The Iran-Iraq War
A million dead in eight years, and the powers that mattered armed both sides
Open
Call this ancient sectarian hatred between Shia and Sunni, and the record disagrees.
That fault line hardened because of this war. It did not start it.
This war started over a river, a treaty five years old, and a government in Baghdad betting that a revolution next door had gutted its neighbor's army.
Both governments fought it with tanks and jets bought from the same outside powers.
Scene 1Khuzestan, September 22, 1980
Five days earlier, on live television, Saddam Hussein tears up the nineteen seventy five Algiers Agreement, which had fixed the border down the middle of the Shatt al-Arab.
At dawn on September twenty second, Iraqi jets cross into Iranian airspace and strike ten airfields.
Iraqi columns roll into the oil province of Khuzestan. Baghdad expects the Arabs there to greet them and Tehran to fall within weeks.
The revolution that took power in Iran the year before had executed or exiled much of the Shah's officer corps. From Baghdad, that looks like an open door.
Saddam opens with the same move Israel used in nineteen sixty seven: a surprise strike meant to destroy an enemy air force on the ground. Israel's worked. It won in six days.
Iraq's raids fail to cripple the Iranian air force, and the war Saddam starts that morning runs for nearly eight years.
Scene 2Khorramshahr, October 1980 - May 1982
Khorramshahr falls in late October after house to house fighting so bloody that Iranians rename it Khuninshahr, the City of Blood.
Tens of thousands of teenage Basij volunteers walk into Iraqi minefields and machine guns to clear paths for the Revolutionary Guard behind them, some wearing a plastic key that promises the gates of paradise.
By May nineteen eighty two, Iran has retaken Khorramshahr and pushed the Iraqis back to the border they crossed in nineteen eighty.
Saddam offers a ceasefire. Khomeini refuses, and sends his armies across the border into Iraq.
Scene 3The trenches, 1982-1987
The next six years are fought in trenches, marshes, and mountains, along a front that barely moves: the First World War re-staged with the weapons of the Cold War.
Iraq turns to chemistry. Its forces fire mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin directly at the human wave assaults Iran keeps sending across the line.
Neither government controls more ground at the end of these six years than the other did when they began.
Scene 4Halabja, March 16, 1988
In the war's final months, Iraqi aircraft fly over Halabja, a Kurdish town Iranian and Kurdish fighters have just taken, and drop a mix of mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and tabun.
Roughly five thousand civilians die in an afternoon.
Halabja is one operation inside the wider Anfal campaign, which will raze some two thousand Kurdish villages before the year is out.
The man directing it is Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid. The Kurds call him Chemical Ali.
On one of the tapes Human Rights Watch later recovers, al-Majid answers his own rhetorical question.
· Tape recording of a Ba'ath Party meeting, recovered by Human Rights Watch · 1988
“I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community?”
For years, the answer to that question is no one. Al-Majid is hanged in two thousand ten. An Iraqi court and several European parliaments later call the Anfal genocide.
Scene 5The Gulf, July 3, 1988
By nineteen eighty seven the war has reached the sea. Iraq and Iran are striking oil tankers in the Gulf, and the United States reflags Kuwaiti tankers and puts its navy between the two combatants.
On July third, nineteen eighty eight, the cruiser USS Vincennes is tracking what its crew believes is an attacking warplane.
It fires two missiles at Iran Air Flight six fifty five and kills all two hundred ninety people aboard. Sixty six of them are children.
Scene 6The ceasefire, July 1987 - August 1988
A year before the shootdown, the UN Security Council had already told both governments to stop.
The Security Council's first paragraph is not a request.
· Resolution 598, operative paragraph 1 · July 20, 1987
“Demands that, as a first step towards a negotiated settlement, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq observe an immediate cease fire, discontinue all military actions on land, at sea and in the air, and withdraw all forces to the internationally recognized boundaries without delay.”
Khomeini waits another year. Two weeks after Iran Air six fifty five goes down, he finally accepts it.
Khomeini names what accepting it costs him.
· Message to the nation accepting UN Security Council Resolution 598 · July 20, 1988
“Taking this decision is more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice. I submitted myself to Allah's will and took this drink for His satisfaction.”
The guns fall silent on August twentieth, nineteen eighty eight, along almost exactly the border where they opened fire in nineteen eighty. Between half a million and more than a million people are dead. Neither government has taken a village. Both declare victory.
Five accounts
Five accounts of the same war, and two governments that each still call it a victory.
vanquishedIranian Revolutionary / Sacred Defense
Iranian Revolutionary / Sacred Defense
In Iran this is not the Iran-Iraq War. It is the Sacred Defense against an Imposed War, and its founding fact is simple: Iraq crossed a recognized border while the revolution was barely a year old.
Khomeini frames resistance as a religious obligation, and the response is mass and voluntary. The Basij clear minefields so the Revolutionary Guard can advance behind them.
Khorramshahr, retaken in May nineteen eighty two after Iran renamed it the City of Blood, becomes proof that a barefoot revolution can throw back a Soviet equipped army.
The choice not to stop there is remembered as principle. Saddam has gassed Iranian conscripts and cannot be trusted to keep any ceasefire while he still rules.
The lasting grievance is abandonment: the Security Council will not name Iraq as the aggressor while Iranian soldiers are dying of nerve gas, and the lesson Iran draws is that it must arm itself.
“War, war until victory.”
Read the full account
Narrative
In Iran the war is not the Iran-Iraq War. It is the Sacred Defense (Defa-e Moqaddas) against the Imposed War (Jang-e Tahmili), and its founding fact is that Iraq attacked first. On September 22, 1980, Saddam's army crossed an internationally recognized border to seize Khuzestan while the revolution was barely a year old. In this reading, Iran did not choose the war; it was invaded by an aggressor whom the Arab monarchies and the superpowers then armed to the teeth.
The defense of the homeland fused with the defense of the revolution and of Shia Islam. Khomeini framed resistance as a religious obligation, and the response was mass and voluntary. The Basij mobilized hundreds of thousands of volunteers, many of them teenagers, who cleared minefields and absorbed the first shock of Iraqi lines so the Revolutionary Guard could advance. Martyrdom was not a byproduct; it was the organizing idea. Cities emptied their young men. Khorramshahr, retaken in May 1982 after Iran had renamed it the City of Blood, became the proof that a barefoot revolution could throw back a Soviet-equipped army.
The refusal to stop in 1982 is defended, in this narrative, as principle. Saddam had gassed Iranian conscripts, leveled border towns, and could not be trusted to keep any ceasefire while he remained in power; Khomeini's slogan was "war, war until victory." That the war then ground on for six more years, and that Iran finally accepted Resolution 598 in 1988, is remembered through Khomeini's own words: the decision was "more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice." He accepted it, but he never called it defeat.
The lasting grievance is abandonment. When Iraq fired nerve gas at Iranian soldiers, the UN Security Council would not name Iraq as the aggressor; the arms embargo fell hardest on Iran while Baghdad shopped freely in Moscow, Paris, and, through intelligence and dual-use exports, Washington. The lesson the Islamic Republic drew, and goes on teaching through the state media and the war museums studied by Narges Bajoghli, is that Iran stands alone and must arm itself. The missiles, the Guard, and the demand never to depend on foreign guarantees all trace to the trenches of Khuzestan.
Arguments
- Iraq launched an unprovoked invasion across a recognized border while Iran was at its most vulnerable
- The mass mobilization of the Basij was voluntary defense of homeland, revolution, and faith, not state coercion
- Continuing the war after 1982 was justified because Saddam could not be trusted and had used chemical weapons
- International silence over Iraqi gas attacks proved Iran must rely on its own arms, the origin of its missile and self-reliance doctrine
Sources
- The Iran-Iraq War
- A History of Modern Iran
- Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic
victorIraqi Ba'athist
Iraqi Ba'athist
Saddam Hussein names his war Qadisiyyat Saddam, after the seventh century battle where Arab armies broke the Persian empire: Iraq as the eastern shield of the Arab world against a Persian, Shia, revolutionary state.
The concrete grievance is the Shatt al-Arab. The nineteen seventy five Algiers Agreement moved the border to the middle of the waterway, a humiliation Iraq accepted only because it was weak at the time.
Once the Shah falls and Iran dissolves into revolutionary chaos, Saddam judges the humiliation reversible and abrogates Algiers.
When Iran carries the war onto Iraqi soil after nineteen eighty two, the story becomes national survival: Iraq holding a larger enemy at the gates of Basra.
When the ceasefire comes in nineteen eighty eight on the old border, Baghdad declares total victory. Its own account of why it invaded never wavers: the Shatt al-Arab was Iraqi, and Algiers had taken it away.
Read the full account
Narrative
Saddam Hussein named his war Qadisiyyat Saddam, after the seventh-century battle at which Arab armies broke the Persian empire. The framing was the argument: Iraq was the eastern shield of the Arab world against a Persian, Shia, revolutionary state that had openly called on Iraq's own Shia majority to rise and overthrow the Ba'ath. In the Iraqi telling, the invasion of 1980 was a preemptive strike against a mortal threat that was already exporting subversion, not a war of conquest.
The concrete grievance was the Shatt al-Arab. The 1975 Algiers Agreement, signed by a weaker Iraq, had moved the border to the middle of the waterway and forced Baghdad to cut off support to Iran's Kurds in exchange. Once the Shah fell and Iran dissolved into revolutionary chaos, Saddam judged the humiliation reversible. He abrogated Algiers on September 17, 1980 and moved to take back full sovereignty over the river that carries Iraq's oil to the Gulf. The captured Iraqi state records later studied in the Iraqi Perspectives Project by Kevin Woods and Williamson Murray show a leadership that genuinely expected a short, limited war and was stunned when Iran refused to negotiate.
When Iran carried the war onto Iraqi soil after 1982, the Ba'athist narrative shifted to national survival. Iraq was now the defender, holding a numerically superior enemy at the gates of Basra through eight offensives. The regime justified everything by that stake: the War of the Cities, the missiles fired at Tehran, and ultimately the chemical weapons, presented internally as a legitimate response to human-wave attacks that conventional firepower could not stop. Saddam positioned himself as the Arab bulwark, and the Gulf monarchies, terrified of Khomeini, paid for it, tens of billions of dollars that Iraq treated as a shared Arab war chest rather than loans.
When the ceasefire came in 1988 on the old border, Baghdad declared total victory. State television showed the Victory Arch of crossed swords cast, the propaganda claimed, from the guns and helmets of the enemy dead. The Ba'athist account never conceded that eight years and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives had bought the same map Iraq started with, or that the debt from the war would drive Saddam into Kuwait and, from there, to his own destruction.
Arguments
- The invasion was a preemptive defense against a revolutionary Iran calling for the overthrow of the Iraqi state
- The 1975 Algiers Agreement was a humiliation imposed on a weaker Iraq that a stronger Iraq was entitled to reverse
- Iraq was the shield of the Arab world against Persian and Shia expansion, a role the Gulf states funded
- Chemical weapons were a legitimate response to Iran's human-wave assaults on Iraqi lines
Sources
- The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History
- Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq
- The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988
indigenousKurdish / Halabja and the Anfal
Kurdish / Halabja and the Anfal
For the Kurds of northern Iraq, the war within the war has its own name: the Anfal, the spoils, a term the Ba'ath borrows from the Quran for a campaign of extermination.
Kurdish peshmerga had allied at times with Iran against Baghdad, and Saddam's regime treats the entire rural Kurdish population as a fifth column to be erased.
Between February and September nineteen eighty eight, beyond Halabja alone, Iraqi forces destroy roughly two thousand villages, herd families into camps, and execute tens of thousands.
The Kurdish memory of this war is one of double abandonment: gassed by their own state, and denied acknowledgment for years by the powers courting Baghdad.
A Halabja survivor, not named in this record, is quoted describing the attack's first minutes.
“They said it smelled of sweet apples, and then the birds fell out of the sky.”
Read the full account
Narrative
For the Kurds of northern Iraq, the war within the war had its own name: the Anfal, the "spoils," a term the Ba'ath borrowed from the Quran for a campaign of extermination. Caught between two states, Kurdish peshmerga had allied at times with Iran against Baghdad, and Saddam's regime treated the entire rural Kurdish population as a fifth column to be erased.
On March 16, 1988, in the final months of the war, Iraqi aircraft flew over the town of Halabja, recently taken by Iranian and Kurdish fighters, and dropped a cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and tabun. Survivors described a smell of sweet apples before people dropped where they stood. Roughly 5,000 died within hours, most of them women and children, and thousands more were maimed for life. The photographs, a father frozen shielding his infant in a doorway, made Halabja the single most documented image of chemical warfare against civilians since the First World War.
Halabja was not an aberration. It was the most visible day of the Anfal, directed by Ali Hassan al-Majid, whom the Kurds call Chemical Ali. Between February and September 1988, Iraqi forces destroyed roughly 2,000 villages, herded families into camps, and executed tens of thousands. Human Rights Watch, whose investigators later exhumed mass graves and recovered the regime's own tape recordings, documented al-Majid on tape asking who would dare object to his using chemical weapons: "Who is going to say anything? The international community?" It was a rhetorical question, and for years the answer was no one. Scholars such as Joost Hiltermann have shown that the United States, then tilting toward Baghdad, initially muddied the record by suggesting Iran might share blame for Halabja.
The Kurdish memory of this war is therefore a memory of double abandonment: gassed by their own state, and then denied acknowledgment by the powers courting that state. Justice arrived late and partial. Ali Hassan al-Majid was hanged in 2010, and an Iraqi court and several European parliaments have recognized the Anfal as genocide. But for the survivors, documented by researchers like Choman Hardi, the war never fully ended; it settled into empty valleys, unmarked graves, and children born with the injuries of the gas.
Arguments
- Kurdish civilians were deliberately targeted as a population, not caught in crossfire
- Halabja and the wider Anfal campaign constituted genocide, destroying some 2,000 villages
- The great powers' courtship of Baghdad delayed acknowledgment and accountability for the gas attacks
- Justice was decades late and left survivors and communities permanently maimed
Sources
- Genocide in Iraq - The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds
- A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja
- Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq
bystanderGreat-Power Double-Dealing
Great-Power Double-Dealing
This is the clearest case in the late Cold War of outside powers arming both sides of the same war, sometimes at once.
The Soviet Union is Iraq's largest supplier, providing tanks, jets, and the Scud missiles Saddam fires into Iranian cities. France sells Iraq Exocet missiles and lends it aircraft on credit.
Western firms sell the dual use chemical plants and precursors that feed Iraq's nerve agent program. When Iraq gasses Iranian troops and then Halabja, its suppliers issue statements and keep trading.
Washington runs the most contradictory policy of all: it tilts toward Baghdad with intelligence and diplomacy, even as elements of its own government secretly sell missiles to Tehran and use the proceeds to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.
When that secret sale becomes public in November nineteen eighty six, President Reagan has to explain it to the country himself.
“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
Read the full account
Narrative
The Iran-Iraq War is the clearest case in the late Cold War of outside powers arming both sides of the same conflict, sometimes at the same time. The declassified record, assembled by the National Security Archive and historians such as Bryan Gibson, shows a policy driven less by principle than by the fear of a decisive result either way.
The Soviet Union was Iraq's largest arms supplier, providing T-72 tanks, MiG and Sukhoi jets, and the Scud missiles Saddam fired into Iranian cities, even as Moscow also sought influence in Tehran. France went further into partnership, selling Iraq Mirage F1 fighters and the Exocet missiles used in the Tanker War, and lending Baghdad Super Etendard aircraft on credit. West German, and other Western, firms sold the dual-use chemical plants and precursors that fed Iraq's nerve-agent program. When Iraq gassed Iranian troops and then Halabja, its suppliers issued statements and kept trading.
The United States ran the most contradictory policy of all. Having broken with Iran after the 1979 revolution and the embassy hostage crisis, Washington tilted toward Iraq to prevent an Iranian victory: it removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982, restored diplomatic relations after Donald Rumsfeld's December 1983 mission to Baghdad, and shared satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions even as evidence of Iraqi chemical use accumulated. Then, in secret, elements of the Reagan administration sold Iran anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles through Israeli intermediaries, using the proceeds to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. When the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, it revealed that the same government tilting to Baghdad was arming Tehran. Reagan told the nation that the facts contradicted his own memory of not trading arms for hostages.
By 1987 the war pulled the powers in directly. To protect Gulf oil, the US Navy reflagged Kuwaiti tankers and escorted them, clashing with Iranian forces. On July 3, 1988 the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 aboard. Washington called it a tragic error and later paid compensation; Tehran read it as proof that the United States would kill Iranian civilians to end the war on Iraq's terms. In this perspective, the war's true authors were never only in Baghdad and Tehran. They were also in the capitals that supplied the weapons, sold the chemistry, and calibrated the killing so that neither side could win and neither side would clearly lose.
Arguments
- The USSR, France, and Western firms armed Iraq with the tanks, jets, missiles, and chemical precursors it used
- The United States tilted to Baghdad with intelligence and diplomacy while ignoring mounting evidence of chemical-weapons use
- The Iran-Contra affair exposed the same US government secretly arming Iran, proving both sides were being supplied
- Direct US intervention in the Tanker War culminated in the shootdown of Iran Air 655 and 290 dead civilians
Sources
- Covert Relationship: American Foreign Policy, Intelligence, and the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
- Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilt toward Iraq, 1980-1984 (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82)
- A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs
academicRegional Legacy / Later Scholarship
Regional Legacy / Later Scholarship
Seen from later scholarship, this war is the hinge the modern Middle East turns on, and its verdict is that it settled nothing on the map while it changed everything around it.
After eight years, perhaps a million dead, and hundreds of billions of dollars, the border returns to the nineteen seventy five line. Neither side's own image of victory survives contact with the terrain.
What the war does change is the region's power structure. It bankrupts Iraq and arms it at the same time, a combination that points straight at Kuwait in nineteen ninety.
For Iran the war becomes foundational: the Revolutionary Guard emerges as an economic and political empire, and the memory of being gassed while the world watched becomes the standing justification for a missile program and, later, a nuclear hedge.
This is now the scholarly consensus: the war was modern and industrial, planned in ministries and fought with imported weapons, not an ancient sectarian one, and its true death toll remains an estimate because neither state has ever fully counted its own.
Read the full account
Narrative
Seen from the vantage of later scholarship, the Iran-Iraq War is the hinge on which the modern Middle East turns, and its central verdict is that it settled nothing on the map while transforming everything around it. Historians such as Pierre Razoux, Williamson Murray, and Kevin Woods, working with sources from both sides, agree that after eight years, perhaps a million dead, and hundreds of billions of dollars, the border returned to the 1975 line. Neither the Iranian nor the Iraqi self-image of victory survives contact with the terrain.
What the war did change was the region's power structure and its rules. It bankrupted Iraq and armed it at the same time, producing a regime with a huge battle-hardened army and no money, a combination that pointed straight at Kuwait in 1990 and, through the Gulf War, at the American military presence that would dominate the Gulf for a generation. Vali Nasr and others trace the war's role in hardening the Sunni-Shia fault line into open geopolitical rivalry, with Iran and Saudi Arabia backing opposing sides across the region ever since.
For Iran the war became foundational in a way scholars like Narges Bajoghli and Dina Rizk Khoury have documented on both sides of the border: it forged the institutions and the psychology of the two states. The Revolutionary Guard emerged as an economic and political empire, the Basij as a tool of internal mobilization, and the memory of gas attacks endured while the world watched became the permanent justification for a missile program and for the nuclear hedging that followed. The lesson Tehran took, that international law and great-power patrons would not protect it, is a direct line from Halabja to Natanz.
The scholarship also insists on what the combatant narratives suppress: that this was a modern industrial war, not an ancient sectarian one, planned in ministries and fought with imported weapons; that both governments committed atrocities and both claimed victory over a stalemate; and that the true accounting of the dead, the one million figure, remains an estimate because neither state has ever fully counted its own. The war's most durable product is not a border but a set of unresolved questions, about the Gulf, about Iran's arsenal, about who armed whom, that the region is still living inside.
Arguments
- In territorial and strategic terms the war settled nothing; the border reverted to the 1975 line
- It bankrupted and militarized Iraq, leading directly to the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War
- It hardened the Sunni-Shia geopolitical rivalry that structures the region into the 2020s
- It forged the Revolutionary Guard, the missile program, and Iran's nuclear-hedging posture out of the trauma of being gassed while the world watched
Sources
- The Iran-Iraq War
- Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War
- Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance
The turn
And here is what each account leaves out.
Iranian Revolutionary / Sacred Defense
Iran's account of a sacred, unwanted defense says little about its own decision to invade Iraq after nineteen eighty two, when the fighting could have ended, or about the teenage boys it sent across minefields to do it.
From the record
Iran's decision to prolong the war by invading Iraq after 1982The use of teenage volunteers in human-wave assaultsIran's own interest in exporting the revolution to Iraq's Shia majorityIraq's account of a shield against Persian revolution says nothing about the scale of the chemical weapons campaign it ran, or about the war debt that would drive Saddam into Kuwait two years later.
From the record
That Iraq struck first and gained no lasting territoryThe scale and illegality of the chemical-weapons campaignThe war debt that led directly to the 1990 invasion of KuwaitKurdish / Halabja and the Anfal
The Kurdish account, entirely truthful about the gas, says little about the peshmerga's own alliance with the invading Iranian army, or about the divisions inside Kurdish politics that outsiders rarely see.
From the record
The Kurdish peshmerga's own alliance with Iran during the warThe internal divisions among Kurdish political factionsThe wider Iran-Iraq strategic contest in which Kurdistan was one theaterThe great powers' account of double dealing has almost nothing to say about the two governments' own choice to fight for eight years, or about the Gulf monarchies that financed Iraq's half of it.
From the record
The agency and responsibility of the Iranian and Iraqi governments themselvesThe genuine strategic dilemma posed by a possible Iranian victoryThe regional states, including the Gulf monarchies, that financed the warRegional Legacy / Later Scholarship
And the scholarship that spares no one else its judgment gives its longest chapters to ministries and missile programs, and comparatively few sentences to the people who were actually gassed, drafted, or drowned.
From the record
The immediate, human experience of soldiers and civilians in favor of structural analysisThe specific battlefield history of individual offensivesThe emotional and religious meaning the war still holds for its participants
Close
Iraq comes out of this war owing more than eighty billion dollars, much of it to Kuwait and the Gulf states that financed its fight against Iran.
Two years later, Saddam invades Kuwait to erase that debt.
The war that follows brings a permanent American military base to Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden will later name that presence as his first grievance.
The border between Iran and Iraq, meanwhile, sits almost exactly where the jets crossed it on September twenty second, nineteen eighty.
The record
By the numbers
- Span
- 7 yrsSeptember 22, 1980 to the…
- Killed
- ~1Mestimates range from 500,000 to more than 1,000,000…
- Displaced
- 1-2Mwounded and maimed; more than 100,000 Iranian casualties…
- Place
- Iran/Iraq
Key figures
- Ruhollah KhomeiniSupreme Leader of Iran; called the conflict an "imposed war," refused a ceasefire for six years, then accepted Resolution 598 in July 19881902 to 1989
- Saddam HusseinPresident of Iraq; ordered the September 1980 invasion and the chemical-weapons campaign1937 to 2006
- Ali KhameneiPresident of Iran during the war (1981-1989); later Supreme Leader1939 to ?
- Akbar Hashemi RafsanjaniSpeaker of the Iranian parliament and acting commander-in-chief in 1988; persuaded Khomeini to accept the ceasefire1934 to 2017
- Mohsen RezaeeCommander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for most of the war; directed the human-wave offensives1954 to ?
- Ali Hassan al-MajidSaddam's cousin, known as "Chemical Ali"; directed the Anfal campaign and the gassing of Halabja1941 to 2010
- Javier Perez de CuellarUN Secretary-General who brokered Resolution 598 and the ceasefire1920 to 2020
Primary sources
· Message to the nation accepting UN Security Council Resolution 598 · July 20, 1988
“Taking this decision is more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice. I submitted myself to Allah's will and took this drink for His satisfaction.”
· Resolution 598, operative paragraph 1 · July 20, 1987
“Demands that, as a first step towards a negotiated settlement, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq observe an immediate cease-fire, discontinue all military actions on land, at sea and in the air, and withdraw all forces to the internationally recognized boundaries without delay.”
· Address to the Nation on the Iran Arms and Contra Aid Controversy · March 4, 1987
“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
· Tape recording of a Ba'ath Party meeting, quoted in Human Rights Watch, Genocide in Iraq - The Anfal Campaign · 1988
“I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community?”
Threads
- The Iranian RevolutionWomen marched alongside mullahs to overthrow the Shah. Within a year, the mullahs made the veil mandatory.
- September 11 and the War on TerrorNineteen men with box cutters turned the world’s most powerful military against two countries that didn’t attack it.
- The Six-Day WarSaddam opened the war on September 22, 1980 with surprise airstrikes on Iranian airbases, consciously echoing Israel's Operation Focus of 1967. Israel destroyed an air force in hours and won in six days; Iraq's raids failed, and the war it started lasted eight years.