A Bloody Vy for Supremacy

Why did Saddam Hussein invade Iran in 1980 starting a bitter eight-year war, later to be known as the Iran-Iraq war? Because relations had been growing increasingly hostile between Iraq and Iran due to the increasing severity of border disputes, coupled with the recent Iranian revolution and Saddam’s fear of being overthrown. Saddam viewed Iran as a threat to Iraqi power in the Middle East and decided military action against the considerably weaker Iranian forces was the only course to pursue.

Saddam later justified the invasion by claiming that there had been repeated instances of artillery strikes and skirmishes between Iraqi and Iranian military forces in disputed territories like the Shatt al-Arab waterway, that divided a steadily expanding Iraq and a recently reformed Iran. Historians also hypothesize that the recent 1979 Iranian Revolution would inspire similar revolutions to take place in Iraq. Saddam feared that these recent revolutions would end with him being overthrown just as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was in Iran.

This fear of revolution, paired with Saddam’s megalomaniac desire to expand their borders and become the leading power in the Arab world, became the perfect excuse to send troops over the Iranian border. It is necessary to understand that in a Shi’ite majority in Iraq, everything Saddam did was to ensure that he remained in power. If for even a moment the strong sense of Iraqi nationalism (or possibly the fear of Saddam) began to falter, his dictatorship would crumble, and his people would have his head.

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One of the more legitimate reasons for the sudden Iraqi aggression is the seemingly constant land disputes that originate from the 1847 Treaty of Erzerum which defined the Shatt-al Arab waterway as the border that divided the Persians and the Ottomans (At this time Iraq was still considered Ottoman). “Both agreed to respect freedom of navigation in the waterway, while Iran said it would cease interfering in northern Iraq in exchange for receiving control of two predominantly Arab cities, Khorramshahr and Abadan. The dispute was not completely settled and disagreements continued over the next several decades. In 1975, a new agreement was reached whereby the midpoint of the Shatt was determined to be the boundary between the countries.” (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). This agreement came to be known as the Algiers accord, and it effectively gave Iraq near-total control (except waters surrounding Khorramshahr and Abadan) of the Shatt-al Arab waterway in return for normalized relations between the two nations.

Effectively forcing Iranians to pay a toll anytime they wanted to use the waterway for shipping and travel. Looking forward to future events it is easy to wonder whether or not Saddam ever intended to respect either treaty.  On the afternoon of September 22nd, 1980 (during a month in which war is strictly forbidden for all Muslims), Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi Air Force to conduct bombing runs on ten Iranian airfields just before sending six divisions of Iraqi infantry across the border into Iran (Faridani). Saddam claims that his goal is to retake territories that historically belong to Iraq, which they claim had been previously extorted from them by their Iranian neighbors in the Erzerum and Algiers treaties. “When we can return what is rightfully ours we will do it. No patriotic person would let go of what is rightfully his…..Not just legally reasserting control of the Shatt al-’Arab but retaking control of the Shatt al-Arab the way it was before the Algiers Agreement in 1975” (Hussein). This statement seems to suggest that Saddam was willing to make small concessions to Iran in the meantime, all the while intending to retake the very lands that Iraq had just sacrificed. “A year and a half and they didn’t return our lands…..This necessitates that we regain it with blood and weapons (Hussein). While Saddam had tried to reach out to resolve the growing tensions between Iraq and Iran, his demands weren’t taken seriously by the newly installed pro-western (not quite capitalist, however) Iranian Government and Saddam decided he had no other option but to resort to violence. While at this point it may seem that Saddam was completely unjustified in his declaration of war, Iran also played a part in the destabilization of relations between the neighboring nations. For decades, Iran supported Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq that were desperately trying to carve out their nation and finally build the famed “city upon a hill” for their fellow Kurds (who still struggle to achieve their goals over forty years later).

“Iran, practically speaking, should kill its horse [Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the head of the Iraqi Kurds’ insurgency in northern Iraq]  by closing the borders and stopping the military support to the saboteurs whom they were directly supporting” (Hussein). For a paranoid and power-hungry Saddam, Iranian support of the pro-west Kurds was a massive threat to his secular pro-soviet dictatorship. Similarly, Saddam feared that the Shi’ite 1979 Iranian Revolution would inspire even more Kurdish support; this time by his people, the majority of which being Shi’ite. Initially, Saddam greeted the Iranian Revolution with open arms as it resulted in the removal of Iran’s Shah who had been seen as a common enemy to both Iraq and the Iranian people alike. “The essentially secular Iraqi leadership became more of an issue after the Iranian revolution, when Ayatollah Khomeini, who had spent part of his exile in Iraq (he was expelled in October 1978), began encouraging his former colleagues to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq because his regime was anti-Islamic. This was part of Khomeini’s broader strategy of spreading the Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East. Saddam responded as he did to any challenge by a ruthless crackdown on Shiite fundamentalists and by sending aid to Arab separatists in Iran.” (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). Saddam saw this as an attempt by the new Iranian leadership to weak Iraqi control over the region and ensure the continuation of Iran’s era of Pan-Arab dominance, something Saddam himself became insistent on destroying. With a nationalistic megalomaniac like Saddam as their leader, Iraq was forced to thrust herself into combat with her neighbor. “The standard explanation views the invasion as an expression of Hussein’s aggressive personality and his unbridled regional ambitions.

These ranged from the occupation of Iran’s territories (Shatt Al-Arab waterway and the oil-rich province of Khuzistan), through the infliction of a decisive defeat on the Iranian revolution, to the desire to make Iraq the preeminent Arab and Gulf state. It has even been suggested that by defeating Iran, Hussein hoped to become the most influential leader of the nonaligned movement.” (Karsh). Saddam envied Iranian influence, and he concluded that if he could not pressure Iran into a diplomatic solution in Iraq’s favor, he would simply take what he wanted by way of force. At this point, it’s important to recognize the difference in military strength between the two nations. While Iraq was able to field almost three-thousand tanks and one-thousand artillery pieces, Iran could barely field seventeen-hundred tanks and only had three hundred operating artillery guns. In air superiority, however, the roles were reversed. Iran had vastly higher numbers of both fighter jets and helicopters. Unfortunately for Iran however, the advantage of air superiority wasn’t enough as they were under strict arms sanctions and were unable to keep up with Iraqi arms production. Saddam was willing to throw everything he could at his Iranian neighbors to ensure Iraq’s ascent to power in the Middle East. However, Saddam realized that Iraq’s power couldn’t stem from annexing as much territory as possible; he had to annex the right territories, and large oil reserves had been discovered in the Khuzestan province.

Knowing that these oil reserves would not only allow him to prolong combat with Iranian forces but also generate massive amounts of money for Iraq to either buy or trade oil for weapons, as well as much-needed artillery shells with the Soviet Union. Saddam was so driven to transform Iraq into the powerhouse of the Middle East, that he was willing to disregard decades-old treaties and amass a huge military to run Iran into the ground and simply take what he wanted. Like the vast majority of conflicts throughout history, the Iran-Iraq war was based solely on greed. Whether for lands, oil, or religion, Iraq (being led by a power-hungry dictator) broke treaties they claimed allegiance to. Justified or not, Saddam broke his word, invaded his neighbor, and stole Iranian territory containing precious black gold. Saddam, desperately wishing to place himself at the height of power in the Middle East was willing to shed the blood of the innocents to get there.