Could one side or the other have had a decisive victory in the Iran - Iraq War?

Could it have been possible, at some stage during that conflict, for either Iraq or Iran to succeed in a major breakthrough in the enemies lines and either take the opposing sides capital or at least inflict such losses that the weakened side begs for peace? and what would the outcome of this peace be?
 
Yes: if Iran had held back and marshalled their resources and built up their stocks of Chinese and North Korean weapons, rather than using them stupidly in human wave attacks and piecemeal offensives, then one of their Badr Offensives might have succeeded, allowing them to cut the Baghdad-Basra highway, and putting them in a position to capture Basra, cutting off Iraq from the sea, and making it only a matter of time until Baghdad fell. Of course, if that had happened, it would have created the real risk of Turkish, Egyptian, or U.S. intervention.
 
Tricky. On the one hand you have Iran, which had the higher command of its armed forces gutted by the Revolution (and which was IIRC in many cases appointed by the Shah) and then on the other hand you have an army commanded by a man with a huge ego, no talent and a need to shoot anyone who appears to be a better general than him.
 
Agreed, Iran certainly had more potential to win the war outright but there was no way the U.S. would ever stand for having the Ayatollah sitting on the resources of both Iran and Iraq. Once Iran regained the strategic initiative in 1982 is when the United States started really ramping up weapons shipments to regain the overall stalemate. They were already accepting military aid and advice from Israel, maybe if Iran also decided to respond favorably to Soviet offers of assistance than they might be able to better equip a force instead of hoping they have more bodies than the Iraqis have artillery shells. Of course, the moment it seems that Iran could really truly win the US might approve airstrikes to try and break up advancing forces. Not sure how far they'd go to upkeep the stretgic balance.
 
I'm not entirely well informed on the Iraqi air forces capabilities at the time, but couldn't they have bombed Tehran with nerve gas, specifically targeting areas where the Ayatollah and President resided ? thus crippling the Iranian political leadership.
 
Is there anyway Iraq's initial air strikes could do better, and let them get air superiority?

In order:

1. Yes, but Iran is such a big country that it's impossible for a force of Iraq's capabilities at the time of the start of the Iran-Iraq War to completely cripple them.

2. No, not ever, the Iranian Air Force played a decisive role in the early stages of the war before the US arms embargo kicked in, Iranian pilots and planes were much better than anything Iraq had.

Also, if Iraq had actually managed to get the Khuzestani Arabs to rise up in support of the Iraqi invasion, Iran likely would have been forced to the peace table.
 
Have Iran go for broke. there was a plan to mass forces further north and throw everything in a drive toward Baghdad. Might succeed, might not.
 
As others have said, while it might be possible in a practical sense there would be considerable difficulties in getting the idea past the personalities in charge.
One example of this is on the Iranian side. After the initial human-wave attacks on Basra, they changed tack and began a strategy of attrition, mounting deep raids all along the 730-mile border. This put the Iraqi defenders under a great deal of pressure. All their prepared defensive positions were in the south, and the Iranian numerical advantage was being used to attack at a wide variety of points. This meant that Iraqi troops had to be stationed along the entire border, stretching their numbers and logistics train to - or perhaps beyond - their limit. It's possible that this might have broken the Iraqi ability to continue the war, if it had been continued.
Unfortunately, this raid/attrition strategy required competent, disciplined soldiers and good planning, which could only be supplied by the Iranian regular army and its officers. The Pasdaran and Basij were almost completely useless in the mountains where many of these raids occurred, but were unwilling to accept direction by the army (or the result of seeing the army become more useful and important). They convinced the clerics in Tehran to drop the attrition strategy and return to the human-wave attacks - not difficult, given the distrust of the clerics for the regular army. This effectively turned the main repository of skill and professional military knowledge into bystanders, and employed the Iranian numbers to their greatest disadvantage.

So, if there was some way of continuing this strategy, it's possible for Iran to gain an advantage in the conflict which could potentially be decisive. I'm not sure we'd see Chieftains rolling to Baghdad, but we could certainly get quite a different result.
 
I would argue that it's really not possible for either side to do this. Iraq's military as 1991 and 2003 showed was abysmal in quality, the Iranian Revolution and general isolation handicapped Iran's attempts to establish any kind of decisive offensive muscle.
 
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