Basically, the PoD is that Iraq wins the Iran-Iraq War through some more competence and luck on their side and slightly less competence and luck on the Iranian side. Enjoy.
By the early 1980s, the Ba’ath rulers of Iraq were in complete control of their once chaotic country, while Iran was undergoing revolutionary turmoil. That situation led Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, believing it to be an easy prey, his goal being to advance his prestige as the leader of the Arab world. He also feared that the new Islamic Republic of Iran could incite a revolt among the Iraqi Shi’ites, who formed 60% of the population. Socialist, secular and Arab nationalist Iraq was an obvious candidate to export the Iranian Revolution of the Ayatollahs to. Longer term causes included the competition for dominance in the region and ideological, ethnic and religious differences. There was also Iraq’s desire to secure a border alignment that would give it control over the entire Shatt-al-Arab waterway, which it shared with Iran due to the 1975 border agreement considered to be humiliating by Baghdad. Lastly, there was a personal antipathy between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini because the former had expelled the latter from Iraq in the late 70s. Iraq decided to launch what Saddam Hussein referred to as the “Whirlwind War”.
Iraq assembled an army of 190.000 men, 2.200 tanks and 450 aircraft. In addition, the area around the Shatt al-Arab posed no obstacle for the Iraqis, as they were armed with Soviet equipment to cross rivers. Iraq correctly deduced that Iran’s defences at the crossing points around the Kharkeh and Karoun Rivers were undermanned and that the rivers could be easily crossed. Iraqi intelligence was also informed that the Iranian forces in Khuzestan (which consisted of two divisions prior to the revolution) now only consisted of several ill-equipped battalions and a handful of company-sized tank units. The only qualms the Iraqis had were over the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force or IRIAF (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 American attempt to rescue its hostages from the occupied embassy in Teheran. As such, Iraq's leaders decided to carry out a surprise air strike against the Iranian air force's infrastructure prior to the main invasion.
In Iran, severe officer purges, and shortages of spare parts for Iran’s American made equipment (M48 and M60 Patton tanks as well as F-14 Tomcat jetfighters, delivered to the Shah) had crippled the once powerful Iranian armed forces. Between February and September 1979, Iran's government had executed 85 senior generals and had forced all major-generals and most brigadier-generals into early retirement. By September 1980, the government had purged 12.000 army officers. These purges resulted in a drastic decline in Iranian military operational capacities. Their regular army (which, in 1978, was considered the world's fifth most powerful) had been badly weakened by purges and lack of spare parts. The desertion rate had reached 60%, and the officer corps was devastated. The most highly skilled soldiers and aviators were exiled, imprisoned, or executed, a crippling capital flight that seriously reduced the competence of the Iranian army. Continuous sanctions prevented Iran from acquiring many heavy weapons, such as tanks and aircraft. When the invasion occurred, many pilots and officers were released from prison, or had their executions commuted to combat the Iraqis and many junior officers were promoted to generals. Iran still had at least one thousand operational tanks and several hundred functional aircraft, and could cannibalize equipment to procure spare parts.
Saddam Hussein decided to change his plan of attack somewhat after, according to him, having an epiphany (in reality some of his generals had suggested it, but Saddam’s bloated ego didn’t allow him to admit that). The original plan was for four out of six divisions would attack in the south into the province of Khuzestan (this province was predominantly Arab rather than Persian and Saddam hoped in vain that the local Arab population could be persuaded to support Iraq). The two remaining divisions were to attack on the central and northern part of the border in the original plan, but Saddam altered it considering the conquest of Khuzestan was the operational goal and because the largely mountainous borders were suboptimal for large military operations. Five divisions were to be used in the conquest of Khuzestan while remaining Iraqi army and paramilitary forces were to dig trenches and create powerful fixed field fortifications on and around the mountain passes that the Iranians were most likely to attack through, with an emphasis being placed on Baghdad’s safety. Subsequently, viewing the size and still fairly potent strike force of the Iranian air force, also decided it was more productive to establish regional air superiority over Khuzestan instead of the entire country, which was three times bigger than Iraq itself.
The Iraqis started with an aerial offensive against western Iran on September 22nd 1980. Most of the Tu-22 medium bombers and Sukhoi Su-20 fighter bombers (capable of carrying heavy duty ordinance for hardened facilities) along with most of the handful of MiG-23BNs (the ground attack variant of the MiG-23) were focused on Khuzestan. The Iraqis managed to destroy the armed concrete hangars with two tonne bombs, the Tu-22 being capable of carrying 9.000 kilos of bombs and the Su-20 being able to carry 4.000 kilos on wing mounted hard points. Many planes were destroyed on the ground as a result of their hangars, despite being made out of armed concrete, buckling under free fall bombs. In addition to that, MiG-23s used air-to-surface missiles and their 23 mm cannon to attack aircraft on the ground with some serious successes. On the morning of September 22nd Iranian pilots found their airbases in Khuzestan under attack and tried to scramble their fighters, mostly failing due to the almost complete element of surprise.
Simultaneously, a massive artillery bombardment was launched, predominantly with Katyushas and 152 mm M1955 howitzers (both of them Soviet-built weapon systems). An armoured assault commenced afterward spearheaded by T-72 tanks and Lion of Babylon tanks (an Iraqi modified version of the T-72) which were followed by the more numerous Chinese-built Type-69 tanks, the mainstay of the Iraqi armoured forces (they were an improvement of the Type 59, which themselves were Soviet T-55 knock-offs). In one week the Iraqis advanced over 120 kilometres, reaching the provincial capital of Ahvaz and the port of Bandar Mahshar. The Iraqi offensive consisted of two pincers focused on these two cities, and largely due to lacking Iranian defences and an incompetent enemy response, the Iraqis managed to converge 20 kilometres east of the Ahvaz-Bandar line. As planned, Iraqi forces entrenched along the line they had reached and the modern SA-2 Guideline anti-aircraft missiles and SA-6 mobile triple SAM launchers were moved forward into Khuzestan.
The Iraqis did that just in time, because the superior IRIAF came down hard on Khuzestan with F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers, supplied by the US during the reign of the last Shah. As they ran into the SA-2 and SA-6 missiles, they incurred severe losses while not seriously damaging Iraqi ground forces. Iranian ground troops, in the meantime, attacked Iraqi positions consisting of trenches, barbed wire fields, mine fields, artillery positions and tanks dug in as casemates in frontal human waves. Iranian counteroffensives over late 1980 and early 1981 failed to dislodge the Iraqis from their positions in Khuzestan. In similar fashion to WW I armies and the Japanese in WW II, the Iranians mindlessly assaulted enemy positions head-on, and as a result shrapnel shells and machine guns mowed them down.
Khomeini, in the meantime, remained distrustful of the military because it had always been a pillar of support to the Shah. He’s rather listen to the fanatically loyal Revolutionary Guard and the equally fanatical Basji militia which, however, was poorly equipped and counted many boys as young as 14 and elderly men as old as 70 among its ranks. Any strategy that didn’t make liberation of Iranian territory its first and foremost priority was dismissed by Khomeini, and as a result Iranian numbers were decimated every single time. That was worsened when Saddam Hussein deployed mustard gas and chlorine gas: especially the first few times were horrible because the Iranians at the time weren’t wearing gasmasks and had to resort to urine drenched pieces of cloth instead. Serious losses affected the Iranian air force, diminishing what could have been an advantage to Iran. Their ground forces suffered the most and even with a 3:1 numerical advantage, the Iranians couldn’t bear such losses for too long. Such costly battles for no gain were also very demoralizing, except for the fanatical supporters of Khomeini.
In the meantime, spare parts were getting even harder to obtain as US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev both tacitly chose the Iraqi side, deeming them the “lesser of two evils”. The US gladly supplied intelligence while Moscow had no qualms about selling MiG-25 interceptor fighters, T-72 main battle tanks, AK-47 assault rifles, Dragunov sniper rifles, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and surface-to-air missiles to Saddam. By late 1981, the Iraqis were armed to the teeth, compared to 1980 (though that didn’t stop the surprise attack of Israel against the Osirak reactor, which the Israelis didn’t believe was a scientific reactor for peaceful purposes rather than a means to create an Iraqi atomic bomb).
Over the course of winter 1981-’82, Khomeini finally changed his mind on allowing a more indirect strategy. An attack on the central part of the Iran-Iraq border toward Baghdad, which army commanders had been advocating, was now favoured by him. His forces, however, proved too weakened for that to succeed, despite capturing the Iraqi town of Mandali (ten kilometres from the border) inflicting heavy losses on the Iraqi defenders as well. The victory proved Pyrrhic and that was combined with the increasing repressiveness of the Khomeini regime (with Khomeini blaming internal dissent and godlessness as the cause of the losses in the war). Leftist elements gained support as the regime grew harsher: the communist Tudeh Party, the social-democratic Organization of Iranian People’s Fadaian (or Fedayan-e Khalq) and the Islamic Marxist “People’s Mujahideen” banded together and started strikes and demonstrations across the country while engaging in a guerrilla and sabotage campaign against Khomeini’s forces.
As popular support for the radical Islamist regime ebbed and protest reached tremendous sizes, Khomeini couldn’t squash opposition anymore. In a coup d’état Noureddin Kianouri, General-Secretary of the Tudeh Party, was proclaimed President of Iran in the so-called April Revolution of 1983. Kianouri immediately proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire and requested an armistice before Saddam Hussein could make a good thing out of it and then cash in. All Khomeini could do was to curse those who he blamed for his defeat and flee the country. He fled to Turkey where he requested political asylum and he was granted this asylum despite protests of the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey in Ankara, and from there he could only watch what Saddam Hussein would do to his country.
The Lion of Babylon Roars
Chapter I: The Whirlwind War, 1980-1983.
The history of the Republic of Iraq in the 1980s was completely dominated by the consolidation of power in Saddam Hussein’s clutches. President Al-Bakr resigned as President in 1979 out of “health reasons”, but in reality he had been outmanoeuvred by Saddam who had been the power behind the throne for much of the 1970s anyway. He became President and also assumed the positions of chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, secretary-general of the Iraqi Ba’ath party, and head of the armed forces. Soon after, Saddam conveniently discovered a plot against him that necessitated the execution of his main rivals. A personality cult followed that made him known across Iraq while a semblance of democracy remained: a national assembly convened for the first time in twenty years, but it was nothing more than a rubber stamp institution. The party controlled schools, trade unions, and the government and had its own militia. A massive security state ruthlessly persecuted dissidents and opponents of the regime and censorship was tight. The Ba’ath regime didn’t just use a stick but a carrot as well: it built mosques, roads, hospitals, schools, continued emancipation policies for women, and rewarded young elite Shi’ites and Kurds who would cooperate with the regime. Saddam used symbols in an attempt to evoke the historic legacy of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Iraq in an attempt to invigorate Iraqi nationalism. Sculptors, architects, cartoonists and other artists of various kinds were employed to create an overwhelming amount of propaganda.
By the early 1980s, the Ba’ath rulers of Iraq were in complete control of their once chaotic country, while Iran was undergoing revolutionary turmoil. That situation led Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, believing it to be an easy prey, his goal being to advance his prestige as the leader of the Arab world. He also feared that the new Islamic Republic of Iran could incite a revolt among the Iraqi Shi’ites, who formed 60% of the population. Socialist, secular and Arab nationalist Iraq was an obvious candidate to export the Iranian Revolution of the Ayatollahs to. Longer term causes included the competition for dominance in the region and ideological, ethnic and religious differences. There was also Iraq’s desire to secure a border alignment that would give it control over the entire Shatt-al-Arab waterway, which it shared with Iran due to the 1975 border agreement considered to be humiliating by Baghdad. Lastly, there was a personal antipathy between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini because the former had expelled the latter from Iraq in the late 70s. Iraq decided to launch what Saddam Hussein referred to as the “Whirlwind War”.
Iraq assembled an army of 190.000 men, 2.200 tanks and 450 aircraft. In addition, the area around the Shatt al-Arab posed no obstacle for the Iraqis, as they were armed with Soviet equipment to cross rivers. Iraq correctly deduced that Iran’s defences at the crossing points around the Kharkeh and Karoun Rivers were undermanned and that the rivers could be easily crossed. Iraqi intelligence was also informed that the Iranian forces in Khuzestan (which consisted of two divisions prior to the revolution) now only consisted of several ill-equipped battalions and a handful of company-sized tank units. The only qualms the Iraqis had were over the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force or IRIAF (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 American attempt to rescue its hostages from the occupied embassy in Teheran. As such, Iraq's leaders decided to carry out a surprise air strike against the Iranian air force's infrastructure prior to the main invasion.
In Iran, severe officer purges, and shortages of spare parts for Iran’s American made equipment (M48 and M60 Patton tanks as well as F-14 Tomcat jetfighters, delivered to the Shah) had crippled the once powerful Iranian armed forces. Between February and September 1979, Iran's government had executed 85 senior generals and had forced all major-generals and most brigadier-generals into early retirement. By September 1980, the government had purged 12.000 army officers. These purges resulted in a drastic decline in Iranian military operational capacities. Their regular army (which, in 1978, was considered the world's fifth most powerful) had been badly weakened by purges and lack of spare parts. The desertion rate had reached 60%, and the officer corps was devastated. The most highly skilled soldiers and aviators were exiled, imprisoned, or executed, a crippling capital flight that seriously reduced the competence of the Iranian army. Continuous sanctions prevented Iran from acquiring many heavy weapons, such as tanks and aircraft. When the invasion occurred, many pilots and officers were released from prison, or had their executions commuted to combat the Iraqis and many junior officers were promoted to generals. Iran still had at least one thousand operational tanks and several hundred functional aircraft, and could cannibalize equipment to procure spare parts.
Saddam Hussein decided to change his plan of attack somewhat after, according to him, having an epiphany (in reality some of his generals had suggested it, but Saddam’s bloated ego didn’t allow him to admit that). The original plan was for four out of six divisions would attack in the south into the province of Khuzestan (this province was predominantly Arab rather than Persian and Saddam hoped in vain that the local Arab population could be persuaded to support Iraq). The two remaining divisions were to attack on the central and northern part of the border in the original plan, but Saddam altered it considering the conquest of Khuzestan was the operational goal and because the largely mountainous borders were suboptimal for large military operations. Five divisions were to be used in the conquest of Khuzestan while remaining Iraqi army and paramilitary forces were to dig trenches and create powerful fixed field fortifications on and around the mountain passes that the Iranians were most likely to attack through, with an emphasis being placed on Baghdad’s safety. Subsequently, viewing the size and still fairly potent strike force of the Iranian air force, also decided it was more productive to establish regional air superiority over Khuzestan instead of the entire country, which was three times bigger than Iraq itself.
The Iraqis started with an aerial offensive against western Iran on September 22nd 1980. Most of the Tu-22 medium bombers and Sukhoi Su-20 fighter bombers (capable of carrying heavy duty ordinance for hardened facilities) along with most of the handful of MiG-23BNs (the ground attack variant of the MiG-23) were focused on Khuzestan. The Iraqis managed to destroy the armed concrete hangars with two tonne bombs, the Tu-22 being capable of carrying 9.000 kilos of bombs and the Su-20 being able to carry 4.000 kilos on wing mounted hard points. Many planes were destroyed on the ground as a result of their hangars, despite being made out of armed concrete, buckling under free fall bombs. In addition to that, MiG-23s used air-to-surface missiles and their 23 mm cannon to attack aircraft on the ground with some serious successes. On the morning of September 22nd Iranian pilots found their airbases in Khuzestan under attack and tried to scramble their fighters, mostly failing due to the almost complete element of surprise.
Simultaneously, a massive artillery bombardment was launched, predominantly with Katyushas and 152 mm M1955 howitzers (both of them Soviet-built weapon systems). An armoured assault commenced afterward spearheaded by T-72 tanks and Lion of Babylon tanks (an Iraqi modified version of the T-72) which were followed by the more numerous Chinese-built Type-69 tanks, the mainstay of the Iraqi armoured forces (they were an improvement of the Type 59, which themselves were Soviet T-55 knock-offs). In one week the Iraqis advanced over 120 kilometres, reaching the provincial capital of Ahvaz and the port of Bandar Mahshar. The Iraqi offensive consisted of two pincers focused on these two cities, and largely due to lacking Iranian defences and an incompetent enemy response, the Iraqis managed to converge 20 kilometres east of the Ahvaz-Bandar line. As planned, Iraqi forces entrenched along the line they had reached and the modern SA-2 Guideline anti-aircraft missiles and SA-6 mobile triple SAM launchers were moved forward into Khuzestan.
The Iraqis did that just in time, because the superior IRIAF came down hard on Khuzestan with F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers, supplied by the US during the reign of the last Shah. As they ran into the SA-2 and SA-6 missiles, they incurred severe losses while not seriously damaging Iraqi ground forces. Iranian ground troops, in the meantime, attacked Iraqi positions consisting of trenches, barbed wire fields, mine fields, artillery positions and tanks dug in as casemates in frontal human waves. Iranian counteroffensives over late 1980 and early 1981 failed to dislodge the Iraqis from their positions in Khuzestan. In similar fashion to WW I armies and the Japanese in WW II, the Iranians mindlessly assaulted enemy positions head-on, and as a result shrapnel shells and machine guns mowed them down.
Khomeini, in the meantime, remained distrustful of the military because it had always been a pillar of support to the Shah. He’s rather listen to the fanatically loyal Revolutionary Guard and the equally fanatical Basji militia which, however, was poorly equipped and counted many boys as young as 14 and elderly men as old as 70 among its ranks. Any strategy that didn’t make liberation of Iranian territory its first and foremost priority was dismissed by Khomeini, and as a result Iranian numbers were decimated every single time. That was worsened when Saddam Hussein deployed mustard gas and chlorine gas: especially the first few times were horrible because the Iranians at the time weren’t wearing gasmasks and had to resort to urine drenched pieces of cloth instead. Serious losses affected the Iranian air force, diminishing what could have been an advantage to Iran. Their ground forces suffered the most and even with a 3:1 numerical advantage, the Iranians couldn’t bear such losses for too long. Such costly battles for no gain were also very demoralizing, except for the fanatical supporters of Khomeini.
In the meantime, spare parts were getting even harder to obtain as US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev both tacitly chose the Iraqi side, deeming them the “lesser of two evils”. The US gladly supplied intelligence while Moscow had no qualms about selling MiG-25 interceptor fighters, T-72 main battle tanks, AK-47 assault rifles, Dragunov sniper rifles, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, and surface-to-air missiles to Saddam. By late 1981, the Iraqis were armed to the teeth, compared to 1980 (though that didn’t stop the surprise attack of Israel against the Osirak reactor, which the Israelis didn’t believe was a scientific reactor for peaceful purposes rather than a means to create an Iraqi atomic bomb).
Over the course of winter 1981-’82, Khomeini finally changed his mind on allowing a more indirect strategy. An attack on the central part of the Iran-Iraq border toward Baghdad, which army commanders had been advocating, was now favoured by him. His forces, however, proved too weakened for that to succeed, despite capturing the Iraqi town of Mandali (ten kilometres from the border) inflicting heavy losses on the Iraqi defenders as well. The victory proved Pyrrhic and that was combined with the increasing repressiveness of the Khomeini regime (with Khomeini blaming internal dissent and godlessness as the cause of the losses in the war). Leftist elements gained support as the regime grew harsher: the communist Tudeh Party, the social-democratic Organization of Iranian People’s Fadaian (or Fedayan-e Khalq) and the Islamic Marxist “People’s Mujahideen” banded together and started strikes and demonstrations across the country while engaging in a guerrilla and sabotage campaign against Khomeini’s forces.
As popular support for the radical Islamist regime ebbed and protest reached tremendous sizes, Khomeini couldn’t squash opposition anymore. In a coup d’état Noureddin Kianouri, General-Secretary of the Tudeh Party, was proclaimed President of Iran in the so-called April Revolution of 1983. Kianouri immediately proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire and requested an armistice before Saddam Hussein could make a good thing out of it and then cash in. All Khomeini could do was to curse those who he blamed for his defeat and flee the country. He fled to Turkey where he requested political asylum and he was granted this asylum despite protests of the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey in Ankara, and from there he could only watch what Saddam Hussein would do to his country.
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