cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr. Iraqi troops entered the outskirts of Abadan on 3 November but were repulsed by Pasdaran troops the same day.17 It was not until 10 November that the Iraqis achieved their first real tactical success: the seizure of Khorramshahr after a punishing house-to-house fight lasting more than a week and costing more than 6,000 casualties. The Iranians had suffered heavy casualties as well and, in honor of their fallen, renamed the city “Khuninshahr,” or “City of Blood.”18
While the Iranians lacked the large-unit strength to launch coordinated counterattacks, they displayed surprising aggressiveness at the small-unit level, aiming for targets with maximum leverage effect on the Iraqi economy.
On 7 November, well-executed Iranian air, naval, and commando attacks on the Iraqi facilities at Mina al-Bahr and al-Fao virtually destroyed the Iraqi capability to export oil through the gulf.19
Iranian special forces also cut the Iraqi oil pipeline through Turkey, while Iranian F-4s struck Kuwaiti border posts in a pointed message to the gulf states: Iran’s long arm would extract a price for supporting Iraq, and oil facilities could be hit just as easily as border posts.20
These attacks had the desired effect. Iraqi oil exports plummeted. But with their own petroleum facilities so vulnerable, the gulf states supported Iraq only on the condition that Iraq restrain its reprisal strikes against the Iranian oil-exporting infrastructure.
Loss of Momentum: With the Iraqi capture of Khorramshahr, ground operations in Khuzestan ended. The Iraqi Army proceeded to dig in along its line of advance while tightening the seige of Abadan.
What followed was a “phony war” lasting throughout the fall and part of the winter. Both sides waged a desultory artillery duel while striving to rebuild their strength. The Iraqis focused on restocking their arsenal and purchased about two billion dollars worth of weapons from Egypt.21
The Iranians recalled veterans of the Shah’s army to the colors, mustered at least 100,000 additional “volunteers,” and established a seven-member Supreme Defense
Council under the chairmanship of Bani-Sadr to run the
22
war.
Iranian Counteroffensive: The Iranians undertook offensive operations as early as January 1981. Anxious to demonstrate that he was indeed in charge, Bani-Sadr pushed for a major armored counterthrust in the Susangerd sector. In the tank duel that followed, the Iranians reportedly destroyed about 50 Iraqi tanks, but suffered losses double that number in an attack that soon fizzled.23
But the Iraqis failed to exploit the opportunity, preferring instead to hold the positions they had successfully defended. The Iranians regrouped and attacked twice more that year. In September, they lifted the seige of Abadan, retaking the city.24 In December, they mounted another major thrust near Susangerd, this time with greater success. After some Iraqi units panicked, Saddam Hussein warned his troops, “It is important that you not lose any more positions.”25
The increasing Iranian confidence culminated in the corps-size operation “Undeniable Victory” of March 1982. Iranian units finally punched through the Iraqi lines east of Susangerd, effectively splitting Iraq’s forces in the north from those in southern Khuzestan. Although the Iranians still lacked both the logistics support and tactical boldness necessary to achieve a decisive success, after a week’s fighting they succeeded in savaging the better part of three Iraqi divisions.26
“Undeniable Victory” marked a fundamental change in the course of the war. Iraqi confidence was badly shaken. Iran, on the other hand, had 15,000 prisoners and almost 700 captured or destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles to show
for an operation combining the efforts of more than 100,000 regular army, Pasdaran, and Baseeji troops.27 The operation even featured the successful landing of Iranian commandos behind the lines at Dezful. This compounded the Iraqis’ confusion, which was already aggravated by persistent shortcomings in their operational intelligence.
With the success of this operation, the strategic initiative passed from Iraq to Iran.
War of Attrition: Iran continued to push, shifting its main effort to the southern front. A three-pronged attack, pointedly code-named “Operation Jerusalem,” hit the Iraqis in late April 1982.28
The Iraqis responded with a major counteroffensive of their own in the first week of May. Unable to make any significant headway against stiff Iranian resistance, this effort faltered. The momentum once again passed to the Iranians, who retook Khorramshahr later that month.29
The war was evolving into a terrific pounding match, with the Iraqis on an increasingly hard-pressed defensive. Apparently, as a result of a major review of the Iraqi war aims, Saddam Hussein announced in late June that all Iraqi forces would withdraw from Iranian territory—a tacit admission that the war was unwinnable.30
Even though the last invading troops withdrew across the border in late June, Khomeini was in no mood for an immediate peace.31 His troops pressed hard on the northern and central fronts. Heavy fighting was reported near Qasr-i-Sharin in the north. Near Basra, Pasdaran and Baseeji troops launched a series of human wave assaults. The Iraqis met the onrushing Iranians with a hail of artillery and machine gun fire. In mid-July 1982, they reported that more than 6,000 Iranian dead littered the Iraqi breastworks.32
The Iranians kept attacking. Old men and teenagers were later found among the dead. They clutched plastic keys to paradise in their fists and wore stenciled signs on their battle jackets, announcing they had the Imam Khomeini’s “permission” to enter heaven. The Iranians pressed these attacks with relentless regularity throughout July. After 18 days of near-continuous fighting, more than 25,000 of Khomeini’s zealots were reported slaughtered on the approaches to Basra.33 Not for nothing was Radio Teheran (“The Voice and Vision of Islam”) commending the “martyr-creating land of Iran.”34 Despite these appalling losses, the war was tilting inexorably in Khomeini’s favor. In early August, Iranian forces crossed the border into Iraq in a three-pronged assault.35 Iraq, in an attempt to disrupt Iranian oil revenues, and also to embroil outside powers in the fighting on its behalf, resumed its attacks on the Iranian oil-exporting facility at Kharg Island.36 The Iraqis were also beginning to feel the effect of a manpower crunch, and reports began appearing of Jordanian, Egyptian, and Sudanese “volunteers” in Iraq. In addition, the Iraqis announced in January 1982 that they were forming special “task brigades” of lightly armed and quickly trained volunteers to supplement the regular armed forces.37 Throughout the remainder of 1982 and 1983, the
Ayatollah’s forces maintained pressure on the Iraqis. They were frequently repulsed with heavy loss, but it was the Iranians, not the Iraqis, who were on the attack, and the Iraqis were occasionally forced to give ground in the face of steady pressure. For example, in February 1983, Iran’s six-division “Before Dawn” offensive was thrown back with heavy loss. In July 1983, an Iranian offensive in the far northern front drove 11 miles into Iraq. In August 1983, Iraq withdrew on the central front. In October 1983, Iraq claimed to have killed 20,000 Iranians in five days of fighting near Basra.
The war of attrition, with each side demonstrating an ability to absorb horrific punishment without breaking, continued into the next year.
Breaking the Deadlock: In 1984, Iraq despaired increasingly and searched for a way to break the deadlock. Initially, the Iraqis tried to raise the human cost of continued Iranian attacks. They began to use chemical weapons (reportedly as early as August 1981), purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new armaments, and constructed extensive fortifications and obstacles to channel Iranian assaults into preplanned artillery “killing zones.”38
In a continued effort to draw others into the conflict against Iran, the Iraqis increased their attacks on tankers and Iranian oil-producing facilities. Its Super Etendard strike fighters, on loan from France, were employed with Exocet missiles for the first time in March. The fighters hit a Greek tanker near Kharg Island.39 But the campaign was paradoxical. Baghdad was trying to stop the flow of Iranian oil through the Persian Gulf, through which its own supporters were equally dependent, and from whom Iraq was receiving more than one billion dollars a month in cash subsidies made possible by those exports.
After failing for three years to fight their way to a solution, the Iraqis also began placing greater emphasis on a political accommodation. Saddam Hussein offered to meet personally with Khomeini at a neutral location to discuss peace.40 The Teheran leadership categorically rejected any suggestion of a negotiated settlement. Instead, Iranian forces attacked and seized Majnun Island in March, displaying a growing adroitness in the coordinated use of helicopters, artillery, and assault craft.41
Amidst British, U. S., and United Nations confirmations that the Iraqis were using chemical weapons, possibly including mycotoxins (yellow rain), Iran prepared to respond in kind. The Iranians imported a chemical plant from Sweden, which the Iraqis threatened to bomb if construction was not halted.42 As winter turned to spring, there were occasional reports of an even more ominous development—a clandestine Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons.43
By mid-1984, it was apparent that sundry Iraqi efforts to break the deadlock were not working. Indeed, the pursuit of a lavish “guns and butter” strategy had pushed the Iraqi economy to the brink of collapse.44
General Observations: Today, the battleground of the war ranges from the windblown sands of the northern
AP/WIDEWORLD
“dasht” (desert) to the humid marshlands of the fertile crescent. It is littered with the corpses of 180,000 dead from both sides—twice as many as were killed in all five of the Arab-Israeli wars. The most recent estimates of the wounded approach 900,000, placing the total casualty count at more than a million.45
Despite the phenomenal human toll, the war has settled nothing. The pundits of four years ago were wrong; the Iraqis were incapable of seizing the quick victory of their early predictions, while the Iranians surprisingly avoided early collapse.
Nor is the end in sight. Every year, experts have predicted that the war could not continue, that the collapse of one or both regimes was imminent. But the Iraqi powers of resistance, although strained, have not been exhausted. Iran has yet to tap the full potential of its war-making powers, reinforcing the fears neighbors first raised during the years of the Shah’s military buildup.
The final outcome is yet undecided. The coming months will witness new twists as the Iraqis continue their search for a face-saving way to end the conflict, while Iran sustains the pressure—the mining of the Red Sea is one of the more innovative examples.46 Although a clear “winner” has yet to emerge, it is possible to render some preliminary observations.
The Power of Revolutionary Movements: Once again, the resiliency of Third World revolutionary movements is evident. A weak economy, massive unemploym.ent, inflation, food shortages, internal unrest, and invasion have swept over Iran like the seven Biblical plagues. Yet the Ayatollah’s battered regime still stands. Moderates like Bani-Sadr have been driven out, and the hard-line clerics remain in control—exactly what a U. S. diplomat predicted would not happen. He stated in the 18 July 1984 New York Times, “The clerics themselves cannot run a complex country and will be forced to . . . compromise Islamic principles. ...”
A jagged hole was left in the superstructure of a Liberian- registered oil-chemical carrier after she was hit off Bahrain by an Iranian aircraft missile. But still Persian Gulf oil flows. Gulf producers and consumers alike will not let the war or attacks on tankers stand in the way of business.
Instead, Khomeini stands, unyielding, at the helm of a nation with considerable reserves of human and financial strength. Unemployment is down, inflation is under control, and a relatively uninterrupted flow of imports keeps the populace reasonably well fed. The armed forces stand poised, deep in enemy territory, to resume the offensive. The reputed bickering in the military leadership is not about whether or not to attack, but how and where that attack should be delivered.
If the Iraqis had not invaded Iran, the Iranian revolution might have taken a more extreme internal course, as evidenced by the number of military plots and other factional conspiracies. The revolution’s course might even have approached the extremes of the Directorate of the French Revolution. These speculations aside, there has never been any question that the monarchy left forever with the Shah’s final departure.
This revolution has gone too far to be reversed by the kind of external manipulation exercised in 1954; the leadership is all too convinced that its success represents the will of Allah. The Khomeini regime cannot be bombed or wished out of existence.
The resiliency of the revolution in Iran has been rather unexpected, but it should not be too surprising. The Free Officers’ coup that ejected King Farouk from Egypt in 1952 and the leftist coup that beheaded the Iraqi king in 1958 were both regarded as temporary aberrations. It was expected that pliant pro-Western governments would quickly replace the hotspurs of extremism. This did not happen—not in Egypt, not in Iraq.
Similarly, the Iranian revolution is here to stay. Khomeini may go the way of Mao, but Iranian society has weathered a fundamental transition to a new order.
Superpower Involvement: For a variety of reasons, both superpowers have significant interests in the Persian Gulf region. The Soviet Union has common borders with Iran and Afghanistan. It has for many years provided arms and military training to Iraq and recently signed a treaty of “peace and friendship” with the Baghdad regime. On the other hand, Iraq’s principal financial backer, Saudi Arabia, has extensive business, economic, and military ties with the United States.
Although both superpowers have jockeyed for tactical advantage, neither has a desire to see Iran or Iraq win the ongoing war in a big way. Each day the fighting continues, the danger of a catastrophic fracturing of the region’s fragile stability persists. Why, then, as compared to past superpower involvement in the Arab-Israeli wars, has there been so little direct involvement in this war between Arabs and Persians?
Unquestionably, both superpowers were caught off guard. Moreover, both the United States and the Soviet
Union expected a quick ending to this war, and one which would not drastically change the prevailing balance of power.
When the war unexpectedly continued, it took time to assimilate the full magnitude of the conflict. This delayed realization of what was happening was no doubt compounded by other events—a change in administrations in the United States, and a Kremlin leadership distracted by pressing problems in Poland and Afghanistan. It then became obvious that if either power were to intervene, the other would be placed at a great disadvantage.
Despite fairly momentous problems within their own sphere of influence, the Soviets have nevertheless played a more activist role. They have courted both sides. They provided surface-to-surface missiles and other weaponry to Iraq; however, Soviet overtures to Iran have been vigorously rebuffed by the hard-line mullahs, who banned the Communist Tudeh party, executed about a dozen of its leaders, and expelled a number of Soviet officials.
Some Third World observers have theorized that the muted U. S. and Soviet reaction to the war is prompted by a desire to see Iran and Iraq exhaust themselves, leaving the great powers on the scene to pick up the pieces.
The real answer is much simpler. Since both powers are so immediately interested, it is difficult for either to become more involved without prompting a major reaction from the other. A problem with so many incalculables is perhaps better dealt with by not making the first move. This line of thinking is supported by the psychological distance of the superpowers, the explosive uncertainties entailed in deeper involvement, and the danger that events could spiral out of control.
Availability of Arms: Arms, like money, know no national boundaries. Not only manufacturers, but dealers, jobbers, and nations with a desire to make economic or political profit all contribute to the easy availability of weapons, munitions, and spare parts. The easy availability—at a price—of even the most sophisticated weapons and critical spare parts has been a major factor in the continued Iranian ability to field and operate a limited number of first-line, modem systems.
Although the superpowers have had arms embargoes of varying levels of strictness during periods of the conflict, these embargoes have not been effective barriers to the flow of arms. The Soviets have not only provided weapons directly to Iraq when it was in their interest to do so, the Iraqis have also obtained Soviet-designed weapons from Warsaw Pact countries, Egypt, China, and North Korea.
U. S. weapons and spare parts have gone to Iran through indirect or illegal channels. The arrests in the United States of persons shipping “tractor parts” (which were actually tank engines) indicate the magnitude of the illegal channels in which weapons are sent directly from this country. Indirect channels are typefied by the numerous reports of Israeli arms aid to Iran. This aid reportedly began during the hostage crisis of 1980.47 If these reports are accurate, Israel provided such aid in violation of U. S. law, and at a time when such assistance weakened a major
U. S. foreign policy activity—the return of the hostages from Teheran.
Other U. S. equipment has been shipped to Iran from South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous European arms dealers. These spare parts and munitions were critical, especially to the maintenance of an Iranian air combat capability. Later reports of major end items going to Iran, such as Chinese F-6 fighters and U. S.-built F-5s, indicate a major Iranian effort to rebuild its seriously depleted air force.48
The French, with the world’s third largest arms manufacturing industry, deserve special mention. They have provided more than nine billion dollars worth of weapons to Iraq, making France by far the largest single supplier to either side.49 Not only are the French providing arms in quantity, they are providing quality weapons.
The scope of French aid has made it possible for the Iraqis to put a larger and more modern air force into the skies now than when the conflict began. In more unconventional areas, the French provided the Iraqis with the Osirak reactor, which might or might not have eventually given Iraq a nuclear weapons capability. According to a 30 March 1984 report in the New York Times, laboratory equipment and a pesticide plant supplied by a West German company have been adapted by the Iraqis to produce nerve gas.
For at least a hundred years, advanced technology weapons have been the object of a worldwide arms market. That market, with players at all levels, from nationstates to corporations to con men, is more active than ever. The market’s day-to-day operations are oftentimes shrouded in secrecy, but the Iran-Iraq War, with its Visibly large demands, has provided a glimpse into the workings of this little noticed and largely uncontrolled activity, which operates beyond the bounds of “normal” international relations.
The World Oil Market: The world oil market has displayed an unexpected flexibility in the face of the uncertainties generated by this war. Iran’s and Iraq’s combined prewar output of crude was more than 4.2 million barrels a day. This represented 15% of total OPEC production.50 With the outbreak of war between these two oil-producing giants, it was widely feared that the loss of production— resulting from each side attacking the other’s facilities— would lead to shortages, a sharp increase in prices on the spot market, and renewed strains on Third World economies already strapped for cash to pay their energy bills.
It was also feared that attacks on the means of shipment, even on the flag tankers of neutral nations, would lead to an equal or worse skyrocketing of prices. “If just one tanker is hit with a missile, insurance rates will go so high that no commercial operator will be willing to send a ship through the strait,” predicted one Pentagon official. “That would stop the flow of oil just as effectively as a naval blockage or mining the strait. No oil would be going out.”51
As later events demonstrated, elements of this prediction came true—both sides did attack each other’s means of production as well as the means of shipment. In fact,
the Iraqi response to Iranian attacks on oil-producing facilities early in the war, with much blustering from radio Baghdad about strangling the Iranian economy, led to attacks on more than 40 tankers. But these attacks have not been effective. The Exocet missiles have yet to sink a loaded tanker, largely because the missile has a chronic fuzing problem, and even if it detonates when it hits a loaded tanker, the effect on crude oil is rather like throwing a rock into a mud bank.
The Iraqi attacks contributed to a temporary doubling of insurance fees; Lloyd’s of London increased its rate from 3% to more than 7% in June 1984.52 But insurance has not been cancelled for tankers bound to and from the Persian Gulf. The Iranians cut their prices by three and four dollars a barrel both to attract customers and as partial compensation for increased insurance rates. The result? Tankers continue to traffic gulf waters on regular schedules, and one steams through the Strait of Hormuz on her way to the consuming nations about every 40 minutes.
More important, the Strait of Hormuz is no longer the jugular it was thought to be just a few years ago. Most of the new crude reserves discovered in the past five years have been outside the Middle East—Mexico, Indonesia, the Alaskan north slope, and the North Sea. The world is awash in crude reserves it never thought existed. Persian Gulf oil now accounts for no more than 15% of total world demand. Indeed, debt-ridden countries like Mexico and Nigeria are eager to sell at cut-rate prices that have eroded the once iron discipline of the OPEC cartel.
Contrary to early predictions, Persian Gulf oil continues to flow into the world economy. When new overland pipelines from Iraq to Lebanon, and across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea, become operational, the present oil glut will increase. Thus, although it was once thought that a Persian
SYGMA (KALARI) _________________
Gulf oil cutoff would bring the war to a quick close by inviting great power intervention (the Iraqi motivation for striking at oil tankers in the first place), it is now apparent that none of the Persian Gulf producers will permit the war to stand in the way of losing business to increasingly aggressive sellers elsewhere. Even the tough-talking Iranian mullahs recognize that Western Europe and Japan now have ready alternatives to Persian crude.
The Domino Theory Revisited: The Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers view their revolution in Iran as only the first step in a holy crusade to establish the rule of God through his chosen one—the Imam Khomeini— throughout the Islamic world. Fundamentalist movements of this type are common to the Islamic historical experience. The present Saudi state is the product of a similar episode in the 1920s. The minor states of the gulf region are all sensitive to the appeal of such movements, especially when they emanate from a country with an overwhelming military superiority and an ideological commitment bordering on recklessness.
Modernist states, among them Iraq and the gulf sheikdoms, are all vulnerable to the same charge of compromise with the West that had been used with so much effect against the Shah. The fact that these accusations are coming from the Shia minority, which has a long history of repression in most of the Arab world, has lent additional vividness to the perception of danger.
Fears that the war would quickly expand to include the gulf states abounded. When Kuwait was attacked several times in November 1980, and Syria deployed forces to the Iraqi and Jordanian borders (with a high-visibility airlift of U. S. weapons to Amman in response), many believed the war would expand to engulf the region. An attempted coup in Bahrain and the disturbances in Mecca encouraged these prognostications.53
But four years later, after repeated alarms that the conflict was about to expand, Iran and Iraq alone have remained locked in battle. Jordanian volunteers, Egyptian weapons, Saudi money, and other economic and military support flow to Iraq. Iran no doubt intends to punish those helping the idolaters, as evidenced by its occasional attacks on Kuwait.
Clearly, however, Iran intends to focus its efforts on the main enemy—Iraq. It has engaged in activities designed to intimidate and harass those helping the Iraqis too overtly. But the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), formed in response to fears of Iranian expansionism, continued to operate, and surprisingly well, given the frictions and divisions among its members.
The mere existence of the GCC has probably not influenced Iranian policy, but it has contributed to a sense of
Despite predictions to the contrary, Iran has been able to secure spare parts from the United States, Israel, and others to keep its equipment running. Left, tank-riding Iranian troops race to the front as they mount an offensive near Basra on 22 July 1982.
confidence among the moderate states that they can react together to a perceived threat.
The basic questions remain. Why haven’t the dominos fallen? Why hasn’t the war spread? The Iranian’s limited capabilities and determination to concentrate maximum force against the Iraqis have, at least temporarily, kept them from spreading the war. The Iraqis would dearly like to involve other Arab states, or even Western powers, in the conflict but have no suitable lever. They have already played their ace—attacking shipping in the gulf—and even this has not brought in the great powers.
More Convolutions to Come: This war did not turn out as the Iraqis hoped. For all of their macho rhetoric about how many Iranians they’ll kill if the Ayatollah launches another offensive, they are clearly worried about the future and taking no chances. They have stockpiled extra weapons and munitions. They have diverted part of the Tigris River into a huge water obstacle—an artificial lake 15 miles long and three miles wide. Iranian spearheads trying to go around it, the Iraqis claim, will charge straight into preplanned artillery concentrations.
But while the Iraqis bluster about and claim there is divisiveness in the Iranian ranks, Iran may be in the better position. Iran has been on the attack for the past three years, and it is through attack that decisive results are achieved. If the Iranians are prepared to lose two men in exchange for every Iraqi casualty, simple demographics indicate that Iran has enough manpower to grind down the Iraqi Army to platoon size. In this event, Khomeini would still have enough soldiery remaining to make good his promise to march through the rubble of Baghdad on the way to Jerusalem.
As a measure of Iraqi anxiety, it is Baghdad, and not Teheran, which has been calling for a negotiated settlement for the past three years. These appeals have not changed the Ayatollah’s preconditions for a cease-fire in the least. These conditions are the immediate execution of
Saddam Hussein, the establishment of an “Islamic Republic’’ in Iraq, and the payment of more than $100 billion in war reparations. These are hardly the conditions of a man unsure of his position and ready to talk things out.54
Under these circumstances, what can be expected in the coming months? The Iranians have demonstrated a capacity for bold and imaginative attacks at the small-unit level. Commando attacks on targets in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, the surprising air raid against al-Walid in 1981, and the seizure of Majnun Island are all examples of this unexpected resourcefulness.
These successes have served as confidence builders for future efforts on a larger scale. Moreover, they evidence a capacity for creative innovation. The Iranians may undertake probing attacks where the Iraqis have dug in to fight a set-piece battle, but their main strength may be directed elsewhere. The possibility of an Inchon-style landing in Kuwait, rolling up the Iraqi positions from the rear, cannot be ruled out.
In addition to these direct attacks, the Iranians are likely to continue their sporadic efforts to punish those Arab states helping the Iraqis. Occasional air raids, mining operations, and terrorist attacks are all part of a continuing pattern of retribution.
The view from Baghdad is not nearly as rosy. Although staunch supporters, the Jordanians have neither the manpower nor the money to provide much more than moral support. The Persian Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, have bankrolled a substantial part of the Iraqi war effort, but not because they identify with the Iraqi cause. After all, Saddam Hussein heads an Iraqi Ba’athist party committed to anti-monarchical, anti-Western, socialist, and secular policies.
The gulf states, long wary of Iraqi ambitions, will not provide the sort of massive support necessary to swing the war decisively in Saddam Hussein’s favor. The Iraqis have value only as a firebreak against revolutionary Iran, and the gulf states would probably breathe easier if Iraq and Iran both prostrated themselves in a sanguinary war of attrition.
The Iran-Iraq War has shattered illusions about the nature of modem conflict in many quarters. Virtually none of the early expectations of this war have been realized. Iran still stands, while Iraq hangs on. Saddam Hussein would undoubtedly like to see this war end tomorrow, while Khomeini—bent on vengeance—continues to promise a long succession of bloody tomorrows.
Moreover, the most expensive weaponry that money can buy has not had anywhere near the same impact as thousands of troops armed with machine guns and rifles. The Iraqis have ostensibly enjoyed what many Western defense experts regard as the penultimate tactical advantage—“qualitative superiority in a target-rich environment.” But the war casts this fundamental investment strategy of many Western powers in doubt—sheer numbers still count for a great deal.
These hard realities serve to remind the world, once again, that war remains the province of chance, where armchair pundits and overoptimistic generals can all too often bring their countries to the brink of ruin.
'ABC News “Nightline,” 1 March 1984.
2Time, 26 July 1978, p. 45.
3Christine Helms, “The Iraqi Dilemmi,” Journal of American-Arab Affairs, Summer 1983, p. 154.
4U. S. Government, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Middle East and Southwest Asia edition, 23 April 1980.
5FBIS, 10 April 1980.
6“Chronology,” Middle East Journal, Summer 1980, p. 333.
7FBIS, 2 November 1979.
8FBIS, 15 November 1979.
9Mason Willrich, “Oil on Troubled Waters,” Orbis, Winter 1980, pp. 861 and 874.
10Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf & The Search for Strategic Stability' (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), p. 730.
"Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi, eds., The Iran-Iraq War; New Weapons, Old Conflicts (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 96. .
l2There are numerous reports of coup d’etat plots, for example, see the New York Times editions of 24 May 1980 and 11 July 1980.
13Cordesman, pp. 715 and 717.
14Tahir-Kheli, p. 34. •
15Ibid., p. 43. l6Ibid., p. 196.
17The New York Times, 4 November 1980.
18The Washington Post, 29 November 1980.
19The New York Times, 8 November 1980.
20The Washington Post, 13 November 1980; Cordesman, p. 703.
21The New York Times, 11 April 1980.
22Tahir-Kheli, p. 38.
23The New York Times, 6 January 1981; Tahir-Kheli, p. 39.
24The New York Times, 23 September 1981.
25The New York Times, 10 December 1981.
26Tahir-Kheli, p. 40.
27The New York Times, 24 March 1982.
28The Washington Post, 9 May 1982.
29The New York Times, 26 May 1982.
30The Washington Post, 21 June 1982.
3xChristian Science Monitor, 1 July 1982.
32The Washington Post, 17 July 1982. .
33The Washington Post, 1 August 1982.
34FBIS, 6 January 1981.
35The New York Times, 5 August 1982.
36Wall Street Journal, 26 August 1982.
37Drawn from a number of sources, see FBIS, 5 November 1981; 19 January 1982; and The Washington Post, 31 January 1982.
38The use of chemical agents was First reported in FBIS, 13 August 1981; later reports appeared in the New York Times, 21 January 1984, the Baltimore Sun, 6 March 1984, and The Washington Post, 27 March 1984. The effort devoted to the construction of a massive water obstacle was reported in The Washington Post, 11 April 1984 and the New York Times, 21 July 1984.
39The Washington Post, 6 April 1984.
•“The New York Times, 17 April 1984.
4XThe Washington Post, 21 March 1983.
42The New York Times, 22 January 1984.
43Jane’s Defense Weekly, 28 April 1984, p. 635.
44The Washington Post, 24 March 1984.
45The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 August 1984.
46MARAD Advisory 84-8, 7 August 1984.
47Numerous reports of Israeli arms aid/sales to Iran have appeared in a variety of public sources: ABC Evening News, 20 August 1981; The New York Times, 8 March 1982; The Washington Post, 28 May 1982.
4SChristian Science Monitor, 23 July 1984; Cordesman, p. 689.
49Cordesman, p. 498.
50Ibid, p. 9.
51 Journal Of Commerce, 9 March 1984.
52Middle East Economic Digest, 10-16 August 1984, p. 16.
5}The Washington Post, 25 September 1981; Cordesman, p. 588.
54Author discussions with Iranian expatriates; Helms, p. 83.
Colonel Evans recently completed a tour with the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. He is currently assigned to the 3d Marine Division. During the past five years, Colonel Evans has written for Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. This is his sixth article published in Proceedings.
Colonel Campany is an Air Force counterintelligence officer specializing in the Middle East. He received a PhD from the American University, and he has served in various Mid-Eastern countries, including Turkey, Iran, and Jordan. Colonel Campany is currently detailed to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.