Zone D 39;exclusion Aérienne Clash Of Clan
Edelira Longinotti
While the Iraqi leadership had hoped to take advantage of Iran's post-revolutionary chaos and expected a decisive victory in the face of a severely weakened Iran, the Iraqi military only made progress for three months, and by December 1980, the Iraqi invasion had stalled. The Iranian military began to gain momentum against the Iraqis and regained all lost territory by June 1982. After pushing Iraqi forces back to the pre-war border lines, Iran rejected United Nations Security Council Resolution 514 and launched an invasion of Iraq. The subsequent Iranian offensive within Iraqi territory lasted for five years, with Iraq taking back the initiative in mid-1988 and subsequently launching a series of major counter-offensives that ultimately led to the conclusion of the war in a stalemate.
The conflict has been compared to World War I in terms of the tactics used by both sides, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across fortified defensive lines, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, Iranian human wave attacks, Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons, and deliberate attacks on civilian targets. The discourses on martyrdom formulated in the Iranian Shia Islamic context led to the widespread usage of human wave attacks and thus had a lasting impact on the dynamics of the conflict.[53]
The relationship between the governments of Iran and Iraq briefly improved in 1978, when Iranian agents in Iraq discovered plans for a pro-Soviet coup d'tat against Iraq's government. When informed of this plot, Saddam ordered the execution of dozens of his army's officers, and in a sign of reconciliation, expelled from Iraq Ruhollah Khomeini, an exiled leader of clerical opposition to the Shah. Saddam considered the 1975 Algiers Agreement to be merely a truce, rather than a definite settlement, and waited for an opportunity to contest it.[57][58]
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba'ath government, which was received with considerable anger in Baghdad.[60] On 17 July 1979, despite Khomeini's call, Saddam gave a speech praising the Iranian Revolution and called for an Iraqi-Iranian friendship based on non-interference in each other's internal affairs.[60] When Khomeini rejected Saddam's overture by calling for Islamic revolution[57] in Iraq, Saddam was alarmed.[60] Iran's new Islamic administration was regarded in Baghdad as an irrational, existential threat to the Ba'ath government, especially because the Ba'ath party, having a secular nature, discriminated against and posed a threat to the fundamentalist Shia movement in Iraq, whose clerics were Iran's allies within Iraq and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed.[60]
Saddam's primary interest in war may have also stemmed from his desire to right the supposed "wrong" of the Algiers Agreement, in addition to finally achieving his desire of becoming the regional superpower.[57][62] Saddam's goal was to supplant Egypt as the "leader of the Arab world" and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf.[63][64] He saw Iran's increased weakness due to revolution, sanctions, and international isolation.[65] Saddam had invested heavily in Iraq's military since his defeat against Iran in 1975, buying large amounts of weaponry from the Soviet Union and France. Between 1973 and 1980 alone, Iraq purchased an estimated 1,600 tanks and APCs and over 200 Soviet-made aircraft.[66]
Some scholars writing prior to the opening of formerly classified Iraqi archives, such as Alistair Finlan, argued that Saddam was drawn into a conflict with Iran due to the border clashes and Iranian meddling in Iraqi domestic affairs. Finlan stated in 2003 that the Iraqi invasion was meant to be a limited operation in order to send a political message to the Iranians to keep out of Iraqi domestic affairs,[75] whereas Kevin M. Woods and Williamson Murray stated in 2014 that the balance of evidence suggests Saddam was seeking "a convenient excuse for war" in 1980.[71]
On 8 March 1980, Iran announced it was withdrawing its ambassador from Iraq, downgraded its diplomatic ties to the charge d'affaires level, and demanded that Iraq do the same.[60] The following day, Iraq declared Iran's ambassador persona non grata, and demanded his withdrawal from Iraq by 15 March.[76]
In Iran, severe officer purges, including numerous executions ordered by Sadegh Khalkhali, the new Revolutionary Court judge, and shortages of spare parts for Iran's American and British-made equipment had crippled Iran's once-mighty military. Between February and September 1979, Iran's government executed 85 senior generals and forced all major-generals and most brigadier-generals into early retirement.[60]
By September 1980, the revolutionary government had purged some 12,000 officers of all levels from the army.[60] These purges resulted in a drastic decline in the Iranian military's operational capacities.[60]
On the eve of the revolution in 1978, international experts in military science had assessed that Iran's armed forces were the fifth most powerful in the world.[77] However, by the eve of war with Iraq, the recently formidable Iranian army was in many crucial ways a shell of its former self, having been badly weakened by losses in experienced personnel. The desertion rate had reached 60%, the officer corps was devastated and its most highly skilled soldiers and aviators had been exiled, imprisoned, or executed. When the invasion occurred, many pilots and officers were released from prison, or had their executions commuted to combat the Iraqis. Throughout the war, Iran never managed to fully recover from this flight of human capital.[78]
Many junior officers were promoted to generals, resulting in the army being more integrated as a part of the regime by the war's end.[78] Meanwhile, a new paramilitary organisation gained prominence in Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.[79] Created to protect the new regime and serve as a counterbalance to the army, the Revolutionary Guards[g] (IRGC) had been trained to act only as a militia and struggled to adapt as needed following the Iraqi invasion, initially refusing to fight alongside the regular army, resulting in many defeats. It was not until 1982 that the two groups began carrying out combined operations.[80]
An additional paramilitary militia was founded in response to the invasion, the "Army of 20 Million", commonly known as the Basij.[81] The Basij were poorly armed and had members as young as 12 and as old as 70. They often acted in conjunction with the Revolutionary Guard, launching so-called human wave attacks and other campaigns against the Iraqis.[81] They were subordinate to the Revolutionary Guards, and they made up most of the manpower that was used in the Revolutionary Guard's attacks.[57]
The human wave has been largely misconstrued both by the popular media in the West and by many scholars. The Iranians did not merely assemble masses of individuals, point them at the enemy, and order a charge. The waves were made up of the 22-man squads mentioned above [in response to Khomeini's call for the people to come to Iran's defense, each mosque organized 22 volunteers into a squad]. Each squad was assigned a specific objective. In battle, they would surge forward to accomplish their missions, and thus gave the impression of a human wave pouring against enemy lines.[82]
Despite neglect by the new regime, at the outset of the conflict, Iran still had at least 1,000 operational tanks and several hundred functional aircraft and could cannibalize equipment to procure spare parts.[h][80] Continuous sanctions greatly limited Iran from acquiring many additional heavy weapons, including tanks and aircraft.[78]
In addition, the area around the Shatt al-Arab posed no obstacle for the Iraqis, as they possessed river crossing equipment. Iraq correctly deduced that Iran's defences at the crossing points around the Karkheh and Karoun Rivers were undermanned and that the rivers could be easily crossed. Iraqi intelligence was also informed that the Iranian forces in Khuzestan Province, which consisted of two divisions prior to the revolution, now only consisted of several ill-equipped and under-strength battalions. Only a handful of company-sized tank units remained operational.[58]
The only qualms the Iraqis had were over the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (formerly the Imperial Iranian Air Force). Despite the purge of several key pilots and commanders, as well as the lack of spare parts, the air force showed its power during local uprisings and rebellions. They were also active after the failed U.S. attempt to rescue its hostages, Operation Eagle Claw. Based on these observations, Iraq's leaders decided to carry out a surprise airstrike against the Iranian air force's infrastructure prior to the main invasion.[58]
It is widely accepted among scholars that Iraq was seeking to annex,[83] or at least to establish suzerainty over,[22] Iran's Khuzestan province, but Saddam Hussein publicly denied this in November 1980.[84]
On 10 September 1980, Iraq forcibly reclaimed territories in Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad that it had been promised under the terms of the 1975 Algiers Agreement but that Iran had never handed over, leading to both Iran and Iraq declaring the treaty null and void, on 14 September and 17 September, respectively. As a result, the only outstanding border dispute between Iran and Iraq at the time of the Iraqi invasion of 22 September was the question of whether Iranian ships would fly Iraqi flags and pay Iraq navigation fees for a stretch of the Shatt al-Arab river spanning several miles.[85][86]
Iraq launched a full-scale invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980. The Iraqi Air Force launched surprise air strikes on ten Iranian airfields with the objective of destroying the Iranian Air Force.[60] The attack failed to damage the Iranian Air Force significantly; it damaged some of Iran's airbase infrastructure, but failed to destroy a significant number of aircraft. The Iraqi Air Force was only able to strike in depth with a few MiG-23BN, Tu-22, and Su-20 aircraft,[87] and Iran had built hardened aircraft shelters where most of its combat aircraft were stored.
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