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1 Introduction
Nigel Ashton and Bryan Gibson
Three decades ago Iraq and Iran became embroiled in a devastating eight-year war. Much more than a bilateral struggle, the IranâIraq War served to re-define the international relations of the Gulf region. It drew in a particularly wide array of outside powers including the United States, France, Turkey, Israel and the Soviet Union, all of which played controversial roles. The IranâIraq War stands as the only significant Cold War era con-flict in which the interests of the United States and Soviet Union unwittingly aligned, with both superpowers supporting the Iraqi regime. The significance of the war has proven enduring in terms of the re-shaping of Iraqi and Iranian society, with the former embarking upon a genocidal campaign against the Kurds and the latter solidifying its revolutionary status, as well as in terms of the geopolitics of the Gulf region, with Iraq subsequently launching the 1990 invasion of Kuwait which led to the introduction of sanctions and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Our knowledge of the IranâIraq War has advanced considerably in recent years, with much new documentary evidence becoming available thanks in particular to mandatory reviews of documents in Western archives and the release of captured Iraqi materials. In the light of this wealth of new evidence, this volume re-assesses our current understanding of the IranâIraq conflict in an international context. It addresses a number of its central features, including Iraq's regime politics, the economic dimensions of the war, the formulation of American policy, the war's impact on the Gulf, and the role of other players including the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Soviet Union, France, and Turkey.
It is particularly important to re-examine the conflict at this juncture for a number of reasons. Firstly, with the withdrawal of American troops at the end of 2011, Iraq's potential to exert influence throughout the Gulf as in independent actor has increased significantly. Meanwhile, Iran's continuing clash with Western interests in the region, which also manifests itself in Iraq itself, might well lead to further conflict in this economically and strategically vital region. Since the IranâIraq War was a defining historical moment for both countries, and continues to shape the outlook of the political elite, particularly in Tehran, it is essential to grasp the impact of the war in order to understand Iran and Iraq's subsequent and current foreign policies.
The historiography of the IranâIraq War has gone through four distinct phases, precipitated in large measure by events in the region. The first phase of scholarship coincided with the waging of the war itself and its immediate aftermath. Scholars and analysts attempted to judge the dynamics of the conflict from inside the events themselves. The majority of works consisted of journalistic accounts and think-tank analyses, although a few serious academic studies did appear, mainly towards the end of the war. But with the conclusion of hostilities on 20 August 1988, the war ceased to provide cover stories depicting the gruesome realities of modern warfare, and interest in its study outside specialist academic circles slowly waned. Indeed, one commentator lamented in early 1990 that âin the relatively short time since Iran accepted a ceasefire with Iraq, the Gulf war has faded from public view and concern with remarkable speed.â1
This first phase of scholarship was subject to all of the familiar pitfalls of the writing of very contemporary history including a relative dearth of primary sources, particularly pertaining to decision-making and strategy, the distorting effects of propaganda, and straightforward uncertainty as to the war's outcome. Initially, serious scholars were reluctant to engage in analysis of the war. Scholarly caution was prudent to the extent that Iran had just undergone a revolution and uncertainty prevailed over how it would frame its foreign policy. Would Ayatollah Khomeini behave like a âturbaned Shahâ or would he pursue a novel, ideologically driven foreign policy?2 Saddam Hussein's calculation in launching the war in September 1980 was by contrast relatively straightforward: Khomeini constituted an implacable ideological foe, and the opportunity presented by perceived Iranian weakness in the wake of the revolution and the purging of the armed forces should be seized. While initially apparently successful, the Iraqi invasion was characterised by gross strategic errors and before long Iranian resistance began to turn the tide of battle. This was not what Saddam â or anyone â had expected. Because of the dramatic shift in the regional balance of power, it took experts some time to adjust to the situation and begin to draw conclusions. But as the war progressed, and Iran evicted Iraqi forces from its territory, a small number of scholarly works began to appear, offering a first glimpse of how the war was viewed in the West.
The first detailed study of the IranâIraq War by Stephen R. Grummon appeared in 1982, entitled The IranâIraq War: Islam Embattled. This provided a valuable initial analysis of the conflict, examining its root causes, the first two years of hostilities, the role of third-party mediators, and the superpowersâ responses to the war. It was, however, limited by its brevity and the dearth of primary sources.3 Later that same year Shahram Chubin, an Iranian expert, published Security in the Persian Gulf 4: The Role of Outside Powers, which analysed the military-supply relationships between the three regional powers â Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia â and the United States and the Soviet Union. Though not dealing specifically with the IranâIraq War, Chubin's work presented detailed background information on the military-supply relationships in the region that existed prior to the conflict.4
As the war moved to Iraqi territory from 1982 onwards, uncertainty continued to prevail over its outcome, with Iraq fighting a series of desperate defensive battles to blunt successive Iranian offensives. Scholarly caution continued to prevail and commentary on the war still remained confined to the domain of journalists and think-tank analysts. In 1987, President Reagan's controversial decision to re-flag Kuwaiti tankers and the revelations regarding America's complicity in the IranâContra scandal, which had broken in November 1986, catalysed a heightened interest in the war. Although the Middle Research and Information Project (MERIP)'s reports had already focused a great deal of attention on the war, the increased American presence in the Gulf in 1987 prompted other scholarly journals to follow suit. Thus, in the spring of 1987, an important issue of Foreign Affairs appeared, featuring a number of seminal articles on the war. In particular, Nita M. Renfew's âWho Started the War?â and Shireen T. Hunter's âAfter the Ayatollahâ offered penetrating analyses of the causes and likely effects of the war. Renfrew challenged the established notion of Iraqi culpability for the outbreak of the war, arguing that Iran had initiated the conflict by aggressively seeking to subvert Iraq's secular order. At the same time, Hunter focused on the precarious political situation in Iran, including the declining health of Ayatollah Khomeini and the domestic impact of the seemingly endless war. She speculated about the future course of Iranian policy in the light of these developments. Later that year, in its winter 1987 issue, Foreign Affairs published a piece by Barry Rubin titled âDrowning in the Gulf â, which provided a thought-provoking analysis of the reasons behind Reagan's decision to re-flag Kuwaiti tankers. Rubin argued that the Kuwaitis had skilfully manipulated the Reagan Administration by playing off American and Soviet antagonism through the tactic of presenting the same request to both powers, knowing that each would try to outbid the other. In doing so, the Kuwaitis ensured that their interests were safeguarded.5 The themes of culpability for the outbreak of the war, the role of ideology in Iranian politics and the relationship between local actors and the superpowers raised by Renfrew, Hunter and Rubin became key, enduring areas of subsequent historiographical debate about the war. They are refected in particular in the contributions to this volume by Chris Emery, Rob Johnson, Artemy Kalinovsky, and Kristian Coates Ulrichsen.
The events of 1987 also prompted the appearance of a number of broader studies of the war, whose authors could not be aware that the con-flict would soon end. For instance, in 1987 Edgar OâBallance, a prolific writer on modern warfare, published The Gulf War. OâBallance worked as a freelance journalist throughout much of the 1980s, and was able to obtain first-hand details of the conflict. While his work was for the most part one of narrative, O'Ballance did provide a useful technical account of the military operations of the war. Unfortunately, due to the timing of its publication, O'Ballance's narrative stops in April 1987, just short of the significant events of late 1987 and 1988.6 Similarly, Anthony H. Cordesman's painstaking analysis of Iran and Iraq's military action between 1984 and 1987, The IranâIraq War and Western Security, 1984â1987, stops short of the war's dramatic conclusion. Nevertheless, Cordesman's work is valuable because it was the first major politico-military analysis of the war's impact on US security.7 The impact of the war on the US role in the Gulf has loomed large in its subsequent historiography and is refected in the contributions to this volume by Judith Yaphe, Malcolm Byrne, and Chris Emery.
Unlike O'Ballance, who never returned to complete his work on the war, in 1990 Cordesman, with the help of Abraham R. Wagner, published a more comprehensive study, entitled The Lessons of Modern War, II, The IranâIraq War. Like Cordesman's earlier work, this book made a significant contribution to the historiography of the war, this time more specifically in the field of military history, offering a detailed analysis of the forces, operations, and weaponry used.8 A final addition to this group of scholars writing originally just before the war's conclusion is Majid Khadduri, whose book The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the IraqâIran Conflict appeared in 1988. Khadduri developed a new approach to the historiography of the outbreak of the war, arguing that its root cause was the confessional divide between Sunni-dominated Iraq and Shi'a Iran. Building to some extent on the work of Renfrew, Khadduri argued that revolutionary Iran had goaded Iraq into attac...
