As of June 1987, the major events of the war could generally be divided
into six overlapping phases: the original Iraqi offensive, Iranian mobilization
and resistance,
the Iranian counteroffensive, the war of attrition, Iraqi internationalization
of the war, and the surge in superpower involvement. In addition, there
was the tanker war
in the Persian Gulf, which extended over several of these phases.
The Original Iraqi Offensive
Baghdad originally planned a quick victory over Tehran. On September
22, 1980, Iraqi fighter aircraft attacked ten air bases in Iran. Their
aim was to destroy the
Iranian air force on the ground -- a lesson learned from the Arab-Israeli
June 1967 War. They succeeded in destroying runways and fuel and ammunition
depots, but
much of Iran's aircraft inventory was left intact. Simultaneously,
six Iraqi army divisions entered Iran on three fronts in an initially successful
surprise attack. On the
northern front, an Iraqi mountain infantry division captured Qasr-e
Shirin, a border town in Bakhtaran (formerly known as Kermanshahan) Province,
and occupied
territory thirty kilometers eastward to the base of the Zagros Mountains.
This area was strategically significant because the main Baghdad-Tehran
highway traversed
it. On the central front, Iraqi forces captured Mehran, on the western
plain of the Zagros Mountains in Ilam Province, and pushed eastward to
the mountain base.
Mehran occupied an important position on the major north-south road,
close to the border on the Iranian side. The main thrust of the attack,
however, was in the
south. Iraqi armored units easily crossed the Shatt al Arab waterway
and entered the Iranian province of Khuzestan. While some divisions headed
toward
Khorramshahr and Abadan, others moved toward Ahvaz, the provincial
capital and site of an air base. Supported by heavy artillery fire, the
troops made a rapid
and significant advance -- almost eighty kilometers in the first few
days. In the battle for Dezful in Khuzestan, where a major air base is
located, the local Iranian army commander requested air support in order
to avoid a defeat. President Bani Sadr, therefore, authorized the release
from jail of many pilots, some of whom were suspected of still being loyal
to the shah. With the increased use of the Iranian air force, the Iraqi
progress was somewhat curtailed.
The last major Iraqi territorial gain took place in early November 1980.
On November 3, Iraqi forces reached Abadan but were repulsed by a Pasdaran
unit. Even
though they surrounded Abadan on three sides and occupied a portion
of the city, the Iraqis could not overcome the stiff resistance; sections
of the city still under
Iranian control were resupplied by boat at night. On November 10, Iraq
captured Khorramshahr after a bloody house-to-house fight. The price of
this victory was
high for both sides, approximately 6,000 casualties for Iraq and even
more for Iran.
Iranian Mobilization and Resistance
Iran may have prevented a quick Iraqi victory by a rapid mobilization
of volunteers and deployment of loyal Pasdaran forces to the front. Besides
enlisting the Iranian
pilots, the new revolutionary regime also recalled veterans of the
old imperial army, although many experienced officers, most of whom had
been trained in the
United States, had been purged. Furthermore, the Pasdaran and Basij
(what Khomeini called the "Army of Twenty Million" or People's Militia)
recruited at least
100,000 volunteers. Approximately 200,000 soldiers were sent to the
front by the end of November 1980. They were ideologically committed troops
(some
members even carried their own shrouds to the front in the expectation
of martyrdom) that fought bravely despite inadequate armor support. For
example, on
November 7 commando units played a significant role, with the navy
and air force, in an assault on Iraqi oil export terminals at Mina al Bakr
and Al Faw. Iran hoped
to diminish Iraq's financial resources by reducing its oil revenues.
Iran also attacked the northern pipeline in the early days of the war and
persuaded Syria to close
the Iraqi pipeline that crossed its territory.
Iran's resistance at the outset of the Iraqi invasion was unexpectedly
strong, but it was neither well organized nor equally successful on all
fronts. Iraq easily advanced
in the northern and central sections and crushed the Pasdaran's scattered
resistance there. Iraqi troops, however, faced untiring resistance in Khuzestan.
President
Saddam Husayn of Iraq may have thought that the approximately 3 million
Arabs of Khuzestan would join the Iraqis against Tehran. Instead, many
allied with Iran's
regular and irregular armed forces and fought in the battles at Dezful,
Khorramshahr, and Abadan. Soon after capturing Khorramshahr, the Iraqi
troops lost their
initiative and began to dig in along their line of advance.
The Iranian Counteroffensive
Iran had created the SDC in 1980 to undertake what the Iranians called
Jange Tahmili, or the imposed war. Iran launched a counteroffensive in
January 1981. Both
the volunteers and the regular armed forces were eager to fight, the
latter seeing an opportunity to regain prestige lost because of their association
with the shah's
regime. Iran's first major counterattack failed, however, for political
and military reasons. President Bani Sadr was engaged in a power struggle
with key religious
figures and eager to gain political support among the armed forces
by direct involvement in military operations. Lacking military expertise,
he initiated a premature
attack by three regular armored regiments without the assistance of
the Pasdaran units. He also failed to take into account that the ground
near Susangerd, muddied
by the preceding rainy season, would make resupply difficult. As a
result of his tactical decision making, the Iranian forces were surrounded
on three sides. In a long
exchange of fire, many Iranian armored vehicles were destroyed or had
to be abandoned because they were either stuck in the mud or needed minor
repairs.
Fortunately for Iran, however, the Iraqi forces failed to follow up
with another attack.
After Bani Sadr was ousted as president and commander in chief, Iran
gained its first major victory, when, as a result of Khomeini's initiative,
the army and Pasdaran
suppressed their rivalry and cooperated to force Baghdad to lift its
long siege of Abadan in September 1981. Iranian forces also defeated Iraq
in the Qasr-e Shirin
area in December 1981 and January 1982. The Iraqi armed forces were
hampered by their unwillingness to sustain a high casualty rate and therefore
refused to
initiate a new offensive.
In March 1982, Tehran launched a major offensive called "Undeniable
Victory." Its forces broke the Iraqi line near Susangerd, separating Iraqi
units in northern and
southern Khuzestan. Within a week, they succeeded in destroying a large
part of three Iraqi divisions. This operation, another combined effort
of the army,
Pasdaran, and Basij, was a turning point in the war because the strategic
initiative shifted from Iraq to Iran. In May 1982, Iranian units finally
regained Khorramshahr, but with high casualties. After this victory, the
Iranians maintained the pressure on the remaining Iraqi forces, and President
Saddam Husayn
announced that the Iraqi units would withdraw from Iranian territory.
The War of Attrition
The "war of attrition" began after the Iranian high command passed from
regular military leaders to clergy in mid-1982. Although Basra was within
range of Iranian
artillery, the clergy used "human-wave" attacks by the Pasdaran and
Basij against the city's defenses, apparently waiting for a coup to topple
Saddam Husayn. All
such assaults faced Iraqi artillery fire and received heavy casualties.
Throughout 1983 both sides demonstrated their ability to absorb and
to inflict severe losses. Iraq, in particular, proved adroit at constructing
defensive strong points
and flooding lowland areas to stymie the Iranian thrusts, hampering
the advance of mechanized units. Both sides also experienced difficulties
in effectively utilizing
their armor. Rather than maneuver their armor, they tended to dig in
tanks and use them as artillery pieces. Furthermore, both sides failed
to master tank gunsights
and fire controls, making themselves vulnerable to antitank weapons.
Internationalization of the War
Beginning in 1984, Baghdad's military goal changed from controlling
Iranian territory to denying Tehran any major gain inside Iraq. Furthermore,
Iraq tried to force
Iran to the negotiating table by various means. First, President Saddam
Husayn sought to increase the war's manpower and economic cost to Iran.
For this purpose,
Iraq purchased new weapons, mainly from the Soviet Union and France.
Iraq also completed the construction of what came to be known as "killing
zones" (which
consisted primarily of artificially flooded areas near Basra) to stop
Iranian units. In addition, according to Jane's Defence Weekly and other
sources, Baghdad used
chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations and launched
attacks on many economic centers. Despite Iraqi determination to halt further
Iranian progress,
Iranian units in March 1984 captured parts of the Majnun Islands, whose
oil fields had economic as well as strategic value.
Second, Iraq turned to diplomatic and political means. In April 1984,
Saddam Husayn proposed to meet Khomeini personally in a neutral location
to discuss peace
negotiations. But Tehran rejected this offer and restated its refusal
to negotiate with President Husayn.
Third, Iraq sought to involve the superpowers as a means of ending the
war. The Iraqis believed this objective could be achieved by attacking
Iranian shipping.
Initially, Baghdad used borrowed French Super Etendard aircraft armed
with Exocets. In 1984 Iraq returned these airplanes to France and purchased
approximately
thirty Mirage F-1 fighters equipped with Exocet missiles. Iraq launched
a new series of attacks on shipping on February 1, 1984.
Gradual Superpower Involvement
In early 1987, both superpowers indicated their interest in the security
of the region. Soviet deputy foreign minister Vladimir Petrovsky made a
Middle East tour
expressing his country's concern over the effects of the Iran-Iraq
War. In May 1987, United States assistant secretary of state Richard Murphy
also toured the Gulf
emphasizing to friendly Arab states the United States commitment in
the region, a commitment which had become suspect as a result of Washington's
transfer of
arms to the Iranians, officially as an incentive for them to assist
in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon. In another diplomatic effort,
both superpowers
supported the UN Security Council resolutions seeking an end to the
war.
The war appeared to be entering a new phase in which the superpowers
were becoming more involved. For instance, the Soviet Union, which had
ended military
supplies to both Iran and Iraq in 1980, resumed large-scale arms shipments
to Iraq in 1982 after Iran banned the Tudeh and tried and executed most
of its leaders.
Subsequently, despite its professed neutrality, the Soviet Union became
the major supplier of sophisticated arms to Iraq. In 1985 the United States
began
clandestine direct and indirect negotiations with Iranian officials
that resulted in several arms shipments to Iran.
Iranian military gains inside Iraq after 1984 were a major reason for
increased superpower involvement in the war. In February 1986, Iranian
units captured the port
of Al Faw, which had oil facilities and was one of Iraq's major oil-exporting
ports before the war.
By late 1986, rumors of a final Iranian offensive against Basra proliferated.
On January 8, Operation Karbala Five began, with Iranian units pushing
westward
between Fish Lake and the Shatt al Arab. They captured the town of
Duayji and inflicted 20,000 casualties on Iraq, but at the cost of 65,000
Iranian casualties. In
this intensive operation, Baghdad also lost forty-five airplanes. Attempting
to capture Basra, Tehran launched several attacks, some of them well-disguised
diversion
assaults such as Operation Karbala Six and Operation Karbala Seven.
Iran finally aborted Operation Karbala Five on February 26.
In late May 1987, just when the war seemed to have reached a complete
stalemate on the southern front, reports from Iran indicated that the conflict
was intensifying
on Iraq's northern front. This assault, Operation Karbala Ten, was
a joint effort by Iranian units and Iraqi Kurdish rebels. They surrounded
the garrison at Mawat,
endangering Iraq's oil fields near Kirkuk and the northern oil pipeline
to Turkey.
By late spring of 1987, the superpowers became more directly involved
because they feared that the fall of Basra might lead to a pro-Iranian
Islamic republic in
largely Shia-populated southern Iraq. They were also concerned about
the intensified tanker war. During the first four months of 1987, Iran
attacked twenty ships
and Iraq assaulted fifteen. Kuwaiti ships were favorite targets because
Iran strongly objected to Kuwait's close relationship with the Baghdad
regime. Kuwait turned
to the superpowers, partly to protect oil exports but largely to seek
an end to the war through superpower intervention. Moscow leased three
tankers to Kuwait,
and by June the United States had reflagged half of Kuwait's fleet
of twenty-two tankers. Finally, direct attacks on the superpowers' ships
drew them into the
conflict. On May 6, for the first time, a Soviet freighter was attacked
in the southern Gulf region, hit by rockets from Iranian gunboats. Ten
days later, a Soviet tanker
was damaged by a mine allegedly placed by Iranians near the Kuwait
coast. More shocking to the United States was the May 17 accidental Iraqi
air attack on the
U.S.S Stark in which thirty-seven sailors died. The attack highlighted
the danger to international shipping in the Gulf.
The Tanker War
The tanker war seemed likely to precipitate a major international incident
for two reasons. First, some 70 percent of Japanese, 50 percent of West
European, and 7
percent of American oil imports came from the Persian Gulf in the early
1980s. Second, the assault on tankers involved neutral shipping as well
as ships of the
belligerent states.
The tanker war had two phases. The relatively obscure first phase began
in 1981, and the well-publicized second phase began in 1984. As early as
May 1981,
Baghdad had unilaterally declared a war zone and had officially warned
all ships heading to or returning from Iranian ports in the northern zone
of the Gulf to stay
away or, if they entered, to proceed at their own risk. The main targets
in this phase were the ports of Bandar-e Khomeini and Bandar-e Mashur;
very few ships
were hit outside this zone. Despite the proximity of these ports to
Iraq, the Iraqi navy did not play an important role in the operations.
Instead, Baghdad used Super
Frelon helicopters equipped with Exocet missiles or Mirage F-1s and
MiG-23s to hit its targets.
In March 1984, the tanker war entered its second phase when an Iraqi
Super Etendard fired an Exocet missile at a Greek tanker south of Khark
Island. Until the
March assault, Iran had not intentionally attacked civilian ships in
the Gulf. The new wave of Iraqi assaults, however, led Iran to reciprocate.
In April 1984, Tehran
launched its first attack against civilian commercial shipping by shelling
an Indian freighter. Most observers considered that Iraqi attacks, however,
outnumbered
Iranian assaults by three to one.
Iran's retaliatory attacks were largely ineffective because a limited
number of aircraft equipped with long-range antiship missiles and ships
with long-range
surface-to-surface missiles were deployed. Moreover, despite repeated
Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, Iran itself depended on
the sea-lanes for vital
oil exports. Nonetheless, by late 1987 Iran's mine-laying activities
and attacks on ships had drawn a large fleet of Western naval vessels to
the Gulf to ensure that the
sea-lanes were kept open.
Role of the Air Force
Despite Iraqi success in causing major damage to exposed Iranian ammunition
and fuel dumps in the early days of the war, the Iranian air force prevailed
initially in
the air war. One reason was that Iranian airplanes could carry two
or three times more bombs or rockets than their Iraqi counterparts. Moreover,
Iranian pilots
demonstrated considerable expertise. For example, the Iranian air force
attacked Baghdad and key Iraqi air bases as early as the first few weeks
of the war, seeking
to destroy supply and support systems. The attack on Iraq's oil field
complex and air base at Al Walid, the base for T-22 and Il-28 bombers,
was a well-coordinated assault. The targets were more than 800 kilometers
from Iran's closest air base at Urumiyeh, so the F-4s had to refuel in
midair for the mission.
Iran's air force relied on F-4s and F-5s for assaults and a few F-14s
for reconnaissance. Although Iran used its Maverick missiles effectively
against ground targets,
lack of airplane spare parts forced Iran to substitute helicopters
for close air support. Helicopters served not only as gunships and troop
carriers but also as
emergency supply transports. In the mountainous area near Mehran, helicopters
proved advantageous in finding and destroying targets and maneuvering against
antiaircraft guns or man-portable missiles. During Operation Karbala
Five and Operation Karbala Six, the Iranians reportedly engaged in large-scale
helicopter-borne operations on the southern and central fronts, respectively.
Chinooks and smaller Bell helicopters, such as the Bell 214A, were escorted
by Sea
Cobra choppers.
In confronting the Iraqi air defense, Iran soon discovered that a low-flying
group of two, three, or four F-4s could hit targets almost anywhere in
Iraq. Iranian pilots
overcame Iraqi SA-2 and SA-3 antiaircraft missiles, using American
tactics developed in Vietnam; they were less successful against Iraqi SA-6s.
Iran's
Western-made air defense system seemed more effective than Iraq's Soviet-made
counterpart. Nevertheless, Iran experienced difficulty in operating and
maintaining
Hawk, Rapier, and Tigercat missiles and instead used antiaircraft guns
and man-portable missiles.
As the war continued, however, Iran was increasingly short of spare
parts for damaged airplanes and had lost a large number of airplanes in
combat. As a result, by
late 1987 Iran had become less able to mount an effective defense against
the resupplied Iraqi air force, let alone stage aerial counterattacks.
Role of the Navy
In late 1987, an accurate estimate of Iranian naval capability was difficult.
In the November 1980 offensive against Iraqi ports and oil facilities,
Iran lost at least two
corvettes and two missile boats. Nevertheless, the Iranian navy was
able to supply Abadan by night (with food and arms for the armed forces
and the remaining
civilians) until late 1981, when Iranian forces regained the city.
Lacking parts and qualified personnel, few Iranian ships were deployed
outside limited coastal areas, where their main functions were patrol and
search missions.
The Iranian navy stopped and searched hundreds of ships suspected of
carrying military equipment destined for Iraq. Beginning in 1984, some
Iranian military
elements such as the Pasdaran also assaulted ships in the Persian Gulf.
In May 1987, reliable sources reported that a Soviet ship was assaulted
by a Pasdaran unit
speedboat; such Pasdaran raids were largely ineffective, however, because
of the weapons used -- machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
Source: The Library of Congress Country Studies
Back to top
Front Page