The Iran-Iraq War

Official U.S. Marine Corps photo Gen George B. Crist was the first Marine appointed to head a unified command: U.S. Central Command. He commanded the Tanker War against Iran in the late 1980s and established the regional relationships and planning foundation that allowed Central Command to successfully intervene in the Gulf War.

ment Joint Task Force] wrapped in a unified command label” that “had never come to grips with the new area responsibilities.” It remained focused too narrowly on its Cold War function and was “a retirement home, losing more people through retirement” than through permanent change of station orders.

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General Crist felt that the new command had to “have stature and credibility, and get a unified strategy, for the whole region, both peace and war.” This meant establishing relationships with each of the nations within its area of responsibility despite the Department of State’s suspicion of the new command. To accomplish this, Crist sent his staff on many trips to the Middle East, working directly with those in charge, because he knew that in the Middle East “rank or position meant absolutely nothing: it’s man-to-man, a personal thing. If they like you, you can do almost anything. If they don’t like you, forget it: you’re not going anywhere.” The strong relationships that Central Command formed in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, were very valuable during the crisis to come.

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The biannual Gallant Eagle exercises were begun by Kelley’s task force but continued by Central Command. Conducted in the deserts of California and Nevada, they provided an excellent rehearsal for the upcoming crisis in the Iraqi desert. Moreover, the Bright Star exercises conducted in Egypt since 1981 provided valuable experience in cooperating with Arab governments in the Middle East.

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Shortly after consolidating his power in Iraq, Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Iran. He intended to take advantage of perceived Iranian instability following the 1979 revolution and the political isolation resulting from Iran’s concurrent seizure of the American embassy in November of that year. On 22 September 1980, Iraq launched a series of air strikes against Iran, all self-consciously modeled on Israel’s successful air strikes against the Egyptian Air Force at the start of the 1967 Six-Day War. Iraq’s air force executed the attacks ineptly, however, and as a result the attacks were a failure. The very next day, the Iranian Air Force was able to launch strikes against Iraq and its invading columns.

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On 23 September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, launching an offensive to take Khuzestan, push the border to the Zagros Mountains, and secure the Shatt al-Arab. The Iraqi ground offensive was not much more effective than the previous day’s air strike, however. The Iraqis advanced very slowly, and only one of the targeted cities was captured— Khorramshahr on 24 October. Around the other cities the slow speed of the Iraqi attack allowed the Iranians to regroup and reinforce so that the Iraqi attack ground to halt. Attempting to put a good face on its failed offensive, Iraq offered terms to Iran, but the offer was ignored.

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In January 1981, the Iranians began their counterattack. One of the first battles was an armored clash between the Iranian 16th Armored Division and the Iraqi 6thArmored Division and the 10th Republican Guard Armored Brigade at Susangerd. The Iranians employed approximately 300 M60A1 Patton and FV4201 Chieftain Mark V main battle tanks and lost approximately 200. The Iraqis, with

*The Marine Corps History Division’s accepted style is to italicize enemy military formations within the text in order to aid the reader in differentiating them from American and allied units. Although Iran was the enemy during the Tanker War, which was a subconflict of the Iran-Iraq War, italicizing Iranian units in this chapter and then italicizing Iraqi units in subsequent chapters is needlessly confusing. Therefore, Iraqi units are italicized throughout this work, and Iranian units are not.

From Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, Cultural Intelligence for Military Operations: Iran (CD-ROM) Iranian armor suffered badly in the initial battles of the Iran-Iraq War.

approximately 350 T-72, T-62, and T-55 tanks, lost around 100, despite the advantages of hull-down positions surrounding the Iranians on three sides along a single, narrow road.41

With this initial defeat, Iran’s counterattacks—utilizing mass attacks by newly recruited but poorly trained and equipped religious volunteers backed by the regular Iranian army—were increasingly successful throughout 1981 and into 1982. In May 1982, Iran regained Khorramshahr and had essentially regained all of the territory lost to Iraq in the fall of 1980. Iran proceeded to invade Iraq in turn, pushing into southern Iraq and threatening the southern town of Basrah. During the first battle of Basrah in July 1982, Iraq finally stopped the Iranian offensive through excellent combat engineering and massive firepower.

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Iran’s military successes shook the Iraqi military and the political leadership; this led directly to a series of military reforms, some immediate, others long term. In the aftermath of this first Iranian offensive, the Iraqis quickly realized that the only effective responses they possessed to Iran’s mass attacks were massive fortifications and overwhelming firepower. As a result, Iraqi engineers became very good at building extensive fixed fortifications. These took the form of massive minefields and extensive barbed wire entanglements before high earthen berms designed as fighting positions. These positions were backed up by massive concentrations of artillery and extensive roads so that reinforcements and supplies could be quickly and easily shifted along the front. The Iraqis also began to employ larger and larger amounts of chemical weapons against Iranian attacks.

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The linear nature of these defenses also made it easier to control the Iraqi military, whose junior leaders remained startlingly incompetent. Moreover, defending Iraq itself was better supported by the troops than invading Iran, and Iraqi élan increased substantially, even among those troops drafted from the majority Shia population. With its own regular army greatly depleted, thus forced to rely increasingly on mass attacks alone rather than the combination of mass attacks backed by regular army forces with which it had initially been successful, Iran was unable to break through these tougher Iraqi defenses. Iraq in turn could still make no headway against the Iranians, resulting in a bloody stalemate on the ground from 1982 until 1986.

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The Iranian threat forced Saddam to reform military leadership as well. Like most totalitarian regimes, military advancement in Iraq had been predicated more on loyalty to Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party than on professional competence. Iraqi failures in the initial invasion of Iran highlighted the weaknesses involved and posed a threat to Saddam’s hold on power in Iraq. Saddam began

Defense Imagery DN-SC-87-06413 The USS Stark (FFG 31) listing to port after being struck by an Iraqi-launched Exocet missile during the Iran-Iraq War.

the reforms by dismissing or executing 200–300 officers who had failed in various ways during the early years of the war while promoting those who did well. Former officers dismissed during the political purges were brought back, and the Republican Guard—the elite troops who reported directly to Saddam—was opened to new members based on ability rather than political loyalty. Finally, Saddam began promoting or leaving successful officers in place, rather than rotating them to prevent their building blocs of support. One officer who benefited from these policies was Salah Aboud Mahmoud, commander of the Iraqi III Corps and the Marines’ primary opponent in the Gulf War.45

Like the ground war, the air war was also mired in stalemate. The Iraqi Air Force, including their numerous helicopters, did not perform well supporting the ground forces. In addition, Iraqi fighters did not aggressively engage Iranian aircraft and thus failed to achieve air superiority. In the early days of the conflict, the Iraqis conducted numerous air strikes against various strategic targets with little effect, dropping few bombs with great inaccuracy. Iraq’s own air defenses were just as inadequate. On 7 June 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, and Iraqi air defenses inflicted no losses on the Israeli aircraft. Iranian aircraft found it nearly as easy to make their own strikes against Iraqi targets, though the damage from those strikes was far less.

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The Iranian Air Force performed somewhat better, in part because Iraqi targets were significantly closer to their air bases, but they were handicapped by the American arms embargo, which left them unable to get spare parts or proper technicians to repair their American-built aircraft. The Iraqis attempted to end the standstill by attacks against Iranian population centers in what was called the “War of the Cities,” but again the distance to Tehran blocked the Iraqi effort as it was beyond the range of the Iraqi SS-1/R-17 Scud-B surface-to-surface missiles.

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Iraq responded to its aerial impotence in three different ways. It hired the French to develop the

* Kari

integrated air defense command and control system, a system which came on line in 1986. The Iraqis also attempted to acquire longer range surface-to-surface missiles, but were unable to purchase these and were forced to begin to develop a long-range missile themselves by altering the Scuds they already possessed. Finally, like the Iranians, they shifted the attacks to oil production and transportation facilities.

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Like most Iraqi bombing efforts, attacks on Iranian refineries and pipelines were ineffective. Iraq also attempted to effectively blockade Iran’s oil ports by firing on tankers entering or exiting these ports with Aérospatiale AM38 and AM39 Exocet

*Kari is not an acronym; the system was named by spelling the French word for Iraq, “Irak,” backward.

anti-ship missiles. The Exocet proved ineffective at destroying the massive tankers, and Iraq’s aircraft lacked the range to cover all of Iran’s ports. Iraq’s target identification methods were also poor, culminating in the unintentional launch of two Exocet missiles against the USS Stark (FFG 31) in May 1987. In the attack, 37 sailors died and 21 more were wounded, but the Stark did not sink. Iraq apologized for the incident, and Saddam took it as a sign of weakness when the United States responded with only a diplomatic note. Regardless, Iraq’s attempts to close Iranian ports through airpower decreased.

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In February 1986, the Iranians made another attempt to break the deadlock, launching an amphibious assault across the Shatt al-Arab onto the al-Faw Peninsula. This amphibious assault managed to flank the Basrah defenses, and the Iraqis responded with increasing desperate counterattacks, including chemical weapons. The Iranian advance was stopped, but the Iraqi counterattacks failed to destroy the al-Faw salient. The Iranians launched their last serious offensive, the second battle of Basrah, in January 1987. This was a massive battle, with a combined total of at least a quarter of a million men contending for the small river city. The battle continued through March, with Iranian assaults and Iraqi counterattacks all failing, though the Iranians managed to get through five of the six Iraqi defensive lines. The end of this massive battle represented the end of Iran’s offensive capabilities on the ground.

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With Iran’s offensive capabilities depleted, the Iraqis planned a series of large, yet limited offensives designed to force the Iranians to accept peace terms. In April 1988, the Iraqis launched their first offensive since 1980 to drive the Iranians off the al-Faw Peninsula. In addition to the Republican Guard and the VII Corps, the Iraqi generals employed the 26th Naval Infantry Brigade in an amphibious flanking attack. The Iraqis secured the peninsula in less than 48 hours of intense fighting following a massive bombardment. Beginning in May 1988, the Iraqis launched a series of four offensives. Each assault was carefully planned and meticulously rehearsed, and the attacks were preceded by massive artillery bombardments, including copious use of chemical weapons. Another significant factor was that the Iraqis outnumbered the Iranians by as much as 10 to 1 at the location of each attack. These offensives were very successful; Iraq destroyed much of Iran’s remaining combat power in the Iranian province of

As the Iran-Iraq War dragged on, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) became the predominant military force in Iran. The IRGC was formed from the urban guerrillas who unseated the Shah in 1979. The IRGC recruited and trained the Basij volunteers who conducted the human wave frontal attacks on Iraqi positions.

From Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, Cultural Intelligence for Military Operations: Iran (CD-ROM)