By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
The Islamic revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad did not stabilize Iran or produce peace. It created a vacuum in Iran into which competing visions rushed: clerical rule, secular nationalism, regional dominance, and external opportunism. What emerged was not a settled state, but a charged field. Into that field stepped Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, who feared that Iran, a theocratic state mostly composed of Shia Muslims, would rally Iraq’s Shia majority against the Sunni Muslim he controlled with his Baʽathist government.
Saddam moved fast, aiming for a blitz war. He seized Khuzestan (oil-rich, Arab-populated), grabbed the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and said that he’s replacing Ruhollah Khomeini with a compliant regime in Iran. He thought he’d succeed because Khomeini’s revolution had purged the army of the Pahlavi’s officers, and since Iran’s capture and extended torture of the American Embassy personnel had isolated Iran from world sympathy. Saddam, driven by the Anunnaki’s perspective of domination, intended to strike Iran at its weakest. Saddam calculated that revolutionary Iran was weak. He cited border disputes, control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and fear of revolutionary spillover to justify his attack. But the immediate attack provoked a collective anti-dominance, cooperative reaction among the Iranians; they unified and counterattacked the Iraqis. Iraq’s leadership calculated that revolutionary Iran was weak. Border disputes, control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and fear of revolutionary spillover provided the immediate justification.
1980–1982: IRAN SURVIVED, THEN PUSHED BACK
1981–1982: IRAN MOBILIZED MASS RESISTANCE
KHORRAMSHAHR — FALL AND LIBERATION
Iraq attacked the city of Khorramshahr in southwestern Iran on the Shatt al-Arab waterway on September 22, 1980, and after 34 days, Iraq won and murdered Khorramshahr’s inhabitants. Khorramshahr sits at the gateway between Iran and Iraq’s southern front, close to Basra, Iraq’s main southern city, near Abadan, and opposite Iraq’s Basra region and the Persian Gulf. controls access to the Shatt al-Arab, a key oil export route that tied the land and oil tanker aspects of the Iraq-Iran war; this is why Khorramshahr became an early dominator objective and later a symbolic cooperator victory. The attack began on September 22, 1980. Iraqi forces launched their full-scale invasion of Iran, striking across the border into Khuzestan and advancing toward Khorramshahr, besieging it from September 22 to October 26, 1980. Iranian regulars, Pasdaran, and local volunteers resisted house-to-house as Iraqi armor and artillery ground (reminiscent of the Russian attack on Ukraine a few years ago). But from April 24 to May 24, 1982, Iranians encircled Iraqi forces west of the Karun River and recaptured Khuzestan. After 34 days of brutal fighting, the Iranians captured thousands of Iraqi troops and halted Iran’s march on Iraq.
From May 24, 1982, to late 1982, Iranians attacked the Iraqis, who, shaken and overextended, withdrew westward.
1982–1986: IRAN VS IRAQ IN ENTRENCHED ATTRITIONAL WARFARE
- After pushing Iraq back, Iran invaded Iraq itself to capture Basra and collapse Saddam’s regime. But inside Iraq, the Iranians faced superior weapons systems–armor, artillery, chemical attacks, the more cohesive and experienced Iraqui officer corps, and extensive external support including financial backing and strategic tolerance from regional and global powers. Iran, by contrast, relied heavily on mass mobilization—Revolutionary Guards and volunteer forces driven by ideological commitment rather than material parity. The result was a World War I–style stalemate with trenches, artillery barrages, minimal territorial change and massive casualties that led to war fatigue among Iranian civilians who quietly resisted Khomeini’s endless mobilization of men, then of boys.
1982–1986: IRAN VS IRAQ IN ENTRENCHED ATTRITIONAL WARFARE USING CHILD SOLDIERS SACRIFICES
1984–1988: IRAN AND IRAQ EXPANDED WAR TO CIVILIANS AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Iraq used chemical weapons on civilians and soldiers. Both sides launched missile attacks on cities, as Israel, the U.S., and Iran do nowadays. Both Iran and Iraq attacked the other’s oil freighters.
After 8 years, Iran was exhausted, Iraq was regaining initiative, and the economies of both nations were ruined. In the settlement, the borders of both were unchanged; neither won, but their war had killed over a million people.
The Iran-Iraq war shows the outcome of the Anunnaki domination’s ideology: When a polity perceives weakness in a rival, it attacks, meets resistance, and escalates until the attack halts. Entrenchment and sacrifice of civilians and soldiers follow until both sides are exhausted with no gain, maximum loss, and perpetuation of domination delusions anyhow.
Iran–Iraq War, Saddam Hussein, Khomeini, Shatt al-Arab, Khuzestan, Basij, child soldiers, chemical warfare, tanker war, UN Resolution 598
#IranIraqWar #SaddamHussein #Khomeini #Basij #ChildSoldiers #MiddleEastHistory #WarOfAttrition #ChemicalWeapons #EnkiSpeaks #SashaAlexLessinPhD
REFERENCES
- HISTORY Channel video overview
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — geopolitical context
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 598
- Oxford University Press — conflict analysis
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