the iran-irak war

7/29/2019 The Iran-irak War

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THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR:

Chaos in a Vacuum

STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE

PRAEGER


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THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR


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THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR

Chaos in a Vacuum

STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE

New YorkWestport, Connecticut

London


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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pelletiere, Stephen C.The Iran-Iraq War : chaos in a vacuum / Stephen C. Pelletiere.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-275-93843-3 (alk. paper)1. Iran-Iraq War, 19801988. I. Title.

DS318.85.P45 1992955.05'4dc20 91-28089

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 1992 by Stephen C. Pelletiere

All rights reserved. No portion of this book maybe reproduced, by any process or technique, withoutthe express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-28089ISBN: 0-275-93843-3

First published in 1992

Praeger Publishers, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with thePermanent Paper Standard issued by the NationalInformation Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

P

In order to keep this title in print and available to the academic community, this editionwas produced using digital reprint technology in a relatively short print run. This wouldnot have been attainable using traditional methods. Although the cover has been changedfrom its original appearance, the text remains the same and all materials and methodsused still conform to the highest book-making standards.


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To my wife, Jean, and my son, Danilo


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Contents

Maps

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Origins of the War

Iraqs Decision to Go to War

Why Iran Invaded IraqThe Static Defense Phase

Al Faw

Karbala

Tawakalna ala Allah

Epilogue

Appendix Maps of Karbala V Battles

Bibliography

Index

ix

xi

xiii

1

23

49

71

93

117

141

151

155

161

163


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Maps

Iraq

Northern Iraq

The Northern Gulf

Basrah and Vicinity

The Final Battles

Karbala V Battles

Late November 1986

January 911, 1987

January 1114, 1987

January 1421, 1987

January 27February 2, 1987

xvi

77

94

119

143

156

157

158

159

160


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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following, who helped me in the writing of thisbook. I especially want to thank the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S.Army War College and its director, Col. Karl Robinson. The institute pro-vided a base for conducting research on the crucial final phase of the Iran-Iraq War. Through the institute, I had access to much information thathelped resolve vexing problems about the Iraqi army. Through my connec-tion with the War College, I gained interviews with people inside and out-side our government, as well as with individuals overseas. These people

helped shape my ideas about the war. In this regard, I particularly want tothank Lt. Col. Douglas Johnson, who taught me how to evaluate militaryperformance. Additional thanks go to Col. John Hickey and GaryGuertner, Shirley Martin, who typed the manuscript, Marianne Cowling,who edited a significant portion of it, and the Repro Department at theWar College, which provided the maps.

I also want to thank Carl Rosberg and Bob Scalapino at the Institute ofInternational Studies at Berkeley, which provided funding to carry on my

research, George Lenczowski, who gave me a basis for understanding theMiddle East, and Kenneth Waltz, who taught me respect for systems.


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Introduction

This study of the Iran-Iraq War is designed for the general reader. The warwas a complex business, with peculiar features that have to be grasped be-fore any understanding is possible. For example, geopolitics was an ex-tremely important part of the war. The Persian Gulf regionthe areawhere it took placeis one of the worlds most strategic locations. Bothsuperpowers claimed it as their sphere of influence. They regarded it astheir right to interfere in the war whenever they felt their interests werethreatened.

Iran, a revolutionary state, rejected this interference; Iraq sought to co-operate with the superpowers, and even to exploit their interference.Baghdad found this expedient, since its aims and those of the superpowerswere similar: The United States, the Soviet Union, and Iraq all wanted anegotiated end to the fighting. Iran, on the other hand, wanted to destroyIraq and set up an Islamic republic in its place.

For reasons explained in this study, Iraqs objectives changed, and itthen no longer had an incentive to cooperate with the superpowers. In se-cret, it planned a military solution that defied both Washington and

Moscow. This decision by the Iraqi leadership brought Iraq the victory itcraved but subsequently unleashed a storm of difficulties that led directlyto the invasion of Kuwait.

The war also was heavily influenced by demography. The Iranians vastlyoutnumbered the Iraqis (45 million Iranians, 16 million Iraqis), and a sig-nificant proportion of Irans forces were religious zealots. Against suchodds Iraq could do little but husband its relatively meager human re-


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xiv Introduction

sources. At the same time, however, it had to fight. And since Iraqs forceswere relatively inexperienced in modern warfare techniques, they had to betrained. Iraq was fortunate to have an excellent general staff (shaped by the

traditions of the Prussian military), which by the wars end had developedthe army into a first-class fighting institution. The synergy between thegenerals and Iraqs civilian leadership made victory possible. The concen-tration of efforts occurred in 1986, when the Iraqis decided to switch strat-egies and seek a unilateral end to the conflict.

Finally, the reader should be aware of the views of Irans clerics aboutwar: They opposed modern armies, which they regarded as corrupt institu-tions. Just before the start of the war with Iraq they had purged the army

that the shah had left them and, as a result, had only fragments with whichto oppose the Iraqis when the invasion came.It was fortunate for the clerics that Irans people arose spontaneously to

the nations defense. The clerics exploited this outpouring of support andorganized it into newly mobilized forces under the command of youthfulrevolutionaries who had helped to overthrow the shah. The revolutionar-ies formed light infantry units, calling themselves the RevolutionaryGuard. Like other institutions of this type, its quality was mixed. On theplus side, the Guard was full of zealits courage was phenomenal. How-

ever, few of its members had any military training, and a great many hadno education.

Indeed, the Guard and the Iraqi army were the antitheses of one another.The Guard, the product of revolution, comprised antisecular, religiouszealots. The Iraqis were committed to modernization and all its trappings,including the most modern military capabilities that the regime could buy.Its officers strove to learn and apply the principles of modern warfare.

The Iranians rejected the concept of military professionalism. They de-

emphasized training, depending instead on spontaneity. Their idea of abattle was a headlong charge. They believed that ultimately, by piling onmore and more troops, they could smother Iraqi resistance and score a de-cisive breakthrough.

In a struggle that pitted zealots against a smaller but modernized army,discipline and modern arms prevailed. Iraqs success was not painless,however. To achieve victory, it first had to radically transform its society.The changes that were made strained not only the fabric of the Iraqi state

but ultimately the entire state system of the Persian Gulf.A major theme that the study will develop is one of change, and of thecost of change to a society like Iraqs. It is the authors belief that the crisisover Kuwait grew out of the Iran-Iraq War, specifically from Baghdads de-cision to impose a costly military solution on its enemy.


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THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR


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IRAQ


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1

Origins of the War

The Iran-Iraq War came about as the result of a power vacuum that devel-oped in the Persian Gulf with the announcement by Great Britain in thelate 1960s that it would withdraw from the region, where it had exercisedhegemony for over a century.1 Britains decision inspired the shah of Iranto assume Britains role as policeman of the Gulf, a step that he was en-couraged to take by the United States. The shahs subsequent efforts toturn the Gulf into an Iranian lake disturbed relations among all the littoralstates, but Iraq in particular perceived itself to be threatened, since the

shah made no secret of his hatred for the Arab nationalist regime there. Itwas this vying for ascendancy between Iran and Iraq that led to the out-break of war in 1980.

An examination of the situation in the Gulf during the era of Britishcontrol is a prerequisite to any study of the Iran-Iraq War.

BRITAIN IN THE GULF

Great Britains active involvement with the Persian Gulf dates back tothe nineteenth century. In this period its interests in the region weremainly strategic. Britain feared that hostile forces would turn the Gulf intoa staging area for an invasion of India, its prized colonial possession. Theprincipal source of danger to Britain was imperial Russia, which since thetime of Peter the Great had been waging campaigns of conquest along itssouthern border. Russias imperial advance to the south, the British felt,was deliberate, a search for warm water ports giving access to India.2


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2 The Iran-Iraq War

Britain saw a second threat coming from Germany. Before World War I,the kaiser had contracted with the Ottoman Empire to build a Berlin-to-Basrah railway. Basrah, the second largest city in Iraq, is located on the

Shatt al Arab, a watercourse debouching into the Gulf. To Britain, a Ger-man rail line that terminated on the Gulf almost inevitably would becomean avenue for transporting troops.

To prevent the Gulf from becoming an enemy base, Britain consoli-dated its control over the area. Throughout the nineteenth century it con-cluded a series of treaties with the local rulers. The pacts forbade the rulersfrom allying themselves with parties of whom Britain might disapprove;the rulers also agreed not to alienate their territories, which meant theywould not grant commercial concessions without British permission.

At the turn of the century Britains interest in the Gulf expanded; in ad-dition to viewing the area as a strategic asset, it took note ofits commercialimportance. The change came about after oil was discovered in southernIran. Britain ultimately gained control of this concession and formed acompany to exploit it, 51 percent of the shares of which were controlled bythe British government.3 Britain was then in the process of converting itsfleet to oil, and thus the discovery was of military as well as commercialimportance.

The outbreak of World War I delayed exploitation of Gulf oil resourcesuntil 1928, when Iraq granted a concession to a group of British, Dutch,French, and American interests. Shortly afterward the Bahrainis openedtheir territory to the Americansa violation of the nonalienation clause oftheir treaty with Great Britain. Britain put pressure on the Bahrainis to re-nege on this deal. Ultimately a compromise was struck whereby the Ameri-cans were permitted to take over the concession, after they had set up acompany registered in the British Commonwealth. A similar dispute arose

when Kuwait offered exploration rights to another American group. AgainBritain intervened, and this time American and British interests shared theconcession fifty-fifty. One by one all the states that today make up the Per-sian Gulf system let concessions; and in all but one of these states British in-terests were involved, either as monopoly holders or as participants: Qatargranted a concession in 1934; Abu Dhabi in 1959; Oman in 1963; Dubai in1966; and Sharjah in 1972. Only in Saudi Arabia were the British shut out;there the concession was solely in the hands of Americans.

The chief benefit to the local rulers from Britains hegemony over theGulf was the military protection they received. The British suppressed pi-racy, the slave trade, and arms traffic; they regulated the successions in thevarious states; and they generally kept the peace. This regulatory activityon the part of the British persisted until the late 1950s, when they resolveda three-way dispute among Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Dubai.

That intervention was one of the last such undertakings Britain performedin the Gulf. After that, its influence in the area deteriorated rapidly.


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Origins of the War

THE WANING OF BRITISH INFLUENCE

Britains paramount position in the Gulf was jolted by three rudeshocks, all occurring in the 1950s. In 1951 Iranian politicians represent-

ing the broad centerthe bazaar, the middle class, and the intelli-gentsiapushed through legislation in Irans majlis (parliament) tonationalize the Iranian National Oil Company, the principal owner ofwhich was Britain. The British tried unsuccessfully to get the Iranians torescind their action. After an initial violent confrontation, they took thematter to the World Court, where it languished. In the meantime, Iranseconomy practically ground to a halt. Britain, claiming that Iran had nolegal right to dispose of its oil, threatened to sue would-be buyers. The tac-

tic was effective; Iran sold only an insignificant amount of oil during thethree years the dispute dragged on. Despite legal maneuvering, Britain ul-timately lost in this test of wills with the Iranians. It had to concede Iransright to take over the company. The British settled for relatively meagercompensation.4

The dispute with Iran had barely been resolved when the Middle Eastwitnessed another nationalization crisis. Again British interests were in-volved. They, along with the French, had been the principal shareholders

in the Suez Canal Company, which Egypts nationalist leader, GamalAbdul Nasser, seized in 1956. Refusing to acknowledge the takeover, theEuropeansalong with the Israelissent troops into the canal zone todrive out the Egyptians. The operation miscarried after the United Statesand the Soviet Union demanded that the invading forces be withdrawn.5

Unable to stand up to superpower pressure, British Prime MinisterAnthony Eden resigned. Although the Suez Canal crisis occurred relativelyfar from the Gulf, its impact was felt throughout the region. Britains with-drawal was perceived as an ignominious retreat.

The coup de grace to Britains prestige came in 1958 in Iraq. Arabnationalists staged a coup that swept away the Hashemite dynasty, amongBritains staunchest friends in the region. In contrast with previous in-stances, Britain could not restore its friends to power. Indeed, the king waskilled during the takeover by the nationalists. Of all the reverses that Brit-ain experienced during the difficult decade of the 1950s, this setback inIraq probably proved the most costly.

THE FORMATION OF IRAQ

Prior to the end of World War I, there was no formal entity of Iraq. Thearea that we know today by that name formerly was an out-of-the-way cor-ner of the Ottoman Empire6 called Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia in themid-1800s had fewer than 1.3 million inhabitants. Over three-quarters ofits area was desert where in summer the temperature could soar as high as

3


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4 The Iran-Iraq War

43.3 C. (about 110 F.). In the northeast corner of the region rainfallmight reach 100 centimeters (40 inches) a year; elsewhere it averaged be-tween only 10 and 17 centimeters (4 to 6.8 inches).

The victorious Allies at the end of World War I demarcated the formalboundaries of the Iraqi state. They did so as part of the League of Nationsmandate scheme. Not only Iraq but the states of Trans-Jordan, Syria, andLebanon came into being at this time. All had formerly been possessionsof the now defunct Ottoman Empire, lands the Turks had forfeited bybacking the Germans in the Great War. The new states became clients ofthe European powers, who were enjoined to mentor their developmentand prepare them ultimately to become independent, self-sustainingentities.

The great flaw of the mandate scheme was the way the states were com-posed. The mandate authorities failed in practically all cases to achieve in-ternal cohesion. This was partially due to the impracticability of applyingthe European-derived state system to Middle Easterners. The Ottomanshad ruled their vassals under the milletsystem, allowing the separate com-munities to police themselves and choose their own representatives, whoacted as intermediaries with the Ottomans. But under the state system itwas necessary to form an amalgam of many peoples within a single geo-

graphic entity, and the groups so joined by and large proved mutually an-tagonistic. As a result the new states were difficult to govern. Iraq was aprime example.

The British, the mandate authorities for Iraq, originally had intendedthat it should be formed of two vilayets (provinces) of the Ottoman Em-pire, Baghdad and Basrah. Later the British decided that, to make Iraqmore defensible, they should incorporate Mosul, a mountainous vilayetnorth of Baghdad. This move benefited the Iraqis and the British commer-

cially, since it put the rich oil fields of Mosul in their possession. At thesame time, however, Britains decision to tack Mosul on to the rest of Iraqcreated problems. Much of Mosul was thenand is todayinhabited byKurds, who are neither Semites nor plains dwellers, as are the Baghdadisand Basrawis. They are mountain warriors of Aryan racial stock who areunsympathetic to their southern neighbors, an attitude they have evincedby numerous clashes over the years. In Chapter 4 we will see how the antip-athy of the Kurds for their fellow Iraqis became a factor of military impor-

tance when the Iran-Iraq War erupted in September 1980.Boundary problems arose for Iraq in another area: It had no adequateoutlet to the Gulf, being virtually sandwiched between Kuwait and Iran.To alleviate this difficulty, Britain supported Iraqs claim to major controlover the Shatt al Arab, the waterway connecting Iraqs only significantport, Basrah, to the sea. The watercourse previously was shared with Iran.By compelling the Iranians to forgo their sovereignty over practically all ofthe Shatt, Britain revived a quarrel between the Arab Iraqis and Aryan Iran-


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Origins of the War 5

ians that went back centuries. To us, the Shatt dispute is important becauseit later became the trigger that set off the Iran-Iraq War.

Britains decision to set up a monarchy in Iraq also gave trouble. Profess-

ing to find no suitable candidate for kingship among the native Iraqis, itimported a king from the Hejaz area of the Arabian Peninsula. The king,Faisal, was a Hashemite, an old and aristocratic Arab family that traces itsancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad. The decision to import a for-eign dynasty alienated important elements of the local Iraqi elite. Britain,however, had incurred obligations to the Hashemites during World War I,and its desire to compensate them overrode arguments against thearrangement.

In setting up Iraqs bureaucracy, Britain made another perhaps unwisedecision: It staffed the new government with a number of British civil ser-vants who were to assist in the rule. These Britishers served as advisers formany of the appointed Arab ministers. As might be expected, the setupcaused keen resentment among nationalist-minded Iraqis, who accusedthe advisers of influencing the government to favor Great Britain; in par-ticular they claimed that the advisers were behind Iraqs decision to grantlucrative oil concessions to British interests.

Overall, the edifice Britain created in Iraq was fundamentally insecure.

Nonetheless, Iraq ultimately became Britains bastion in the Middle East,a situation helped into being largely by the defection of Egypt from theWestern camp.

Prior to World War II, Egypt was foremost among Middle Easternstates with ties to Britain. After the 1953 Egyptian revolution, however,British influence in Egypt dimmed. Not only was Egypts President Nasserhostile to Britainwhich he viewed as an exploiter of the Egyptiansbut,in clashes with British interests, he turned for aid to the Soviet Union,

which action alienated him generally from the West. As a result, Britainwas forced to seek a new base in the region, and Iraq seemed a likely candi-date. Unfortunately for the British, Arab nationalism soon spread to Iraqand poisoned relations in that corner of the world as well.

Although British influence in Iraq had rankled Arab nationalists forsome time, relations did not become critical until relatively late. In 1955Britain and the United States decided to make Iraq the seat of the BaghdadPact, which proved to be a disastrous move.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE BAGHDAD PACT

After World War II, Britain and the United States sought to containthe spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East, and to this end theyconsidered forming an anticommunist bloc of Arab nations. Nasser vehe-mently opposed this, claiming that the Arabs had no grievance againstthe Soviets; rather, it was against Israel that they should ally. In the face


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6 The Iran-Iraq War

of Cairos intransigence, the British and Americans abandoned their ideaof an all-Arab anticommunist alliance and substituted the Northern Tierconcept. Under it, the states of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq formed a

barrier along the Soviet Unions southern border, checking its advancetoward the Gulf.7

The Hashemites offer of Iraq as a base for the Baghdad Pact broughtdown a storm of criticism on their heads. Nasserist propagandists por-trayed them as lackeys of the West, and this fanned the barely repressedhostility of anti-Hashemite elements inside the country.

In the midst of this furor, the Hashemites, usually adept at protectingthemselves, blundered fatally. A number of officers in Iraqs army had

been plotting against the Hashemites but had not found an opportunity tomove against them. In the summer of 1958 the regime permitted a tankbattalion, commanded by one of the disaffected officers, to transitBaghdad in the process of relocating to the Jordanian front. Once insideBaghdad, the unit mutinied and carried out a coup that eliminated theking and most of his retinue. The cost to Britain of the overthrow wasconsiderableat a stroke it lost not only its foremost friend in the MiddleEast but also its base of power in the Gulf.

Five years later the dictator-general who led the coup was himself de-posed and assassinated, and after that Iraq was ruled by a succession of mil-itary regimes. Each of these successor regimes tended to be a little moreacceptable to Western interests. By the late 1960s it appeared that theWest would regain its former influence in the country. But in 1968 yet an-other coup reversed the trend toward moderation. The coup leaders, ad-herents of the Bath (Renaissance) Party, not only were extreme Arabnationalists but also followed Nassers lead in cultivating rapprochementwith the Soviets. After a clash of interests with the Western powers, the

Bathists committed Iraq to a fifteen-year friendship treaty with Moscow,the third Arab state (after Yemen and Egypt) to do so.

It was the Wests misfortune that the Bathists takeover in Iraq practi-cally coincided with the announcement by Britain that it was abandoningits military presence east of Suez. Britain declared that it no longer had theeconomic resources to police the Gulf, which raised the disturbing specterof a power vacuum in this strategic area of the globe.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE VACUUM

Since the turn of the century, the British consistently had taken the leadin Gulf affairs; at the same time U.S. interest in the area was growing. TheAmericans, pursuing the Open Door policy, had competed with the Britishon all fronts. Gradually competition moderated as the two agreed to sharein developing the regions rich resources. By the early 1950s the Americanshad begun to surpass the British, largely because they had gained a monop-


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oly in Saudi Arabia, by far the areas richest oil producer. The more theSaudi fields produced, the more U.S. interests in the Gulf expanded.

Thus, when Britain announced that it was pulling out of the Gulf, many

anticipated the United States would become guarantor of the regions sta-bility. In addition to having extensive commercial interests there, theUnited States led the Western alliance. Within the alliance, Europe at thistime derived 50 percent of its oil from the Gulf; 80 percent of Japans oilimports were from there; and 70 percent of both Australias and New Zea-lands supplies came from there.8 As the Wests leader, the United Statesseemed the likely candidate to keep the oil lines open.

That some sort of safeguard was required could not be doubted; on the

eve of Britains departure, governing arrangements in the Gulf were dis-turbingly casual. During its tenure, Britain had dealt with the local rulerson a personal basis. In 1971, just prior to its exit, it cobbled together theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE), a unitary state made up of several minuteshaykdoms. It also oversaw the creation of the states of Qatar and Bahrain.These were all fragile entities and hence vulnerable to subversion.

During the late 1960s and into the 1970s radical movements sproutedeverywhere in the Gulf region. Ethiopias pro-Western regime under HaileSelassie was replaced by a Marxist one. Aden expelled the British and

formed a Marxist government. Arab radicals supported by Nasser seizedpower in North Yemen. Radicalism ultimately intruded into the Gulfproper with the outbreak of a Marxist revolt in Oman. Western interestseverywhere were under attack.

The United States did not assume Britains responsibilities in the area,largely because of Vietnam. In the late 1960s a formidable antiwar move-ment was under way in the United States. Although the movement did notenjoy broad-based support, questions about the war raised by the militants

troubled many Americans. Since concurrently the U.S. economy had goneinto recessionblamed by the militants on VietnamWashington couldnot easily justify taking on yet another costly overseas commitment.

Nonetheless, President Richard Nixon recognized that Western inter-ests in the Gulf must be protected, andin what appeared to many at thetime to be an ingenious solutionhe made the shah of Iran, MohammadReza Pahlavi, the regional protector for the West.

This study takes the position that Nixons scheme was unworkable. The

shah lacked the resources for an assignment of this magnitude, and in try-ing to carry out his task, he thoroughly alarmed the Bathists in neighbor-ing Iraq, which basically is what caused the Iran-Iraq War.

THE SHAH AS POLICEMAN

There seems to be no question of what was in Nixons mind when he setup the shah as the Gulfs policeman: He wanted him to be just that, some-


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8 The Iran-Iraq War

one who would keep peace in the area. On the other hand, the shah seemsto have believed that he could turn the Gulf into his own private preserve.For this he had to establish his undisputed hegemony over the region.9

Indeed, the shah had been working hard since at least 1968 to accom-plish just this. In 1969 he unilaterally abrogated the treaty that Britain hadbrokered between Iran and Iraq over the Shatt al Arab.10 Under the treaty,Iraq controlled the whole of the waterway and could deny it to anyone atany time. The shah sent his gunboats, flying Irans colors, into the chan-nel, a direct challenge to the Bathists authority. The Bathists did not as-sert themselves in this instanceother than to complain to the UnitedNations, which did nothingand thus Iran was free to come and go in thewaterway.

In 1970, the shah sponsored a coup against the Bathists, who frustratedhis attempt. But once again they took no effective action against him. Theymerely expelled large numbers of expatriate Iranians, the bulk of whomhad been residing in the southern, Shia-dominated province of Basrah.

In 1971, the shah took another step that, although not directly aimed atthe Bathists, antagonized them nonetheless. He revived an irredentistclaim to the island of Bahrain. Bahrain then, as now, was ruled by aprincely Arab family; and the Bathists, as Arab nationalists, felt them-

selves duty bound to resist attempts to alienate land from Arab control.As it turned out, they had no need to act because the shah was made to

withdraw his claim under pressure from Britain and the United States.Washington has enjoyed basing rights for elements of its fleet in Bahrainsince 1948, and so was unwilling to have the islands status disturbed inany way.

Immediately after this, the shah resurrected another ancient claim, thistime to three small islands in the Strait of Hormuz. These islands, the

property of two of the tiny emirates that later became the UAE, were stra-tegically located and, the shah maintained, in radical hands could becomebases from which oil supplies moving out of the Gulf could be interdicted.To forestall any such radical takeover, the shah appropriated them.11

The Bathists response to this maneuver was to break off diplomatic re-lations with Iran and Great Britain, which they accused of collusion in theseizure. They also assisted Arab guerrillas fighting to topple the sultan ofOman, who maintained a close relationship with Great Britain. Partially in

response to the Iraqis stepped-up aid to the guerrillas, the shah sent an ex-peditionary force to Oman to assist the sultan.By this time the competition between the shah and the Bathists had be-

come intense.12 Increasingly apprehensive about arms supplies from theUnited States to the shah, the Bathists resolved to match his buildup manfor man, tank for tank, and plane for plane. This set off a frenzied armsrace in which the Iraqis principal supplier was the Soviet Union.13

In 1973 the shah considerably increased the stakes in his competition


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with the Iraqis by persuading Nixon that the Bathists were, in his words,a Trojan horse whereby the Russians would gain access to the warm wa-ters of the Gulf.14 Nixon, won over to this argument, entered into what

we may reasonably describe as a conspiracy against the Bathists. Heagreed to support a scheme whereby the shah would incite a rebellion ofthe ever restless Kurds. The Kurds leader at that time, Mulla MustafaBarzani, was easily persuaded to go along, once he knew the Americanswere involved. Thus was reignited one of the longest, bloodiest revolts inMiddle East history.15

The shahs arguments to Nixon received additional support from the Is-raelis, who drew from their private stores of American-supplied weaponsto arm the rebelsfor which Washington reimbursed them somethinglike $16 million.16 The operation made sense to the Israelis, who perceivedthe Aryan Kurds to be natural enemies of the Jews enemies, the ArabIraqis.

As the shah made his case to Nixon, funding the Kurds would not be ex-pensive. The guerrillas adapted easily to difficult conditions, the shahclaimed, and needed but a modest provision of weapons, really only smallarms. Indeed, in the shahs view, the rugged terrain of Kurdistan wouldnullify whatever advantage the Bathists might possess in sophisticated

weaponry; the Bathists, being plains dwellers, would not have the stom-ach for mountain fighting.

In this case, however, the Bathists proved extremely resolute, commit-ting enormous resources to the struggle against the guerrillas. By 1975some Iraqi units were clashing directly with paramilitary forces from theshahs army, infiltrated into Iraq to help the rebels. It was becoming obvi-ous that unless the situation of the Kurds improved radically, the shah wasgoing to have to scrap his aid to the rebels or to provide direct aid in the

form of Iranian reinforcements to keep the rebellion going.At this juncture both the shah and Iraqs strongman, Saddam Husayn,

drew back. They agreed at a meeting of OPEC nations, held at Algiers inMarch 1975, to declare a truce. Under the terms of their Accord the shahagreed to close his border to the Kurds, which effectively killed the revolt;it collapsed within a fortnight. Saddam in return agreed to surrender Iraqsclaim to sovereignty over the entire Shatt al Arab. Henceforth the water-way would be apportioned to both Iran and Iraq by means of a line drawn

down the middle.

17

The Algiers Accord was one of the more astonishing agreements ofrecent times. Few expected that the shah and Saddam, widely regarded asabsolutely antipathetic toward each other, would make peace. What ap-pears to have happened is that both sides were influenced by the 1973 Araboil embargo. The embargo caused world oil prices to skyrocket, and thisinduced them to rethink their priorities. They saw it to be in their interestto sell oil, as much oil as possible, as fast as possible. Under the cir-


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10 The Iran-Iraq War

cumstances, the Kurdish revolt became a hindrance to their commercialactivities.

With the Kurdish revolt extinguished, the Gulffor the first time

since the late 1950swas reasonably stable. But the peace was in a veryreal sense poisoned. The Bathists were basically unhappy with the agree-ment, feeling they had been coerced into signing the pact by the shah, theCIA, and the Israelis. They had been forced, as they viewed the matter, tosurrender their precious rights in the Shatt al Arab, their principal outletto the Gulf.

Thus the Iraqis were ill disposed to respect the accord. In fact it seemsthat they would abide by it only until they had sufficiently built up their

strength, whereupon they would reclaim what they perceived to be theirunjustly forfeited rights.18

As it happened, the Bathists were provoked to reopen the matter of theShatt more quickly than anyone imagined by an astonishing developmentin Iran.

WHY THE SHAH FELL

Practically all scholars who have investigated the shahs career divide itinto two distinct phases: an early phase covering the period up to roughly1962, in which he was generally perceived to be beleaguered by subversiveforces at home, and a later strong phase, in which he gained control of Iraninternally and pursued his forward policy of turning the Gulf into an Iran-ian lake. Under this interpretation, the forces that plagued the shahthroughout his early years of rule gave way later on; this particularly wasthe case with his most formidable opponents, the Communists.

Scholars, in attempting to account for this turnabout, have focused on

the so-called White Revolution, an ambitious reform program undertakenby the shah to transform Iranian society from the top down. This program,in which estates were parceled out to the peasants, and in which otherlesser but still critical reforms were enacted,19 is generally credited withbroadening the base of the shahs regime and enabling him to consolidatehis position.

As to what motivated the shah to launch his reforms, it is generally un-derstood that he was forced to do so under pressure from Washington.20

The theory goes that the Americans, unhappy with the appalling corrup-tion of the Iranian system, held back aid from the shah. This goaded him toconfront the corruption problem head-on, which he did by launching theWhite Revolution.

While there are certainly elements of truth in this interpretation, it doesnot fully explain the transformation of the shahs power position. Some-thing much more fundamental occurred in the early 1960s that affectedhis career: He and the Soviet Union achieved rapprochement.21 Whereas


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in the 1950s, in the time of Stalin, Moscow had assiduously tried to topplethe shahfor this its principal instrument had been the Tudeh (IranianCommunist) Partywith the advent of Khrushchev, it eased pressure

against him.This change in Irans relations with the Soviet Union was a concomitantof the era of dtente, when the Soviets saw it to be in their interest to workwith established governments of the Middle East, even governments likethat of Iran. As a consequence the Soviets at this time began cutting backtheir support for various dissident groups, including the local Communistparties. This change affected both Iran and Iraq. In the case of Iraq,Moscow continued to develop good relations with Baghdad into the late1970s, when the Bathists purged the Iraqi Communist Party, executingtwenty-one of its leaders and driving the senior cadre into exile, fromwhich they have yet to return.

To be sure, the shah had to make accommodations to the Soviets toneutralize their enmity for him. In 1962, for example, he agreed that noforeign missile bases would be established in Iranian territory. This, how-ever, was not a significant concession; the United States did not need tobase its short-range missiles in Iran after the development of interconti-nental ballistic missiles. In 1965, the Soviet Union contracted to assist in

the construction of a major metallurgical complex near Ispahan, paid forwith gas from the Iranian oil fields. And, perhaps of most significance,Iran in 1966 contracted to purchase $100 million in small arms from theSoviets.

But the bottom line is that once freed from obsessive concern about thethreat of Soviet subversion, the shah could attack other entrenched andhostile centers of power inside his country, such as the wealthy landlordsand the clergy. This in fact was what the White Revolution was all about.

From a political standpoint, it was a vehicle for undercutting the power ofthe landowning interests, including the clergy, who controlled vast tractsof land through religious foundations.22

At the same time, however, while it was vitally important that the shahcentralize his authority, by itself the move was insufficient to secure hisrule. Eliminating opposition was, after all, a negative activity. The shahalso needed to strengthen his rule positively. He needed to overcome themajor weakness of his regime: the fact that there were no strong institu-

tions in Iran on which he could rely to perpetuate the monarchical form ofgovernment. This situation was mainly due to shortcomings of his father,whose career we will now discuss.

REZA KHAN

Irans independence was not a gift from the Europeans, as was the casewith Iraq after World War I. Iran was an independent state as far back as


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THE YOUNG SHAHS COURSE

Thus Rezas son, Mohammad, found himself in an extremely weak posi-tion at the close of World War II. And, as we have shown, this situation

persisted until the early 1960s, when the Soviets abruptly eased their pres-sure. After that the way was clear to make reforms in the government. Hedid undertake certain corrective measures to strengthen his rule. Unfortu-nately, he did not go far enough. He did not encourage the creation of astrong monarchical party, or an independent judiciary, or academicallysound institutions of higher learning. Later on, he could have leaned onsuch agencies for support when the going got difficult.

As it was, the shah focused practically all his energies on developing a

mighty army. Presumably he took this path in the belief that military mightwould establish his competence as a policeman.26 As we shall now try toshow, the shahs decision to concentrate on building a strong military iswhat ultimately brought him down.

THE SHAHS FOLLY

The military buildup of the shah made very little sense. For example, he

purchased the latest equipmentreally lethal weapons, on the order of su-personic jets and fast battle cruisers.27 This led many to wonder againstwhom he was intending to use such weapons. In the Gulf, there was reallyno one who could threaten the shah in a fashion to require a buildup ofthis order. Certainly not the small states of the lower littoral, none ofwhich had a population above a few hundred thousand, and no military es-tablishment to speak of. Saudi Arabia? Hardly. The Saudis have neversought to maintain a formidable armed force. They mainly are concerned

with suppressing internal dissent, for which they have need of little otherthan a strong constabulary.

The shah often defended his immense buildup by claiming it was neededto stop the Soviets, in the event they decided to advance on the Gulf. Therewas really no likelihood that the shahs army could stand up to the Soviets,no matter how much up-to-date equipment it had (we will discuss thecompetence of the Iranian army below).28

That left Iraq. To be sure, the Iraqis did eventually develop into some-

thing of a threat to Iran. But that development came comparatively late. Inthe early 1970s, when the shahs military buildup began, the Iraqi armywas like the Saudis, really just a robust police force.

There was another mystery about the shahs arms purchases: How washis military to deploy the weapons he was purchasing? F-14 jets andSpurance battle cruisers need rigorous maintenance by competent crews.The shahs military was composed mainly of raw recruits from the ruralareas who could not read or write, let alone cope with the weapons field


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manuals, all of which were in English.29 The shahs answer to this problemwas to import American technicians. And this, as we shall see in Chapter 3,caused enormous problems, as the U.S. presence became such that it of-

fended Iranian nationals.30

In sum, we may say that the shahs weapons program was not only inap-propriate, it wasin important respectsdysfunctional. This situationeventually drew criticism from opposition figures inside Iran.

Abol Hasan Bani Sadr, Irans first president under the Islamic Republic,devised an ingenious explanation for the strange course that the shahseemed to be following in buying arms. He theorized that the Iranianarmed forces were set up primarily to serve Western interests.31 Iran, withits immense riches from oil, was in effect helping the imperialists to keepopen their weapons production lines and buoying the Wests economy.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made essentially the same criticism.The shah, he said, was committing treason against the Iranian people.He was giving their oil to the Americans and in return they were build-ing military bases for themselves in Iran. They gave Iranians arms in-tended for U.S. use.32

Unfortunately there is some truth to these charges. From at least 1972numerous officials inside and outside the Pentagon questioned the propri-

ety of selling the shah weapons for which he had little use. It was particu-larly deplored that under the scheme worked out by Nixon there was noteven a check on his arms purchases; the shah was unique in his ability tobuy directly from the U.S. arsenal without review.33 As one observernoted, the shah gave Nixon a blank check, against which he could purchasevirtually anything he pleased, and no one in the United States could gain-say him.34

The most likely explanation for this extraordinary state of affairs is that

the United States needed the money. Its economy was experiencing severedislocations, and cash purchases by the shah helped to ease some of thediscomfort.35

So, as Bani Sadr has suggested, there was a conspiracy of sorts function-ing. U.S. military suppliers fed the shahs insatiable need for weapons;36

the shah fed cash into the U.S. economic system; and few thought aboutthe long-term consequences of what was going on.

NO HELP WHEN NEEDED

The Iranian army was dysfunctional from another, much more perni-cious, aspect. It was to the army that the shah looked for support in thefinal days of his ruleand it failed him. The shah, as we now know, was afatally ill man, badly debilitated from treatments he was receiving. Hewanted the army to help him out, in effect to take some of the burden of


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suppressing the Khomeinists from him; it proved quite incapable ofdoing this.

In part, the failure of the shahs army to sustain him was the shahs own

fault. He had so structured it that the officer corps was largely defective.From the very first days of his rule the shah had feared a military coup andsought to guard himself against it by, in effect, handicapping his officers.He structured the armys command so that very little horizontal commu-nication obtained between units; all communication was vertical. Theshah passed orders down through the ranks; responses were passed upwardfrom below. Unit commanders were rarely permitted to deal with the shah,except on a one-on-one basis. Senior officers never met together outsidehis presence. As a result, Irans army never had the equivalent of the U.S.Joint Chiefs of Staff.37 Some observers have gone so far as to suggest thatthe army was merely a projection of the shahs personality,38 being unableto function without specific, direct orders from him. The officers had notbeen trainednor were they expectedto think for themselves.39

At the very end the shahs last resort was to his security force, SAVAKand that, too, failed. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, this fearedagency was credited with having suppressed numerous threats against hisrule with brutal efficiency. There was, however, good reason why at the last

SAVAK, too, would prove inadequate; to understand why this would be,one must appreciate how an organization such as this operates.

Essentially SAVAKand all other security forcesare surveillancenets. They live off informers, who supply them with information enablingthem to stay ahead of the opposition. Iran in the 1970s was a country inmotion, in the sense that the population was continually shifting.40 Therural masses migrated to the urban centers looking for improved liveli-hoods, and this disturbed the surveillance arrangements of SAVAK. Infor-

mants took themselves out of the ambit of local security units and, turningup elsewhere, confused agents in their new location.

Moreover, a security force must intimidate the populace if it is to main-tain order. In a situation such as developed in Iran, this is most difficult.Many of Khomeinis adherents craved martyrdomagainst minions likethese the security apparatus was virtually helpless.

In the end everything collapsed, and the shah was swept away with a sud-denness that was astonishing.

REACTION IN IRAQ

We will discuss the role of the Islamic forces in the shahs overthrow inChapter 3. Here we want to concentrate on the effect that the shahs disap-pearance had on Baghdad.

Throughout the hectic days leading up to the shahs overthrow, theBathists generally avoided interfering in events. Had they wished, they


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probably could have become involved quite easily. Instead, they remainedaloof from events in their neighbors territory.41 Evidently they feared thatthe regime which replaced the shah would complicate the arrangements

for security in the Gulf that they had brokered.When the shah was at last swept away, the Bathists faced the uncom-

fortable reality that they had been badly compromised. The AlgiersAccordon which they had banked so heavilyhad now been absolutelyundercut. The accord had been concluded with the shah, not with theshahs government and certainly not with Iranian society at large. It hadbeen a personal arrangement, in which the shah with a nod and a hand-shake had undertaken certain obligations. With him gone, there was noway the Bathists could hold his successors to account.

Starting immediately after the shahs overthrow, there was an increas-ingly determined effort on the part of the Bathists to bring to the clericsattention the matter of Irans unfulfilled obligations under the AlgiersAccord.42 Specifically, they wanted several parcels of land that the shah hadpromised to hand over. Moreover, there appears to have been some under-standingat least on the Bathists sidethat the shah would withdrawfrom the disputed islands in the Strait of Hormuz.43 Not only did the cler-ics put the Bathists off, but they adopted an arrogant stance culminating

in the utter rejection of all the latters claims.On top of this, the Khomeini regime began trafficking with the

Bathists nemesis, Masoud Barzani, the son of the late Mulla MustafaBarzani, who had succeeded his father as the leader of the rebel IraqiKurds. The remnants of the Kurdish guerrillas, having fled to Iran after themovements collapse in 1975, were still there, living in refugee camps.Khomeini had offered to subsidize them, in order that they might resumetheir insurrectionary activities in northern Iraqan absolute violation of

the Algiers Accord.44

On the evidence of statements by the Bathists, it is clear that the actionsof the Khomeini government irritated them no end (see Chapter 2). Still,there is nothing to suggest that they were prepared to go to war with the Is-lamic Republic until events occurring in the international arena changedtheir thinkingthe U.S. hostage crisis of 1979.

THE ANTI-AMERICA CAMPAIGN

The shahs unexpected overthrow for a time greatly dismayed officialWashington, but this was soon offset by the U.S. belief it could workwith the shahs successor, Ayatollah Khomeini.45 After all, the Khomeiniregime comprised for the most part religious figures, who presumablycould be counted on to oppose communism. At this time Washingtonsgreatest fear was that the Soviet Union would capitalize on the shahs


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overthrow to preempt the former privileged position of the United Statesin Iran.46

U.S. hopes that a modus vivendi could be worked out with the clerics

were dashed once the hostage seizure took place. The arrest of some sixtyU.S. diplomats by Iranian radicals, and their subsequent imprisonment inthe U.S. embassy in Tehran, was an appalling act, violating every standardof international diplomacy. That the Khomeini government not onlyfailed to free the hostages but cynically exploited the situation seemedincredible.

The hostage seizure had come about as part of a spontaneous action by agroup of radical students. Only later on, seeing the potential in the situa-

tion, did Khomeini exploit it. Basically, the ayatollahs aim was to use theincident to offset a dangerous situation that was developing within the rev-olution: It was factionalizing as various groups began to maneuver for ad-vantage, each bent on taking charge of events.

To unify ranks, Khomeini resorted to the tactic of identifying the en-emy. He made the case that the United States was on the point of interven-ing militarily. The revolutionaries were then admonished to cooperate orbe devoured by the Great Satan. That the ranks closed forthwith is testi-mony to Khomeinis correct analysis.

But Khomeini did not leave the situation there; he was able to cap thisvictory by yet another bold stroke. He cited Washingtons noninterven-tion as proof of the impotence of the West and of the corresponding powerof his revolution. He claimed that the United States was incapable ofstanding up to the might of Islam; it could not free its hostages even bymilitary means, he boasted. The apparent impotence of the worlds strong-est power seemed irrefutable evidence of the correctness of the ayatollahscontention.

The United States certainly was hamstrung in its attempts to wrest thehostages from the students, but this was due to fear of provoking a clashwith the Soviet Union. Iran is one of the few areas of the world that is partof the spheres of influence of both superpowers. Any move by one ofthem to invade the country was certain to encounter opposition from itsrival.47 Moreover, the Soviets had a treaty with Tehran that gave them theright to invade whenever a third party entered Iran and threatened Sovietsecurity.48

Had the United States put troops into Iran in the late 1970s, that cer-tainly would have triggered the intervention provision of this treaty; theSoviet army would not have tolerated the appearance of a U.S. army on itsdoorstep. Khomeini certainly understood that this was the situation.Therefore, his boasts that he would turn Iran into a graveyard for U.S. mil-itary forcesshould they dare to invadewere a sham. Invasion wasnever a possibility.

At the same time, Khomeinis taunts were tonic for his cadres. The ap-


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parent ability of Iran to stand up to the Great Satan was an achievementwithout parallel in the lives of Iranians. After all, only forty years before,Britain and the Soviet Union had forced the abdication of Reza and packed

him off to South Africa. And twenty-five years before, the United Statesand Great Britain had engineered a successful coup that toppled the legalgovernment of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and restored theshah to his throne.49

There is no doubt that Khomeinis handling of the hostage taking gave agreat lift to the Islamic Revolution and carried it past dangerous shoalswhere it might have foundered. At the same time, however, his runningbattle with the United States appears to have made up the minds of theBathists on the course of action they should take against him.

Saddam, who had become president after his mentor, General AhmadHassan al Bakr, had stepped aside, appears to have seen the hostage crisis asan exceptional opportunity. Irans army was primarily equipped with U.S.weapons; thus, by antagonizing Washington, the ayatollah had foreclosedhis ability to obtain replacements or spare parts. Along with this, one ofthe first acts of Khomeini on assuming power had been to purge the army,which he viewed as a nest of disloyal shah supporters.50

To Saddam, the ayatollahs seemingly irrational behavior could havemeant but one thinghe was rendering himself practically defenseless. Itwas therefore the ideal time to settle accounts. A window of opportunityhad opened for the Bathists that would be unlikely to remain openindefinitely.51 If they wanted to slay the Iranian serpent, they should actwithout delay.

SUMMARY

In this chapter we have tried to show that a disconnect developed be-tween the United States and the shah of Iran regarding the mission that theshah was to perform when he became Washingtons surrogate in the Gulf.Whereas the United States wanted him to deal with Sovietand Arabradicalsubversion in the Gulf, and thus protect U.S. client regimesthere, the shah had his own agenda. He envisioned making Iran the super-power of the area, and in line with this he invested heavily in Westernarms. This placed enormous strains on Irans rather limited political sys-

tem, and it collapsed.As for Iraq, it undertook a military buildup of its own to keep pace withthe shah. At the same time, however, the Bathists principal objective wasto build up their economy. When the Arab oil embargo enabled them todo precisely this, they in effect sued for peace with the shah, and for a brieftime the Gulf was relatively stable. When the shah unexpectedly fell frompower, the Iraqis found themselvesby defaultthe strongest power inthe Gulf, which led them to reassess their position vis--vis Iran.


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NOTES

1. The British made the announcement on June 16, 1968, and formally endedtheir rule in the Gulf on December 2, 1971.

2. This is the Warm Water Ports theory. For a treatment of events in the recenthistory of the Middle East according to the theory, see George Lenczowski, The

Middle East in World Affairs (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968).3. All of the references to oil in this chapter are based on Stephen Hemsley

Longrigg, Oil in the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).4. Americans who mediated between the British and Iranians induced the for-

mer to give up their monopoly over Irans oil. Under a new arrangement, the Brit-ish shared their concession with several foreignpredominantly U.S.companies. Details are in Longrigg, Oil in the Middle East, p. 278.

5. The United States moved against Britain, France, and Israelstates withwhich it was normally closein order to prevent the Soviet Union from takingunilateral action in defense of Egypt. President Eisenhower also was angered thatthe three states had concocted this plot against Egypt without Washingtonsknowledge.

6. This is not to say that Iraq had always been a backwater. It had been the seatof the Abbasid Empire, the largest empire wholly controlled and administeredfrom a central location that has ever existed. It also was the home of the ancientSumerian civilization. See Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO:

Westview Press, 1985).7. Although the United States promoted the Baghdad Pact, it never became a

full member. That upset the signatories, who felt, probably correctly, that this di-minished the agreements effectiveness. For the reasons for Washingtons refusal to

join, see Lenczowski, The Middle East in World Affairs, pp. 283ff.

8. Statistics taken from The Gulf: Implications of British Withdrawal, SpecialReport Series, no. 8 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic International Studies,1969), p. 64.

9. We base this assumption on the shahs assertion that the power vacuumformed by Britains pullout from the Gulf must not be filled by any power outsidethe Gulf. Acting on this conviction, the shah opposed the formation of the Federa-tion of Arab Emirates, which was originally supposed to include all of the statescurrently making up the United Arab Emirates, plus Bahrain and Qatar. He felt thefederation would be Britains instrument for furthering its interests in the Gulf.Ruhollah Ramazani, Irans Foreign Policy (Charlottesville: University of VirginiaPress, 1975).

10. It remains a question whether this in fact was the beginning of the desperateenmity between the shah and the Bathists. The Bathists have alleged that the shahwas plotting against them from the time they took power in 1968. In that year theyput on trial a number of individuals they claimed were spying for the shah. PhebeMarr (The Modern History of Iraq, p. 214) says the validity of the charges is impossi-ble to evaluate. If the Bathists fabricated this plot, then the shahs decision to abro-gate the Shatt treaty could have come about in reaction to what must be viewed asprovocation by the Bath. This study tends to support the Bathists charges. The

judgment is based on the shahs subsequent aggressive behavior toward them.Majid Khadduri feels the shah was behind the 1970 coup against the Bath; see his


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Socialist Iraq (Washington, DC: The Middle East Institute, 1978), pp. 54ff. And,as we shall discuss below, the shahs instigation of the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq iswell documented by U.S. congressional sources.

11. The largest of the islands, Abu Musa, was administered by Sharjah, and thetwo others, Greater and Lesser Tumbs, by Ras al Khaima. Sharjah agreed, in effect,to turn Abu Musa over to Iran; Ras al Khaima refused to part with its possessionsand the shah seized them.

12. Ramazani, Irans Foreign Policy, says no single act between 1953 and 1968exerted a more profound effect upon Iran than the Iraqi revolution. This exampleof antimonarchical revolution, says Ramazani, was too close to be ignored by theantiroyal elements both inside and outside of Iran. It was also feared, Ramazanicontinues, that the example of Iraq might expose the other Arab states in the Per-

sian Gulf area to military coups dtat. The Bathists at this time were fierce anti-royalists, which in part may explain the apparent contradiction of their seeking totopple the sultan of Oman, an Arab ruler. The Bathists could also justify theirsupport for the guerrillas by pointing to the fact they were Arab radicals, as were theBathists.

13. For a good description of the Iraqi armys arms buildup with Soviet aid, seeJohn Wagner, Fighting Armies: Antagonists in the Middle East, a Combat Analy-sis, in Richard Gabriel, ed., Fighting Armies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1987). Wagner says Iraq after 1973 underwent the most dramatic expansion of any

Arab army. It more than doubled its size and added some 1,600 tanks and an equalnumber of armored personnel carriers. Logistics and maintenance capabilities werestrengthened and training improved. As a result the army was transformed from asmall counterinsurgency force to a well-equipped military establishment.

14. Details of the attempt to topple the Bathists using the Kurds can be foundin the House Select Committee on Intelligence Report (the Pike Report), an al-leged copy of which was leaked to the Village Voice, January 28, 1968.

15. The Kurds in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the Middle East have been re-belling against their overlords for centuries. This particular revolt, led by Barzani,

had been sputtering along since 1961.16. Parallels between this operation and Irangate are striking: the use in both in-

stances of a third party, Israel, as a conduit for clandestine arms supplies; the factthat the affair was conducted over the objections of professionals in both the StateDepartment and the CIA; and the fact that the overall rationale was fightingcommunism.

17. Given the fact that the Iraqis have only thirty-six miles (almost fifty-seven ki-lometers) of coast on the Gulf, giving up half the Shatt was no small concession.

18. Evidence of the Iraqis general unhappiness was Defense Minister Adnan

Khayrallahs bitter reproach that the Bathists would never have gone along withthe accord if they had not been coerced by the United States, Israel, and the shah.

19. Ramazani, Irans Foreign Policy, p. 319.20. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U. S. Military Sales

to Iran (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 4.21. Ramazani, Irans Foreign Policy, pp. 315ff.22. See Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1971), pp. 26ff.


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23. Reza had originally thought of establishing a republic with himself as presi-dent but abandoned this plan when it met with resolute opposition from theclergy, to whom the republican form of government was anathema.

24. An anecdote, widely repeated in pre-Khomeini Iran, was that the old shah in-vaded the sanctuary of a mosque to remove a clergyman who had taken shelterthere from the shahs police.

25. Moreover, Ataturk left Turkey a strong institution in the army, which he en-joined to stay out of politics.

26. The question of why the shah embarked on this spectacular arms-buying pro-gram is not easy to answer. This study looks for an explanation in the nature of the re-gime: an autocracy. When the ruler is totally dependent on the force of hispersonality to maintain his sway, he looks for all the psychological help he can get. A

good way of impressing the worldand his own peoplewith his omnipotence isto acquire enormous amounts of arms. The shah similarly sought to convey strengththrough lavish display, as when he celebrated Irans 2,500-year-old monarchical tra-dition with what amounted to the worlds largest party in the desert at Ispahan.

27. For the U.S. arms relationship with the shah, see Ramazani, Irans ForeignPolicy, pp. 359ff.

28. For a good assessment of the competence of the shahs army, see DonaldVought, Iran, in Gabriel, Fighting Armies.

29. We must remember that throughout this period Iran was primarily an agri-

cultural society.30. U.S. Congress, U.S. Military Sales to Iran, says the number of Americans in

Iran, working in various military service capacities, increased from 15,00016,000in 1972 to 24,000 in 1976 and suggests the number would hit 50,00060,000 orhigher by 1980.

31. Discussed in Shaul Bakhash, The Politics of Oil and the Revolution in Iran(Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1982), pp. 3ff.

32. Ibid.33. Gary Sick, All Fall Down (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 29ff.

34. The only state that even approached the shahs situation was Israel. In thelatter case, however, there was some check, since the American people were payingfor Israels purchases; its requests at least were aired in Congress.

35. This economic explanation needs to be expanded, but that is beyond thescope of this study.

36. We will discuss the numbers and kinds of weapons the shah purchased andthe cash amounts in Chapter 2.

37. Robert Huyser,Mission to Tehran (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 58.38. See Vought, Iran.

39. Sick claims that at one point it was suggested that the shah temporarily turnover his rule to the army. He complained it could not even run the oil industry, areference to the armys inability to get the fields operating after an oil workersstrike. All Fall Down, p. 68.

40. Between 1956 and 1976 the urban population of Iran increased from 31percent to 47 percent (from 6 to 16 million). Said Amir Arjmand, Irans IslamicRevolution in Comparative Perspective, World Politics, 38, no. 3 (April 1986),p. 398.


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41. Nikola Schahgaldian, The Iranian Military Under the Islamic Republic (SantaMonica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1987), p. 23, cites a coup attempt against the Is-lamic Republic of July 1980, for which the clerics blamed the Iraqis. The clerics alsoaccused the United States, Israel, and Egypt. It is probable the Iraqis were some-how involved, although it is also probable the pro-shah Iranians organized the coupon their own and kept the Iraqis informed of its progress.

42. We will go into this in detail in Chapter 2.43. The possession of these islands by Iran continually rankled the Bathists.44. The third protocol of the Algiers Accord specifies that neither party will

meddle in the affairs of the other.45. There is some anecdotal evidence of contacts between the United States and

the Khomeini regime.46. One month after the hostage seizure the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, which

drove the United States to proclaim the Carter Doctrine, whereby an attempt byanyone to destabilize the Gulf would be opposed by the United States, using what-ever means necessary.

47. The best discussion of the modus operandi of the great powers in regard toIran is in George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-versity Press, 1949), pp. 43ff.

48. This provision is still in force, as far as the Russians are concerned, althoughKhomeini subsequently repudiated it.

49. Mossadeq led the fight against Britain during the oil nationalization crisisdescribed above. Britain and the United States later raised a successful coup againsthim and ousted him from power.

50. We will discuss these purges and speculate on the numbers of officers af-fected in Chapter 3.

51. The window stood a good chance of closing once the elections in the UnitedStates had been held. A new regime in Washingtonand it seemed fairly certainCarter would losemight make other arrangements with the clerics, and evenpatch up hostilities.


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2

Iraqs Decision to Goto War

To understand how Baghdad came to initiate the Iran-Iraq War, we needto be aware of Iraqs situation in late 1979, on the eve of the outbreak ofhostilities. Just prior to the war the Bath Party had undergone a funda-mental change that affected not only the internal politics of Iraq but its or-ientation toward the Persian Gulf as well. Against the backdrop of thischange the Islamic Revolution occurred in neighboring Iran. Certain ac-tions of the clerics deeply disturbed the Bathists and led to a rupture be-tween Baghdad and Tehran. In this chapter we discuss Bathism and the

level of political development of the Iraqis, and compare this with the po-litical awakening of popular forces in Iran.

The important thing to bear in mind about the Bathists is that theleadershipand most of the membershipwas recruited from the lowerclasses.1 It was not, as previous Arab nationalist regimes in Iraq had been,composed of individuals from the wealthy landowning and merchant aris-tocracy. Only with this awareness can one appreciate the dimensions of theBathist takeover in 1968. Although initially a coupin the sense that the

Bathists gained power through a sudden seizureit developed into an au-thentic revolution. The Bathists presided over a complete transfer ofpower from one class to another. The former ruling class was destroyed, ascompletely as occurred in Iran.

The fact of the Bathists being lower class explains their style of rulethey tended to be harsh and uncompromising. They exhibited extraordi-nary suspicion, as would be natural in men who had to cope withconditions and circumstances with which they were unfamiliar. Further in


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keeping with the lower-class character of their movement, the Bathistswere disposed to seek violent solutions to problems that beset them.

Their disposition to take violent measures earned the Bathists an unen-

viable reputation. Practically from the first days of their rule their behaviorprovoked international opprobrium. Shortly after taking power they puton trial persons they claimed were spies. They publicly hanged a number ofthem, raising a storm of protest throughout the world at the alleged bar-barity of their actions.2

The original Bathists also were violent in their ideological stands. Theyperceived themselves to be in the vanguard of the Arab nationalist move-ment, which led them to adopt positions that many construed as ultra-radical. In their eyes, for example, the Arab monarchs of the Gulf werecreatures of Western imperialism. The Bathists decision to support theDhofari rebels against the sultan of Oman (see Chapter 1) set the wholelineup of conservative Arab states against them.3

It was on the Arab-Israeli issue that the Bathists were most uncompro-mising. Because of its geographic location Iraq is not one of the so-calledconfrontation states. Nonetheless, Iraqi military units fought in the 1973Arab-Israeli War, on the Syrian front.4 They were the only one of the bel-ligerents on the Arab side to fail to make peace; as a result they remained

technically at war with Israel long after the fighting had ceased.Nevertheless, at the end of that war a profound change came over the

Bathiststhey gradually but determinedly reduced their level of commit-ment to Pan-Arab causes and concentrated instead on building up theirown economy. As noted in Chapter 1, the Arab oil embargo had openedextraordinary possibilities for them in the way of financial gain. Theyevinced single-minded dedication to exploit these new possibilities.

Among the first undertakings of the Bathists in the new era of wealth

was to multiply their oil outlets. In 1973 they had but one operating pipe-line through Syria.5 They contracted for a second line through Turkey in1985, and along with this opened a line to the Gulf, which clearly was theirmost convenient and efficient avenue for transporting oil. They also builttwo offshore loading facilities for oil tankers.

Concurrently the Bathists developed previously unexploited oil fields atRumaillah, in the far south of Iraq. Concessions for these fields had beenheld by foreign companies that had refusedfor reasons of their ownto

develop them.6

Their refusal provoked the Bathists to revoke the compa-nies concessions and, with the aid of the Soviets, they undertook to workthem themselves.

The Bathists committed enormous sums for oil-related projects inthe south, such as petrochemical plants. In addition they developednonoil-related industries like salt works and sugar refineries. And theybuilt desalinization facilities to provide fresh water for irrigation works.This accelerated development of the southern provinces created prob-


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Iraqs Decision to Go to War 25

lems for the Bathists that ultimately influenced their decision to go towar with Iran.

THE RISE OF THE SHIA OPPOSITION

The south of Iraq is the most backward area in the country. Even theKurdish north, which the Arab nationalist regimes that preceded the Bathhad consistently ignored, is better off. In the north the climate is salubri-ous, and the northernersindependent mountain peoplelook out forthemselves against the central government. The south is a desert, wherepeasant cultivators subsist upon extensively irrigated plots. The society ofthe south is rigidly structured along class lines, and before the coming ofthe Bathists a relatively small elite oppressed the peasants, keeping thembackward and estranged from the central authorities. Unable to negotiatedirectly with the bureaucracy, the peasants were beholden to their leaders,who performed this function for them. In effect the old milletsystem ofthe Ottomans was perpetuated in the south until the Bathists came.

When the Bathists moved to bring about the transformation of thesouth, they alienated the local leaders. Instead of working through themwhich would have preserved the leaders status as mediators with the

governmentthey brought in their own cadres to oversee the numerousdevelopment projects they meant to carry out.

They also opened up the remote areas with roads, giving them access toevery hamlet and town. They electrified the region and provided the peas-ants with television sets, so that they could receive broadcasts of Bathistpropaganda. They built schools and made education compulsory, and ofcourse in the schools they promoted the virtues of progress, which theyequated with secularism. It was not that the Bathists opposed religion; it

was, rather, that they were passionately formodernization. The models ofmodernization they drew upon stressed secularity as the means by whichto advance.

This emphasis on secularity confirmed the hostility of the local religiousleaders against the Bathists. In defense, the clerics revived the long-standing animosity of the Shias for the Sunnis. It is an unfortunate fact oflife in Iraq that all regimes since the state was founded have been domi-nated by Sunnis, even though Shias account for up to 65 percent of Iraqs

population.7

In 1975 the Bathists encountered their first clerically inspired anti-regime activity in the south. With characteristic harshness they executedfive minor clerics involved. Because of the extreme secrecy under whichthe Bathists operated, we have scant details about this affair; however,it is known that the five were accused of belonging to a group calledDawa, an organization we will encounter again just before the outbreakof the war.


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This study adopts the view that this 1975 incident represented the stir-ring of political consciousness in the Shia community, an awakening thatwas extraordinarily belated. Iraqs Arab Sunnis had long been politically

active, and even the Kurds began organizing politically in the early 1960s.For the Bathists the politicization of the Shias was a profoundly worri-some development. Shia tribal revolts in the prerepublican days of Iraqwere extremely violent affairs.8

THE CARROT AND THE STICK

In 1977 bloody riots erupted in the Shia city of Karbala. Again, becauseof government secrecy we do not know precisely what triggered them.Since the trouble occurred during the period of pilgrimagewhen Shiasconverge on Karbala to venerate the martyred Shia leader Husseinreligion certainly was a factor contributing to the disturbances. But therewere unmistakable political overtones to the affair as well.9

The regime ordered a communitywide purge of militants, with securityforces rounding up scores of minor clerics and religious students, many ofwhom were subsequently executed. Saddam also decreed it a crime punish-

able by death to belong to Dawa, which would seem to confirm that in theregimes eyes, this had been a political manifestation.

Along with the crackdown, Saddam sought to placate the Shias. Mostnotably he acted to improve the quality of life of Iraqis generally, and sincethe Shias were the most distressed members of the population, this re-dounded largely to their benefit.

The Bathists in the days immediately after the Arab oil embargo hadpracticed extraordinary austerity. They wanted to modernize Iraq, but

not at the expense of putting the country in debt to the internationalmoney market. They therefore rigorously restricted imports and at-tempted wherever possible to pay for whatever infrastructure they ac-quired. As a result, Iraqisdespite the potentially enormous wealth oftheir countrysubsisted under conditions that were positively frugal.Although their general welfare was assuredno one starved, no one wasreduced to beggingthey had few luxuries.10 Moreover, this was a condi-tion that apparently affected everyone across the board; Iraq in the early

1970s resembled Egypt under Nasserto all appearances it was a class-less society.

In the late 1970s Saddam in effect turned away from the austere life-style and opened his country to imports, flooding it with a wide range ofconsumer goods. The purists among the Bath Party bosses roundlycondemned his move. But the success of his action was instantly apparentamong the general populace, which indulged in an orgy of consumerspending.


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Along with liberalizing the economy, Saddam instituted a change in hisstyle of rule. In effect he switched personas. Whereas previously he hadbeen a remote figure, with little or no contact with the general populace,

he nowin the words of one Western reportergot out and pressed theflesh. He toured the Al Thawrah district, the Shia quarter of Baghdad, so-liciting the residents opinions and concerns.

The Bath was never a populist institution. It was not much interested inestablishing rapport with the masses. Indeed, it was the partys policy thatit would lead the masses into the modern era whether they desired it ornot. Thus Saddams striving to accommodate himself to the public seemedto many old-time party leaders the worst sort of pandering.

The Bathists were committed doctrinally to the principle of collectiveleadership. The chairman of the party was viewed as primus inter pares. InSaddams new leadership style many Bathists thought they could detectthe emergence of a cult of personality, and they condemned this develop-ment as well.

Of all Saddams actions at this time, perhaps none proved as upsettingto the leaders as his move to open the party ranks to new members. He hadbegun appealing for new blood in the Bath, and he specifically calledupon the Shias to become members. In his speeches he compared the party

to a boat, aboard which, he said, there was room for alla way of indicat-ing that the old days of exclusivity were at an end.11

The result of this appeal was to transform the Bath Party from an elitevanguard into a mass movement. This had the further effect of pro-foundly altering the arrangements whereby power was distributedthroughout Iraq. It weakened the hold of northernersspecifically resi-dents of the so-called Golden Triangleover the partys apparatus. TheGolden Triangleroughly formed by the cities of Samarra, Tikrit, and

Mosulwas the turf of Iraqs Sunnis, the geographical antithesis of theShia south.

Saddam almost certainly intended to aggrandize himself when heopened the party to new members, because in so doing he broadened hisbase of popular support. But we may say that it was also a move of neces-sity. Iraq under the Bath was a totalitarian system. Once its leaders hadbegun to develop the country economically, they perforce brought about ahuge increase in the bureaucracy. How could totalitarians like the Bathists

allow the bureaucracy to grow and not staff it with their people? Obviouslythey could not; it was essential to make more Bathists.

In any event, we believe Saddams instincts were correct. If, as we havesuggested, the Shias were becoming politicized, then one way of copingwith this was to co-opt the politically active spirits among them. At thesame time it is easy to see how Saddams activity might alienate certain ofthe party bosses and cause them to look on him with suspicion and increas-ing hostility.


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SHOWDOWN WITH THE BOSSES

Saddam was slated to take over the presidency of Iraq in 1979. Through-out the period leading up to this he had functioned as the partys strong-man, the personal protg of the partys titular head, General AhmadHassan al Bakr, whobeing somewhat old and infirmwas anxious tostep down and had prepared the way for the younger man to take over.

As the transition approached, the bosses apparently began maneuveringto block Saddams elevation. It is unclear precisely how they intended toaccomplish this. Some observers have suggested that an issue was made ofparty democracy. Bakr and Saddam should not be permitted to orches-trate the succession; instead, the senior party leaders should have a say.12

Apparently there was to be a party congress at which Saddams candidacywould be voted upon.

There may well have been such a scheme, but we should not be swayedby the appeal to democracy into thinking that Saddam was bereft ofintraparty support. In fact, he had a large following of junior party mem-bers who backed him against the older cadres.

Saddam was a cautious individual who rarely made a move withoutpreparing the ground. It is likely that he feared the outcome of a party

congress vote that he could not sew up beforehand. This probably iswhat persuaded him to preempt the bosses by inducing Bakr to stepdown prematurely. Once installed as president, Saddam called for thecreation of a national assemblythat is, a parliamentthat would rat-ify his new office.

It was a fairly shrewd operation all around. By sanctioning the creationof a parliament, Saddam advanced Iraq toward modernization. By gettingthe parliament to legitimize his leadership, he circumvented the bosses at-tempt to cut him down. Of course his performance did not endear him tothe bossesand thus his next move.

Saddam announced the discovery of a plot against himself, in which, heclaimed, prominent party leaders were involved. We should not be sur-prised that all of the leaders implicated were suspected of being opponentsof the new president. He subsequently ordered the execution of a numberof them.13

And in a related move that was in many ways even more shocking,Saddam implicated Syrias president Hafez el Assad in the alleged plot. As a

consequence he aborted discussions then ongoing to form a union betweenIraq and Syria, a plan promoted by Bakr over a period of years.14

A CRITICAL JUNCTURE

With the foregoing we have tried to show that immediately prior to theoutbreak of the Islamic Revolution, Iraqs internal politics were greatly


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disturbed. We also have indicated that the country was undergoing pro-found reorientationit was in effect turning its face away from westernArab lands and toward the Gulf; Iraq was essaying to become a Gulf

power, something it had never been before.At precisely the time this great change was occurring, the Islamic Revo-lution erupted in neighboring Iran. The activities of Khomeini and hispeople in the first days of this revolt greatly antagonized the Bathists,causing them not merely to become hostile to the Iranians but actually tofear them.

We are going to argue that the Iranians went too far when they publiclycalled for the export of their revolution. This basic tenet of the IslamicRevolution, we believe, initially disturbed relations between Iran and Iraqand ultimately was responsible for preventing a reconciliation betweenthem.

EXPORT OF THE REVOLUTION

A radical fringe of Khomeinis followers considered exporting the revo-lution to be the primary mission of Iran. They believed it must spreadacross land and water until a worldwide ummah (community) of Muslims

formed that would be loyal to Khomeini, thus ensuring the return of jus-tice to the earth.

A cleric like Ayatollah Sadiq Ruhani, who sat on Irans RevolutionaryCounciland was thus one of the most powerful men of the regimewanted the worldwide revolt to commence immediately, and had singledout as targets the various Shia communities of the Gulf.15

There are a lot of Shias in the Gulf. Kuwait is 30 percent Shia, Bahrain is70 percent; Saudi Arabia has probably up to 500,000 Shias concentrated

in the strategic oil field region of the eastern provinces; there are small butsignificant pockets of Shias in the UAE. Most disturbing to the Bathists,Iraqs populationas we have already pointed outis 65 percent Shia. Itsarmy is made up predominantly of adherents of the sect, perhaps as high as85 percent. The Iranians were playing a most dangerous game agitatingthis particular situation.

But for the Bathists, it was not only that the Iranians were trying tomake trouble. Baghdad was concerned for two other reasons. On the one

hand it offended the Bathists that Ruhani would threaten Arab regimes.Under Saddam, the Bathists had tempered their extreme Pan-Arabism,but they still paid homage to the concept of an Arab nation. The regimethat Ruhani proposed to substitute for Bahrains Khalifas almost certainlywould be an Iranian one.

On a more pragmatic level, the Bathists were disturbed because annexa-tion of Bahrain by Iran would extend Iranian hegemony into the Gulfproper. The Bathists had been deeply troubled by the shahs annexation of


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the three small islands in the Strait of Hormuz, Abu Musa and Greater andLesser Tumbs. They had accepted that development, only to be assaultedon another f

the iran-irak war

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