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Cythereal posted:We haven't even gotten a good [really bad] submarine movie in a long time. Did Hunter Killer pass you by in 2018? That film is BAD. Fun, but baaaad.
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Sep 3, 2019 13:10
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 11:43 |
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Jobbo_Fett posted:That is correct, Albania simply joined Italy after threats of invasion. I forget what happened to the King (Zog, iirc) He fled to Greece, then to France and finally to England when France was invaded and ended up settling in France post war (as a lot of disparate monarchs did).
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Sep 4, 2019 11:45
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zoux posted:How many warships have US subs sunk Quite a lot, they got 8 Japanese aircraft carriers, Shinano, Taiho, Shokaku, Unryu, Shinyo, Chuyo, Akitsu Maru and Taiyo (Though aircraft carrier is a grand term for Akitsu Maru and Chuyo, both were mainly aircraft trucks). A significant proportion of those losses are at the point where Japan has so few escort ships and even fewer planes so they are using aircraft carriers to ferry suicide planes and the like to outlying bases with minimal escort. They shouldnt neccesarily have got Taiho but her damage control was a shambles. They sunk Kongo and a destroyer in the same incident.They got two of the Takao heavy cruisers and a light cruiser at Leyte Gulf. They got at least double digits of destroyers in total and a fair amount of light cruisers. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Sep 5, 2019 |
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Sep 5, 2019 12:24
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Jobbo_Fett posted:They had some good stuff in the navy, so I'm told, but what would imply good doctrine, tactics, and equipment for their forces? I'll try to expand my knowledge on their artillery, because I believe they had some decent designs when it came to mountainous terrain. The Italian navy had pretty rudimentary fire control and non existent night fighting training. They'd likely have gotten clowned on in the early 30's Their ship design was reasonable certainly but not exceptional.
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Sep 5, 2019 17:48
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ChubbyChecker posted:The Clunk? This thing
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Sep 7, 2019 14:25
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I'd consider it fairly likely the Soviets would gank Nazi Germany hard the moment that landings started. Could Hitler realistically draw that many more troops off the eastern front when he is facing the prospect of the intact numbers of the Soviet Union that were not destroyed during Barbarossa this time? Even without the active invasion its a consideration they would have to make.
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Sep 12, 2019 15:53
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Can we just not before the thread gets closed again.
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Sep 13, 2019 14:24
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The iranian revolution was a pretty big gently caress up to not see coming.
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Sep 17, 2019 18:05
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I wouldnt say that was really a battle as envisaged. It was certainly decisive but it wasnt really a fleet on fleet engagement as i think was envisaged by people that followed that doctrine.
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Sep 17, 2019 22:53
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Iran-Iraq, 1984 Its been two thread incarnations since the last one of these, but its time to try and push to finish this project off. The older threads are linked below, as is my website links for people who don’t have archives. Fair warning, this gets unpleasant. Previous thread post index. Terrorism in the Iran Iraq war (previous thread). Website versions of the lot, this one will appear at some point soon. Recap Just to recap where we got to in the last chronological post, ignoring the asides on the tanker war and terrorism: Iran has established its war aims, which are fundamentally unacceptable to Saddam and essentially serve as a declaration of intent for a war of annihilation on their side. Iran has started counter-attacking into Iraq, particularly notably around Basra at the start of what would come to be called the Dawn offensives that would take place up and down the border with Iran attempting to find a weak point to exploit. They have suffered significant casualties and almost the entire loss of the equipment of one of their few armoured divisions in attempting this and not gotten much territory in return, they have reached the outskirts of Basra and are starting to shell the city. Iran has really pissed off the USA and France by having their proxy Hezbollah conduct the Beirut bombings and as a result arms supplies to Iraq are being stepped up, the USSR has also thawed in their attitudes and are starting to supply Iraq with key assistance in codebreaking and weapon supply. I know I said previously I wouldn’t cover the dawn offensives, but I have decided I will because they demonstrate the frenetic pace of the war, with half a dozen major offensives taking place in a matter of months in 1983-84, but also because they demonstrate the evolving nature of the two armies and their approaches quite nicely. Major Iranian offensive operations of 1983-4  Map showing Dawn 1-4 and areas controlled by KDPI. Dawn II Both nations had significant problems with their Kurdish populations and would support the Kurdish revolutionary movements in each other nations vigorously throughout the war, in the eternal hope of the warring nation that with just this last shipment of weapons The People Will Rise Up. Particularly coming off the back of the chaos of the revolution the KDPI had exercised de facto control of a lot of north western Iran characterised by the three cities of Sardasht, Baneh and Bukan. However given the failure of attacks on Basra, Iran now needed to pass through that area to attack into Iraqi Kurdistan as shown in the map it was sitting pretty much across the major pass into Iraqi Kurdistan that they would need to control to pass through. The Iranian armed forces would assemble a force of 120’000 men against the PDKI’s 20’000 and the fight in that area would last a few short weeks with the Iranian Kurds being driven back into the mountains with their last remaining stronghold being the city of Baneh and many of their members seeking sanctuary in Iraq. At this time the KDPI (Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran) would enter a period of internal power struggle with factions who were unhappy with the leadership of Abdul Ghassemlou all vying for power, there would be several assassinations of his lieutenants and attempts upon his life as well. He would ultimately survive until the end of the war when he was assassinated by agents of Iran while in Vienna for peace talks in 1989.  Abdul Ghassemlou The Iranians were taking full advantage of this and were acting in concert with the KDP, (the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an Iraqi Kurdish faction controlled by the Barzanis). They sought to take the major KDPI center of Haj Omran to break their power in the area and boost the KDP and try to set off a general insurrection against Iraq in Kurdistan. After the taking of this border region the plan was to push west to Soran and then break out into the major oil areas surrounding Mosul if the assault went well, which would have a decent chance of inflicting such damage on Iraqs economy that the war might end very quickly afterwards. The involvement of the KDP in this attack directly would do much to stoke Kurdish infighting and enmity which continues to this day, whole families were deported to Iranian prison camps where many would die.  Iranian axis of attack. The Iranians brought three divisions to bear in Operation Dawn II, the 28th Mechanized division, which was comprised roughly of one third tanks and two thirds mechanized infantry, (The precise structure and quantities of Iran’s troops is very difficult to pin down). This regular Iranian army division was supported by a Pasdaran division who assaulted across the border while a Revolutionary guards infantry division assaulted north inside Iran itself, originating at Piranshahr and pushing into Kurdish areas as yet uncontrolled to track down and destroy KDPI elements that had escaped. The offensive went well initially with Iranian troops quickly overwhelming the Iraqi brigade who was guarding the border region and the PDKI troops in the region who realistically stood no chance at all, they penetrated ten miles deep into Iraqi territory on the first day of the offensive, July 22nd. However, Iraq was really on the ball at this stage and immediately responded by airlifting several elite infantry battalions to the area who counterattacked and slowed the Iranians while two divisions of infantry entered the area by road. The Soviets had recently delivered Mi-24 helicopters to Iraq and here was where we see that really starting to bite the Iranians. Their planes are largely occupied elsewhere, and the area didn’t have great airbase facilities in the first place which meant that these Iraqi helicopters were able to do immense damage to Iranian forces as they made their way across mountainous slopes, much as the Soviets were to do in Afghanistan. Iranians would use their own AH-1J Cobras though they had far fewer, this would be one of the couple of occasions where Iranian helicopters would score air to air victories against Iraqi planes when one of them would shoot down an Iraqi MiG-21 with its nose gun while it was going low and slow over the battlefield. However here we see the technological edge really starting to turn against Iran, Iraq is getting new weapons and they are not.  Adnan Kharillah (Right). Saddam himself would visit the battlefield on July 24th, and one of his more competent generals, Adnan Kharillah, his cousin, who would be one of the victims of “Helicopter Crashes” post-war. In very bloody fighting the Iranian attack would be turned back in 3 days of fighting and the Iraqis would immediately dig in hard as they had elsewhere. Iran maintained control of eleven villiages and some of the border area and would enact a pretty brutal regime with the area govered by exiles of hardline Dawa party (as covered more in depth earlier, a hardline Iraqi Shia party linked to Tehran). Casualties were heavy on both sides, with Iran suffering nearly 3’000 dead from their attacking forces, Iraq around 2’000 with unknown but probably very heavy casualties for the KDP and KDPI. Dawn 3  Rough Iranian attack plans for Dawn 3. Iran would keep pushing with another heavy attack taking place little over a week later on July 30th, they assembled 60’000 troops in 5 divisions, with 3 infantry, one mechanized and one armoured division from the regular army along with significant supporting light Pasdaran forces. Iraq still held positions inside the Iranian borders at the towns of Mehran and Dehloran and had constructed significant trench networks. The Iranian plan was to assault and take those positions and then push rapidly into Iraq to the Tigris and cut the Baghdad-Basra road which lay around twenty miles into Iraq. However with the increase of Iraqi professionalism and SIGINT they saw this coming and had their own forces in the area also comprised of 3 infantry, 1 armoured and 1 mechanized division. They launched a spoiling attack with their tanks which inflicted significant damage on the preparing Iranian infantry divisions before retiring. Iraq enjoyed an advantage in equipment as Iranian divisions were equipped with Chinese built Type 59 and 62 tanks against the Iraqi Soviet built T-72’s. It wasn’t a decisive edge certainly, but it is again indicative of the growing material gap in replacement equipment for each side. The battle would carry on for nearly a week with Iranian light infantry attacks at night causing significant problems, they would be inserted by low flying helicopters at night and attack from the rear. Iraq would abandon its positions and retreat into Iraq itself on the 2nd of August. During this confusion the Iranians attempted to exploit it with an armoured push but were checked by the arrival of a fresh Iraqi armoured division and heavy air attack, again in part from the newly arrived Iraqi Hinds. The battle would end on August 10th, with the Iranians having driven Iraq out of Iran in this area. Iraq suffered 6’600 killed or captured with unknown numbers wounded, Iran suffered 7000 dead and 15’000 wounded. Iraq would fire SCUD/FROG missiles at Dezful and other cities in southern Iran in retaliation, Iran would respond by heavily shelling Basra. Iran had up to this point maintained a belief that if they could only get into the city (itself a significant Shia area of Iraq) or near it then The People Will Rise Up and overthrow Saddam. However, this didn’t happen, so they decided to start shelling them anyway. The UNSC would demand the immediate end of bombardment of civilian population centers by both sides in resolution 540, Iraq accepted the resolution, but Iran would reject it. This would be an ongoing trend with Saddam attempting to get international pressure to stop the attacking of population centres but Iran rejecting it. After all, Iraq’s major population centers were closer to the border and much more vulnerable, while much of Irans lay safely behind the Zagroz mountains. It was a pretty shabby and cynical approach by both sides to it, but Iraq did come out looking slightly shinier in this particular salvo of the war of international relations. Dawn 4 Dawn 4 was another attempt to break the power of the KDPI by killing Ghassemlou who had taken refuge in the Penjwin valley in Iraq. This area was one of the major supply routes of equipment to PDKI forces still around Gavileh and Baneh in Iran. Iran would array two brigades of Pasdaran forces as the initial assault who infiltrated Iraq on the night of October 19th and would assault Iraqi defensive positions in the rear and overwhelm the Iraqi border batallion guarding the area. Then as dawn broke the regular army came through with two infantry divisions, two mechanized divisions and a tank brigade and attacked up the road into Iraq. However their armour was unable to advance at anything other than a walking pace, the road was essentially single file because it was a mountain road and a huge traffic jam developed, and they had light infantry climbing the hills to the side to protect them from flank attack and were reluctant to advance quicker than their supporting infantry were even when there was a chance to do so. Iraq however knew this attack was coming in the general area and had three infantry divisions and a combination of five mechanized and armoured brigades with oversized artillery support. Iran was stopped at the outskirts of Penjwin by an entrenched Iraqi division on October 22nd and was immediately counter attacked by the Iraqi’s under another of the more competent generals, Abdul Rashid, who would survive his competence and die in hospital in 2014 from complications from a stroke. Heavy air attack by Iraq’s newly arrived Su-25 and other air elements would cause incredible damage to Iranian forces in the narrow passes and the Iranians would be pushed back to the border in a matter of days. While this was going on, Pasdaran forces would surround and destroy the PDKI stronghold of Gavrileh. Few fighters managed to escape and make their way to Iraq. Iran however was not done with this attack, bringing up two fresh Pasdaran divisions they waited for weather to ground the Iraqi air force and attacked again on November 6th, having much more success as they took control of Penjwin this time and were pushing towards Sulaymaniah in the west. Iraq would respond by flying in two battalions of the republican guard equipped with copious quantities of mustard gas mortar shells. This would wreak havoc on the underequipped Pasdaran, and Iraq quickly took Penjwin back and would drive the Iranians back to the pass but not out of Iraq entirely when the start of winter snowfall would put an end to the offensive season. Casualties would be around 5’000 dead Iranian soldiers, mainly from the Pasdaran, 15’000 wounded, with 2’800 dead Iraqi soldiers and around 4’000 wounded. Iraq would now dig in and arm the 1’000 or so PDKI soldiers who escaped Iran and would serve in this area as auxiliaries to the Iraqi army for the remainder of the war. Dawn 5 and 6 and Operation Kheibar As the new year dawned the Iraqi’s were well entrenched across the entire front, it had been largely driven out of Iran. Iran had control of some areas of Iraqi territory, largely in Kurdistan but also some in the centre as a consequence of Dawn 3. Iran took the winter to consider its best option to try and knock Iraq out of the war quickly. They considered the following options: Major offensive in Kurdistan to seize the oilfields, cut the pipeline between Kirkuk and Dortyol in Turkey, destroying Iraqs monetary capability to fight. This was dismissed because of difficulties attacking in the northern mountainous region and also to avoid angering turkey who could pretty much destroy Irans economy if aggravated enough. Attack Baghdad to destroy the seat of Iraq’s regime. This was dismissed as Iran lacked the equipment to fight on the open plains which would be necessary to take the city. Attack Basra to cut Iraq off from the sea entirely and threaten the gulf states currently supplying Iraq more directly. This was dismissed because Iraq had heavily fortified Basra and they lacked the capability at this time to cross the Shatt-Al-Arab to bypass the defences. Capture the oilfields north of Basra in the marshlands and use them as a bargaining chip to force Iraq into an advantageous peace. This would present difficulties in supplying their troops across said marshlands and leave them open to air attack in the open areas. They decided to attack the oilfields north of Basra. Iran would use 400’000 men in this attack which represented two thirds of their armed forces at the time. They planned and executed a diversionary attack in Kurdistan to try and divert Iraqi reinforcements, this was executed on February 12th when a division of Pasdaran who had been trained for winter fighting in mountains crossed the Nosud pass and destroyed the Iraqi forces in that area. In concert with KDP forces they advanced towards the Darbandikhan Dam which provided power to Baghdad, they were stopped by a quick Iraqi counterattack. However Iraqi SIGINT was good enough that they realised this for what it was and didn’t over reinforce the area, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Darbandikhan Dam Dawn 5 and 6 were then launched in the central areas, Dawn 5 took place in the same area as Dawn 3 as they assaulted towards the city of Kut with three divisions of infantry which failed to break through Iraqi trenches over five days of heavy fighting from February 16th to 21st. Dawn 6 was an attack by two mechanized divisions towards Ali al-Gharbi taking place at the same time. They were again stopped cold by the Iraqi trench networks and Iraq refused to fall for the Iranian bait and reinforce those sectors. However due to the parlous state of Iranian intelligence they had no idea of that and carried on with Operation Kheibar, named after the fortress captured by Muhammed one year before he took Mecca, to give an idea of the prominence assigned to it. Operation Kheibar was an attempt to capture the Basra marshes, particularly focused on the Hoveyzeh marshes, Majnoon islands and cutting the Baghdad-Basra road. Iraq had flooded these marshes to stop Iranian movement and kept light forces in the area assuming it to be fairly impassable. They would conduct this attack with nine divisions totalling 135’000 infantry. 80% of these were Pasadaran forces whose use of messenger and written communication impeded Iraqi intelligence gathering efforts. The Iraqis knew something big was coming, but not where.  Period photograph of Pasdaran forces and their boats in the marshes. February 22nd saw a heavy fog and rain which marked the right conditions for Iran to attack which was split into roughly two groups. They used hundreds of lightweight aluminium boats in an attack which swiftly took the entire area over the course of 36 hours. Having taken the marshlands to a point only two miles east of the Baghdad-Basra road at Al Qurnah and Al Sharish they sent light forces west to try and stop traffic on the road. However, they lacked heavy equipment to deal with Iraqi tanks. The other group attacked in the south, taking the Majnoon islands where they encountered much stiffer Iraqi resistance, which took four days for them to overcome but eventually Iran found itself in control of this major pocket of Iraq. It had a fairly insignificant direct impact on Iraqs economy as production there had already been stopped as their major facilities had been destroyed by Iranian shelling previously, however it represented nearly a sixth of Iraqs available oil reserves. The Iranians would then dig in and wait for Iraq’s response.  Major attacks and positions of Operation Kheibar They wouldn’t have to wait long, Iraqi high command panicked briefly due to the lack of forewarning for this attack but the 3rd and 4th corps managed to coordinate and both dispatched armoured brigades to assess the scale of the attacks in their respective areas and secure the road. This proved quickly too much for the Pasdaran who were unable to respond to them effectively and were frequently rolled straight over in their foxholes. However, getting perhaps a little overexcited, Iraqi tanks from the 3rd corps would pursue the fleeing Iranians into the marsh and 30 Iraqi tanks sank into the mud and were destroyed before the crews fled as Iran committed more reinforcements. Iraq would commit increasing numbers of helicopters to strafe Pasdaran positions, to which they had no real definitive answer, only enough light AA to mitigate their attacks by forcing them to keep higher.  Iranian soldiers conducting prayer atop the pontoon bridge. Iran constructed defensive positions furiously, with a pontoon bridge extending about 6 miles from the edge of the marsh area back to Iran, this would be furiously shelled but they managed to keep it operational by quick swapping in damaged sections in a remarkably efficient manner. Iran would commit all its reserves to this in an attempt to hold on to their gains. Soon there were six Iranian infantry divisions and one armoured division in the area, their front extended around thirty miles wide and ten miles deep into Iraqi territory. Iraqi generals however would respond very heavily, General Khairallah of IV Corps in the north would deploy Republican guard troops to heavy embattled areas to stiffen Iraqi resolve, order the employment of chemical weapons and divert the high-tension electrical lines into the marshes. These were the 200’000-volt lines previously used to supply the oil facilities that Iran had just taken. Chemical weapons were mustard gas fired from artillery and also light prop trainers who sprayed Tabun nerve agent. Tabun was a chemical developed in WW2 Germany from the same chemical family as Sarin gas, it is notably distinct in that it is much easier to manufacture, and as will become grimly relevant later, related to insecticides. These measures would prove dangerously effective with several thousand lightly equipped pasdaran dieing in the opening hours of these attacks on February 29th. Two days were left for the chemical weapons to dissipate until Iraq went in to retake the area where they found thousands of floating corpses in the marshes. Iraqi soldiers were issued with surgical hygiene masks which would have done little to protect them and there were doubtless some long-term health complications for them about which we know little. General Rashid of III corps followed a similar approach in the south, though gas efforts were less effective owing to a strong southerly wind, but the morale effect was sufficient that many of the Revolutionary Guards abandoned their positions and fled. Over the course of ten days much of the marshland was re-secured. Iran still held the Majnoon islands however and resisted attempts to dislodge them. Iraq had no water capability to speak of to attack the islands, they attempted to attack via helicopters but lost 8 Mi-8’s in the attempt, to Iranian AA fire that they had placed on barges surrounding the island and the attack was repulsed. Iran reinforced heavily, including its only remaining SA-7 missiles and its entire store of chemical protective equipment. Iranian chinooks would ferry reinforcements in and remove wounded at night. This entered a period of stalemate however and marked the end of offensive operations for some time on March 12th, 1984. 20’000 Iranians had been killed, 30’000 wounded and 1’000 captured. Iraq had suffered the loss of 3’000 dead and 9’000 wounded, as well as 60 tanks, though 30 of those to their own incompetence. An especially sobering note to this story is that of the Revolutionary Guards forces committed to this assault 57% of them were under the age of 18 with children as young as 12 being found among the dead, and they represented a third of the casualties. It was not initially Iranian policy to use child soldiers in frontline Pasdaran positions, but as losses mounted and in preparation for significant attacks like this the Pasdaran would draw from the Basijj to swell their numbers and replenish losses. This would remain the state of affairs for quite some time. Iran’s supreme council was divided on the effects of this attack, the army called the Pasdarans activities as foolish and dangerous and a waste of life and pushed for an end to offensive operations until Iran could secure anti-tank and anti-air missiles to nullify Iraqi equipment. The Pasdaran fired back by criticising the army and air force for not supporting them and pushing for further offensives. However the Supreme defence council voted to end Iranian offensive operations by a ratio of 4 : 1. The follow up offensives were cancelled. Saddam on the other hand was playing the international politics game and refused to mount huge offensives that would necessitate heavy chemical weapon usage as such activities were attracting significant international condemnation. Both sides would now go on an international shopping spree and reinforce. Soon would begin the war of the cities, where they would bombard each other’s population centres as an attempt to break each other’s civilian morale, which went about as well as it ever does. There would be one more offensive that year, Dawn 7 would involve two divisions of the Iranian army again attacking in the Mehran sector towards Kut. However, decoded messages gave the Iraqis ample time to reinforce and they stopped it easily. That would also not represent the end of the Dawn offensives with 8 and 9 to follow in 1985. Development of Iraqi intelligence capabilities.  Crypto-52 machine, designed by Boris Hagelin in 1952 and produced by Crypto AG.  Close up of the arabic cipher reels. Since the start of the war Saddam had been careful to maintain good relations with everyone he could, in the hopes they could be induced to provide him with the equipment and support he needed to fight the war. Iraq with its much smaller population was compelled to fight a more high-tech war in order to compensate for Iran’s numbers. It could not afford to alienate international opinion in the way that Iran felt itself able or compelled to do. As you may have noticed a frequent refrain in Iranian offensive operations is the Iraqi’s know what they are doing quickly and respond. This is because of the Iraqi decoding unit, a highly secretive section that reported directly to Saddam. Initially, they did standard decoding work using Crypto-54 machines produced by the Swiss Crypto corporations which meant they could use to decode at a slow rate Iranian radio traffic, however it was not a perfect match for the equipment Iran was using at the time. An Iranian defector arrived in 1981 carrying a full set of books, rotors and the machine itself, a Crypto-52, which enabled Iraq to read pretty much every bit of Iranian radio traffic they cared to for the next 2 years. However, they could not intercept Revolutionary Guards traffic because they did not use radio, relying primarily on hand delivering messages. So when the Rev. Guards did offensives off their own bat the Iraqis were generally surprised by them in the early years of the war because they depended very heavily on intercepted traffic. This of course made coordinating Pasdaran and regular army actions even harder and limited tactical communication of Pasdaran forces as a cost for that. Iran were not completely oblivious of this problem, in 1983 they would acquire the new Crypto- T450 machine which replaced their old Crypto 52’s. The 52’s were essentially developments of the rotor type cipher machines typified by Enigma. They were indeed originally made in the 1950’s. However the T450 was an electronic machine representing state of the commercial art. Iraq responded by opening their wallet, going to Japan and buying significant computing hardware to decode this, sending 1500 of their brightest technicians to japan for training. They would also call on the KGB who would send some of their best cryptographers to assist in return for a fully intact F-4 Phantom II that had been only lightly damaged after a belly landing in Iraq, and also Yugoslavia who was induced via cash payments to send some of their best specialists. Iran would modify its codes frequently, but it would take Iraq only a matter of weeks before they had broken the new ciphers. The biggest problem Iraq had was a lack of Farsi speakers, only three Iraqi soldiers could speak Farsi to any degree of fluency in 1979 and Iraq would scramble to increase that number throughout the war. Saddam would keep a tight grip on this flow of information to attempt to cultivate a mystique among his generals that he was able to divine Iranian intentions accurately. Iraq was also far more successful in cultivating human intelligence networks, Iran was a very repressive regime, particularly towards Kurds and Arabs in their borders, refugees fled across the border and any who could speak Farsi were snapped up to work in translation, though the low literacy rate was a problem in plugging that gap. Many still were persuaded to return and act as intelligence sources. They also established reconnaissance group 888 who would infiltrate through the more porous Iranian lines into their rear area and conduct sabotage and intelligence gathering. They would also receive the latest in reconnaissance hardware from the USSR, with MiG-25R’s which flew high and fast for photo reconnaissance over Iranian positions, they were also given satellite photos by the USSR, the French and the USA at various points. The most enduring relationship being that with the USA for satellite reconnaissance. Iraq would build a very impressive and modern intelligence network from a very low starting point.  MiG-25R reconnaissance variant. To contrast, Iran inherited a world class intelligence system built for the Shah by the CIA. They had ground-based intercept stations in the Zagros mountains that captured much Iraqi radio traffic, three specially built C-130 for ELINT gathering at altitude which had powerful magnification cameras that could spy into Iraq from safe positions over Iran, as well as an existing staff of Arabic speakers who could effectively decode Iraqi messages. However, as you may have already guessed, the majority of people who knew how to work these systems fled, were imprisoned or shot in the revolution. When they had to try and rebuild it, they released some of their staff from prison, but they were unable to get it back up and running again at anything approaching a useful capacity. Iran was reduced to using its F-4’s to do low level photography runs over Iraqi territory which cost them six of their very limited stockpiles of these planes. They had some human sources among opponents to the Saddam regime, who were certainly not lacking, but a lack of a good electronic intelligence apparatus would hurt Iran badly. State of the war in 1984. The most important feature of these offensives, (including the one mentioned in the previous post, towards Basra), was that Iran was really spending equipment at a significant rate that it couldn’t afford to lose. Iraq is receiving significantly sophisticated weapons from the USSR that it is using to good effect while the best that Iran is really receiving is the Type 59 tank from China. They are enjoying significant success with light infantry tactics but those are inherently limited to the mountainous areas, the second they come up against heavy resistance in areas they are not suited for it starts to run into problems. The lack of air support, poor logistical structures caused not least by a lack of automobile transport and a lack of sophisticated anti-tank missiles is undermining their effectiveness badly. While the repeat rate of these attacks is good, Iraq is able to quickly manoeuvre to block with its helicopter and mechanized reserves as Iran cannot launch more than one attack at once due to these limitations. There is also still significant squabbling and infighting between Revolutionary Guard forces and Iranian Army which is making planning these attacks an utter headache for them. This also marked the start of widescale chemical weapon use by the Iraqi’s against Iran. Which would not relent and would expand to be used against Kurdish militias in the latter stages of the war. In many ways the war starts to resemble WW1 with significant trench lines, human wave attacks and chemical weapons as a response to that. This is a bit of a PR problem for Saddam who is making significant gains in the international sphere, Tariq Aziz spends probably more of his time abroad this year, than in Iraq, soothing creditors, securing arms deals and generally putting himself about. Iran is starting to run into its own problems, riding high off Iraqi incompetence and their own ability to throw men at the problem has gotten them this far. That is not necessarily meant as an indictment of their capability, they used the resources they had very effectively. But now Iraq has gotten smart and they need to start applying themselves a bit more artfully and increase their technological sophistication. Both sides are attempting to portray the other as the villains via any international body they can. Iran attempted to denounce Iraq for use of chemical weapons in violation of the Geneva protocols of 1925, they sent high profile victims of Iraqi blister gas use to European hospitals in a deliberate attempt to create a media circus. The UN would unequivocally rule that Iraq was using chemical weapons. Iraq’s attempts to deflect criticism on this matter didn’t work, their approach was to say they were not using them near civilian populations and were using them judiciously. An attempt to denounce Iraq in the security council was however blocked by both the US and USSR. The US was trying to butter up Iraq to restore relations and the USSR was trying to evade the precedent when they were up to dodgy activities with chemical weapons themselves in Afghanistan. After mounting pressure from the Israel lobby who were permanently concerned more with Iraq than Iran, and from many American members of congress when it was revealed US companies were providing the capability to build chemical weapons the US did issue a condemnation and blanket embargo and pressured others to do the same. Notably West Germany was very complicit in this with the supply of “Pesticide manufacturing equipment” to Iraq. When this was cut off in September of 1984 after growing US pressure, the Iraqis went to East Germany who were more than delighted to sell to them, this equipment would be key for Iraq’s domestic nerve gas program. Iraq would also be supplied by dozens of companies from dozens of countries as well, including the USSR who shipped them their first mustard gas, Spain who sold them dispensing canisters, Egypt who sold them gas artillery shells as well as companies from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Lebanon. Iraq took the case of Iranian treatment of Iraqi POW’s to the ICRC however and successfully got Iran indicted for a systematic program of torture and poor treatment of Iraqi prisoners which formed a significant part of their intelligence gathering methods. This garnered significant international attention at the time and did much to deflect attention away from the chemical weapons use of Iraq. Both sides now are starting to run short of numbers, Iraq now has nearly a million Egyptian guest workers who are keeping their economy running. There is rising discontent among some of the populace which forces Iraq to implement a rotation system where for every 2 weeks on the line a soldier gets one week in the rear. It also puts significant money into consumer goods and comforts for its populace. The low literacy rates of many of the men it is forced to use is hampering their effectiveness to some degree. Iran on the other hand is expanding its use of child soldiers to a breath-taking degree, employing systematic recruitment in their schools, the average age of enrolment in the Basijj militia interviewed by the UN in Iraqi prison camps is 14. Iran are also observed to be using Pakistani and Afghani volunteers in their forces with certain allegations of coercion used in their recruitment. The PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), headed by Jalal Talabani, took this moment to assure Saddam of their neutrality and negotiated for slightly more autonomy in return for this. Saddam was all too happy to grant this as Iraq could not under any circumstances afford a widescale Kurdish insurgency in their oil areas. Iraq has recognised and fortified its positions and taken internal political measures with the PUK that secure their northern frontier and their fortifications elsewhere have held. Iraq was conducting a concerted charm offensive to the international community with Saddam quashing major offensives to portray Iraq as the victim of Iranian fundamentalist aggression. Which was all the veil that many countries needed to sell him the weapons he needed. A topic we will be diving into as we progress through 1984 as both sides settle in for the long war. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 18:16
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feedmegin posted:Um this is a bit like saying 'England, the UK'... I have a geographic blind spot where i think Denmark and type Holland, i always seem to fall directly into that pit.  .Squalid posted:I feel like this was probably covered in a previous post, but how did Saddam end up being supported by both the US and USSR again? Iran was really bad at diplomacy Iran wasnt just bad at diplomacy, Iran was AWFUL at diplomacy, a lot of this is a consequence of how their nation sort of worked, there was a lot of free-wheeling zealots in the revolutionary guards taking actions off their own bat. The entire thing starts with them taking over the American embassy, initiating the US embassy hostage crisis and unseating the US friendly Shah, which pretty much put friendly relations with the US immediately on the rocks. They then proceeded to really upset the entirity of the Arab world, particularly the Sunni arab world by calling for more widescale revolution, this unnerved Saudi Arabia, who had also had strong links with the Shah, it particularly upset Bahrain who were Shia majority with a Sunni ruling class. They had a long running feud with the UAE over islands in the Persian gulf that lasted from before the days of the revolution, they were also conducting mischief abroad, they conducted a series of bombings in France, they were working on creating and building up Hezbollah in Lebanon, they had a pretty piss poor reputation with how they treated their arab minority and also existing and long running emnity with Russia going back centuries. This was not an auspicious start for them to get along with their neighbours. Despite all of this, people still tried to get along with Iran, pretty much everyone sold to both sides at one time or another, the USSR, who supplied them generously inthe early years of the war in return for an F-14 and cash, the USA armed Iran too, though in the US case it was largely as a result of the arms for hostages crisis. Most european nations sold to both sides, they largely wanted to avoid another oil shock and take advantage of the potential for cash from sales to both. It would take significant pressure from the US to stem arms sales from Europe to Iran, which they would apply later on in the war. Iran could have really sat pretty had it not insisted on alienating everyone. Iran would board US ships and attack neutral tankers in the gulf, they would then arm the Mujahidin in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and intensify their calls for the southern SSR muslims to rise up, they would blow up the US and French barracks in Beirut and conduct bombings in France proper and had a nasty habit of shooting their exiles on the streets of European cities and their proxies would kidnap people from all nations in Lebanon. The only people they didnt aggrevate really were Israel, China and North Korea who would supply them largely to spite other people, Iraq and the USSR respectively. They approached diplomacy with a hammer in every situation. There are reasons they behaved in this way, it wasn't neccesarily completely irrational. Iran had a foreign policy that was incapable of being consistent, you had the moderates in Tehran trying to gracefully manuever their way into Moscows good graces, or to gently thaw with America, then the Revolutionary guards would come out with their big honking clown car and gently caress it up by blowing something up because they were essentially a law unto themselves and were very dedicated revolutionaries. Nobody really liked Saddam, its just that he was generally the person least likely to set the Persian Gulf on fire, he was a murderous dictator but he was far more predictable. He also had the bankroll of not only Iraq to spend but also the gulf states who were granting him significant loans to keep the Persian menace at bay.
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Oct 1, 2019 23:02
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So I sat down and this unintentionally swelled from a couple paragraphs to a midsize essay over the course of a few hours, but its done now and as a result you all get to see it. Iran and US relations post war HW Bush Iran US relations are a bit of a mess just constantly. One of the big pushing factors to Iran-Contra was in part a desire to build relations with Iran in order to get them to make Hezbollah release the hostages they had been taking like candy in Lebanon. (Along with the desire to generate off the books cash to arm the Contras). This was the apex of the utter clown parade that was US attempts to talk with Iran during the war itself, with Iran and the US and Israel all being taken to the cleaners by a conman claiming to have contacts with the US government and moderate elements of the Iranian government for weapons. Just after the end of Iran-Iraq, HW got a call from Tehran from a man claiming to be Rafsanjani (The president of the time). Who said, they wanted to improve relations in return for releasing US hostages in Lebanon held by Hezbollah. It came to light later after he asked the CIA to check, that it was a political opponent of Rafsanjani who was trying to embarass him by having him implicated with the US. Trying to normalise relations had the added hurdle of not even being able to find the right person to talk to. The concept of just essentially some guy being able to ring up the president of the USA and pretend to be the president of Iran is utterly boggling. Clinton Both sides have at various times since then attempted to bridge the gap, but utter farce or internal politics got in the way on both sides. Rafsanjani was actually interested in rapprochement and had the hostages released in 1992 along with the bodies of the two that Hezbollah had murdered, however the US didn’t reciprocate in letting Iran back into the international community. While this was going on there were more murders of Iranian exiles and an attempt to start an uprising in Iraq after Gulf 1, which the hawk elements of the US government took as an excuse to renege after the hostages were home. Rafsanjanis political opponents would take that as an excuse to harden their own stance and stepped up their support for Hamas and Hezbollah and was aggressively trying to derail the Arab-Israeli peace process at the time. (A time when it looked anything other than vanishingly unlikely). Iran for their part saw what happened to Iraq, saw the increased permanent US deployments in the gulf and the continued sanctions against them as proof of US duplicity. This was in danger of low key starting a war in the mid 90's. A US military exercise set the Iranians on edge as they saw it as a precursor to them invading the islands they controlled in the Persian gulf, and they started threatening the gulf with a build-up on their positions on the central islands of Abu Musa and Abu Tunb (and others), this was not an idle threat of their ability to really badly gently caress with world oil supplies which they had shown a willingness to do before. Here we get Rafsanjani really trying to make peace with the US and just cool everyone off, they gave a huge oil contract to a US company to develop an offshore oil field, the government and the CIA pushed for this to happen as they really wanted to try and break the ice. But then the republicans won Congress and the Israeli lobby and those who just plain hated Bill Clinton and they put up even harsher economic sanctions. This is the point that Newt Gingrich really starts yelling about overthrowing Iran. He pushed through a very public 18 million dollars for the CIA's budget for Iranian operations. This would accomplish bugger all, you can’t run a spy ring in a coffee shop for 18 million. It completely tanked any chance of the CIA really developing any meaningful Iranian intelligence network (Which they had lost in its entirety 6 years prior). What the CIA actually did was stuff like smuggling books into Iran. The one thing this really achieved was in convincing Iran that America was essentially declaring full scale covert war against them, so Iran countered by actually declaring covert war. They attempted to start a riot in Bahrain and then blew up Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, a building that housed a bunch of USAF personnel of whom they killed 20 and injured a further 400. The revolutionary guard navy harassed boats in the gulf leading to concerns about suicide boat attacks. At this point however as the US is genuinely considering bombing Iran in retaliation a new president took over from Rafsanjani. President Khatami stopped the Rev. Guards from killing dissidents in other nations, had the leader of the intelligence services sacked for conducting these operations without notifying the supreme leader. He started making all sorts of noises about condemning terrorism, not killing Salman Rushdie and apologising for the US embassy siege as well as restraining the revolutionary guards from messing with people in the gulf. Clinton reciprocates by making noises about apologising for US actions in the past, not quite going as far as to do so but certainly moving in that direction and eased some restrictions on Iran. However Khatami couldn’t get the Iranian government to move forward to respond to US overtures. Clinton made a significant effort to meet Khatami when both were scheduled to speak at the UN before he left office, however Khatami who lacked the Supreme Leaders authorization to conduct talks slid out a side door to avoid him. GW Bush Then we get Dubya entering office. The state department and the joint chiefs of staff both pushed for continuing Clintons attempts to connect with Iran. However, they were obsessed with Iraq and just didn’t care all that much about Iran by comparison. The only person who cared and took an active interest in what to do with Iran was John Bolton, and I hardly need to articulate what his views were, but nobody cared enough to support his views to Dubya. Iran during this are hoping that they might be able to get on Dubyas good side by his links to oil industries in the US. They probably correctly divined that pressure from corporate interests could make Dubya take an interest in them. Then we get 9/11. Iran had been fighting the Taliban for quite some time and after 9/11 they seize the moment and invite the US in for talks, for the first time since 1986. Its been 15 years since the two countries have been able to even be in the same room together (The Germans and Italians are nominally there so it doesn’t look like it’s just the Iranians but their delegations tended to take very long lunches, like 5 hours long). It took some wrangling but the US agrees over the objections of Bolton, Wolfowitz and Luti (the assistant secretary of defence for near eastern affairs, who had served as Gingriches military aid before entering the administration). Iran gives the US significant intelligence about where the Taliban are in Afghanistan and are really pushing commonalities, the US are a bit leery but take their information and it develops into regular talks. However at this point the Israelis intercept a shipment of weapons to Palestine from Iran, it seems unlikely this was an official government action but it still puts a bit of a spanner in the works. Then we get possibly the most ill-considered speech, the Axis of Evil speech. Which is notable because it didn’t come out of US government policy on Iran, because the US government had no policy on Iran at all, it was a lyrical flourish. This really hacks off Iran who withdraw from the talks, release a major Taliban commander and start undermining the government the US is trying to install in Afghanistan. Then the US really decides to bollock everything up. Iran is interested in cooperating on Iraq, they want a say in selecting the new form of governance for that nation. Some effort is made on that front by both Iran and elements of the US government, but they get told to get stuffed and shut them out of Iraq entirely. So, Iran decided to be difficult, they were utterly convinced that the US was going to come and overthrow them, the lack of a clear US policy had reinforced this worry that had festered for 20 years, they took precisely the approach they had taken in Lebanon. They sought to create as much of a pig’s ear of a situation that the US would be too busy dealing with that to threaten them. And eventually they would come out on top. They would send thousands of fighters into Iraq to just get ready to create a mess due to the disintegration of the border, and it worked very well. Both sides attempted via gestures to get the other to open up, the US sent significant aid to Iran after an earthquake hit a city, Iran sent a message via Switzerland which contained a plausible solution to normalising relations. Unfortunately, it was taken as a hoax and ignored because they had no easy way to validate its provenance, it turns out to have been from the highest level of Iranian government, so nothing came of either effort. The US would move to supporting pro liberalising elements in Iran. Liberalising in this context meaning freedom of speech, human rights (as we in the west would understand them), labour rights, dismantling of the Revolutionary Guard’s chokehold over much of the economy, and freedom within the political process to choose who is on the ballot. Iran would react rather poorly to this, viewing it largely correctly as an attempt to overthrow them using soft power. That was not the only reason the US were attempting this but it was a major part of it. At the end of all this muddled process in 2006 we get the Iran nuclear deal, or the start thereof. This was a major push from Condoleezza Rice, who took the view that you needed to engage with Iran to try and get them to cooperate. Because she was so close to Bush she circumvented all the Neo-Cons who gatekept the president, particularly Cheney and Rumsfeld at this point. She managed to get approval for using China and Russia to reach an agreement with Iran. It was offered to Iran that in return for halting their nuclear program they would get aid from Europe to modernise their oil and gas industry, they would get a light water reactor for nuclear power generation and a gradual reduction of sanctions. This was backed by Iran’s friends in Russia and the PRC as well. They prevaricated and were accused of stalling by the US which got their backs up and they eventually rejected it. They were probably going to reject it even without that particular wrinkle. So that really brings us to the current state of sanctions on Iran, they were found in contravention of nuclear proliferation by the IAEA and there were significant international pushes for sanctions and inspection of cargo to stop Iran achieving nuclear weapons. This failure essentially kicks off Iran really escalating their activities, supplying Iraqi militias aggressively and paying them to attack US forces, we have reached the state of pretty much undeclared war that would rage for years. Obama Obama then turned up and he is explicit about using diplomacy to engage with Iran. He goes on Arab TV and talked this up for the middle-east at large. This was received very positively in much of Iran, but their own hardliners torpedoed every attempt of the moderate elements in Iran to actually do something about it. Not getting anywhere he would however try again, writing directly to Supreme Leader Khameini on two occasions and getting polite but non-committal replies. Unfortunately, then Ahmadinejad would get re-elected in Iran in 2009. He was one of only 4 candidates approved by the Religious Guardian Council to stand (of 476 applicants). There was pretty much certainly fraud in that election but its impossible to prove, he won by huge margins in every province bar two, even ones that he had lost in 2005. This sparks massive protests, after some indulgence from the Supreme Leader they eventually get told to stop but don’t, the Basijj militia go out attacking protesters and the police shoot a fair few, including the nephew of the second place candidate Mousavi. Iran blames the west for this, expels a number of British diplomats and all western journalists. There has been no reliable evidence that was the case. However, this set back relations further and the protests would continue but to no ultimate effect. After about a year in 2010, the US would try again, they exposed a secret Iranian enrichment reactor and threatened further sanctions. They presented a deal for Iran to send its uranium to Russia, who would refine it into fuel grade uranium for their power reactors. This actually seemed to be getting somewhere, as Iran accepted the deal in principle and Ahmadinejad was in favour of it publically. Unfortunately, Irans internal politics derailed it, the Supreme leader didn’t particularly like Ahmadinejad or the West, his own political opponents in the government were determined to derail it to embarrass the president. Iran could not get a political consensus to agree to it themselves and so they rejected it and continued enriching uranium. As a result they got hit with the really big sanctions stick by the UN, we also get Stuxnet at this point which buggers about a third of Iran’s enrichment centrifuges. Israel, while probably not acting in concert with the US on this though its no way to be sure funds Sunni terrorists in Iran who conduct a series of bombings against the revolutionary guard, killing north of 50 of their officers, including a major general and dozens of civillians. There were also several assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists almost certainly conducted by Mossad. To explain why that’s important when we are discussing the US, the view of the hardliners in Iran is that of a global Zionist conspiracy which ties Israeli and US actions together. This really boosted Iran’s paranoia, though whether it was paranoia when there were people out to get them is of course an open question. Iran then steps up its activities in the gulf, again, and start bombing campaigns in Iraq in an attempt to mess with the US attempts at withdrawal, killing at least 15 American soldiers, the US bombs Iranian backed militias in Iraq and warns Iran very strongly through Russia, Iranian boats charged a US task group openly threatening to blow them up and dropping fake mines in the water ahead of them. The commander had not been in the gulf that long and didn’t realise that it was the Revolutionary guard up to their usual tricks. Fortunately, when he asked permission to open fire he was told not to and we managed to avoid a shooting war starting right then and there. They did something similar to a British ship who fired warning shots at the revolutionary guard who fortunately thought better of their activities and left. This behaviour continues with another round of sanctions over the nuclear enrichment program resolution in the UN in 2012 which shut the Iranian central bank out of much of the world’s financial system, followed by the EU implementing the same sanctions. Iran responded by threatening to close the states of Hormuz. These sanctions are really started to hurt Iran at this stage. It was at this stage that Obama goes into his second term and manages to thrash out the deal that would eventually be signed. Conclusions This is essentially the very very short version of Iranian relations with the US since 1989. I hope it has illuminated why making a deal with Iran is quite so drat difficult. They are a completely fractured nation with an uneasy balance of power between moderates and radicals. There is only really one person who can actually impart order, and that is the Supreme Leader Khameini. The supreme religious lot in charge are all really loving old, they have been there for decades and have seen everything come to nought and still in my view cling to this idea of Iranian regional hegemon as a greater Shia state that Khomeini explicitly stated was the goal of the Islamic revolution back in 1979. The second is that Iran is pretty much as to blame for this as the US is, precisely how much is open to personal interpretation, there is no denying the huge scale of the damage that Dubyas administration did to ever finding an actual solution. But Iran has nobody but itself to blame for the fact that nobody likes them given their constant and repeated actions. It’s a revolutionary state that never learned to stop fighting, and really its been fighting for nigh on 40 years now. The Axis of Evil speech was poorly judged and deeply bloody unhelpful in terms of international diplomacy, but it really wasn’t inaccurate given Iran’s creation and support of two of the nastier international terrorist groups of recent years. Iran and America now just fundamentally cannot trust each other, Iranian overtures historically have largely been met by either disbelief or a demand for complete capitulation by the US. And US overtures have been met with either silence or another campaign of bombings by Iran. The fact that the Obama deal got signed at all is an absolute miracle given the legacy of distrust that it had to overcome. Hardliners on both sides want war, its very difficult for them not to get it at this stage. I’m avoiding discussion of the recent abrogation by Trump because dear god I don’t really wanna poke that beehive of modern political clownery, also my knowledge on the subject is much more limited.
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Oct 2, 2019 17:30
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Nebakenezzer posted:I have two questions for you. Pretty much, Iran especially will engage in human wave attacks of a scale not really seen outside of WW1, at least not commonly. To draw a quote from i think the first post i did on this. quote:“They come on in their hundreds, often walking straight across the minefields, triggering them with their feet … They chant Allahu Akbar and they keep coming, and we keep shooting, sweeping our fifty mills [sic] [machine guns] around like sickles. My men are eighteen, nineteen, just a few years older than these kids. I’ve seen them crying, and at times, the officers have to kick them back to their guns. Once we had Iranian kids on bikes cycling towards us, and my men started laughing, and then these kids started lobbing their hand grenades, and we stopped laughing and starting firing” From an Iraqi officer who was on the front lines near Basra. Theres lots of accounts like this, its not something that all of Iran is neccesarily on board with, particularly the regular army views this as wasteful and inneficient in internal debates on the matter, but it is the definitive feature of much of Irans tactics with its Revolutionary guards militias. These are people with a few weeks training, fanaticised largely by religious fervour and patriotism who are throwing themselves in to die. It is not applied completely artlessly, they will use light infantry to infiltrate iraqi lines and attack in more intelligent ways but there are definitely significant and frequent moments of just sending in the next wave. Theres an offensive in 1987 where they will suffer 120'000 casualties in four rdays of fighting. For context the battle of the Somme caused Britain 60'000 casualties in one day. On the defensive its again very reminiscent of the misery of WW1, except their country couldnt afford, or didnt want to afford, take your pick, to supply them with appropriate gas masks when the Iraqis come so you get massive casualties and then panic when Iraq rolls in with tanks that they dont have the equipment to fight effectively. As far as i am aware the only evidence of the Arrow air crash being anything other than bad luck was a Shia group claiming responsibility for it at the time. I think that were there any evidence of that being the case it would have come to light by now. Its certianly something that the IRGC might do if they had the chance, but i dont really see how they would have done.
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Oct 2, 2019 17:48
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Nebakenezzer posted:e: I hope you don't mind me yammering on about this, but it occurred to me a short time ago learning about Iran-Contra etc might be helpful in maybe finding better evidence to support my theory that Reagan heard about the accident, panicked, and asked his BFF PM Mulroney to cover it up I don't mind, I will be getting on to Iran contra because we are about to hit it chronologically and that and all the stories about where they got their arms from is quite interesting in of itself. But I haven't encountered anything that would suggest it.
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Oct 2, 2019 23:00
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Dazzle does work, but its purpose is not to obscure that there is a ship there, its to obscure how long that ship is and what way it is pointing in order to confuse optical rangefinders. E: Curse your edit 
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Oct 5, 2019 12:46
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Previous posts: Previous thread post index. Iran, Iraq 1983-84. Website versions of the lot, this one will appear at some point soon, was gonna format it all last week but got ill. Xthetenth has kindly offered his posts on naval design to be put up on that site as well from another thread on here so they will be appearing steadily, one is up right now and there are two more, so please go read them if you havent already. The arms trade in Iran-Iraq. As you may imagine, in 8 years of total war there was considerable attrition of equipment from both sides both on and off the battlefield. Very little of the initial equipment used by both sides would end up surviving the war due to the intensity of the fighting. As a result, given the relatively weak initial industrial bases of both nations it was necessary for truly eyewatering sums to be spent on armaments by both sides. This war would cost the warring nations something of the order of $1’100 billion dollars. Iraq suffered $450bn of this, $160bn from lost oil revenue, $110bn from debt, $90bn from damage, $80bn for arms purchasing and $10bn on other sundries. Iran suffered $650bn lost, $350 of lost oil revenue, $180bn of lost infrastructure, $35bn of lost industrial revenue, $25bn for victim family compensation (notably significantly for compensation of Pasdaran families), $20bn for war equipment directly, $20bn for other war related experiments and $15bn other sundries. The direct buying of arms represented a significant but not overwhelming share of the costs to each nation as a result of the war. Their respective GDPs are of the $50-90 bn range.  Oil revenue plotted against arms supply costs. Taken from Iran-Iraq by Pierre Razoux.  Principle arms suppliers, Iran (Left) Iraq (Right). Taken from Iran-Iraq by Pierre Razoux. This will not solely concern the arms trade because a lot of other trade is also very vital to what goes on and why. However, it will mainly concern it. One contextually very important thing which is perhaps lost today is that in 1980 we are just coming off the back of the first and second oil shocks of 1973 and 79. Oil prices spiked by as much as 400% during this time which completely buggered the economies of several nations. It was the Arab world, particularly through OPEC really flexing its muscles. This led to gas rationing in the US, the introduction of the 55mph federally enforced speed limit (which would last through 1995). It had spooked Japan hugely, badly hurt the Netherlands particularly in western Europe, and caused the death of the dominance of the huge car in the US and the rise of Japanese car manufacture (It’s a whole other really interesting topic). There had also been the previous embargoes that hit the UK and France in 1956, the UK and US in 67. OPEC was the real big beast of the international economy in the 70’s and 80’s and nations had to be genuinely very careful of upsetting them. And they were generally speaking dominated by the Arab states at this stage. This underlines the huge diplomatic imperative in staying on their good side. However, there was a slow waning of influence beginning at this time which lead many nations to adopt neutrality, or to sell to both sides, this was helped by the fact both belligerents were major oil sellers, the USSR was coming online with their huge reserves and North Sea oil was starting to be extracted. Turkey was delighted by the Iran Iraq war, it gave them exactly what they wanted, distraction from their own massive human rights abuses, the opportunity to sell to both sides to get their economy out of a ditch, and the ability to kill the Kurds in cooperation with both Iran and Iraq. Always the subtext of any Turkish diplomatic move really. Turkey would buy Iraq’s oil in quantity and at a cheaper price. They wanted the war to go on forever really. They would sell consumer goods in vast quantities to both sides who couldn’t afford to pay for more expensive western built goods and acted as Iran’s pretty much sole entrance point for much of their imports. Huge quantities of Turkish gest workers would enter Iran and their exports to both nations would grow by $2bn by the end of the conflict. They didn’t get much involved in arms sales so I’m mentioning them here because they were an important part for other reasons. But they didn’t want to risk ending the war earlier or upsetting one side too much because they were minting it in non-military sales. Very few nations kept out of this entirely, only one European nation was completely uninvolved and that was the Republic of Ireland. Pretty much every major nation on earth was involved in this to one degree or another. Equipment overview. At the start of the war the regular armies of Iran and Iraq were of comparable size, I’ve covered this previously in some detail, but the important part was largely how much equipment each side had at varying points.  Iranian Chieftain tank. At the start Iran had a cumulative total of 2’810 AFV’s, two thirds of which are tanks. A significant proportion of them were out of action due to lack of spare parts. Iran’s chief tanks were the M-48/M-60 and Chieftain mark 3 and 5 and Scorpion light tanks. The Chieftain being a notorious maintenance hog even when you have access to spare parts which Iran did not. They had a whole bunch of Soviet BTR and BMP-1 AFV’s of various types bought when the Shah was trying to butter up the USSR. They would go on to acquire genuine USSR equipment typically via North Korea and significant quantities of Chinese copies of said equipment from the PRC (Notable large quantities of Type 59 and 69 tanks). Their armoury would grow to include variants of the T-54/55, T-62, and T-72 (largely captured from Iraq) as well as also purchasing large quantities of EE-9/11 Cascavels and Urtus from Brazil In terms of other equipment Iran had 2’900 artillery pieces, mainly of US manufacture, mainly the M101 105mm and the M114 155mm along with 203mm artillery. As the war went on, they would buy 130mm and 152mm from China in large numbers as well as from North Korea. They possessed HAWK missiles in very limited quantities and one or two operational harpoon missiles and via the mujahedeen in Afghanistan acquired US redeye missiles and captured Soviet equipment equivalents such as SA-7’s. They were able to acquire SA-7’s legitimately via North Korea. The Iranian navy had 7 warships of significant size and 34 smaller patrol boats. These were your typical cold war navy mix of US and British decommissioned ships that were then sold off. No major combatants would be bought but dozens of light speedboats would be bought from Sweden. They had a collection of maritime patrol aircraft from the US such as the P-3. The Iranian airforce started with 550 fixed wing planes, almost entirely of US origin, F-4, F-5, F-14 C-130 and various Boeing utility and electronic intelligence aircrafts. They had 80 helicopters, which were also mainly US with Cobra’s, Hueys and Chinooks. This would not grow appreciably, they would secure light prop trainers from Switzerland and F-6 (MiG-19) and F-7 (MiG-21) fighters from China in small quantities.  Domestically produced Iraqi T-72 (Lion of Babylon) Iraq had a total of 5’350 AFV’s, around half of which are tanks. Their tanks were at a pretty typical stage of readiness that you might expect. Their tanks at this point are almost entirely communist bloc, T-55s, some T-62’s, produced in both the USSR and Romania. They had AMX-30’s in reasonable numbers, France was Iraq’s major western backer generally. At the wars outbreak they had significant amounts of BTR series vehicles and ERC90’s from Panhard. As the war goes on, they would acquire OT 62/64 from Czechoslovakia, EE-3/9/11 Jararaca/Cascavels/Urtu’s from Brazil, Panhard M-3’s which are just the doofiest looking thing. As for tanks they would eventually acquire T-72 tanks in bulk from the USSR and Poland and would begin a project to build their own copies of the T-72 called the Lion of Babylon. Iraq’s artillery was almost entirely Soviet bloc and it started with 2’250 tubes, it was the standard array of stuff you would expect, 122, 130 and 152mm howitzers and the array of light AA guns you would expect. This mix wouldn’t change that much over the war as they were well able to acquire most of their ammunition requirements easily and getting new tubes wasn’t challenging as you just went shopping around the eastern bloc and international arms traders were almost giving the things away. The Iraqi navy was very small due to their much more restricted nature of their coastline, they had a bunch of Soviet missile boats and French helicopters (Alouette III’s mainly) at the start of the war, along with Westland 52’s. As the war went on, they would acquire HOT missiles to mount on their acquired Gazelles they would use to attack close in coastal targets.  Artwork of a (non-Iraqi) DeHavilland Heron. The Iraqi airforce started with 400 aircraft and 280 helicopters, these were majority Soviet bloc with a collection of British planes, typically Mig-21/23’s, Il-28’s and Su-7’s with Hawker hunters, they also possessed a small number of Tu-22’s and Tu-16’s and would acquire Chinese versions of the Tu-16’s as the war went on. They had a mishmash of transport and utility plane, An-12/24’s, Il-14/76’s and de Havilland Herons. As the war went on, they would acquire Mirage F-1’s, Super Etendards, MiG-25’s, MiG 29’s and significant amounts of Su-20’s and Su-25’s. Their helicopters were of the Mi-4/6/8 family along with a variety of French designs. As the war went on, they would acquire the Mi-24 and updated French designs in quantity. The general thrust of all this is that as you can imagine, both sides faced a sticky logistical problem. They had to buy almost all of the arms they were employing, certainly at the higher end of sophistication. They both solved this in different ways, Iraq was far more able to just open the wallet and buy what they needed as far more people were willing to sell to them, they had both more money and more access. This meant that excepting the early days of the war when the USSR was unhappy with them and restricting their access to arms, they had no real issues keeping their stuff running. Iran had to resort to subterfuge to get what they needed which lead to a huge quantity of scandals that would ensue around the world as well as reducing their reliance on technology of their military. Going beyond these figures however Iraq also had far more access to equipment like radar, trucks, chemicals, alloys, concrete mixers, earth movers and other necessary equipment. As the war went on the numbers would change, in 1984, Iraq had increased the number of AFV’s they had to 8’100, of which 5’000 were tanks. Iran had dropped to 2’200 AFV’s of which 1’050 are tanks. In 1988 Iraq had dropped slightly to 7’310 AFV’s but increased the share of tanks to 6’300. Iran had a similar change with having around 2’300 AFV’s of which 1’800 were tanks. In artillery there was significant growth from both sides to 1984 with Iraq growing to 7’750 pieces, and Iran to 5’660, though as both sides cash run out you see very dramatically the effect going into 1988 with Iraq dropping to 3’400 and Iran to 1’900. With regards to the Navy, neither side really grew that much in terms of shipping. The significant losses involved were when Iran got one of their large frigates sunk by the USN. But naval weapons were not a major focus of growth. The disparity however is apparent nowhere more strongly than in the air. In 1984 Iraq had increased its airforce to 640 planes and 400 helicopters, while Iran’s had dropped to 161 planes and 80 helicopters. Both sides would drop again into 1988 with Iraq having 511 planes and 350 helicopters and Iran 140 planes and 75 helicopters. Iran’s spares rate was so parlous that they were able to operate readiness rates for their planes of around 60% for the F-4 and F-5, but only around 20% for the F-14. Arms sales. Iraq Pre and early war The USSR was a long-term Iraqi backer ever since the mid 1960’s they saw Arab socialism as typified by the Ba’ath party as their best route into influence in this area, especially as a counterweight to western backing of the traditional Arab-Islamist monarchies. As a result, they sold arms extensively to Iraq in a huge variety of not terribly sexy ways because it was all pretty much above board (as much as it can be when selling weapons). Largely speaking Iraq didn’t need another weapons supplier than the USSR because you can really get whatever you want to varying degrees of quality off the shelf from them. This helped the USSR greatly with their balance of payments owing to the unique and beautiful way their economy functioned (more on that later).  President Georges Pompidou France was also a long-term Iraqi ally, ever since De Gaulle declared neutrality in the 1967 war, he would flatter the Iraqi delegation relentlessly in 1968 and was really the only western nation willing to do so given Iraq’s links to the USSR. Iraq would reciprocate by including France in the nationalisation of their oil industries and would order arms starting in early 1972. French industry would hurriedly organise a pro-Iraq media blitz to get the government to negotiate with Saddam so he would protect their industrial interests as Iraq nationalized. Not all of the French government was on board with this, the minister of foreign affairs particularly detesting the Iraqi regimes authoritarian nature. However, President Pompidou was very pro Iraq with Iraq serving as Frances advocate on OPEC and excluding them from the oil embargo in the oil crisis recently. They would sign a 10-year agreement for protection of French industrial interests and offer advantageous oil prices. In return for significant French arms sales including mortars, light armoured vehicles, modern radars, light aircraft and planes. Later war While there will be a million small contracts from a dozen nations, the figure to keep in mind is that 3 nations, USSR, France and PRC supplied Iraq with 85% of its weapons. The rest are included because they are interesting, but they were considerably less important. Iraq was mainly able to continue with state to state arms sales due to its thicker wallet and avoided many of Iran’s pitfalls with arms dealers and illegal dealings. Iraq agitated the Soviets quite badly by invading Iran without checking with them first, the USSR was playing the game of trying to peel Iran off the western sphere entirely and have them enter their orbit and Saddam definitely was Not Helping, one of their client states had just attacked a third world country that had just escaped from the grips of Western Imperialism, so Saddam was in the dog house. They refused from 1980-83 to increase deliveries of weapons and spare parts to Iraq. The thawing of this was in 1983 they finally signed a new contract with Iraq to build a new major repair depot and rocket manufacture facility in Iraq and provide new armaments after the USSR gave up trying to negotiate with Iran. The lack of spares and ammunition would dog the Iraqi war in this period until they got new suppliers in place, they approached other nations in order to plug the gap and started up their own manufacture. However, the USSR would ship Iraq its first mustard gas in 1982 that it would employ soon afterwards. They employed shells bought from Spain and Egypt in a plant constructed by the FRG, with ancillary equipment having been bought from the Danish, Dutch and Belgians. They would also begin shipments of SCUD/FROG missiles in earnest in 1983, committing to deliver 300 of the missiles in that year alone. Iraq would attempt to locally adapt these missiles to be capable of hitting Tehran. They would also begin their own domestic missile program which successfully proved capable of creating missiles for these launchers.  Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft. Later in the war in 1987 the USSR would sell Iraq the very best, the USSR was very short on cash and just wanted this entire war to stop mucking up their southern border. To that end they sold Iran MiG-29’s, Su-25’s and significant quantities of SA-13 launchers and missiles along with thousands of AT-4 Spigot missiles and associated launchers. They also committed to a constant sale of whatever Iraq needed in terms of spares for its current equipment to keep fighting. Over the course of the war the USSR would supply Iraq with 280 combat planes, 1000 tanks, 300 howitzers, 600 APC’s, 20 SCUD launchers and 300 missiles, 5 missile boats, SA-2/3/6/7/8/13/14 launchers and missiles, AA-2/6/7/8/11 missiles and AT-3/4 AT missiles and a huge quantity of ammunition generally. This comes to roughly 40 billion dollars, or about half of Iraqi weapon deliveries. Romania under the USSR’s oversight would ship 300 tanks, 200 AFV’s 100 howitzers and thousands of AK’s, light vehicles and missiles. Czechoslovakia would ship around 200 APC’s, 24 training aircraft and various ammunition. Poland would deliver 200 tanks, 300 APC’s, 100 howitzers, various ammunition, missiles and vehicles. Hungary would ship around 150 APC’s and 400 AA guns the combloc tally outside of the USSR comes to about $4bn. With the USSRs reticence early on we have the start of the almighty free for all, Iraq immediately turned to China and France. The PRC were interested at this stage in doing 3 things in the middle east, displacing Soviet influence, gaining export orders and in prolonging the war as long as possible in order to aid 1 and 2. Iraq was able to secure the start of Chinese deliveries in late October of 1980 (the war having started in late September). This consisted of quantities of Type-59 and 69 tanks (T-54 development), significant quantities of 130mm M-46 artillery, Type-56 (AK type) and huge supplies of ammunition. These would start rolling in from early 1981 onwards and would not stop. China would also later in the war commit to deliver Iraq 4 H-6D (Tu-16) with capability for launching C-601 silkworms, which would have proven devastating for Iranian tankers had they ever been put into service. At the same time, they would also sell Saudi Arabia CSS-2 DF3 missiles, this is one of Chinas MRBM’s, though sold without the nuclear tip, in order to allow them to deter Iran. China over the course of the war would ship 1500 tanks to Iraq, (Type 59 and 69), 300 howitzers, several silkworm batteries, 30 fighters, 4 bombers and associated ammunition for a total of around $6bn. France would supply Iraq gladly, honouring a signed agreement for 40 Mirage F1’s to be delivered in 1980 which would help bring Iraq’s air force up significantly in quality compared to Iran’s US planes. Saddam would successfully employ negotiations with French industrialists to get them to pressure the French government as a hugely successful bargaining tool. They would also deliver Iraq its nuclear reactor in this timeframe, Osirak, despite the efforts of Mossad who sabotaged parts as they were leaving France and would assassinate several physicists involved with Iraq’s nuclear program. France would open the taps on sales, selling tens of thousands of missiles of all kinds, (HOT, Milan, AS-12, Magic) and their associated launching equipment to Iraq with radar, more armoured vehicles and electronic equipment included.  Super Etendard coming in for landing on the very carrier they would leave from to fly to Iraq. France would respond to Iranian aggression in Lebanon and France itself (embassy bombings, kidnapping of hostages, murder of dissidents etc.) by selling more to Iraq. Iraq approached them in early 1983 to attempt to buy 20 Super Etendards and associated Exocets. However, Dassault had stopped the line and there were none to be had, they counter-offered with 24 Mirage F-1’s modified to fire the Exocet which would be ready in 1985, Iraq accepted but needed a stopgap. Dassault pressured the French government to loan Iraq Super Frelon helicopters and half a dozen French navy Etendards. The navy threw a shitfit seeing where this was going, but were overruled, Mitterrand authorised the sale of 6 Super Frelons and the rental of 5 Etendards for 2 years. The US pressured France to knock that poo poo off, but they ignored them and delivered them anyway. Flying from the Clemenceau they hugged the ground along the Syrian - Turkish border (violating both airspaces) and landed in northern Iraq. This provoked more violence from Iran with the bombing of the French and US barracks in Beirut occurring 2 weeks later killing 58 French and 242 American soldiers. France tried to retaliate by parking a 500kg bomb outside the Iranian embassy in the same city but the person responsible for leaving it there forgot to set the fuse, so it was disarmed. France would ship Iraq 121 Mirage F1’s, rent them 5 Super Etendards, deliver 62 attack helicopters, 210 light AFVs (Panhard armoured cars and AMX-10P’s mainly). 80 self-propelled howitzers, 60 Roland SAM systems and a dozen Crotale SAM batteries. Significant radar and ECM systems. HOT and Milan missiles and launchers, 4-500 Exocet missiles, AS-30L ATG missiles and a variety of air to air missiles (Magic 1 / 2 and Super 530) for a total of around $17bn The rest of the world Europe at large would also supply Iraq, the EEC managed nothing other than a declaration of concern before opening up the armouries. Europe would fight aggressively against a UN arms embargo on two grounds, first because they feared they would retaliate with a joint oil embargo against them which would dickhole everyone’s economy pretty much, but also because they wanted the opportunity to sell, sell, sell. Britain took the official position of neutrality, it was insulated somewhat by North Sea oil so could sell more freely. They would sell Iraq spare parts for captured Chieftains, its existing scorpions, along with pharmaceuticals, trucks, cars and significant quantities of machine tools and would bring Iraqi students to Sandhurst for training, along with radar guidance systems for their artillery. Germany would also sell to Iraq, but in less quantity, they were neck deep in Iran to a much greater extent, but Saddam was not going to choose to be picky, they bought chemicals and factories for the production of chemical weapons, armoured recovery vehicles, machine tools, heavy trucks and entire army hospitals. They also sold them 60 Bo-105 helicopters and stockpiles of the HOT missiles to arm them. They sent these via Spain to avoid Israel pitching a fit publicly about them arming the violently anti-Israeli Iraqi regime. German companies would also sell pesticide producing factories to Iraq, Karl Kolb Gmbh was building 3 plants for the production of nerve gas. Nobody in their right mind believed Iraq was under the effects of a biblical plague of locusts that mandated that level of nerve agent production, they were well aware of what they were going to be used for. Eventually the FRG would stop them, so Iraq would go to the DDG who would gladly continue their Western neighbours work for cash. Italy would attempt to sell ships to Iraq and Iran early on, but the government fell, and the Socialist party got in who banned all weapons sales. Unfortunately for Italy they had just laid down something like 20 ships for sale to both sides. In another incident of dark comedy Italy ordered construction continue on the larger Iraqi ships to maintain employment, so these ships were made for Iraq but then rotted in the drydock. Eventually Iraq would take possession of these ships, but they were not permitted to leave the Mediterranean. So just sort of pottered around there, probably giving their crews a lovely Italian holiday. Italy would do some very spicy under the table selling but more to Iran than Iraq which we will cover later. Yugoslavia would sell Iraq significant quantities of weapons, including an entire frigate, three minesweepers, 100 130mm howitzers, 300 mortars, tens of thousands of M70’s (AK derivatives) and ammunition in the hundreds of thousands of rounds for all that Iraq might desire. They would gain over $1bn of sales to Iraq alone. Spain would sell slightly to Iraq, generally light weapons in the form of mortars and recoilless rifles, but they would connive in being a conduit for arms from Germany and sell locally produced Land Rovers to the Iraqi military. Scandinavia also had significant North Sea oil as a buffer against potential retaliation and so also sold to both sides. However, there wasn’t much Iraq really wanted from them other than ammunition and explosives components so their opportunities here were more limited than selling to Iran. Also, in the slight supply tier was Egypt, who supplied them with spares for their soviet equipment as well as much of their outdated spares, most notable among their deliveries was 250 T-55 tanks. They would however support Iraq on the battlefield by sending a squadron of Mirage 5’s in 1986. Iran Pre and early war Arms and the sales thereof are really at the basis of a lot of Iran’s problems. Reza Pahlavi had not set out to necessarily make a lot of friends but to make Iran into a significant regional hegemon. He had threatened to go to war with India in support of Pakistan after the events of the Bangladesh independence war and wanted to be prickly enough to stop the soviets from acting to surround him via Afghanistan and Iraq. This meant he spent a lot on arms, Iran was the worlds biggest importer of arms pre-Iran-Iraq, with over $12bn spent 1973-79 and another $10bn on order from the US alone. They were angling to replace Britain in the area who had acted as the self-appointed policeman of the zone until their withdrawal of the early cold war over budget constraints meant that a vacuum was left.  Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carters National Security advisor Post revolution however, the Carter administration weren’t particularly wedded to the former Shah, the majority of pressure on this front came from the Republicans. However, there was a significant effort to get along with the new regime. Nobody really understood who who was, in the new regime because it was all such a mess. The Carter administration had really two objectives when dealing with Iran, the first was maintaining stability in the oil markets, and the second maintaining the eye watering arms contracts that had been signed for $10 billion by the Shah. Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to meet personally with Khomeini in 1979 to discuss this, however he was prevented by the hullabaloo of congress when they found out. This snub is said to have particularly angered Khomeini who was apparently flattered by the US sending someone of such a high level to recognise and meet with him so soon. However, economics got in the way and Iran cancelled its arms contracts due to chaos in their oil revenue, US industrialist poo poo hit the congressional fan, and this meant that they got slapped by a huge embargo on all spare parts which would dog Iran throughout the war. This would be double buried by the start of the US embassy takeover. Iran had a similar contretemps with France, they were much less involved with them because Iran was generally regarded as British and American turf, so France was involved mostly in more mundane industrial projects, still worth huge sums. However, the really big issue was that of Eurodif. Eurodif was a European project under the auspices of the IAEA for a central plant for the enrichment of uranium that could be used by multiple countries to try and control the spread of nuclear technology. France sold Iran a 10% share in the project for a $1bn loan, other nations involved were Belgium, Italy and Spain. This was agreed to get them 10% of the output of enriched uranium and Iran would pay $200mn for several nuclear sites to be built in Iran itself which started construction in 1978. When Khomeini returned to Iran, he would do so aboard an Air France plane, in a moment of panic they agreed with the US and FRG to back Khomeini to try and get a foot in the door at a summit in Guadeloupe in 1979. As soon as he returned pretty much the new Islamic government denounced the whole nuclear deal, suspending payments and demanding return of their $1bn (There is significant hostility to nuclear power, and particularly nuclear weapons among the theocratic thought of Iran at this time, which would obviously go away). France told them to get stuffed and this really sunk Iranian-French relations for the next 10 years, it was not helped by the fact that in a ballsed up assassination attempt on an Iranian exile Quds force soldiers had killed a police officer and a civilian in Neuilly that year. The reason this is important is that it firmly put France in the Saddam camp. As Francois Mitterrand took power in 1981, he would assure Saddam that France was in his corner. This ties in a lot to French cultural attitudes about religion, particularly state religion, Iraq was touted as a bastion of modernism, progressiveness and secularism in an area of the world dominated by conservative theocracies in the oil monarchies and particularly Iran. (Darkly amusingly, also a component of the reasons why the USSR would back Iraq so strongly). Iran and Britain were very much in bed together, most notably of which was a large order for Chieftains. They had bought 750 before the revolution and had a further 1450 on order as it broke out. This would have left Iran’s armed forces of a comparable size to Frances after its completion. They would own 4 British frigates and a significant supply of Westland helicopters. The legal battle over the £400 million bill for those tanks continues to this day. Later war Iran was much more diplomatically isolated as a result of the efforts of the USA largely, who threatened any nation who supplied Iran. Only 4 nations were brave, or foolhardy, enough to risk US displeasure by dealing openly with them. Syria, Libya, PRC and North Korea. These four together met about a third of Iran’s needs, the rest having to be obtained by arms dealers or threats and coercion against other nations or just plain corporate corruption. They were frequently swindled, the most notable guy was Benham Nodjoumi, who sold them 34 crates of scrap iron he led them to believe were TOW missiles. He surrendered to British authorities and went to prison when he got tired of dodging Iranian hit squads who were on his trail.  Adnan Khashoggi, one of the worlds richest arms dealers. Looks like a jolly chap. Iran organised their arms sales mainly through three overseas corporations, one which was organised through the National Iranian Oil Corporation based in London, and two based in the Caribbean (but incorporated in London) called JSC international and Metro International. Their activities in the US were organised by Balanian Hashemi who was an exile who was trying to worm his way back into their good graces. Other notable figures include Saudi Adnan Khashoggi, (The uncle of the recently murdered dissident Jamal Khashoggi), Iranian Manucher Ghorbanifar, who will play a big part in Iran - Contra and Briton Frank Craddock, head of the Commerce International Group, whose company sells to Burma, North Korea, Sudan and others to this day (though now under his son). North Korea slid smoothly into an arms intermediary role for Iran, in 1981 a delegation would arrive who would reach quickly an agreement to sell Iran Type 69 tanks (T-54 developments), Type 59 130mm cannons, Type-63 and BM-11 rocket artillery systems, SA-7 MANPADS and mortars. As the war progressed, they would sell capabilities for producing the FROG-7 missile as well as 200 SCUD-B’s. A midget submarine, various patrol boats and mines and ammunition for a value of around $3bn. China would sell Iran pretty much whatever they could afford, they sold them 200 Type 59 and 69 tanks, 80 F-6 (MiG 19) and F-7 (MiG 21) fighters, significant quantities of silkworm batteries, SA-2 and SA-3 batteries. 1000 medium mortars and millions of spares, shells and rounds for a total value of $3bn. Syria would sell Iran soviet spares from their stockpiles, and also facilitate the transit of Hezbollah fighters to Lebanon. This notably includes large quantities of RPG-7, AT-3’s and SA-7’s. This would come to a total of around $800mn. Dodgy dealings with the rest of the world Here we have the Iranians dancing around nations that technically have them embargoed. This becomes an issue of how those nations decide to deal with this. Many wink at it until it gets scandalous then arrests a couple of people. Some just straight sell sell sell and others avoid the whole idea.  Manucher Ghorbanifar, this guy certainly has the arms dealer look about him, I suspect a long haired cat lies out of frame. The Iranians would attempt to buy US arms and spares through suspect channels, Mark Broman, the director of the US Embassy Military Cooperation Office in France would attempt to convince Egypt to buy F-16’s by fraudulently buying back their F-4’s via Paraguay, via links with the US Ambassador there they would be diverted to be sold to Iran. He would leave his job in 1984 and become joint owner of European Defence Associates who would be involved in the sale of 80 tanks, multiple small arms, aircraft parts and chemical resistant uniforms. The scheme was exposed and foiled and the other partner in EDA, Paul Cutter, was sentenced to 5 years in prison. The two maintained close ties to Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar. Europe would prove equally willing to sell to Iran, Britain would sell spares to Iran for its Chieftains along with Rapier SAM’s and ECM equipment and radar maintenance for their navy and ground stations. Iran would be the second biggest recipient of UK arms in the middle east after Saudi Arabia. Germany was neck deep in Iran. Iran held a 25% stake in Krupp, Chancellor Kohl would preserve this at almost all costs, very willing to supply Iran with parts for the G3 rifles and support for their local production of them. Most importantly they provided Mercedes built trucks and tank transport trailers to ease Iranian logistical issues. They would sell significant quantities of gas protective equipment to Iran, doubtless of great comfort to the Iranian soldiers who were saved from the nerve gas produced by German equipment in Iraq. They were attempting to sell them their excellent type 209 diesel submarine, but the entire world threw so much of a poo poo-fit over this (particularly France, US and Saudi Arabia) that they called it off. Austria, Sweden and Switzerland were of particular value to Iran for obtaining new weapons, Austria sold Iran 140 of their GHN-45 howitzers and plentiful ammunition for same. Switzerland gave them a total of 60 prop light trainers and utility aircraft, cryptology equipment and ammunition as well as radar equipment. Sweden had officially banned sales, but its companies went in anyway, selling 300 RBS-70 MANPADS, 40 boghammer light boats that would be instrumental in attacks on shipping in the gulf and equipment for an entire munitions factory to build ammunition of calibres up to 40mm. Bofors also sold hundreds of thousands of rounds for its weapons to Iran. This led to a scandal where Mats Lundberg and Karl Erik Schmitz were sent to prison for being the ringleaders for their involvement in a wide-ranging cartel supplying Iran. This was trans-European involving companies from: UK, France, FRG, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Norway. They were shipped out using several Caribbean based shipping lines and two phony airlines, one of which was headed by Schmitz. They were found to have sold 30’000 tons of explosives to Iran. They involved the Yugoslav government as the phony “end user” to go on the paperwork who took a 3% cut to ship it on to Iran. As mentioned earlier Italy would allow under the table sale of light weapons, this lead to the event of when the Italians sent a minesweeping force to the gulf in 1987 they had to sweep their own mines sold by their own companies under the table to Iran, the designated end user was the Nigerian army, but the mines were infact sold to Syria (Also under Italian weapons embargo) and then shipped to Iran . The CEO of the company responsible, Valsella (A subsidiary of FIAT), Ferdinando Borletti and Giovanni Borletti (his son) were arrested for breaching export restrictions. (Among other crimes including arming Abu Nidal linked terrorists and running drugs for the Mafia.) When their boats were seized Italian police discovered “appropriated” US made Hydra rockets stolen from USAF bases in Italy along with LAW 72’s, redeye missiles and what was termed grenade launchers. Spain and Greece were both vital lifelines for Iran’s airforce. They would take US equipment for their F-4’s and sell it on at a steep mark-up to try and debugger their economies. This was so rampant both legally and illegally that the readiness rates of their airforces suffered for this and it greatly exasperated the US. Belgium would also get involved in a similar but less radical scheme, Iran tried to buy their obsolete F-104’s, it was stopped at the last minute by the Belgian legislature, but instead they just sold the engines to be fitted to Iranian F-4’s. South Korea, Taiwan, Ethiopia and Singapore would all take a similarly mercenary approach to all this, they discretely sold US equipment to Iran for a significant mark-up who paid immediately and in cash, 12 F-4’s from South Korea and F-5’s from Ethiopia. Japan however would avoid Iran’s overtures because it was completely dependent on the Arab world for oil. South Korea would also supply large quantities of spares for the M48/M60 tanks that they had, F-4/F-5 fighters and AH-1 helicopters. Total values were around $1.2bn for South Korea, $730mn for Spain, $350mn for Greece. Values for others are unknown. Greece would notably pay for this when one of their large arms export warehouses was blown up in 1987, almost certainly by agents of Iraqi intelligence. Other minor sellers would include South Africa who sold Iran 30 G5 howitzers and associated ammunition, and Brazil would sell Iran 180 of the EE-9 Cascavel and 300 of the EE-11 Urtu and significant quantities of 155mm ammunition for around $450mn Pakistan would back Iran tentatively, however they would not deliver weapons as they didn’t want to upset their position as a neutral arbitrator of Islamic disputes and their good relations from Iran. However much illegal smuggling would go on, particularly of Chinese weapons, through the highlands of Pakistan into Iran itself. They would also discretely train Iranian pilots on the F-6 and F-7 fighters that were delivered by China. France I single out France here because there is an interesting scandal which occurs that illustrates the farce of French governmental unity in the 80’s.  Rene Audran, a vanguard of things to come. France seem to be seen to toy with Iran slightly in August of 1984, Rene Audran, Engineer General of France, who had responsibility for French international arms sales would tempt Iran with weapons sales to try and resolve an ongoing hostage crisis. He did this covertly by sending a deputy to Tehran, however when the rest of the government found out he was stopped. Shortly later in 1985 he was assassinated by Action Directe, the most likely reason is that this was part of the system of reciprocal favours between European and Middle Eastern terrorist groups at the time. The most likely culprit for commissioning the hit is the Islamic Jihad (Later Hezbollah), who had strong ties to Iran. The Luchaire Corporation was a French arms export outfit that would become the centre of what would be called the Luchaire affair. Starting sometime in 1983 the Luchaire corporation had started delivering artillery shells to Iran. This turned into a massively corrupt abject shitshow in incredibly short order. In 1984 Admiral Lacoste, director of DGSE and General Wautrin, head of DPSD (External and internal intelligence respectively) notified Minister of Defence Hernu of this activity, however no action was taken, Lacoste would notify President Mitterand of this as well who told him to take it to Hernu, no action was taken. This all started coming to light in 1986 on the eve of the French elections, the Socialists were in power and the Republicans were looking to take over the Prime Ministerial post. This scandal didn’t help the Socialists who were probably going to lose anyway, however the Republicans got in, the new Minister immediately ordered an investigation, and two months later a damning report was delivered. France had delivered half a million 155 and 203mm shells to Iran using false end user certificates for Peru, Brazil, Thailand, Greece and Yugoslavia and the former minister had covered for this actively along with much of the staff of the French MOD had conspired to defraud the CIEEMG (Interministerial commission for scrutiny of war material exports, but in French). 100 million francs were paid to middlemen and officials, no conclusive evidence was found that it had funded the Socialist party directly or Hernu personally, but Lacoste and Wautrin both alleged it at the time. This report was buried until 1987 when at last two key Hernu deputies, Dubos and Dewavrin were indicted, however the judge involved was unable to sentence either of them without causing significant damage to the French MOD and so in 1989 when the French socialists retook power the case was dismissed. Its likely that this was not pursued because had it gone ahead it would have revealed the massive scale of French arms smuggling to Iran. The National Company for Gunpowder and Explosives had delivered 250 tons of gunpowder to Iran for small arms ammunition directly, with much more via the European gunpowder and explosives cartel. The head of this company would be dismissed by the Minister of Defence in 1987 for selling after being ordered to stop. Matra sold radar to Iran and braking tail kits for bombs. Thompson-CSF sold 200 night vision kits for Iranian planes and the DGSE were neck deep in supplying Milan missiles to try and free French hostages in Lebanon. Manhurin (whose name you may remember from the riots around the deposition of Mubarak) sold hundreds of thousands of rounds of light ammunition to Iran. Israel Israel is a very interesting and vital part of this, they would be Iran’s fourth biggest weapon supplier over the course of the war. Everyone publicly hates them, but they are willing to deal with anyone who is willing to hurt Saddam who was their biggest enemy. Israel was undergoing an economic depression at the time and saw this as an opportunity to sell their old equipment to Iran, hurt Saddam, and use the money to modernise. They would also be employed as the US middleman to try and trade arms for hostages, but more on that later. They also used this as a tool to repatriate Iranian Jews. However, they had lost all official contact with Iran, so as soon as the war started the former Israeli military attaché to Tehran sent a fax to a guy, he knew in the Iranian airforce to try and re-establish contact along the lines of “what can we do for you?”. It was evidently successful as shortly thereafter he received a shopping list of parts for pretty much all of Iran’s equipment. Iran would reciprocate by giving Israel information about Osirak for their bombing raid and oil at preferential rates. Israeli planes would use an Argentine charter airline, they would fly from Israel to Cyprus, then over turkey and into Tabriz in Iran. There were a huge variety of maritime front companies used to deliver the bulkier equipment. We have fairly good information about what went on because it created a scandal. Israel supplied Iran with 4-500 HAWK, sparrow and sidewinder missiles, 1’300 TOW missiles, jammer pods, 600 jeeps, 50 155mm howitzers, 150 AT guns, several thousand assault rifles and tens of thousands of rounds for same in the short space of a year and a half. This all came to light when the flight going over Turkey strayed into soviet airspace, it was intercepted by Su-15’s and shot down and it crashed into Armenia. There was a significant cover up at the time, but it would all come to light in the mid 1980’s. Israels involvement will come up again with regards to Iran-Contra. Over the course of the rest of the war they would provide parts for F-4 fighters, M48 and M60 tanks, AH-1 helicopters and HAWK missiles. This was all for a rough value of $2bn. Continued in Post 2. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 23:00
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Continued from post 1. US involvement.  Good ol’ (very ol’ at this stage) President Reagan, declaring he is not a crook. While holding up the report on his crookery. You may notice I haven’t mentioned America at all yet, that is because they deserve their own section, not because of the significance of what they supplied, that is barely a drop in the bucket compared to even North Koreas contribution. But because it’s a drat good and interesting story. I have no doubt that there are other really intriguing stories behind other arms acquisitions, but they haven’t been written about in English (or at all), so Iran Contra here we come. Operation Staunch. The US was targeted by several bombings in Lebanon in 1983, I have written about it before so I will skip over the details. But as a result, the US enacted Operation Staunch, a far more effective way to strike back at Iran than their aborted and generally ill planned military retaliations. They also used this moment to properly get back into bed with Iraq. This was the start of US intelligence sharing with Iraq, as was summarised by the CIA officer in charge, “This cooperation was never, frank nor particularly good, but it continued because Iran had to be contained and the Gulf monarchies protected.” The CIA was not too happy about the order from Reagan to share intelligence with Iraq, they set up a centre for intelligence sharing in Baghdad and passed a steady stream of low-grade information to keep the link open but weren’t particularly enthusiastic about it as they didn’t view Saddam as the lesser of two evils necessarily. Operation Staunch was an attempt to curtail all weapon sales to Iran, Iraq was removed from the terror sponsors watchlist and replaced by Iran. It was headed by Richard Fairbanks, a US diplomat who went on to head the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He concentrated on preventing them gaining sophisticated equipment, issuing statements and instructions to all US diplomatic personnel to push operation Staunch locally to them. It yielded fairly quick results, in 1984 scant months after it began in late 1983, South Korea had agreed to stop selling plane parts, Italy had stopped slipping Iran Chinooks and the UK stopped the flow of Chieftain parts. There were reductions in supplies from the FRG and others as well. The US would re-establish diplomatic relations with Iraq in 1984 and a full CIA station was established there, they were given access to live feed information from ELF-One, a US AWACS plane which patrolled Saudi airspace, and also satellite data and imaging of the Iranian positions which were used by the Iraqis to great effect repelling the Dawn offensives. It was however at this point that Iran-Contra gets going. The whole affair really pissed off everyone, particularly the Arabs, they didn’t believe a word of the US defence that it was a rogue operation done without presidential approval. Correctly so, but this was of pretty scant comfort. To try and rebuild their standing the Americans approached Staunch with renewed vigour. This time with much more effect, sales from Western Europe in 1986 accounted for just over $1bn, but it dropped to just under $200mn in 1987, the UK closed the Iranian weapons procurement office in London through which the overwhelming majority of Iranian acquisitions were ran. Iran-Contra  Bud McFarlane, Reagans NatSec Adviser. Crook adjacent. In 1985, Bud McFarlane, the National Security Adviser presented a proposal entitled “US Policy Toward Iran”. He proposed a massive change in tack, to prevent USSR influence growing in Moscow and them gaining influence over such a major nation on the edge of the Persian Gulf the US needed to openly and actively engage with Iran. He proposed using allies to sell Iran weapons to undercut soviet leverage, curry favour with moderate Iranians and gently pull Iran back to an anti USSR stance. This was a farce for several reasons, the US had no means of identifying who the moderate Iranians were, the USSR was mid pull out from relations with Iran, and it undercut the entire point of Operation Staunch and US credibility of they got caught. This horrified the Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger, his view, probably the accurate one, was that all Iranian moderates were in the grave, his staff shared the same view. It was rejected by both of them. However, this was the genesis of what would become Iran-Contra. Two competing imperatives would lead to this getting past SecDef and into the oval office, the first was the attempt to circumvent congressional restrictions on supplying anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua (The Contras) and second, to sell weapons to Iran in order to release seven US hostages held by Hezbollah and engage in a normalisation of relations with Iran. And the man who would be responsible for melding the two, Oliver North, needs almost no introduction. The ally involved would be Israel.  Oliver North, definitely also not a crook. The director of the Israeli foreign ministry would visit McFarlane in 1985, the two were friends, he described an Iran close to collapse and an undercurrent of moderate forces who want to dispose of the theocracy and return to more normalised relations with the West. But these people needed help, they could promise to intercede to release US hostages in exchange for military equipment. It sounded too good to be true and that should have given the NatSec Advisor pause, but it didn’t. He mentioned it to Reagan, who was a deeply emotional man. Many people describe how deeply personally affected Reagan was by the US hostages in Lebanon and also in Iran generally, some people (typically those that were in his administration) describe that as representative of his humanity, I take a cooler view, he let that cloud his good judgement and made several utterly cataclysmic blunders because of it. Without a doubt it informed his judgement throughout the whole fiasco. He instructed McFarlane to explore this further. This idea had come around before, Israel had been pushing since 1982 for US support and approval for arms sales to Iran, both united by a common enemy in Saddam. The US was aware of Israeli continued support to Iran as they found a warehouse in Portugal stuffed with Israeli weapons ready to ship to Iran. The proposal came in 1985, shortly after Reagan had been hospitalised from surgery to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon. Israel had found an intermediary, a gentleman named Adolph Schwimmer, an arms merchant close to the Israeli PM of the time. He said that he had contact with an Iranian, Ghorbanifar (recall his name from earlier) who said that he could exchange 100 TOW missiles for improved relations with Iran and hence the 7 hostages release, the missiles would come from Israeli stockpiles the US would then replenish. Not necessarily at this stage an unreasonable deal. Certainly, an illegal one, but one can see the argument. This argument was writ large in the oval office. SecDef immediately opposed the idea, he said it was illegal and would need to be passed by Congress, he also said that Iran had shown no signs directly of having any change of attitude. The Secretary of State Charles Schultz agreed as well, he said it was a straight arms for hostages swap. The CIA director was on the side of McFarlane as he wanted to counter USSR influence in Iran and desperately wanted a way in to the closed society of Iran and thought it worth a punt. Eventually Reagan would decide to go ahead with it, he would talk at length about the fate of the hostages. So, the missiles were sent via Israel, they landed, they were unloaded, and they vanished, and no hostages emerged. Ghorbanifar who had supervised the shipment claimed the IRGC had absconded with the weapons and they hadn’t reached the moderates. He then said the US needed to send 400 more in order to secure one hostage release. Somehow nobody stopped them, and the president authorised the second shipment. Iran then offered to release one hostage, the US asked for William Buckley, the CIA station chief, Iran replied he was too ill to be released (he had been tortured to death 3 months prior). So, they requested and got Reverend Weir, who had been part of the Presbyterian Church mission in Lebanon. And he was released. At this point no money has changed hands. However, like one of the four horsemen, Marine Colonel Oliver North was assigned to the NSC to work out the details. We now enter 1986, Ghorbanifar is pretty much known to be a con-man, however he has proven to have some influence and has some access in a nebulous way to high officials in the Iranian government who NEED American weapons and need them now, Operation Staunch has been doing a number on Iran’s operational readiness and they are getting a bit desperate. On the Iranian side in the blue corner we have the realists lead by Speaker Rafsanjani (who I have mentioned previously), he had Prime Minister Mousavi on his side. In the red corner we have Ayatollah Montazeri, the heir apparent to Khomeini at this time, a relatively liberal person by Islamic cleric standards (to the extent that he believed in a multiparty limited democracy and opposed the mass executions of 1988), he deeply hated the USA and maintained his own personal militia headed by a family member who had been jailed under the Shah for murdering rostitutes and homosexuals. Khomeini learned of what was going on and sided with Rafsanjani, giving the Iranian government clear direction in this matter. This gave the lie to Ghorbanifar’s assurances of a moderate undercurrent in Iran. No such thing existed, the entire lot of them knew what was going on and had the endorsement of the supreme leader. It was not going to bolster the hand of the moderates in an internal power struggle one iota. They sent Ghorbanifar back for Phoenix and Hawk missiles, Harpoons and Sidewinders.  Hassan Karoubi - Iranian “moderate”. Ghorbanifar introduced the Israelis to someone he claimed as the leader of the Iranian moderates, Hassan Karoubi, who claimed to spend 3 days a week with Khomeini, they evidently put on a good show because this got its way back to MacFarlane who was delighted that they had contacted such a high official. They balked at some of the requests, but Reagan agreed to send 80 HAWK missiles via Israel. Oliver North is supervising this process on the US end. Now someone fucks up, Israel was going to fly to Portugal, unload the hawks to a deniable plane and then fly on, but they forgot to obtain landing permits and Portugal, smelling a rat, refused it landing rights. So North calls up someone at the CIA, Duane Claridge asking for his help, it was outlined to him that they needed to ship “oil drilling equipment” to Iran and outlined the issue. Claridge almost certainly knew it wasn’t that, but also knew not to ask, so he ordered a CIA plane from St Lucia Airlines to fly it directly from Tel Aviv to Tehran. Unfortunately, this plane could only carry 18 of the promised 80 missiles, and Israel had sent first generation HAWKs (not that Ghorbanifar had promised) replete with prominent star of David livery. And on the tarmac was Prime Minister Mousavi who saw this and went ballistic at Ghorbanifar, who then went ballistic at Israeli intelligence. If you think that this was a near thing that probably should have tipped them off that it wasn’t really a good idea, you are apparently not cut out for a job in international intelligence, because the lesson the US took from this was that they needed to be involved directly to avoid Israeli incompetence messing it up again.  Admiral John Poindexter, replacement National Security Advisor moderate crook. McFarlane resigned around this time, the reasons are still unclear, he was replaced by John Poindexter, who was not liked by SecDef as he had little foreign policy experience. He was a very intelligent man who had done well managing NSC staff and was known to be loyal. He also didn’t like congressional oversight. He discussed with Reagan in November of 86 the problems and they agreed it was Israel’s fault for snarling the whole thing up. So, the US must step in. There was a meeting, SecDef and SecState both argued passionately for stopping the whole affair now, SecDef particularly said at this stage that it violated the Arms Export Control Act as well as their own arms embargo. Reagan responded “Well, The American people will never forgive me if big, strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages over this legal question.” To which SecState would reply that visiting hours are on Thursday. The decision hung in the balance, Reagan had a fantasy in his head that these weapons were going to moderate Iranians, and he couldn’t seem to deal with the fact that the US really had nothing it could reasonably do to influence Hezbollah. He failed to make a firm decision, instead signing an order giving the CIA charge of the arms transfer with the order of strengthening the moderate elements of the Iranian government and to make every effort to free the hostages. The CIA brought in a retired USAF general turned arms dealer, he had been employed to ship arms to the Contras on an ongoing basis by both the CIA director Casey and by Oliver North. Iran would ask through Ghorbanifar for a list of the Iraqi order of battle. There was a meeting in the CIA about this and they produced a detailed map of the disposition of Iraqi forces along the frontline, they justified it on the grounds it was perishable information. Iran employed this to launch an effective night attack that the Iraqis repelled with their armoured reserve. Much of the CIA distrusted Ghorbanifar, regarding him as a cheat and a crook, they quizzed him on detailed questions about Iran which he failed at answering 13 of 15 in a polygraph test. However, the CIA director Casey remained committed to this, saying he was exaggerating his influence but clearly had something. Reagan at this stage ordered 4000 TOW missiles be given to the CIA. The first lot of 500 were loaded up in Texas and shipped to Israel then on to Iran, arriving in February 1986. Ten days later another 500 were delivered. Not one hostage was released. North and Poindexter kept pushing however, they arranged for a meeting in Frankfurt between someone from Moussavi’s office and the IRGC and the US delegation including North. The Iranians asked for phoenix missiles for the F-14 and were provided with another map of Iraqi positions by North who tried to impress on them the danger from the USSR. They agreed to another meeting on the island of Kish. This fell apart immediately, Ghorbanifar demanded an array of weapons similar to before, Hawks, sidewinders, harpoons. North took this request and worked out a scheme where there would be a sequential trade of those for the hostages. But it didn’t get off the ground. The CIA dispatched their foremost Iranian expert, George Cave, to support North. Cave didn’t like Ghorbanifar and was incredulous that the Israelis had recommended him. Israel at this point is playing the game of keeping the US supplying Iran to keep them hitting Saddam as long as possible. North and Cave would go to meet Ghorbanifar and his new Israeli handler, Amiram Nir. Cave pulled Nir aside and asked if they had vetted him, to which end Nir replied that they had, and he was trustworthy. Nir had been explicitly given the role of keeping the US in with Ghorbanifar.  NSA Director General Odom, definably not a crook. At this point North tried to cut out SecDef and SecState, he ordered the NSA director to exclude them from intercepts to do with this topic, but Director Odom told him to get stuffed because he didn’t work for North. He would then take the care to have the intercepts hand delivered to SecDef Weinberger. He offered the intercepts to SecState who refused to get involved. Odom urged SecDef to convince the president to call it off, saying that it was going to leak, and it was going to cause a hell of a mess, to which SecDef replied that he had, endlessly, and Reagan would not budge. Ghorbanifar would then mosey back into view. He proposed a meeting with Rafsanjani and Mousavi in Tehran as a final negotiation point for release of hostages. Cave and North were to fly to Tehran with him to lay the groundwork for a meeting with McFarlane, who though he had resigned was to take a part in this as a presidential envoy. So, this happy group would touch down in May 1986, North, Cave, Macfarlane, NSC member Howard Teicher, Nir who was posing as an American, and a CIA technical officer. They had a palette of hawk missile parts, and another plane standing by for immediate dispatch once they had the hostages. They then waited for someone to appear while the Iranian base commander desperately attempted to keep them entertained by putting on an impromptu airshow. Nobody had told him they were coming until they appeared in his landing pattern. Infact Iran was not remotely ready, they had agreed and been told the details, but they didn’t expect the US to come. The IRGC had no idea who these people were so they scoured the files, they found a reference to Cave in the former US embassy files, but not to North or McFarlane so they agreed to meet them. An hour later Ghorbanifar appeared looking dishevelled with Moussavi’s deputy Kangerlou and escorted them to the Iranian Hilton (now the Independence Hotel). So, meetings began at 5pm. It became very quickly apparent that Ghorbanifar had misled both sides, the Iranians thought the US was there to deliver huge quantities of weapons and spare parts (not just the HAWK missiles) for the release of the hostages later, the US position I have already covered. McFarlane threatened to leave, the Iranians found someone higher ranked, Hadi Najafabadi, Rafsanjani’s deputy, who had the advantage that he spoke perfect English and had the remotest degree of actual authority and seemed to at least know what was going on to the US delegation. Negotiations then actually got off the ground. McFarlane presented a CIA dossier on soviet forces on the Iranian border and said that they knew of soviet plans to invade in support of Iran. Najafabadi concurred and presented his demands. Hezbollah had required Israeli evacuation of the Golan, release of prisoners in Kuwait and monetary compensation. The US were unsure as to whether this was the Iranians trying to get more out of the affair or if they generally had little control over Hezbollah. The answer was probably both. McFarlane stuck to his guns and insisted on hostage’s release. The talks would continue but would founder on mutually unacceptable grounds. So, the Americans left, they had to be snuck out as someone within the Iranian regime had caught wind of this and had organized a mob to come and take them hostage. Fortunately, they were extracted without incident. This is another point where it should have ended, you gave it the good old college try, they got in a room and actually met the Iranians and found that no common ground could be found. McFarlane recommended as such. But it didn’t, Reagan didn’t stop it, and Ghorbanifar and Nir encouraged North to keep it going and so he did. Later that year another hostage was released, Father Jenco, head of Catholic release in Lebanon, Ghorbanifar promised Iran the remaining 12 palettes of HAWK parts when they did, this validated Ghorbanifar to CIA director Casey. Jenco carried a message criticising Reagan from another hostage for not doing enough to free them which the president took rather personally. The CIA dropped all pretence at bringing Iran in against the USSR and it devolved into solely a consideration of arms for hostages at this stage. Poindexter at least had the good sense to want to cut out Israel, Ghorbanifar and Nir. He told North to find another route into Iran, it took them a long time, but they found a nephew of Rafsanjani who was travelling abroad on nebulous business, he was a member of the IRGC and in September of 1986 Ali Bahramani would enter the white house with two other IRGC officers. They would talk for 2 days, Iran arrived with a shopping list and they left with a general agreement for a tit for tat exchange of arms for hostages. Cave managed to establish a fairly good relationship with Bahramani who asked him for US assistance in bringing about a ceasefire with Iraq. This can be taken as pretty much Iranian unofficial policy at this stage; the visit had been approved by the Supreme Leader. Negotiations went on, essentially it went for 500 TOW missiles for a hostage, then the US would try to get Kuwait to release some of the Iranian backed Hezbollah fighters they had imprisoned after the terrorist attacks of 1983. Then 500 more missiles for one more hostage, then the US considers sending intelligence on Iraq and artillery ammunition. It began, the first missiles from this round of talks arrived in October 1986. Then, as I suspect you have all been waiting for, three more hostages were taken. So, state of play after about a year is the US are down several piles of HAWK parts and a couple thousand TOW’s and are up a net of 0 hostages.  Ayatollah Montazeri (right) next to Ayatollah Khomeini. Then it starts to leak. The Lebanese magazine al-Shiraa ran a story about McFarlane’s meeting with Tehran, Cave suspected Ghorbanifar leaked it out of pique for being cut out. The actual culprit was Ayatollah Montazeri, the head of his militia I had mentioned kidnapped a Syrian diplomat and was put in prison for it, so he leaked it to embarrass Khomeini. This started to spread and wouldn’t go away. Reagan dissembled about it and then they held a crisis meeting. SecState delivered a really meaty I fukkin told you so and summarised the start of the farce very neatly that Israel had sucked them up into their operation to support Iran so they couldn’t object to Israel’s sales to Iran. Reagan himself was in denial, sticking to the idea that he never authorised a straight arms for hostages swap, that it was part of a normalisation of relations effort with Iran. SecDef then pointed out that the Israelis or Iranians could now blackmail them very easily, so Reagan went onto TV to try and get ahead of things. Reagans address is not particularly impressive, whether he believed his half truths himself or knew he was at best dissembling is up to debate. But his summary of events bears little relation to fact. In Iran Montazeri denied he leaked it and got into a public disagreement with Khomeini, Montazeri was removed as his successor and his militia leader Hashemi was executed. Despite this they still tried to keep it going. Tehran turned up and tried to get the missiles out via talking to Cave, who reported to Washington. Schultz took over at this point under orders of Reagan, talking to the Iranians but said that they would talk but there would be no arms and no intelligence. This was reported to SecDef by NSA Director Odom who subsequently hit the roof and sent a very hostile message to Schultz basically boiling down to “why are you still meeting with these utter clowns, I testified to Congress that we were done on this, why are we not done?” At that point they were infact, done. Nicaragua To avoid diluting the Iranian narrative I have left out the Contra part of Iran Contra until now. I shall now slide it back in again, it’s a fairly short story. Broadly speaking when the US delivered arms to Iran, Iran paid for them in cash, the CIA then took that cash and used it to buy weapons to ship to the Contras. I’m not going to go into depth here because its not relevant but the reason this was necessary was due to a piece of legislation known as the Boland amendment. Left wing members of congress were against US actions in Nicaragua, which was funding rebel groups against the Sandinista government, which was itself funding left wing revolution in neighbouring countries. This led to the passing of three progressive acts known as the Boland Amendments. Broadly these limited the executive’s discretional power to spend funds appropriated by congress for intelligence operations by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Particularly in reference to Nicaragua. The second Boland amendment was passed because people discovered the CIA had mined the harbours in Nicaragua and had blown up oil storage tanks in Corinto. The new amendment passed explicitly forbade “the CIA, the DoD, or any agency or entity of the US involved in intelligence activities” from using their funding appropriated by congress in Nicaragua. Bulletproof one might say. They also sought other funds from allies, they got $32mn from Saudi Arabia, and $2mn from Taiwan. In 1985 however the Intelligence authorization act banned US government agencies from seeking third party national assistance to fund the contras, excepting humanitarian assistance. So, they turned to private funds, they successfully raised around $3mn from private individuals from fundraisers at the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund (run by a major republican donor) which was funnelled to the contras. However, this isn’t really enough to run a war on. So North came up with the idea of overcharging the Iranians for weapons and using that money to pass to the contras, the proceeds from the sale of arms to Iran was not appropriated from congress, it was bilked from the Iranians, so the NSC, particularly Oliver North used that to get the funds to keep funding the contras. The NSC was not necessarily an intelligence agency so they tried to employ that to protect them from the Boland amendments. The fact that they enacted this scheme right as congress were about to pull them in for questioning over hearings for their previous dodgy dealings before they start selling weapons to Iran to finance this revolt almost beggars belief. Round-Up This is an awful lot of facts and numbers, but I think is representative of an era really before significant and effective international arms control existed. Things like the Chemical Weapons Convention wouldn’t be signed until 1993 which would ban what Iraq was doing specifically. Efforts like the Convention on Cluster Munitions or proper landmine regulation are still decades off. The unrivalled free for all of the 1980’s had a long running effect which started a push for what would in 2014, become the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate international trade in conventional weapons. This includes much of the west, but notably excludes Russia and the PRC. The only thing keeping it in check was the collective conscience of the nations involved, or pressure by the USA, or fear of the retaliations of other nations. That is why it became such an almighty confusing mess. Israel really showed its true colours again that they are ruthlessly out for themselves, even to the great expense of their only consistent ally the US with the whole affair. Whether that attitude and actions are acceptable is something you must judge for yourself on, I can sympathise with their view but ultimately, I don’t find it terribly productive, like many of their actions. But then again, I don’t live in danger of annihilation with three wars in living memory to try and erase my state. I will say it was a quintessentially Israeli plan and it worked out pretty much exactly how they wanted it to. Nobody really had particularly clean hands, some were dirtier than others but it was really a failing by the entire international community, there were some late plays by Europe to try and get a proper arms embargo done via the UN in 1986, but it was vetoed by the PRC and USSR, though the cynical might say that their populaces reactions had cut off their own access to the trough and now they were trying to claim the moral high ground rather late. There is certainly some truth to that, but I wouldn’t necessarily 100% accept it. In reference to the idea of the IRGC blowing up the Canadian airliner that was raised, I don’t buy it because there really isn’t a reason for it to happen in 1985, Iran are desperate for weapons, the US seems to be delivering on them, albeit sporadically, and their chosen method of pressure is taking hostages in Lebanon which is proven to work, why would they risk their one real lifeline to perform this act? Potentially it was carried out by the IRGC as a rogue op, but it would be their largest one to date, and they tend to get found out after the fact because they aren’t terribly subtle. Egypt isn’t exactly prime stomping grounds for them in the 80’s and it would require significant penetration of the apparatus there to get away clean. We know so much about the inner workings of the US government in that era owing to extensive congressional investigations, despite Norths desperate shredding, that I cannot imagine such a cover up could be conducted without some reference to it appearing and being pursued. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 23:01
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Nebakenezzer posted:A fantastic post!! I've a few small questions. The Iranians would use the phoenix a few times throughout the war against various targets, indeed successfully against Iraqi Tu-22's who were bombing Iranian cities most notably, in defence of Kharg and just generally whenever they had the opportunity. They seemed to load them up as part of standard loadout as a shot down F-14 gave the Iraqis and hence the soviets a complete Phoenix in the mid-war. An Iranian F-14 pilot is credited with shooting down 3 Iraqi MiG's with a single phoenix, which im not sure i believe because i cant find any original sources on it but is oft repeated, but they seem to be very much in frequent use as much as their supplies allowed. Iraq widely employed its Tu-22's, I've nearly finished a post today which covers them using them in city attacks and getting them shot down by Iranian F-14's which ill post soonish. They had significant soviet technical assistance and generally speaking were of a much higher level of technical sophistication generally than Libya and so i suspect had a generally easier time of it . Kangxi posted:Fantastic posts. Iran Iraq by Razoux is what i get most of my stuff from if you read it you will recognise the chronological structure of these posts as i use it as the framework for this stuff (what i do is largely check my notes on that book, summarise, check for additional information or confirmation on things that smell a bit "off" in other sources and round out specific areas), i think its the best book on the subject. Other books i draw on include : "The Iran - Iraq war, a military and strategic history" and "Immortal - A military history of Iran and its armed forces". The US stuff i go to "The Twilight War - The secret history of Americas 30 year conflict with Iran" and "America's first clash with Iran - The Tanker War". Theres also specifically a bunch of available declassified CIA documents on Iraq if that is your bag. Theres a book i havent read from the Cold War Histories series called The Iran-Iraq war which i understand is good, particularly on the international diplomatic front, but i havent obtained it yet. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 19:34
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Previous post Its further up the page. 1984-5: Total all encompassing war. Here we get into what is known as the War of the Cities, where Iran and Iraq are slugging at each others population centers and the fronts of the war really stretch from capital to capital. It’s a bit of an open question as to who started attacking each others population first in Iran-Iraq. Evidently when Iraq rolled through Khorammshahr in the opening days of the war a lot of civilians got caught in the bombardment. When Iran took it back and attacked Basra the same thing occurred. There had been sporadic air attacks from both sides on targets in cities. But there is a distinction to be drawn between the attacking of cities that you are actively trying to assault and take, and the systematic attack on the population centres themselves as part of a terror bombing campaign. The former is largely unavoidable, if deeply distasteful, the latter is a conscious choice you are making to try and win the war. And this is how the war would develop. There will be unavoidable comparisons to the strategic bombing campaign in WW2, but I think in Iran Iraq it is something very distinct. The WW2 bombing campaign developed as much as it did initially out of an inability to do anything else, Britain couldn’t invade Mainland Europe, it was engaged in a few side theatres yes, but especially after the point of invasion of the USSR the only way to actually help the soviets effectively and directly was in bombing German cities. When Iraq starts firing Scud missiles at Iranian cities, they know that they can’t hope to really have an effect on Iranian warmaking capacity, Pretty much the entirety of Iranian “production” is located overseas where they purchase arms using oil money. Iraq does attack Iranian oil capacity too and with far more vigour than it conducts the attacks on civilian centres. The same logic holds true for Iran when they retaliate via the same method. The two nations were definitely not ignorant of this and would spend much effort attacking each others oil industries. This will also see the start of the tanker war in true earnest that I have covered in depth in another post, there will be passing references to it, its vitally important, but go back to the other post if you want to know more.  Iraqi FROG-7 launchers captured after Gulf-2. The contrast comes that because of the very scale of the attacks against Germany and Japan, they were destroying enemy production capability and were doing so at quite a prodigious clip. There was no way in hell that you could buy enough missiles at around a million dollars a pop, especially given the CEP of the Scud-B’s and FROG-7’s that were being flung were 450m and 600m respectively. To really actually do damage to specific targets you would need to level the city with them. Somewhat grimly, the less effective nature of the campaign in terms of its destructive power makes it less defensible as a tactic, there is no argument for military efficacy to be made here. Iraq is not in a situation where it has no other way to fight back, it is engaged on a multiple hundred-mile front, every dollar it spends on TBM’s to huck at Iranian cities is a dollar not spent on weapons to fight the Iranian armed forces. This is I think the key distinction between the two, much as the USSR chose to neglect strategic aviation in WW2 in favour of focusing hard on winning the actual active front war, Iraq and Iran would both have benefitted from that approach given the limitations they were under. Of course, it would not break either sides morale, it would really unite the Iranian population, which was still quite fractured even in 1984, in a way that the Ayatollah could only really dream of. It would also put the idea of a mass Shia rebellion against Saddam out of the reach of the Ayatollah. The frontline is largely stale at this point, neither side seems able to advance after the Dawn offensives and they are both digging in, so it is understandable why at this point they start looking for alternate means of pressure to apply to each other. This is why the tanker war kicks off at around this time as well as the war of the cities. One of those would be a far more effective means than the other. The beginning of the war of the cities. In late 1983 Iran exploded a massive truck bomb in a crowded Baghdad city centre, killing about a hundred Iraqis and injuring hundreds more. Iraq publicly swore revenge on Iran for this attack and it was the public justification used when on February 1st 1984, they announced their intention to attack 11 Iranian cities within 5 days, warning their citizens to evacuate. Tehran responded by threatening to shell Basra. (More directly into the city centre one can only assume, given they were already shelling Basra). However Saddam went ahead, on Feb 12th he fired a salvo of Scud missiles at the city of Dezful, killing 40 Iranian civilians and wounding 200. There had been some degree of firings before this point but this is the point at which we start to see proper dedicated campaigns for each side attacking cities.  Iran-Iraq border and the cities that would eat the majority of the war of the cities. Tehran promptly retaliated, firing artillery at the cities of Basra, settlements on the Al-Faw peninsula, Mandali and Kanaqin. Iraq would return fire with more missiles at Abadan, Ahwaz, Susangerd, Andimeshk, Ilam and Kermanshah. Iraq would also start bombing Iranian cities with its airforce, the same ones mentioned above, to which Iran would also retaliate, using its F-4’s. This would result in heavy casualties for both sides, Iraq would lose 3 of its precious 7 operational Tu-22’s in an attempted raid on Tehran, the planes falling victim to Iranian F-14’s which had been put on alert to intercept exactly this sort of affair, the whole thing carrying somewhat amusing echoes of the purpose of the F-14 in the first place, to intercept soviet bombers before they hit US carrier groups. Iran lost several of its F-4’s in this effort to Iraqi ground fire. Its worth noting that 60% of Iranian airforce losses were caused by ground fire and it was in exactly this type of foolhardy endeavour that their losses were highest, F-4’s falling victim to everything from 37mm light AA on a Baghdad rooftop to SA-2 missiles out over the Persian Gulf. Iraq would stop its air campaign after its losses and would switch to attacking other targets while Iran would attempt to keep going for some time. Iraq would decide that missiles were the future for attacking Iranian cities, it was far easier to obtain them and far less risky to fire them than going with bombers. They would dedicate their airforce to attacking Iranian oil infrastructure, nuclear infrastructure and tankers in the gulf. Iraq attacks Iranian nuclear capacity  Reactor 1 at Bushehr, picturing the dome that was cracked by Iraq. The Iranian reactor at Bushehr had continued being constructed after the outbreak of war, originally laid down by Kraftwerk Union AG (A joint venture between Siemens and AEG) in 1975 under the Shah it was not finished by the time of the wars outbreak. They would pull out in 1979 after iran failed to pay their bills. It was around 50% complete at this time. Iran would be attempting to complete it to the point of being able to use it to refine plutonium fuel at this time. Iraq would start their raid on March 24th, their recently delivered Super Etendards took off with a load of Exocets, they had set the missiles to lock onto static structures of roughly nuclear reactor size and fired off 8 missiles at it. This was done with US satellite reconnaissance of the area. Damage assessment afterwards would reveal that there had been only minor damage, the missiles had largely locked on to secondary support structures and hit them. What it did do was focus the IAEA’s attention on the site, as well as the world medias, all of whom suspected or accused Iran of trying to proliferate. Iraq would launch several more raids on this as the war went on, largely to limited effect, though in November 1986 a pair of Mirage F1’s would launch 4 AS-30L laser guided missiles that would crack the reactor dome of one of the plants reactor. Iran would divert significant resources to defend this site as the war went on, diverting them from other targets, making this one of Iraq’s more successful air campaigns in terms of effect in terms of resources invested. Iraqi airforce reforms Iraqs airforce has been pretty uninspiring up to now, its leaders had been party loyalists largely lacking in even basic competence. But now General Hamid Shaban would come to head the IQAF. He wasn’t a brilliant pilot however he did have a very firm grasp about objectives. Iraqs airforce up to now had been somewhat directionless, it pandered to Saddams whim and the glory hound aspirations of the well-connected pilots that flew the planes. It failed to act in a cohesive manner towards a specific end. Shaban looked at this and decided that the Iraqi airforces mission would not to be to ride out to glorious honourable air combat in the sky, but to direct itself specifically for attacking ground targets both at the front and deep in Iranian territory accurately. He changed acquisitions to focus on ground attack, requesting MiG-23BN’s, Su-22, Su-25 and Mirage F-1EQ’s and ordered the mirages already in Iraqi inventory modified to incorporate the EQ’s functions and features for ground attack and requested Dassault send 60 technicians to perform these modifications. The modifications included hardpoint expansion, ECM equipment from Thompson-CSF, more fuel capacity and capability for the AS-30L missile. Indeed those technicians would take back knowledge which would be instrumental in influencing the French airforce to acquire the Mirage F-1CT in 1988 as their own ground attack variant which would serve them very well.  Iraqi F-1EQ having made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after being hit in a raid on Farsi Island. Honestly Shabans reforms are probably the most important thing Iraq really did in terms of getting its act together, it gave their airforce a purpose and they would fulfil that purpose pretty competently. The tanker war would do more damage to Iran than anything else Iran did and that was conducted entirely by the IQAF. Iraq had much less use for an airforce that fought the enemy airforce because Iran’s airforce itself was far more focused on winning air superiority. When it turned its hand to ground attack its planes ran into significant problems with Iraq’s ability to throw cash at missiles and thousands of pieces of light calibre AA that took a very heavy toll on Iran’s air force. This is not to say the IQAF abandoned air superiority, in this year they would shoot down two Iranian tomcats and retrieve a phoenix missile from the wreckage that they would send to Moscow. Irans airforce reforms. Iran also got an airforce chief change, Colonel Seddigh, his predecessor having been disgraced and executed for allowing too many defections and his cautious use of his planes. The new chap was seen to be loyal enough that he was able to persuade the Ayatollahs to allow his pilots to resume training properly (restrictions had been put in place to prevent defection from the Shahs previous favoured branch). He had 20 F-6’s (MiG-19) delivered from the PRC for use as jet trainers and started sending his planes out to aggressively attack Iraqi planes. In engagements shortly after this policy there would be 8 Iraqi planes shot down for the loss of two Iranian planes. F-14’s would also shoot down one of Iraqs precious Super Etendards a few weeks later while the IQAF was raiding Kharg. However he was more benefitted by circumstance, since the start of the war Iran had been unable to access its stores of spare parts that it had bought in quite significant quantity, because there had been a fancy-schmancy new computerised stock inventory system implemented for it. But before the US technicians who installed it could teach anyone in the country how to operate it they, rather sensibly, fled. So Iran had a lot of spare parts, but no way to know what was what. In mid-1984 they managed to decode this system which gave them access to this stockpile, along with significant Iranian buys of parts abroad, including from a ring on the USS Kittyhawk which was in the gulf at the time. As a result, Iranian airforce readiness rates doubled, giving them a ready stock of 30 F-14’s, 60 F-4’s and 50 F’5’s which were combat ready.  Iranian F-14 carrying a modified HAWK missile This was brought up while I was writing it so I thought I would address it directly, Iran was able to briefly maintain a much higher sortie rate in 1984 though they soon started to run dry again. This meant that they adopted a ground ready posture, where they waited on the tarmac until Iraqi ground attack planes were sighted then they scrambled. This meant that they frequently failed to intercept in time, their initial success with this method was to do with the fact their missiles were working well at the time. However as time dragged on into 1985, the Phoenix particularly became more and more unreliable. The reason is that the internal battery was starting to go dead, and spares were almost unfindable, especially for the Phoenix, though they had more luck on the AIM-9’s and AIM-7’s just in terms of availability. Iran in desperation attempted to modify their HAWK missiles for aerial launch from the F-14 to replace the role of the Phoenix but were ultimately unsuccessful. The home front. Iraq  Saddam (front) with best bud Hammurabi (right) and Nebuchadnezzar II (back). Both sides had problems with morale and grumbling at home, times were hard, lots of peoples sons, brothers and husbands were coming back in boxes and there was no end in sight. Iraq doubled down on a cult of personality around Saddam, depicting him as Nebuchadnezzar, Hammurabi and Saladin varyingly, smiting the Persian lion. There was constant media coverage of him among the workers in a very socialist style, as well as the soldiers and prominently with heads of foreign states. There were huge patriotic blood drives and a state saving bond scheme along with urges to donate a days wages, or for women to donate their jewellery, that effort resulting in a windfall of 4 tons of gold in a single year, 1984, which netted Iraq $500mn. The regime also encouraged women to have at least 5 children, another slightly creepy reminiscence of Nazi Germanies policies, though without the racial purity overtones. (Though the birth rate was enough of a problem for France in the 30’s that they viewed contraceptives and their use as a national security issue in some areas of the government). They would echo Iran in putting significant propaganda in the schooling system and militarised the education system by introducing basic training for males 15-17 (them being drafted at 18). There were civic efforts to drain the marshes along the fronts and many other programs of public works. A citizen accolade program was introduced, where those who put in prominent effort became a Friend of Saddam, granting them free healthcare, preferential access to university education for your children and preferential loan rates, and for the truly deserving a brand-new suit and a reception with Saddam. Iraq would also hold elections to “confirm the legitimacy” of its regime, Saddam reserved 40% of the seats in parliament for Shia Iraqis to diffuse Iranian pan-Shia propaganda, and subsequently baited Iran by saying that the heart of Shiism was in Iraq not Iran. Which worked fairly well, Iran responded angrily and called for the destruction of Iraq and liberation of Najaf and Karbala, which made the Iranians look like lunatics and helped Iraq pretend to be the victim. Iraq managed to achieve a good level of unity in the face of the war, Saddam was very conscious of the need to maintain civilian life. As soon as the air defence network seemed to deter Iran from bombing Baghdad he lifted the curfew and a huge proportion of the states budget went to ensure stores were well stocked and affordable. He privatized agriculture and successfully improved production doing so. Over a million guest workers from Asia, Palestine and Egypt were brought in to run the oil industry and female labour rate participation was encouraged and increased dramatically. Saddam also ensured good conditions for the army in particular. Officers were granted cars for good performance, Colonels and Generals being given the much-coveted Mercedes or even in some cases a villa. The families of dead soldiers were granted a pension, plot of land and an interest free loan to build a house on said land. All of this came together to help Iraq retain the ability and will to fight. Iran  Fountain of blood in Tehran 1984. No they weren’t being allegorical. Its red dye. Many other fountains would appear in other Iranian cities. Iran on the other hand took the approach of a cult of the martyr, rather than the cult of the dictator, more fitting their theocratic leanings and governmental structure. The martyr died for god, god is represented through the Ayatollahs etc. etc. etc. They erected a Fountain of Blood in Tehran to represent the sacrifice of the faithful at the front, streets, schools and other buildings were named for prominent martyrs, largely from the Pasdaran. Media coverage was relentless and effusive in their praise of those that martyred themselves at the front. Anti-Americanism and Anti-Israeli messages were common in an attempt to link Iraq into the Zionist conspiracy they claimed wove it all together. In prayer services all over the nation they would recall the sacrifices of prominent Shiite martyrs from the past and promised that all who died on the front would be sent to paradise for their sacrifice. Dress codes for governmental bodies was set to black, the colour of mourning, and also a nice economy measure in terms of buying and producing mass quantities of cloth. The war was cast in a context of a crusade, Shia against Sunni, by Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as a nationalistic struggle, Iranian against Arab. This was an effective approach, especially among Iran’s predominantly quite poor and poorly educated rural populace, this approach, repeated through mullahs down to the village church is something we have seen throughout history as a means of motivating the masses and it worked just as well here as it has in other places. This is not to say that it was limited to them, it was a national fervour and many recruits to the Pasdaran also came from the educated urban classes. Iran also adopted a policy of compensation to its soldiers, those wounded on the front were given priority for government jobs. Khomeini issued a fatwa to authorise children to enrol in the Basijj militia without parental permission, stating that fighting for Islam was a higher calling than work or education. There was the establishment of the Martyrs Foundation who issued a state pension to the family of dead soldiers. Very poor families were very well aware that if their children were to die at the front then their own material situation would improve dramatically, for large rural families this was certainly a compelling, if very depressing, argument. A strong reason for many Pasdaran/Basijj militia was that were they to die, their families would be granted a better future. Further to the idea of it being a crusade, there was establishment of the religious police, who further enforced a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, particularly with regards to the rights of women, particularly with regards to dress codes. This was done simultaneously with encouraging them to work in factories. There are some rather grizzly anecdotes of veils coming loose and getting caught in machine tools. I am certain that many factory foremen were pragmatic about this for the most part, except when the religious police were scheduled to come round. They also adopted the same policy as Iraq for the donation of jewellery, those that donated the most were widely praised in the papers. Civil servants who were of an age to fight were ordered to go or pay a large fraction of their salary to the state, farmers were taxed heavily with in-kind donations for the same. There were scheduled power cuts and a return to bartering as the black market exploded. The Bazaar had been a major component of the unrest that had brought down the Shah, and the Ayatollahs were aware that they could not push it too hard and so largely left the black market unchecked. They would subsidise staple products and try to ensure their supply to various degrees of success. They would order the construction of massive underground shelters when the war of the cities began, though these would be slow in construction. Despite all this largesse from the government, the hardline Islamic Republic party was savaged in the 1984 elections despite direct support from Khomeini, the IRP would win the plurality of votes but not a majority forcing them to enter coalition and replace the Minister of Defence Mohammad Salimi who was blamed for a lot of the problems with Hussein Jalali. Iran was significantly more unstable on the home front than Iraq, reflecting their fractured and for want of a better word, slightly more democratic form of government than Iraq. But also their inability to adopt as significant a guns and butter approach than Saddam did. This instability would lead to further trouble for Iran as they suffer more military reverses throughout 1984 and early 1985. Battle of the marshes, round 2.  Battles around the marshes in 1985. Again taken from Razoux. Iraq would launch a counteroffensive in the Hoveyzeh marshes in early 1985, they launched an attack on the Majnoon islands. Employing boat borne assault troops from two Iraqi special forces brigades, with supporting forces of four divisions they launched a significant artillery attack on the Islands followed up by the special forces attacking the islands beaches. It was a particularly bloody battle with the Iranians rushing troops along their pontoon bridges and dykes and it ended with the Iraqis repelled from the northern island but keeping a presence on the southern island. They started constructing their own dyke back to their lines to reinforce and would dig in. To attempt to hammer out some kind of national unity in the government it was agreed to make another major offensive in the marshes to repel the Iraqis and follow up to Iranian advances in that region in 1984. This offensive was set for March 11th 1985 and was to take place in the Hoveyzeh marshes and had the same strategic aims, cut the Baghdad - Basra road and isolate the city. The marshes will provide advantages over Iraqi firepower etc. etc. etc. We have seen these justifications before in the previous post and I won’t re-iterate them. It wasn’t just a straight replay, they were more prepared this time, they had secured significant supplies of atropine, gas masks and gas capes, enough assault rifles to supply everyone reliably and more supplies of RPG’s. There had been work to improve Army-Pasdaran cooperation and coordination, a concentration of equipment was achieved in the area held by 3 divisions of the 6th Iraqi corps while diversionary exercises were conducted in the leadup to the attack in the areas held by the 3rd and 4th Iraqi corps. 11 divisions were assembled with the majority of Iranian bridge crossing equipment and they would employ repeated maximum pressure human wave assaults to overrun Iraqi defenders and take the road. This attack would fall in the al-Qurnah, al-Azair gap much as the offensives of the past. It was to be called the Badr offensive, named after the battle of Badr from the 7th century and a famous victory of Muhammed over the denizens of Mecca. The attack would be launched to immediate success, the Iraqi 35th ID was overrun quickly by attacks from 2 Pasdaran and 3 mechanized army divisions and fell back to the river, mostly shattered with significant proportions of them being captured. They quickly reached the shore of the Tigris and built pontoon bridges to cross the bridge and allowed the mechanized forces to cross and successfully cut the Baghdad Basra road between al-Azair and al-Qurnah. Elsewhere two Pasdaran divisions assaulted the Iraqi 4th ID in the south, using artillery support floating on large barges and successfully drove them back to the Tigris. Iraq was lacking in support for its men in this sector, with the marshes proving unsuitable for the mounting of heavy artillery support in the style they were used to employing and this badly harmed their ability to resist Iranian attacks. However the Iraqi counterattack was swift, three Armoured divisions, and two mechanized divisions, one a Republican guard unit were rushed to attack the Iranian breach. Iraqi helicopters and heavy bombers pounded Iranian units, with the Tu-16 bombers attacking Iranian staging grounds from high altitude back in the Hoveyzeh marshes. Three special forces brigades were ferried deep into the marshes to cut the Iranian pontoon bridges and cut off their retreat as airpower attacked Iranian boats in the marshes. On March 14th the Iraqi armour attacked with the support of significant quantities of chemical weapons. This did less direct damage but Iranian troops were not well prepared to fight with the penalty to vision and endurance from wearing gas masks and were badly disorganized by it. Iraqs troops were far better prepared and their tanks were equipped to deal with contaminated environment and they successfully pushed Iran back into the marshes. Within 8 days Iraq had recaptured all territory lost in this assault and inflicted 30’000 casualties on iran for 11’000 of their own. The losses of AFV’s and helicopters was about even on both sides at around 100 and 12 respectively. Iraq was elated by the swift victory and lavished gifts upon his victorious troops, Iran was predictably morose. Rafsanjani came under significant fire from Ayatollah Khamenei (The man who would succeed Khomeini eventually) who had emerged as his main political rival. The MEK (Peoples Mujahedin) would carry out several attacks in Tehran and conduct several high profile bombing attacks around this time causing much internal turmoil. As a result of this Rafsanjani decreed a temporary halt to massive offensives to deal with internal conflict and capitulated to army demands to end human wave offensives for the time being. Crucially Rafsanjani would expand the Pasdarans naval division at this time, equipping them with high speed small motorboats bought from China, Sweden and North Korea and the rocket launchers to arm them. This would form the majority of Irans offensive action against ships in the gulf. This also ties in to Iran’s desperation for TOW missiles displayed at this time with Ghorbanifar and Iran-Contra, they had been driven back again and again by Iraqi tanks and needed a solution. Mubarak would visit Baghdad to show his support for Iraq in the middle of this assault and encourage more support for Iraq from the gulf monarchies. This was the real thawing of relations between Egypt and Iraq, which had been somewhat strained since Saddam took power. In return Saddam promised to support Mubaraks effort to get the seat of the Arab League returned to Cairo from Tunis after its suspension in 1979 as a result of Sadats peace agreement with Israel. The war of the cities heats up  Al-Hussein domestic Iraqi Scud copy being inspected. Saddams immediate response to Operation Badr was to enact a new bombing offensive aimed at Iranian industrial infrastructure, hitting oil facilities near Khorramshahr and at Kharg island. Iran would retaliate by launching an attack directly on Baghdad in March, employing its newly acquired Scud-B missiles that it had received from Libya. This embarrassed and enraged Saddam who was especially aggravated that he could not hit Tehran back. He authorized the release of FROG-7 and Scud attacks on the Iranian border cities that were within range. He ordered Shaban to find a way to attack Tehran. And Shaban’s life probably depended on the answer. The Tu-22’s had been savaged previously and so were dismissed, the Tu-16 was an even less promising option. The only alternative he could see was using the MiG-25, it was much faster than the bombers and better able to evade interception, it just needed to be modified. The USSR had developed a system allowing the MiG 25 to drop 500kg bombs at high Mach numbers and Iraq got wind of this and requested it be delivered to them. For two weeks in late April. The mission profile was a MiG-25 would be loaded with 4 500kg bombs and external fuel tanks, take off from Kirkuk and burn the external fuel reaching the Iranian border, it would jettison its external fuel tanks and climb to 60’000 feet (Above the F-14’s service ceiling of 50’000 feet) and accelerated to around Mach 2.5 and sprint at Tehran, twenty minutes later it would reach a point 25 miles from Tehran and drop its bombs which would follow a ballistic trajectory for the last leg of their journey and drop into Tehran. The MiG-25 would then dive and book it for the Iraqi border. It had an accuracy of around +/- 3 kilometers employing this attack, or around a tenth of the length of the city. This would continue every night for the next month, even targeting the holy city of Qom when Khomeini was there for a visit. No MiG-25 was lost in these attacks. Iraq would also heavily bomb border cities for the loss of two MiG 23’s. Saddam declared 1985 as the year of the pilot and lavishly gifted daring pilots with rewards for their exploits. Iranian generals would scream for more HAWK missiles to try and stop the MiG 25’s but they never succeeded in getting a missile battery in the right place to intercept. They mostly retaliated by bombing Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul and other major cities, losing two of their F-4’s over Baghdad in one particularly bungled attack. Saddam would call for another ceasefire, even going so far as to relinquish his territorial claim to the Shatt-al-Arab and negotiations over reparations. However, Iran stuck to their guns about the removal of Saddam and return of Shia refugees (who they wished to use to undermine the entire regime, much as they would when the US would finally push Saddam over). They delivered this reply via a salvo of a dozen Scuds at Baghdad. Iraq would retaliate by ordering a bombing of Tehran with his 4 Tu-16 bombers, equipped with heavy jamming pods they destroyed significant parts of downtown Tehran and killed 80 and wounded 300 Iranian civilians who at this point were generally sleeping in shelters. Eventually both sides started to run short of missiles and in June a truce in civilian targets was agreed supervised by the UN that put a stop to the war of the cities for the time being. However, Iran had another plan to win. To apply pressure on Iraq at every point to force Iraq to maintain such levels of personnel at the front to ruin the Iraqi economy. This was focused around the Hovyezeh marshes initially, with Iran employing light infantry attacking in light boats into Iraqi lines at night in order to wear them down. These operations would last through from June to the start of the rainy season in the late autumn. They also kicked up activity in Kurdistan. The Kurds get shafted. Again.  Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK. The PUK under Talabani had assured Saddam of their neutrality a year or so prior. Talabani denounced the agreement in 1985 on the grounds of Iraqs agreements with Baghdad to allow them to hunt down the PKK (The major Turkish based Kurdish group of the time) in Iraqi Kurdistan. He did this in part in order to gain the support of Abdullah Ocalan who would help him in his internal power struggles against the Barzani brothers and the KDP. Talabani was also of the view that the Iranians might well end up taking over Iraqi Kurdistan and he had to hedge his bets. Saddam offered an amnesty to the PUK if they laid down their arms but it was rejected and the PUK went underground and started fighting the Iraqis. This meant that Kurdistan degenerated into a free for all that took on all the characteristics of a farce. In March 1985 you have the PUK wading into the fight, fighting the Iraqi Popular Army (the Iraqi equivalent of the Pasdaran militia), the Barzani clans KDP fighters, the KDPI of Ghassemlou aligned with Baghdad, all at the same time, there are also the extra factions of the PKK fighters who fled from Turkey who are fighting Turkey and also Baghdad and the PDKI, but not generally the other Kurdish forces or Iran, and the Iranian armed forces who are fighting Baghdad and the KDPI. The PDKI would seek rapprochement with Iran in negotiations abroad, Iran hoping to neutralise the KDPI via these and free up their forces currently keeping them suppressed. They wouldn’t get anywhere until they assassinated Ghassemlou in 1988 and signed an agreement with his successor. Iran would launch another assault in the area in July 1985 in cooperation with the PUK who seized the fortress of Hassan Beg to distract Iraqi forces while Iranian forces overran Iraqi forces at Penjwin and tried to take the Darbandikhan dam again but were repulsed. Two weeks of bloody counterattacks followed which drove Iran back past its starting positions. They suspended operations in the Kurdistan area and focused their attempts in trying to get the KDP and PUK to play nice, to no real avail. The Kurds are really hamstrung a lot by their own internal divisions in this era, divisions stoked and fed by those that want to keep them down certainly, but this is creating and seeding feuds that will last for decades and are still not forgotten today. I’m not suggesting there was much that could be done differently, I don’t really like the Barzani’s particularly as they seem to run their affairs very much in a dictatorial fashion in KDP areas. I don’t pretend to be an expert on Kurdish internal politics but that is very much an observation as to their issues in this period. Around this time is the first time that use of chemical weapons on the Kurds is mooted in internal Iraqi discussions to target leadership and command centres of Kurdish groups, (generally involving the term Special Arsenal, Iraqi code for chemical weapons). Summary During this period a few interesting things crop up. The Iraqis start attempting to engage in Scud hunts, using their Mirages to scour the Iranian countryside for the launchers after a launch was detected, however very little effect was had. Something that was echoed a few scant years later when the coalition tried to find Iraqi Scuds that were firing on Saudi Arabia and Israel. During this period of time. Up to 1985 Iraq would fire a mixture of FROG and Scud missiles at Iran totalling 273, Iran would fire in retaliation a total of 18, almost all at Baghdad. From this point on Iranian acquisition of Scud’s from Libya would ramp up their attacks on Iraq and they would not be shy about retaliating for past grievances while Iraq attempted another PR move by suspending their own attacks. Both nations are now very close to creating their own domestic missile, Iraq’s Al-Hussein (developed from the Scud) and Irans Oghab missile (developed from the PRC Type-83). The Al-Hussein would prove to be far more sophisticated and dangerous, reflecting Iraq’s higher funding and technological level in its development. We see the start of the fight with the Kurds which will end up in Chemical Ali’s rise to infamy, and the real deadlock developing which will dog the war for the remainder of its duration. There will be a few brilliant attacks executed which will shift the lines somewhat, but there will be a lot more bloody failures than successes. The war of the cities and the tanker war both ramp up about now reflecting this state of stalemate as both sides wrestle to find any way to break the deadlock. Both armies have now learned to fight, but having done so at the same rate they are as locked in stalemate as they were before. As a footnote, I have a problem with this endeavour that I want to complain about briefly. I often have to stop and check myself as I disbelieve stuff that I read, as it sounds like what I would recognise today as the insane ramblings of islamophobes. So I go and check, but a lot of this stuff, particularly the martyrdom stuff Iran is really really leaning into did occur and its often very hard to wrap your head around. It’s a type of state I just can’t quite “get”. I understand Iraq a lot more, it’s a recognisable dictatorship with your usual dictatorship trappings, it’s a comprehensible evil. But understanding Iran is difficult. The justifications for why many Iranians fought is complicated, ranging from religious fervour to patriotism to just trying to provide for their families, but the fanaticism that pervades the entirety of the Pasdaran and much of the government is sometimes a little too much when you see the tenth picture of an Iranian kid a full head and shoulders shorter than the men surrounding him going in to fight. This isn’t meant as a particular moral judgement about which of the two regimes is more evil, which is an entirely pointless effort but simply an observation that the life experiences of people in Iran must have just been so far removed from my own that they would put up with and even vote for these people. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 20:54
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HEY GUNS posted:how familiar are you with religious wars? if you only looked at iran it would look like islamophobic propaganda but "we" did our share of this poo poo Its certainly not something i think of as unique to Iran (even in the modern day), its not so much a geography thing and more a time scale thing. This is a modern state in 1980, Iran had been a pretty educated and prosperous nation for a while now going into this war. Its a shock to the system when you have university students going out en masse and signing up for the revolutionary guards, I know people who were born in Iran and were alive in this time period. I guess its a mental seperation between the "past" where i expect this to happen and the "present" where i dont. Which i know to be ridiculous intellectually speaking but the little mental tic is still there.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:51
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LatwPIAT posted:What did warfare in a chemical warfare environment actually look like? I've read a lot about how Cold War AFVs were designed to fight in NBC environments and how it was thought that troops should fight in NBC environments, but how did the Iraqi troops actually conduct mechanized warfare on a chemical battlefield? Did they sit about inside their BTRs without dismounting and shooting through the firing ports, was it basically identical to regular mechanized warfare, was it something else completely - what was it, basically? Initially they would leave a gap of around 8 hours for the agent to dissipate and go in on foot with their tanks in varying degrees of MOPP ranging from just surgical masks in earlier days to actual proper gas masks and capes. There are tapes of some high level Iraqi meetings where they emphasise the 8 hour gap for gas effects to be minimized before they send their troops in and notes on Iraqi training say that it was impressed on them the importance of using gas masks when they were subjected to live chemical weapons training, though precisely what that training was is unelaborated. There are references to republican guards units running into trouble with fighting in close quarters against Iranian soldiers while wearing gas masks with condensation blinding them and the respirator causing them to lose breath. I believe standard procedure was dismount infantry to support tanks and advance slowly in the marshy areas that they did the majority of their fighting in. There is an incident where Iraq tries to get a bit clever and sends in its tanks shortly after the preparatory gas attack, this lead to Iraqi tanks getting ambushed by Pasdaran forces who had held their nerve after the gas attacks. There is reference to the loss of a brigade of tanks to a Pasdaran ambush in the second battle of the marshes which i infer may have been as a result of the infantry staying back in their BTR's and not escorting the tanks as they would do so on other occasions, but that is a guess on the fact that a major ambush was pulled off and it was also when they went in a bit earlier.
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Oct 10, 2019 00:17
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Milo and POTUS posted:What the poo poo What is referred to as "hygiene masks", so i presume something like this actually rather than surgical masks.  Not that that is any better.
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Oct 10, 2019 00:29
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:There was a patriotic uplift amongst my high school cohort immediately following 9/11 and a bunch of people enlisted who might not have, otherwise. Can you imagine if your country was fighting in a truly existential war? It's always perplexing to me when people do not understand these shifts. There is a distinction between a patriotic urge to fight for your country, which i understand and grasp, and the active seeking out and glorification of Martyrdom which i do not. These people are going and getting sent out to perform hugely bloody and futile attacks with massive body counts, the realities of which are not really particularly hidden from the people at home either, largely on the promise of eternal life in paradise after and are often doing so gladly. THAT is what gets me.
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Oct 10, 2019 15:25
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It is certainly used as an ongoing justification throughout the war, not just ex-post facto, its part of the whole state propaganda effort that is employed to keep people fighting and dieing. You are quite correct to an extent, but the fact that death itself is so glorified, almost to the extent of martyrdom being an end unto itself that really just does not compute. Im certain it made sense to those people at the time i just find characterising that mindset to be very hard. It isnt just a consolation to the people that are left behind that your son/brother/father or whatever died for god, the idea of dying for god and its reward is used as a very successful recruitment tool. Certainly there are many examples throughout history in all religions about this, and indeed in more modern contexts with terrorism generally. Its not something unique. I dunno, maybe its the fact that the death is on such a scale, and its conducted by an actual proper state that i can point to on a map, and it has sufficient buy-in from the entire population that said state remains standing to this day.
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Oct 10, 2019 15:54
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Iran-Iraq was regarded by both sides as an existential war for their respective regimes. And they both did their damndest to impress that upon their populace. Whoever lost was almost certainly gonna go down in flames.
Polyakov fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 16:30
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Previous post. Previous post in the series, chase hyperlinks for the rest Website archive in which this will eventually appear. Chemical weapons in Iran-Iraq Because I am an Extremely Normal Person with Extremely Normal Hobbies, I woke up today and thought I would do a footnote to all of this specifically on the subject of chemical weapons, their production, nature and use in this particular war. I will not be including anything photographic about the kind of wounds they inflict or casualty pictures from the war itself because its not something I want to spring on people without warning. There is a lot of publicly available information on this specific topic for people who want to know more. Also, I have rather sloppily referred to Nerve Gas and indeed Mustard Gas, which is not necessarily accurate as pointed out by Platystemon for reasons I will get into later. A little forewarning, theres some unpleasent descriptors of the effects of chemical weapons in here. Frangiblecover pointed out on discord last night while checking my tank numbers something I hadn’t really internalized, that this was the only war where we really know that nerve agents were employed and sort of how they were employed (Or at least that’s how I remember it, do correct me if I misremember). This isn’t quite the case in that there’s pretty reasonable amounts of evidence that the USSR employed nerve agents in Afghanistan alongside other gas weapons but is substantively so. With the context of chemical weapons more generally there is evidence of the use of some kind of chemical weapons in South East Asia by Laos and Vietnam in the late 70’s. The question of whether Agent Orange and other defoliants was a chemical attack is a hotly contested question but not one I’m going to get into, US use in Vietnam is very well documented and you can all decide for yourselves. Egypt used them in Yemen in the 60’s, the PRC allege that the UN forces used chemical weapons against them in Korea but there is no real reliable evidence of that at all and Japan was known to have used them in the 30’s along with Italy. There is also an active debate over whether it applies to things like CS (tear) gas. However, Iran-Iraq really, I think marks only the second major wide scale employment of chemical weapons in war, and the first subsequent to the Geneva convention of 1925. Their widescale use would spook a lot of the world and do a whole lot to speed the adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. A brief disclaimer, I have some education in chemistry, enough to think I understand what I am reading, I’m sure that many people understand it better than I do so please do sing out if I am talking absolute rubbish. Legal Framework. So the only piece of law really relevant to whether nations can use chemical weapons is the 1925 Geneva Protocol. There had been previous statements in the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907 outlawing the use of chemical agents but WW1 put those pretty much entirely on the bombfire. So a new treaty was drawn up. Broadly speaking the protocol outlaws the first use of chemical and bacteriological weapons in armed conflict with other states. It did not do a few critical things however. It did not outlaw research, storage and development of chemical weapons, it also had no mechanisms for the monitoring of who was up to what. This in conjunction with the fact that if someone uses CW’s on you, you can then use them on them means that it infact de facto encouraged stockpiling and research encase somebody broke the treaty. It also did not cover the use of CW’s within a states own borders against their own people. There had been a separate Bacteriological weapons convention of 1975 which was a much more impressive document in terms of actually limiting the ability to use these things. But it only applied to bacteriological weapons. This is things like anthrax. Iraq would argue, incorrectly, that it did not apply to weapons employed within their own borders as a sort of thin veneer of legality. This whole argument was rendered rather moot when they started lobbing it into Iranian territory in the later years of the war. Both Iran and Iraq would sign the Geneva protocol. Protective gear.  Here im going to refer to a US manual on the use of MOPP (Mission orientated protective postures), basically the US Nuclear, Biological and Chemical protective equipment. As shown in that image, the US has several progressive stages of what you wear in various stages of risk from CW’s. The things that we are mainly concerned with are MOPP levels 3 through Alpha. The basic components of your chemical weapons protective equipment are: 1: Your gas mask/respirator, this exists for two purposes, the first being the obvious, to filter agents out of the air and stop them getting into your lungs. It is important that this has a tight seal against your face and that you know what you are doing with it. This is a particular problem for Iran, for religious reasons many Pasdaran refused to shave their beards down, this meant that there were gaps in their protective equipment through which gas would seep and render the whole shebang a bit pointless. A typical way that this is done is via activated carbon/charcoal in the filter. Active carbon is produced by placing carbon rich material, typically wood, in a furnace and cooking it at very high temperatures (900 or so degrees) until it is reduced to pure carbon, a more accelerated way of how charcoal was produced, this must be done under an inert atmosphere to stop the reactive carbon from bonding to other chemicals, ruining the whole point of creating a highly reactive carbon. It is “activated” by piping oxygen rich gas in while heating the carbon to around 1200 degrees, this causes the oxygen to bond with the carbon and it opens up the microstructure creating a huge surface area to volume ratio increase creating millions of sites within the carbon that can react with gasses that pass over it. It is also possible to do this via chemical processes, but I don’t believe it is frequently used for gas mask carbon because it produces a less pure product. Active carbon is particularly good at adsorbing organic (carbon based) chemicals, adsorption being chemical attraction between particles (very crudely it’s a very low energy or enthalpy cost for compounds to bond with the adsorption site), of which Nerve agents and Mustard gas are examples, it will also react well with chlorine. Its high surface area to volume ratio renders it particularly effective for a given volume at doing so. There are other types of gas mask that do this via chemical reactions which work for specific chemicals but they aren’t really relevant to consider here. There will typically be some doping chemicals added to enhance the carbons ability against certain compounds but I wont get into what specifically does what.  Commercial gas mask showing activated carbon filter. The second purpose of the gas mask is to stop it getting in your eyes, Mustard gas is a particular bugger for this, notoriously so, but so is CS and Nerve agents. The mechanics of why this work are fairly self-evident. 2: Your overgarments, in US issue the uniform cloth itself is chemical resistant neglecting the need for something like a gas cape which were widely employed in Iran-Iraq because they had no such luck. This is there to stop chemical agents from contacting your skin. Things like Sarin and other nerve agents can be absorbed through skin contact which will kill you just as dead as if you had inhaled them. Mustard gas in high enough concentrations will burn and blister your skin, its part of a whole class of agents called Vesicants, or blister agents, which as you may infer are designed to cause your skin to blister which will be a significant impediment to fighting, or doing anything. you may also note the gas hood and footwear covers, when you leave a NBC environment you want to bring nothing with you at all, some agents persist and rather than toss the whole boot you take the cover off and bin it to prevent that happening. There are multiple reports of Iranian soldiers suffering very severe aftereffects from eating contaminated food or from treating soldiers injured by CW’s. Now, as I have alluded to, Iran had very little of any of this, not much training for what they did have which rendered this all very dangerous for them in particular. Particularly early on in the war, Iranian protective equipment is described thusly: “Respirators, thin rubber gloves and plastic laundry bags”, however as the war went on we would start to see Iran obtaining and issuing enough proper equipment to help its soldiers survive. I will go into the likely efficacy of this when I discuss each agent in a bit more detail. An issue Iran had is that the quality of first aid remained poor, partly because a lot of this is going on in the marshes and its quite hard to rush someone to an aid station across a pontoon or via a boat when an Iraqi helicopter is likely to take a shot at you. Often people had to wait until night and be exfiltrated them via chinook or boat and then by truck to a city hospital. Often Iranian troops would take their atropine when exposed to mustard gas which would both put a strain on supplies of atropine and reflected poor training in terms of how to actually respond to a chemical attack. Not that I can blame the soldiers themselves for this reaction. This delay is particularly brutal when it comes to mustard gas, where decontamination is delayed by up to 24 hours, when they sent people to Europe they would often arrive with mustard agent still on their person. The specifics of Chemical Weapons. As pointed out, only some “gas” weapons as we refer to them are actually gaseous, the two most famous examples of weapons that are pure gasses are chlorine and phosgene. Neither of which saw any significant use in Iran-Iraq. CS and Nerve agents are both employed as vapours but mustard is not.  CIA prepared chart on Iraqs various forms of chemical weapons. CS Gas  US Army testing an early CN (predecessor to CS) dispersing mechanism. I’m including this because it did see some use in the war and is probably the one most likely for people to encounter. CS stands for 2-Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile, it is comprised of a benzene ring, a methylnitride group and a chlorine atom. It has the chemical formula C10H5ClN2. It was initially developed at Porton Down in the UK where its increased stability and decreased toxicity lead to its replacement of the agent used up to that point, which had been Chloroacetophenone (C8H7ClO). Its now being replaced by Capsicum based sprays in some of its applications because its less dangerous, CS can still kill you in high concentrations or if you have respiratory problems. Its worth noting that CS is quite flammable, and its overuse at the 1993 Waco ranch standoff probably contributed to the fire that burned the whole place down. It is typically deployed via dissolving in a solvent which is then vaporized for deployment as a gas. CS has now been banned for use in war along with all other as termed Riot Control Agents since 1997. It has a safety ratio of around 60’000, which means that the average lethal dose of it is that many times higher than the minimum point at which it will incapacitate your standard human. It requires quite a lot of a balls up to kill someone with it. I will point out that these average humans do mean literally that, the LCt50 dose by which that is calculated means that it will kill 50% of humans and the ICt50 is that which will incapacitate 50% of humans. So its actually quite a bit narrower than that in reality given the bell curve of human populations. The way it works is not understood in its totality, the general idea right now is that its main effect works via the production of Hydrochloric acid in mucous membranes, particularly in the nose, lungs and eyes, which causes irritation in those areas leading to the crying effect (hence tear gas). This is backed up by the effect of chemical burns and irritation on skin and its concentration in effect around those sites that have been observed. There are many subreactions which can lead to permanent damage in other areas of the body but I don’t quite trust my chemistry enough to explain them accurately. However the important takeaway is that to protect yourself you cover your eyes and breathing holes, wear gas proof clothing if you can and you will probably be ok. The builders mask pictured previously will provide some protection though you would also need eye protection. There’s a whole host of improvised protective measures you can take but they boil down to stopping it getting to the parts of your body where it does damage. People who die from RCA agent exposure tend to have been exposed to it for a long time and they exhibit severe damage in their airways. CS is generally non-persistent and will typically disperse in open areas within a few minutes, acute symptoms will persist generally for up to an hour after exposure. Mustard agents  Australian and New Zealand troops amid a forest of Iraqi 155mm mustard gas shells. As I mentioned earlier, Mustard agents are part of a generally larger group called vesicants, of which Mustard is the most prominent member. The ones employed in Iran-Iraq were typically Sulfur mustards, though there is also use of lewisite which involves Arsenic. There is a third category of nitrogen mustards that were not seriously used by anyone but were developed. It was the most widely employed gas of the war, with the overwhelming majority being Sulfur mustards with some employment of Lewisite. It’s easy to make and effective at what it does. Sulfur mustards as a family were first discovered in 1860, they were refined and developed until WW1 when they were really very much focused on. Mustard is deployed generally as an aerosol, a suspension of fine liquid droplets in a gas. It was of course famously employed in WW1 by both sides. The chemical composition of Sulfur Mustard is C4H8Cl2S, a sulfur atom with two methylchloride groups either side. Lewisite takes several forms but generally it is a methyl group with an arseno-chloride group and a chlorine atom off that methyl group. A typical formulation could be C2H2ClAsCl2. Mustards are generally oily substances when in liquid form with a high level of persistence because of it, they are not volatile and will generally break down over a period of weeks in the presence of water, they have a low solubility which makes cleaning them up a bit of a pain as you will quite literally get pools of sulphur mustard sitting out on open surfaces after an attack. This makes them fairly ideal as a chemical weapon because they will persist and remain dangerous in an area without cleanup efforts for a reasonable amount of time. They are only respiratorily dangerous while they are in an aerosol form which is usually a function of them being dropped in a bomb. However they will continue to do incredible blistering damage to skin on contact in the pooled form. They are fat soluble, which means they can be absorbed through the skin into the subcutaneous fat layer, they will also be absorbed if you breathe it in and enter the body that way. It will particularly absorb into the eyes area rendering it very dangerous as a blinding agent as was seen in the infamous pictures from WW1. Absorbed into the skin it will blister the affected area quite severely. It will cause internal damage to your respiratory tract if absorbed there and this is largely how its going to kill you. The mode of action by which it does this is quite complicated and again not neccesarily fully discovered. It disrupts the interface between your epidermis and your dermis, causing your skin to separate out and blister causing associated damage. It will also alkylate your DNA, alkylation is the movement of an Alkyl group, a term for any group containing carbon and hydrogen, removing bits of your DNA from the helix causing its structure to break down upon which it can be attacked by your own white blood cells or just stop replicating altogether. It will also attack thiol groups, Sulphur and hydrogen containing groups which are widely relevant in biology, but specifically in this case for maintaining cell homeostasis, which is the separation of your cells from the outside environment and maintenance of the right chemical balance for those cells to do what they are designed to, and disrupting it kills the cells directly. Mustard agents are more potent in the presence of water as that seems to help their absorption, hence their intense effect on your eyes. That is the first area they will affect, generally it will then proceed on to attack your respiratory tract in higher concentrations. The important takeaway is that mustard agents are dangerous if they touch your body in any significant concentration. There is no antidote for them and if you get blistered by them you need to get to a hospital for long term care. It has significant long-term effects for years afterwards with damage tending to be in the lungs with things like bronchitis, asthma and pulmonary fibrosis but can appear anywhere. It also suppresses your immune system long term leaving you more vulnerable to secondary infection. People exposed to mustard gas frequently develop cancer in various forms, possibly due to its attack on DNA. Nerve Agents  US Honest John missile warhead with sarin bomblets, designed for dispersal over a wide area. There are many agents that attack the nervous system, the ones used in Iran Iraq belong to a group called Organophosphate Nerve Agents. Otherwise known as Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which betrays their mode of action. They are extremely deadly, if you get caught short in a mustard gas attack you are more likely to be wounded or maimed than killed. If you get caught short by a nerve agent attack you are very likely dead. The relevant ones to this war are Tabun (GA) and Sarin (GB) and Cyclosarin (GF), VX is also part of this family but was never used in the war but is alleged to have been produced. Initially developed by Nazi Germany as a pesticide, they were tested and developed extensively but never employed are all the ones with the G prefix with the letter suffix indicating their order of identification. VX was initially synthesised at Porton Down in the UK in the post war. They were produced in significant quantities by all sides in the cold war as weapons. The chemicals themselves are all liquids and have a high volatility, which means that they will turn into a gas at below their boiling point fairly easily. Hence it is an example of a true poison gas. The fact it is a gas also makes it far less persistent than mustard agents, meaning that its easier to deploy on an enemy position and then move in yourself, because being a gas it will dissipate out into the air over a much shorter time and you don’t need to worry so much about decontaminating the area you are walking into. They have no smell and as a result are difficult to detect an attack from. VX was specifically designed with a low volatility so it is a more persistent area denial weapon, possibly hence why it was not actively pursued as this is of less use to Iraq if they want to have the land they take back be of any use. VX is essentially a nerve agent made to act much like mustard gas in its persistence. Its also extremely deadly. One other nasty trick of nerve agents is that some of them will persist in clothing, in liquid form it can be absorbed through the skin and may spontaneously vaporise from a concentration in clothing. This can lead to secondary exposure at a lower level for medical personnel and there is not neccesarily a sign for, given their odourless nature. Advice is to get your clothes off, dispose of them and get out of the area as quickly as possible. It also may precipitate into water, contaminating it. The mode of action for all of them is pretty similar, they are as mentioned Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. They prevent the breakdown of Acetylcholine (AChE) in your central nervous system, which is a chemical signal compound used to activate your muscles and control your nervous system in various ways I don’t quite understand. This causes your nervous system to go haywire, causing constant activation or paralysis of various parts of the body resulting in sweating, spasming of the breathing system, slowing of your heartbeat, convulsions, paralysis and by some combination of the above, death. The chemicals will bind permanently to your cholinesterase within minutes of their entry into the body which makes removing them very difficult until they are eventually broken down. If you have received a low enough dose you might survive until that happens. The one bright spot in this otherwise grim affair, is that it is possible to deliver an antidote to nerve agent exposure. In the event of a lethal dose it is important to act very quickly before the point at which the AChE becomes permanently damaged by the nerve agent, atropine blocks the effects of AChE on the musculature which prevents the associated effects of paralysis and spasm. The standard treatment is immediate injection with atropine, which Iran did acquire and distribute en masse later in the war, however there is a limited time in which this is effective. One thing that The Rock did get almost right, though for gods sake don’t stab your own heart. Its still going to be unpleasant but this will probably stop you dieing, you need to afterwards get off the battlefield and into a hospital as quickly as possible. This is another keep it off your respiratory system first, then also eyes and skin situation. Iranian disposal of contaminated clothes was often not done at all, and the clothes themselves were not frequently resistant to chemical attack. This situation would improve as the war went on but never to a really satisfactory state. The history of Iraqi chemical weapons Acquisition   Iraqi chemical weapons establishment after some light bombing in desert storm. As a result of the influx of cash in the mid 70’s, Iraq (at that point not under Saddams direct leadership) would begin its own chemical weapons program. They had ambitions to become the dominant Arab military power and to do that it was only natural that they have a chemical weapons program. This is not necessarily that unusual for nations at this time, many nations were proliferating like absolute buggery. Its not even illegal, it is only illegal to use them on other nations. They started this alongside their nuclear and ballistic weapons programs at the same time. Iraqs CW program would focus around the Muthanna State Establishment, located around 150 km north of Baghdad. It’s initial name was the State Establishment for Pesticide Production. It was built with as I have mentioned previously, significant FRG and DDG expertise. In 1981 it started producing small amounts of mustard gas, but not really any significant quantities. It had significant issues producing the required chemical precursors so it had to import them from abroad. A particularly notable one was thiodiglycol which I will get into more when I discuss mustard gas specifically, however it is a chemical which has uses outside of this particularly specific purpose, particularly in textile dyeing, and was not controlled until the 1993 CWC. They would buy this particular precursor and others largely from Western Europe and the USA as the places which had the most developed chemical industries. They would procure complete mustard gas from the USSR. As the war went on they would become self sufficient in most of their chemical precursors. Their early efforts to try and produce Nerve Agents were frustrated by the refusal of nations to sell them some of the necessary precursors where there was a quiet but active interdiction effort in Europe and the USA. Their chemical weapons program would grow in size and sophistication until they were able to produce large amounts of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and allegedly quantities of VX. Initially international response was pretty muted, in 1983 Iran started circulating graphic pamphlets showing CW victims in western Europe and sent their casualties to Europe for medical treatment, partly to get them better aid, though one suspects who one knew was a large component in deciding who got to go to the plush Geneva hospital, but also to try and generate media attention. They knew this was probably the only recourse they had at the time. However there was very little response to this in the West. Its likely that this particular act of moral lethargy emboldened Saddam to employ them more widely. Iran would complain bitterly that Britain, France and the USSR were all supplying Iraq with chemical weapons and precursors, this is sort of half true, Britain was supplying chemical precursors at this stage, as was France and the USSR was supplying gas. However, in western Europe those two were far from the largest culprits, they were however the traditional Iranian target of the UK and Iraq’s greatest supporter France. The true largest culprit, Germany, was also supplying Iran with critical equipment so I suspect there may have been political considerations in those two particular parties being chosen. My own cynical quibbling aside however this would thankfully lead in part to some action. In 1984 the US congress issued a report stating that Iraq was using CW’s and elements tried to put Iraq back on the terror watchlist. The state department would condemn Iraq for this, and the UK would reverse its earlier position on neutrality and condemned Iraq and took steps to embargo chemical precursors to weapons to both combatants. France would remain sanguine however and said nothing, as would many other nations. But mechanisms within the UN were at last underway and they dispatched an investigative team who concluded there had been use of mustard and nerve agents and issued their report. At this stage the UK, US, France, Japan and Australia all formally banned the sale of any precursor chemicals for the production of those weapons. However, there was not yet universal action.  Wikipedias map of members of the Australia Group as of 2019. Reagan at this time would start the push hard for the creation of what would become the CWC at the UN (an idea that had been kicking around for a while), dispatching HW Bush to do so, however negotiations bogged down in cold war mistrust. Australia had far more success, creating the Australia Group as an informal anti-proliferation organisation for nations to coordinate their attempts to stop the trade of precursor chemicals and dual-purpose production equipment, it was founded including basically Western Europe, the US, Japan and Australia and persists to this day in its function. They developed a list of such which was implemented as export controls in late 1985. The Security Council also finally managed to locate at least one vertebrae of its spine and called on both nations to implement the Geneva Protocol properly. But took no action to enforce that particular statement. Iraq would secure under the table supplies from a Dutch gentleman from 1984-88 after people started properly trying to clamp down on this, Frans van Anraat, a man who has the distinction of being the only Dutchman to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list and who at the time was an employee of the Nu Kraft Mercantile company, based in Brooklynn. He was arrested initially in 1989 by request of the USA in Italy but was released for reasons I cant quite pin down. He fled to Iraq where he lived until 2003 when he decided that facing trial would probably be better for his health than staying there with the Kurds and Iranians after him. He was tried at the Hague for complicity in genocide after his arrest in 2004 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. In 1987 they would find another such bone and issue a direct resolution which included language to prevent the use of chemical weapons, alongside general statements to stop the war completely. Cynically Iraq Immediately accepted it, while Iran continued to reject it, they thought they could still win gains in the war and wouldn’t accept status quo ante bellum as a resolution, they also considered its language on CW’s insufficient. Unfortunately Iraq’s cynicism won in the theatre of international diplomacy, Iran was predominantly perceived as the aggressor and the issue of chemical weapons was somewhat diffused by the fact that Iran was refusing to come to terms which Iraq was repeatedly offering. (Entirely because Iraq thought it was losing, I hasten to add). Iraq’s use of CW’s against the Kurdish town of Halabjah would bring it back up the international agenda, however not that far initially. At this stage the president of the Security council was Algeria, who really didn’t want to get involved in arbitrating this particularly nasty issue between two nonaligned nations with which it shared religious and cultural ties. The permanent members of the security council were having a protracted argument about the implementation of sanctions on Iran so there wasn’t really anyone at the helm. Fortunately, the FRG had finished hiding and hoping nobody noticed what it had been up to, reunited the axis powers of Italy and Japan and put forward a new resolution to the UN and then to the Council which called in the strongest language yet for the cease of use of CW’s and particularly noted Iraq’s use of them against civilian populations. This was adopted in fairly short order by the security council in 1988. Shortly after the end of the war later in 1988 the Security Council passed a new resolution where it stated its intention to end all use of chemical weapons, this would eventually lead to the CWC of 1993. Employment  BM-21 grad of a type that would be employed by Iraq for nerve agent distribution. Throughout the war Iraq would develop the capability to deploy chemical weapons from 88 and 120mm mortars, 130, 152 and 155mm artillery and also from 122mm rockets. They were working on tipping their Scuds with chemical canisters. In the air they had 250 and 500kg bombs as well as various improvised containers that would be pushed out of helicopters, chemical spraying apparatus for their Swiss prop trainers and Soviet and French helicopters and also converted 90mm air to ground rockets to have chemical warheads. They would use these to distribute CW’s about the battlefield in every way imaginable. They did extensive training to get their artillery able to do proper Time on Target between mortars, light artillery and heavy artillery as well as air dropped munitions to achieve a lethal saturation level of chemical weapons in an area. Which is not a trivial problem to solve in terms of training. The rockets in question are of particular benefit as it’s a lot easier to get a saturation attack going with less tubes when you are using a rocket launcher, and that is what you want to achieve with gas, multiple smaller sources saturating an entire area. You want to catch everyone with no warning to take protective measures, and this is the sort of application that MLRS shines in. Initially Iraq would use CS gas in 1982 in several locations as a means of slowing Iranian advances and disrupting their formations, CS gas is not a lethal agent unless you have a very intense dose and have existing respiratory problems. However this would graduate in 1983 to their first employments of Mustard gas in the northern mountainous areas. Their first attempts were not particularly adept as they attempted to use it on a mountain top position, not quite appreciating that mustard gas is heavier than air, leading to the gas flowing off the top of the elevation and rolling down the hill onto the attacking Iraqis. They also had the predictable problems when I say the word wind direction on other occasions. But they learned quickly. In 1984 they became probably the first nation to use nerve gas on the battlefield in the battles around the Hovyizeh marshes. Discussions in Iraqi high command were in a state of panic about dislodging the Iranians from this particular area due to its presence right next to the Baghdad-Basra road. The typical method of delivery of nerve agents early on was essentially via crop duster light aircraft or helicopters. They would however quickly ramp up their production of shells and rockets and bombs. Iraq would develop its tactics in employing these weapons more as the war went on, targeting rear areas which were less likely to be in a state of readiness, using them to isolate forward areas from resupply before attack. They would also at this point develop something called dirty mustard, a development on the mustard gas formula, this was an aerosolized solid silica impregnated with mustard agent which formed a dust storm of mustard agent. This produced much of the same effect as mustard gas would but had significantly less persistence (something I will again get into later). Towards the end of the war Iraq stepped up the tempo of its chemical operations, its production and tactics were now fully mature, they knew what to do and had the capability to do it. They would start to employ it frequently in attacks to retake Al-Faw. Typically they would fire off chemical rounds via artillery en-masse, wait 30 minutes then go in. This widescale use along with the ongoing war of the cities lead to a fear in Iranian population centres, thankfully never realised, that Iraq would fire chemical tipped Scuds at them which lead to a mass exodus from Tehran in 1987 of up to a quarter of the population. The end of the war is when we start to see widescale use of CW’s against the Kurds, they had long employed CS in this role but with an Iranian offensive in 1988 with Kurdish forces in support got very close to the dam at Dukan and the loss of large parts of Iraqi Kurdistan to Iran, Saddam and Chemical Ali would employ CW’s against Kurdish population centres, particularly infamously against Halabjah, which killed at least 5’000 people, including a large amount of Kurdish civillians. Iran would retaliate in some small capacity with its own stockpile of CW’s towards the end of the war (As indeed they were legally entitled to under the 1925 convention because Iraq did it first), the advantages just weren’t there for it to do so. They talked a big game about it being against the principles of Islam, which it absolutely is, but that didn’t stop them developing their nuclear weapons program. Iraq was prepared, equipped and trained to fight in a CW environment far more than Iran was, and it is likely that the agents they had would have obstructed their own mass infantry attacks far more than it would have harmed the Iraqis. However Iran would never have enough to really do anything decisive, it takes a lot of chemicals to effectively do something wide scale. Efficacy and effects The whole sorry affair sort of illustrates the need and use of international bodies, the international law governing chemical weapons ultimately proved completely toothless because there was no legal or other mechanism by which it could be enforced. This meant that we just had a lot of hand wringing and no action for quite some time before people started voluntarily doing so. A lot of what we recognise today as international law really didn’t start coming about in any enforceable way until after the end of the cold war. The International Criminal Court in the Hague wasn’t established until 2002. When people get desperate unless there is something concrete there to stop them, they will break international norms to survive. This applies more generally to all forms of international bodies, peace and general humanity only survives if everyone is abiding by and is subject to and aware of the consequences of breaking the rules. It sounds very simplistic put that way but it really wasn’t a feature of international law back then. The fact that this war was threatening to destabilise the entire middle east if Iran won was a problem, people didn’t necessarily want to come down hard on Iraq and have it lose to Iran and then you have the nutty fundamentalist terrorist state causing the whole area to burst into flame and blowing up the Champs Elysee. On the other hand they didn’t care for Saddam killing thousands in horrific ways but they cannot bring themselves to make a decision. The actual moral calculus on this is something I’m not gonna get into. Purely from a perspective of stopping the usage of chemical weapons, you have to eliminate the possibility of this question being raised at all, people having to make this moral judgement on their own inevitably means that political limitations they are under will slide in to the equation and people will get away with the thing you are trying to prevent. You need to tie people down to hard and fast rules that have defined penalties and recourses for breaching them. With regards to the gases and protective equipment’s the reason I raise my eyebrow at the protective equipment Iraq issued early on is this is the point they are sending people into areas which they have used agents with persistence like mustard in. They aren’t in danger of inhaling it certainly, the Iraqi’s are not stupid, they aren’t going to poison their own soldiers, but the risk of skin exposure is still in my view very high, but I suppose they didn’t view themselves as having much of a choice. As far as what CW use did for Iraq and to Iran, I think they would have been in real trouble without it, especially in the battles of 84 and 85 where they were really starting to get very desperate with how close Iran got to cutting off Basra. I don’t think they necessarily would have lost the war without using them, but it would have been a distinct possibility. It did tremendous damage to Iran, they claim they suffered 60’000 deaths from chemical warfare, about 10% of their total, this is I would suspect artificially inflated to some degree, there are also people to this day who are horrifically maimed and disfigured by CW attacks and an unknown number of people suffering more minor long term effects. However, Iraq’s transgression of international norms did very effectively signal its willingness to do anything to survive and was part of the eventual calculation that lead to Iran agreeing to end the war. The fear of chemical weapons pervaded the nation, even into their urban centres. I don’t believe Saddam would have gone so far as to attack Iranian cities with gas, not out of any compunction but purely because of how it would look. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 16:35
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HEY GUNS posted:names for big guns i have heard Small cannon syndrome.
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Oct 14, 2019 19:41
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Previous posts Chase the hyperlinks for the rest in the thread. The tanker war post archive Iran-Iraq: The long stalemate, 1985-86 I’ve cheated myself out of a lot of the relevant content for ‘85 here by doing the tanker war and aspects of economic war as its own topic, but now we really start to get into that being relevant to whats going on, so return to those posts if you want a bit more background on what’s going on and why in the gulf. But now we are really at the stage where both sides are lodged. Iraq cannot take offensive action, this is for a combination of reasons, primarily military, it has managed to stabilise itself quite effectively, but a failed offensive might give Iran all the opening it needs to actually break the deadlock. Saddam is now playing the long game, he is attacking Iranian trade and working to try and isolate them diplomatically and generally speaking it is working very well for him. But what Saddam really wants at this stage is peace, he has made his gamble and lost, and he is very aware that the ongoing war is just bleeding Iraq dry. Iran continues its aggressive posture, the primary reason for this in my view is because it is a revolutionary and also very fractured state. That means that in its very fractured and chaotic structure you have people jockeying for position as those positions are still up for grabs and very fluid. One very quick way to the top is success on the battlefield that seems to elude most of their commanders, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dozens of people more than willing to give it a go. This is endemic throughout the Pasdaran particularly, with personal clerical militias being employed to attack as almost a demonstration of one’s own piety and as a status exercise. The efforts they have made to make the whole Pasdaran apparatus work together have started to bear fruit but its all a bit too late. The entire state however has been pivoting towards Khomeini’s stated view of a pan Shia superstate and as a result you have a lot of dangerous nutters in charge. However, this is starting to become rather untenable, there is the growth of a movement of people who will eventually push for peace, but it’s still quite dangerous to push that line too hard lest you be denounced and sidelined. Nobody wants to be the first to blink. Destruction of Iran’s economy. The two warring nations however are not the only ones who are actually really starting to want the war to end. The Gulf Cooperation Council, the association of Saudi Arabia and friends (UAE, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and Qatar) has been extending aid and loans to Saddam for years now and are starting to get tired of how much this war is costing them and Iran keeps putting holes in their lovely tankers. Saudi Arabia particularly is taking this moment to try and muscle in to mediate and increase their influence, King Fahd perhaps wished to emulate the diplomatic successes of his predecessor, King Khalid who is widely credited for the establishment of the GCC. Sadly, neither of them was really up to the standards of King Faisal, Khalids predecessor, who had his problems do not get me wrong but good god he was a far better leader than Saudi Arabia has had since. However, at this stage the Arab monarchies have pretty much identified the rub, Iran will not win, and Iraq will not lose, can we all get back to making money now?  King Fahd of the KSA So, King Fahd sends an emissary to Iran to talk peace. Offering them several concessions, including an immediate stop of aid to Iraq if they were to sign the ceasefire, along with an offer of monetary compensation separate to that. I don’t know the figure, but I imagine it was significant. They gave Iran a gift of refined oil in significant quantities which enabled them to increase their airforce readiness. Remember that Iranian oil refining was concentrated in Khuzestan and along the shores of the gulf, which makes sense because that’s where the oil is, but it also renders it vulnerable to Iraq attack, and they had done so relentlessly. Iran had Hezbollah release the Saudi council it has kidnapped in Beirut at this stage as a reciprocal show of good will. They proposed a counteroffer where the GCC contributed to the overthrow of Saddam, stops all aid and in return Iran would reign in the Pan-Shiite ambitions and make peace with whatever government replaced Saddam. They would not budge on removing Saddam. The problem is that the GCC had no real credible way of overthrowing Saddam, and if they start plotting such and it goes wrong that is going to be a major PR disaster and also probably get Saddam really pissed. They don’t have much of a credible army at this stage in any way. Fahd however would try to wriggle in a deal by involving the US. But the US responded that they had no plan to replace Saddam either, and weren’t going to embark on such an enterprise. So, Fahd’s grand plan as peacemaker fell through, he was not going to embark on anything so dangerous without at least US acceptance if not their active support. With that avenue scuppered, the only way to end the war quickly was to make somebody flinch. They decided to do this the very simple way, by cratering the oil market. I covered this a while ago in brief as part of the tanker war but there’s a little bit more to it.  So, since the oil shock of the 70’s and the skyrocketing of prices, the USSR had really started increasing its rate of oil extraction at a prodigious rate. This allowed them to balance their books, because the USSR was totally divorced from the system of international trade and currency exchange their economy relied entirely on large ticket exports to get them the foreign currencies they needed to buy abroad. You could not exchange the rouble for the dollar, pound or anything else, it had to be done via intermediaries or often very literally by barter, where finished goods would be exchanged for finished goods between the USSR and other nations. (This is really broad stroking it, but you get the idea). However, oil was an ideal way for the USSR to supplement its international budget, previously they had relied on gold export but that is far less lucrative than oil. The CIA had taken note of the increasing rate of the USSR’s gold sales in this period which indicated deep seated structural problems with their economy that they were just burning cash to sustain. The USSR was fighting a huge war in Afghanistan that seemed to have no end, it was entangled in the Star Wars provoked race with the USA, development of economies elsewhere in the world was driving up raw material costs that they desperately needed, and the central planning system was desperately inefficient and breaking down. Their rate of gold sales had quadrupled since 1980 and it was clear that oil sales were plugging an even larger hole in soviet finances. Iran extracted 80% of its state revenue from oil exports that it needed every Rial it could get to buy arms. Iraq extracted about two thirds of its state revenue from oil, but it had access to international finance. The USSR and Iran did not. It would also increase Saddams dependence on the KSA and the rest of the GCC which was not a bad side effect, (well, until you make the murderous despot so desperate he decides to invade one of his major creditors, but who could have seen THAT coming.) So, Fahd concocts this plan along with the CIA to increase the extraction rate of his oil wells from 2mn barrels per day to the full capacity of 10mn bpd. He won over the royal council partly on the strength of punishing members of OPEC that were offering discounts. At this stage OPEC generally acts as a production and sale distributor, they control the price of oil by in part assigning everyone production quotas and set prices to maintain price stability, however in war that gets thrown out the window. It is also stated to be a way to wear out European oil producers who are currently selling North Sea oil at a lower price than OPEC sets. So, Fahd and the US get their way, it seems a master stroke, it defeats two major enemies, the USSR and Iran and ends the war quicker. For the US it would have the same effect but also would provide a significant kick in the pants to US industry who were still getting over the hangover of the oil shortages of the 70’s. The US would contribute to this by letting its currency value fall, the dollars value as the primary exchange currency of petroleum would essentially mean that as well as the decrease in price due to increased supply, each dollar you got for your oil would also be worth less. The USD would drop in value by nearly 40% over the next year and a half, this would make US exports more competitive and aid in the growth of the 1980’s.  Oil price per year. Note the increase brought on by the oil shocks of the 70’s rendering Soviet extraction capacity investment profitable. Displayed in 2017 dollars. So, July 1985 the KSA increases production to 6mn bpd, then by January of 1986 they hit capacity of 10mn bpd. The oil tumbles as shown in that chart, its only stopped when the US oil industry objects and the price is attempted to be stabilised around the $30 mark. This immediately ruins Iran almost entirely, their state income drops by 66% completely destroying their foreign arms budget, now all they have to fight with is their dwindling human resources. Iraq is deeply unhappy but the KSA and USA soothes Saddam with new credit and intelligence support, and Saddam does understand that it is far more damaging to Iran than to him. The USSR increases export rates of gold yet again but they are starting to run out of manoeuvre room.  At the same time Iraq ratchets up its attacks on Iranian shipping, the new Mirage F-1EQ’s having come into service enabling Iraq to strike deeper into the gulf with their Exocets and using buddy refuelling stores could reach out even further to beyond Qatar. This is particularly dangerous because as the price of oil drops, Iran’s capacity to lure in tankers to the danger zone by offering discounts on the price also drops. The same discount of say $2-3 per barrel representing a much higher proportion of that revenue Iran would receive. Iran starts to get desperate. There was some chat about exactly how Iran employed its soldiers, particularly militia, so I thought I’d dedicate a little bit on it. This backdates somewhat because this information has come up before but not in a cohesive way.  Basijj soldiers, wearing the distinctive headband of the organization. Iran has been using child soldiers in the Basijj for a long time, ever since the establishment of the Basijj militia in conjunction with the Pasdaran in 1982. The Pasdaran draw from the Basijj to replenish losses or swell numbers for larger assaults. To use a not completely accurate analogy, think of the Basijj as a territorial reserve for the Pasdaran. They are not at the front full time but will go out there for part of the year. Their training is rudimentary at best and as I mentioned before children as young as 12 are recruited. They would be recruited from school, given 2-3 weeks of training then sent to the front for a 1-2 month “tour” before returning if they survived. They would then return to class until they were needed again for the next offensive or until the school holiday period arrived, it is incredibly perverse to think about, to the extent of rather than going to Bognor Regis for your half term break you get to go get gassed in the marshlands of Iraq. However, Iran was able at this stage to mobilise up to 200’000 Basijj for major assaults, compared to a standing strength of around 500’000 Pasdaran and around 300’000 regular soldiers. The Basijj drew from all walks of life, the majority of them were educated and indeed recruited directly from school. As mentioned previously, the average age of recruitment for a POW Basijj militia member was 14, aided by the fact that parental consent was not required. I will transcribe a few instructive quotes from POW’s interviewed in Iraq by a sociologist during the war, it outlines some of the various reasons people joined. “We are Shiite Muslims, not Sunni. Only a small proportion of Muslims are Shiite, but ours is the true faith. Since the beginning of Islam, we have been fighting and dying for our rights. Imam Ali became the leader of the Muslims but was martyred while reading the Qur’an. (Imam Ali being the last prophet of Islam, regarded as the successor to Muhammed by Shia, Sunnis differ and say Muhammed had no successor) We are not afraid to be martyred for Islam, like Imam Hussein. (Another major prophet of Shiism killed after the battle of Karbala by forces of the Umayyad caliphate). “I was too young to fight, I was a little boy who wanted to play with guns. When they gave me a real one, I’d never been happier. But when I went to fight and shoot people I was petrified.” “I’m not very religious so I don’t know much about Martyrdom, it’s true that martyrdom is very important to Shiites. We learn of the Imams and how they died, but I didn’t go to war to die for Islam, I went to defend Iran and I think most of us went for the same reason. No-one influenced my decision. At 14 I could decide things for myself, I wanted to go to war, so I went.” So, we have a broad spread of reasons as to why these people signed up. Iran would offer many incentives beyond the religious one to get children into the front lines. The wage for a married Basijj militiaman of 16 was equivalent to that of a standard paper pushing civil servant. Should they survive they were given preferential treatment for university admissions and other benefits. It also granted a significant degree of social status upon both the fighter and their family. A recurrent theme seems to be that of just kids, who have no real concept of their own mortality signing up. The regime would select people for their uses often dependent on their reasons. The really religiously devoted ones would be used for very dangerous missions, such as reconnaissance into minefields at night and Iraqi positions to get them to reveal themselves in preparation for further assaults. Frequently given their Qur’an, their grenades if they were lucky and a pat on the rear end before being sent over the top. They were broadly speaking sent out there to die, if they came back it was fortunate. The patriotic and educated were selected for specialised light infantry and infiltration roles, where they would be sent to try and slip through Iraqi positions to attack from the rear. The rest were employed as generic assault infantry, used wherever bodies were needed. To provide some perspective on what that employment in battle was. From an Iranian POW: “[We] boys who attacked the Iraqi’s were a very important weapon because we had no fear. We captured many positions from the Iraqis because they became afraid when they saw young boys running towards them shouting and screaming. Imagine how you would feel. Lots of boys were killed but by that stage you were running and couldn’t stop, so you kept going until you were shot or reached their lines.” From an Iraqi officer: “They come on in their hundreds, often walking straight across the minefields, triggering them with their feet … They chant Allahu Akbar and they keep coming, and we keep shooting, sweeping our fifty mills [sic] [machine guns] around like sickles. My men are eighteen, nineteen, just a few years older than these kids. I’ve seen them crying, and at times, the officers have to kick them back to their guns. Once we had Iranian kids on bikes cycling towards us, and my men started laughing, and then these kids started lobbing their hand grenades, and we stopped laughing and starting firing” Assault on Al-Faw. Dawn 8 & 9.  Map of the attacks and counterattacks around Al-Faw Iran is starting to see its gains eroded in 1986, the Iraqi’s have recaptured the south of the Majnoon islands, they don’t seem to be able to make progress in Kurdistan, at Basra or in the marshes. Iraq was roaming pretty much unchecked in the gulf and the west was making noises about an international coalition intervening in the gulf to keep the peace. They were also as outlined starting to run out of cash, fast. They returned to Basra and the south, that representing probably the most favourable terrain they had to fight on where they had not bogged down. They decided to target the Al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq. Taking this piece of land would cut Iraq off from the gulf entirely, crucially completely negating Iraq’s navy which was based at Umm-Qasr. This would prevent the export of oil to Kuwait via the newly completed pipeline and potentially enable an encirclement of Basra itself as well as enabling more pressure to be put on Kuwait especially, where Kuwait City is Iraq’s major port of ingress for military aid. Iran mobilises as many men as it can, particularly relevantly the 200’000 Basijj militia previously mentioned. It now had around a million soldiers at the front, it was committing a fifth of them to the Al-Faw assault. They had tried and tested their bridging techniques and equipment and trained extensively, carrying out mock beach assaults in the Caspian Sea beforehand. They brought their very best Pasdaran and regular army units. The sector they were targeting had 15’000 Iraqi soldiers in. Iraq badly bungled their signals intercept, convinced that the attack would land in Basra itself or in the Majnoon islands, falling for a carefully constructed Iranian disinformation campaign where they sent their largely useless-in-this-context armoured divisions to the Majnoon sector very obviously. The Iraqi commander of the 7th Corps, General Shawket considered himself protected by the half mile wide Shatt-Al-Arab and the tail end of the rainy season and so was not prepared in any way shape or form. The weather would prove a major impediment to the effectiveness of Iraqi weapons and particularly the airforce in the crucial opening stages.  A photo of typical Iranian bridging arrangements from later exercises. They drew heavily on North Korean assistance to develop their techniques. February 9th, the attack launches. A diversionary attack was conducted north of Basra by an Iranian infantry division following up several waves of attack by Basijj militia. This drew away two Iraqi divisions from the south of the front. Subsequent to that on the same night they assaulted the island of Om-al-rasas, which lies at the midpoint of the Shatt-Al-Arab right at the edge of Khorramshahr. At this point the newly created Iranian 41st assault pioneers put in an almost biblical effort, erecting a pontoon bridge between their side of the Shatt to that island over the span of 6 hours. They assaulted at two other points, one near Abadan around 20km to the south, taking advantage of a sandbank that stretched partway across, the next at a narrow point in the river (narrow in this context being 400 meters) some 30 km further south near to the town of Al-Faw itself. The Pasdaran brought up their light river boats to support the landings and frogmen had secured the other banks before the crossing began. It was a spectacular success. Iran established a pontoon bridge before the end of the first night at Abadan which permitted artillery and trucks across. They dismantled it during the day to hide it from Iraqi air attack which was scrambling to respond. However, they were badly impeded by the end of the rainy season and made little impact. Iraq did respond quite quickly, dispatching a special forces brigade to retake the Khorramshahr island, doing so after two days of bitter fighting. Forces near Basra repelled Iranian attempts to cross north of Khorramshahr. The republican guards armoured division was dispatched from Baghdad for Basra and every available engineer and shovel was sent to fortify the south of Basra. All Iraqi forces south of Basra were in retreat. They didn’t really have an idea of the scale of the issue at this stage because of their lack of reconnaissance. However, Iran was moving quicker. Iran moved from their bridgeheads in the south rapidly north, employing their helicopters by night to drop light infantry behind the Iraqis to disrupt and prevent their retreat. They brought up two AShM batteries to the south of Al-Faw which blocked any Iraqi naval attempts and resulted in the Iraqi navy scrambling to remove the critical Iraqi radar station in the area and the silkworm battery they had that covered the approaches to Bandar to the east, fortunately their separate command structure had enabled them to make appropriate preparations to do so, they saw the attack coming even if the army refused to believe it, the Iraqi marine corps would acquit themselves well as they managed to maintain order and a brigade of them blocked Iranian attacks up the main al-Faw highway long enough for reinforcements to arrive . Some Iraqi forces would continue fighting to the bitter end, but Iran had control of the peninsula from the 19th onwards. The rain cleared three days later on Feb 12th where it became apparent this was a major assault. They immediately started deploying mustard gas to slow the Iranian advance and another armoured and infantry division were brought in to reinforce the southern lines. However Iraqi resistance in the south had collapsed entirely. After four days Iran controlled the majority of Al-Faw. For 2’600 casualties they had taken the area and inflicted 6’500 casualties on Iraq. They now reinforced and prepared for the Iraqi counterattack. As the rain cleared the Iraqi airforce got into action, employing their Tu-16’s and 22’s to attack staging areas, it was during this point that they lost another Tu-22 to an F-14 and a Tu-16 to a HAWK missile. They also suffered 6 other plane casualties. Despite the growing criticality of the situation Iraq was still convinced there would be an attack at Majnoon so committed no further forces there for another 6 critical days. Iraqi General Shawket employed significant quantities of chemical weapons delivered via artillery to try and keep the Iranians off balance and stop them massing to attack him to good effect, however in the marshy terrain they would prove limited in effectiveness as the shells tended to bury themselves in the mud and either not go off or vent a lot into the ground and water table. Iran would pull its exhausted Pasdaran off the frontline and replace them with Army divisions, more suited with their heavier equipment to holding the area. It took until February 18th until the Iraqis recognised this as the major offensive, not just a diversion, in part because a shot down Iranian pilot would tell them that in interrogation.  Iranian soldier on the Al-Faw peninsula Saddam took personal affront at the loss of so much Iraqi territory and required it be retaken immediately. Shawket avoided Saddams immediate displeasure and was kept in command of his forces that were to attack along the Shatt-al-Arab, but General Rashid was given the republican guard who would attack the central area and offered the General that his daughter, Lumma Rashid, would marry Saddams Son Qusay in event of victory, Qusay being Saddams less mad son. A feudal but apparently very effective motivator, a few months later they would marry and would remain married until Qusays death in a fight with US forces in 2003. So, on February 21st Iraq would counterattack along 3 axes, the three roads that ran the length of the peninsula and converged at Al-Faw. There was vicious fighting around the city of Siba where Shawkets column would shell the city viciously but not break through. In the centre areas advance was slow due to the return of the rain which turned the marshes into an almost impassable bog, the Iraqi columns managing maybe three miles a day and employing heavy amounts of chemical weapons to try and clear out Iranian positions. Along the southern road General al-Jebouray and the third Iraqi column was advancing very quickly, the coastal road and area more suited to his tanks. He would manage an advance of nearly 30 kilometres along that road before he ran into heavy Iranian defensive positions who inflicted a surprise shock with their TOW missiles that he had been specifically briefed they did not have which brought him to a sudden stop. He was saved from significant damage in part by the Iranians poor marksmanship where they were expending on average 10 missiles per hit. Now here we get the start of Saddams real beef with Kuwait. Looking at the map you may notice Warbah and beneath it Bubiyah island. Access to this would permit Iraq to quickly outflank Iranian positions by crossing the three-mile-wide stretch of water between it and Al-Faw. Iran warned Kuwait to not permit Iraq to use it, underlining this with their silkworm batteries currently very pointed at Kuwait City. Artillery fire had become a daily soundtrack to life in Kuwait City to underline the point. The Emir of Kuwait complied and warned Saddam to not attempt this, as did the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on pain of losing all material support from their nations. This would deeply humiliate Saddam who did not appreciate having his leash yanked like that and would be remembered four years later. Saddam would authorise his airforce to use its airspace and would infiltrate observes onto there. Kuwait pretended not to notice. Iran would launch an unsuccessful attack in Kurdistan at this stage that will get covered later. Back in the south Iran committed significant quantities of Pasdaran and Basijj in the area, particularly against Shawkets column in the east but they could make little impact and they took Siba and destroyed the bridge there. However, when they tried to push on, they were stopped by Iranian fortifications and proceeded no further before the offensive ended on March 13th. Both sides stabilised and established trench lines, extending the misery yet further.  Iraqi T-54 derivative (I think Type 69) engaged in fighting along the Al-Faw peninsula. Iraqi counterattacks had been very bloody, inflicting 34’000 casualties on Iran, of which at least 10’000 were chemical weapon casualties. Iraq suffered 7’000 casualties in their attack. Iran controlled significant quantities of the Al-Faw peninsula and effectively shut Iraq’s navy out of major operations in the gulf for the foreseeable future. The marshy terrain of the area had nullified Iraq’s mechanized advantage as it had elsewhere. It has also demonstrated the limitations of chemical weapons specifically, now roughly 80% of Iranian regular army units have full protective gear, though only 40% of Pasdaran units do so. General Shawket would survive his lack of readiness owing to his fierce fighting in the counterattack, but he was sacked and replaced as head of the 7th corps by General al-Jeboury. The head of Iraqi intelligence, General Shahin was also sacked, replaced by General al-Duri. Not the same al-Duri as the dangerously psychopathic general who was first brought up in the initial Iraqi assault into Iran in 1980/81. The new head of Iraqi intelligence was regarded as one of the most capable of Iraq’s senior staff. Combat would continue at a low level on Al-Faw for the remainder of the year. Dawn 9  The front and major offensives of 1986. Given Iraq’s heavy pressure on Al-Faw Iran would launch an attack in Kurdistan on February 22nd entitled Dawn 9. Significant quantities of Pasdaran would attack under cover of a snowstorm in the mountains of the Penjwin valley. This weather grounded the Iraqi airforce and prevented spotters from reporting their assault until they were on top of Iraqi positions. A simultaneous assault too place towards Halabja in the south. These attacks were supported by significant Kurdish irregular elements. However, their initial attacks did not go well when they moved past Iraqi border fortifications and came up against the defences of the cities of Rawandaz and Sulaymaniyah. The KDPI fighting on the side of Iraq would cause significant problems in mountain skirmishes with the KDP and PUK. The Iraqis would start to employ napalm against Iranian formations once the weather cleared via the unusual method of using their Il-76 aircraft, flying above the envelope of the SA-7 at 2000+ metres they would push several 200 litre barrels with a fuse out the back that would airburst at 100 meters and ignite it spreading it everywhere. The Iraqi general in command of the northern front General al-Khazraji, counterattacked pushing the Iranians back a few miles from their advance which ended their offensive. Iran would come back round and try again in Kurdistan in April. They launched an assault at Rawanduz which was heralded by a fierce attack from the KDP into their rear areas with the Iranians attacking the front. They would make steady progress towards Rawanduz for several days until Iraq redeployed one of its mechanized divisions to reinforce the area and stopped them. Iran would commit their best regular infantry division to the area which got the attack rolling again briefly before further Iraqi reinforcements arrived. They would launch another smaller assault in the north, taking the town of Mangesh behind the front which lies between Mosul and the Turkish border. This was conducted by around 1000 Kurdish fighters supported by Iranian paratroops, this put them in striking range of the Kirkuk to Dortyul pipeline and Iraq responded heavily, dispatching three brigades with heavy air support along with their own Kurdish fighters to the area and they retook the town after a brief but heavy fight. Iran would respond by bombing the Zakho bridge, the major land link for oil export between Iraq and Turkey, though failing to destroy it. This particularly betrays Iran’s frustration or increasing desperation to risk alienating Turkey at this stage. Consequences of the Dawn offensives. Iran had proven it was still very dangerous, employing a genuinely quite brilliant attack to take the peninsula, but they again got bogged down when Iraq brought in its armoured forces. Realistically they had no chance of taking Basra from Al-Faw, it was foolish to think so, but they didn’t have that many options remaining. It successfully alleviated some pressure on their southern ports and made life more awkward for Iraq to attack into the gulf both by air and sea. They are really risking burning their bridges internationally by keeping fighting and even threatening to escalate into Turkey itself. This bites them hard almost immediately.  Hafez al-Assad, who reminds me of Basil Fawlty whenever I look at him. I do not know why. To this point Hafez Al-Assad of Syria has been a very good friend of Iran. He is in the uncomfortable position of being a Secular Ba’athist Arab state supporting a theocratic Shia mainly Persian state against another secular Ba’ath Arab state. There’s a reason for this that I won’t get into, but it puts him in the camp of people who actually don’t want a radical Shia theocratic regime in Iraq. Which is what the Al-Faw offensive was threatening. He would tell Iran in no uncertain terms that Iraq was Arab, and he would not allow them to occupy it, they wanted Saddam bleeding but not dead. This was the culmination of a long period of increased tensions. Iran was displacing Syrian influence in Lebanon with Hezbollah and had been for some time and their constant verbal attacks on the USSR were a significant embarrassment given the USSR’s backing of Syria. To underline his point Assad ordered a halt to weapon shipments to Iran, turning back one of his container ships. Iran responded by cutting Syria off from oil and Hezbollah started a minor war against Syrian backed militia in Lebanon. Assad would approach Jordan and KSA to try and negotiate a rapprochement, which King Hussein of Jordan would grab with both hands. With the support of 18mn barrels of oil per year free of charge supplied by the KSA he visited Syria and Iraq. Double what Syria had been receiving from Iran. However, Assad took that offer and went back to Iran. Inviting them to outbid the Saudis. The Kremlin leant hard on Assad to try and get him to take the deal with the rest of the Arabs as part of their recent charm offensive in the Arab world more generally to try and get their proxies on the inside. However, Iran would commit to matching the Saudis offer and resuming oil shipments and guaranteeing they would not install an Islamic regime in the event of them winning the war. This meant that Syria would publicly maintain his alliance. He did continue to try to play both sides, teasing the reopening of the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline. But Saddam saw straight through the scheme and told King Hussein that he was not prepared to make the first move, ending that particular idea. Turkey and Iran’s relationship was also on the rocks. The Iranian bombing of the bridge had upset Turkey, and the Turkish price for vital consumer goods had upset Iran because it was exorbitant. Starting in late 1986 the PKK under Ocalan launched an attack in Anatolia, killing twelve Turkish soldiers, Turkey responded with a huge operation into Iraqi Kurdistan which killed 165 PKK fighters and they conduced a huge manhunt in the area where they captured several Iranian supported Kurdish fighters. A heated exchange would begin, Khomeini would openly criticise Turkey and declare Ataturk a tyrant. Turkey would station troops along the border and start shipping more material to Baghdad, though not weapons. They were concerned, 1.5 million Iranian refugees were in Turkey and they had reliable evidence of a significant Iranian Quds force presence that could spark a major religious riot in the area. Iran for its part was deeply alarmed at Turkish forces going and attacking their Kurdish proxies in Iraq and feared them getting drawn in against Iranian regulars. This growing of tensions would lead in part to threats against the Iraq-Turkey pipeline and the further Karbala offensives that would take place later that year in August. Iraqi Diplomatic plays and Iranian unrest. Saddam at this point decided that if Iran held such a significant part of Iraq that he would have to take part of Iran to try and initiate a territory exchange. The attack would fall in the central area of the front around the area of Mehran which had been identified as a weak point by satellite intelligence provided by the US and France along with their own photoreconnaissance. Iraq assembled two reinforced divisions of 25’000 men in the area who were arranged against a single Iranian reinforced Brigade of around 5’000. The attack was largely unremarkable, it was competently executed, Iran quickly recognised it couldn’t hold this particular area and retreated back to the Zagros mountains. The Iraqis expanded to take the town of Mehran and a large area surrounding it then dug in. Saddam would then offer peace and an exchange of land for land, al-Faw for Mehran. However, Saddam has actually gained very little from this, he refused to let his troops pursue and do serious damage to the retreating Iranians, he has encamped in Iranian territory out on a limb in hurriedly erected fortifications and hung up a sign saying “come and have a go if you think you are hard enough.” An unwise challenge to make. Iran was in a bit of internal turmoil. Khomeini was very ill, at an age of 86 he had a pretty good innings, but the Iranian government was divided over whether he should have surgery to try and save his life. Rafsanjani, Khamenei and Montazeri however scuppered this endeavour because they feared his death would cause the Iranian people to lose faith and just peace out of the war with Saddams offer. The line of succession from Khomeini was also at this stage unclear and that needed resolving. The three men however differed on what to do with Saddams offer. Montazeri wanted to end the war and stop the bloodshed, he viewed continuing on as a waste of life. However, Rafsanjani and Khameini outvoted him and convinced Khomeini to come down on the side of continuing the war until Saddam was ousted. However as is the way with all triumvirates, they also immediately fell out on how to continue the war. Rafsanjani said that Iran needed to make friends to secure the weapons they needed to win. Khameini however said that Iran would only win by sticking to its principles of faith in god and rejecting any compromise with foreign power. This debate between factions in Iran has not yet been settled in Iran and continues to this very day. The one thing they could agree on was the rejection of Saddams offer and the preparation and execution of the Karbala offensives. These were named after the historical battle of Karbala. A major unifying historical event for Shiism. Karbala offensives.  One of the IRIAF AH-1’s. The first Karbala offensives was in the Mehran sector on June 30th, 1986. 100’000 soldiers, many of whom were Basijj militia would batter the Iraqi defences for two days in a series of softening attacks until Iranian regular forces would send two armoured and two mechanized divisions who would push Iraq out of Mehran and back into Iraq itself. Rafsanjani would travel there on the 3rd of July to proclaim the liberationof the town, Iraq tried to interrupt with another counterattack, but Iran had recently come into the possession of large quantities of parts for their AH-1 Cobras and they performed a large scale air attack on advancing Iraqi tanks who were unaware that Iran’s helicopter fleet was back in action after they received significant parts shipments from Israel. 30 of them appeared and savaged the unsuspecting Iraqi tanks, destroying nearly 70 of them in this initial engagement. casualties among Iraq’s T-62 and T-72 tanks in a one-sided firefight lasting only half an hour. Iran took the moment to counterattack with its Pasdaran forces and the Iraqis fell back. Unfortunately for Iraqi General Ibrahim Saddam was in a bad mood that day and had him recalled to Baghdad and then shot. Iran’s first counteroffensive had gone well, for 12’000 casualties they had inflicted 5’200 Iraqi casualties, but more critically had destroyed 80 Iraqi tanks in total. Iraqi casualties were mounting with the end of the dawn offensive and the start of the Karbala offensives and Iraqi manpower was beginning to be stretched thin along the front. Saddam sent another peace offer to Tehran, however the Iranians were emboldened by success and turned them down flat, Rafsanjani again called for the deposition of Saddam and threatened that he had 650’000 men assembled for the final assault. However, Iran would not be so foolish as to attack in the centre, instead they would return to Kurdistan. As mentioned earlier, Turkey has started making inroads into Iraqi Kurdistan in their pursuit of the consistent mission of the Turkish nation. This was intolerable to Iran who were concerned Turkey might try to grab land in the north on the pretext of fighting Kurdish terrorists. They were to launch the second Karbala offensive before too long. On August 31st they attacked at Rawanduz, with the aim of taking the city, opening the road to Erbil and Mosul and cutting off Iraqi oil exports and fracturing off Kurdistan from the nation. They would assemble three army divisions and five Basijj-reinforced Pasdaran divisions in the area, however they were stopped cold by two dug in Iraqi divisions outside Rawanduz who were reinforced rapidly by helicopter borne forces who drove them back six miles from the city.  Kor al-Amaya terminal. Iran would launch simultaneously Karbala 3 in the Al-Faw peninsula, Iraq had established a small garrison aboard the Kor al-Amaya offshore oil terminal, they had an early warning radar there to monitor the upper end of the gulf, They took it in short order and destroyed the radar there, which blinded the Iraqi navy to Iranian ship movements resupplying Al-Faw. Iraq would retake the platforms in a helicopter borne assault three days later on September 4th. But the radar was permanently out of action.  Zakho bridge, might not look like much but it was a major logistical link between Iraq and Turkey. The second Karbala offensive however would stop on September 7th, Iran believed it had made its point with Turkey and switched to using the Kurds as guerrilla forces in concert with pasdaran light forces. They would attack a water reprocessing plant near Kirkuk with the PUK in tow, conduct a helicopter borne assault which took the Dukan dam blacking out Kirkuk and the KDP would reach the Zakho bridge and shell it with mortars, blocking it for two days. Baghdad had to put republican guard units in the area to try and contain the Kurdish guerrilla fighters. However, despite some impressive tactical successes, there was no real material gain from these attacks. Iran had managed to retake its land but little more. The war remained at a stalemate. A brief update on the air war The heavy Iranian attacks elsewhere pulled Iraqi planes out of the gulf, this enabled Iran to get back on its feet, they re-established proper SAM coverage over Kharg and organised enough of an air superiority mission to contest the airspace. Only the Mirage-F1EQ was employed against Kharg at this stage owing to its modern nature and ECM equipment with their Su-22’s and MiG-23’s keeping out of the dangerous area. However, the predictability of the Iraqi attacks leads to them losing 8 planes to Iranian F-14’s in the northern and central gulf. Despite their success however the airforce remained in the regime’s bad graces, pilots were warned not to publicise their aerial victories which were frequently granted to the Pasdaran instead who were set up as the true vanguards of the revolution. Information on the air campaign would remain tightly controlled until the late 90’s. Even after that the Pasdaran would pressure to keep the Iranian Air Forces role quiet, even going so far as to stop the screening of a documentary about the IRIAF’s F-14’s in 2012. However, despite Iranian victories Iraq would soon step up its activities again once pressure abated with General Shaban supervising the increase in targeting of Iranian infrastructure conducting several successful attacks on the Esfahan steelworks in central Iran, its surrounding power infrastructure and also the Parchin munitions work near Tehran. Iran would respond with several missile attacks against Baghdad, however Saddam took Shaban’s advice and continued attacking infrastructure targets rather than using planes on cities. Shaban would also orchestrate attacks much deeper into the gulf at this time, even hitting the Bandar Abbas terminal at Larak in late 1986, using 9 Mirage F1-EQ’s as tankers and 3 as strike aircraft with 2 dedicated jamming aircraft. Thinking this out of range of Iraq, there was minimal defences there, and Iraqi aircraft dropped 12 500kg bombs, wrecking one supertanker and critically damaged 4 others. This diverted significant air defence assets to this area. They would fire yet more missiles into Iraqi cities, but Saddam again did not rise to the bait. How things stand 86 into 87  Iranian women undergoing basic pistol training to join the basijj. So, as we end 1986 the Iranian government is suffering repeated hammer blows to its economy. They had a cumulative drop of 13% in its ability to export crude from Iraqi attack both directly and also in scaring off tanker owners. The absolute cratering in the cost of oil and the value of the dollar meant that it lost half of its oil revenue in a 6-month period. Iranian GDP is at this point near as dammit equivalent to the Iraqi GDP, despite its three times larger population. They are running short of recruits for their militias and in a hotly contested debate arm women for the first time, the blow being softened by those women tending to be the widows of dead Pasdaran, they are assigned to some domestic security posts. Conscription is widened with universities being shut down as the professors are conscripted to run the army’s administrative functions, some government departments shut down completely as civil servants are subject to the same treatment. Bribery is on the rise to get even basic levels of governmental functionality done in a timely fashion and desertion is starting to become a real problem. Even Rafsanjani’s designated pilot defected with his Falcon-50 to Iraq. That plane would be one of the candidates for the 3 possible Falcon 50's iraq possesses that is repurposed to fire Exocets that hit the USS Stark in 1987. Iran is close to financial collapse. Iraq is faring slightly better, the GCC has given it a huge grant to compensate for the loss of oil revenue and it has started to export more of its goods, depriving its citizens somewhat but the cash needs to come from somewhere, it is catastrophically indebted but is not in danger of financial collapse. It is in danger of manpower collapse as its economy is now almost entirely run off the backs of Turkish, Egyptian and Palestinian guest workers. Kurdistan is beginning to get close to open insurrection and will prove constant thorn in their sides. The Iraqi army is now 700’000 strong out of a population of around 16 million, or around 4.5% of the total population. They have almost every able-bodied military age man in uniform. They are getting close to running out of people. Iraq has also proven incapable of really attacking, the humiliating defeat when they tried to at Mehran and the constant Iranian pressure has cost them dearly over this last year. Saddam can not really afford any more mistakes like the loss of Al-Faw or Mehran again, the Iranian proficiency at waterborne assault was a nasty shock. He needs to find a way to make Iran bleed and to do so quickly before he makes another mistake. Iraq has also not yet fully rid itself of the cronyism, General al-Duri (the incompetent one) would have one last nasty surprise in for Saddam, left as he had been in charge of 3rd corps north of Basra. The Iranian leadership are a very dangerous combination of both overconfident and desperate at this stage, riding high off what was admittedly a very well executed offensive. Khomeini issues a Fatwa declaring the war must be won by the Persian new year of 1987 which effectively ends the policy argument about what to do. Khomeini was well aware of the damage the war was doing to Iran, it had actually by this point served its purpose. The Islamists were now firmly in control, dissent was quashed, the Kurds were dead or driven into Iraq and the MEK and Khuzestan Arabs relatively quiescent along with the Baloch’s and Azeri minorities. They now need to stop spending money on guns and start spending them on basic necessities for their people. However, this overconfidence and the orders from the Supreme Leader mean that Iran is going to make a series of mistakes in an attempt to end the war quickly and this will lead to some very concerning internal conflicts. At sea this results in a ratcheting up of tension and attacks on neutral shipping which will bring the US into the gulf in force that we have already covered, this will effectively nullify their ability to attack Iraq and their allies economically. On land we will cover the specifics next time, but it will revolve around some of the largest battles and probably the highest rate of deaths in the war, where Iran tries to go in the front door of one of the most fortified cities in the world, Basra. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 20:53
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Squalid posted:Do you have the name of the source where you got the personal accounts of Iranian POWs describing their motivations? I think I remember reading that like three years ago but I could never find it again Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: The story of Irans Boy Soldiers by Brown is the original source for i believe all of those particular quotes, there is also a printing in French which i believe is the same book broadly, or covering the same interviews, with a different title which i know exists from the Iranian born sociologist who did the investigation alongside Brown at the time called L'Islamisme et la mort: Le martyr revolutionaire en Iran by Khosrokhavar (Everything about it is in French so i dont know precisely what went on but its referenced alongside it in some places). They have been requoted in other books as well, notably Vanguard of the Imam by Ostavar, Iran-Iraq by Razoux and Essential Histories: The Iran-Iraq War by Karsh which is where i read them. I havent read Browns book myself because its difficult to find
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Oct 14, 2019 23:49
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While it's true one has to be somewhat careful, Brown's account as I understand its history seems very dependable and is a good illustration of the differences. Brown himself was not there as a journalist, or actually even as I said incorrectly a sociologist. He went there as a teacher as part of the efforts of a swiss children's charity to care for child POWs, he wrote after his four year stint teaching them, a memoir about his experiences. Stage managing that for that length of time would be pretty much an impossibility which marks the distinction in his account reliability compared to the front page of the Washington post from that era in terms of its reliability. Not that journalism is neccesarily inherently dishonest, just that it is more easily mislead due to the shorter time scale or pressure to produce copy than what is essentially a document written by someone who thought it important to share their experience, not something written to shift newspapers but to record.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:57
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Previous posts Chase the hyperlinks to the previous posts in this thread. Website archive that i will get round to uploading all this to eventually. 1986 to 1988 - The war runs out of steam Up to this point the war has sort of swung both ways, both sides have displayed competence, incompetence and ruthlessness in pretty much equal measure. However, the long standing Iranian policy of nothing but aggression has leeched away much of their support and their situation is starting to become somewhat critical. They need to win and win quickly. Khomeini is close to death and is currently bedridden, his three potential successors, Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Montazeri are jockeying for position and each has quite different ideas on how exactly to win. This will not assist Iran in its quest to triumph. However, Khomeini has issued a fatwa that Basra must be taken, so they all set about that particular activity with greater or lesser degrees of gusto. The essential plan is that if you take Basra you set off a Shiite insurrection in southern Iraq which would then mean that The People Will Rise Up and overthrow Saddam permitting them to drive up the Euphrates to Baghdad. Realistically I don’t think that was ever a particular danger. Anti-Persian sentiment was high, Iran had hardly been a particular good-natured foe or ruler of Arabs in its territory. Saddam was a very effective dictator in terms of eliminating and having a good gauge on dissent and had been conducting pre-emptive purges and suppression of potential elements, particularly the marsh Arabs, in the area for years. It smacks to me of wishful thinking in all honesty. The big danger had Iran taken Basra is it then puts the Kuwait city to Nasiriyah road in danger, and the majority of Iraqi supplies ran through that area behind the city. However to cut that road would have been very problematic for Iran. Basra lies atop a river delta with the Shatt-Al-Arab infront of it and the Basra canal behind it, Iran would need to take the city, then cross the Basra canal straight through another line of pre-prepared Iraqi defences, this time without the benefit of marshland or the proximity to their own country and then push another 20km further west to cut that road. This is over open ground which would suit them far less than either urban or marsh fighting. However that is the only plan they really had. So into the breach they went. Karbala 4  Note that the canal runs behind Basra as well as I outlined in the opening. With all that in mind Iran achieved possibly its greatest troop concentration of the war, they assembled 360’000 troops across the river from Basra and 40’000 troops in the Al-Faw peninsula. They had a bit of a kerfuffle about exactly how to do it, the regular army lead by General Shirazi advocated a large scale envelopment from the rear, avoiding the defences of Basra as much as possible and hoping to cut it off. However this was dismissed on the grounds of time, Khomeini had spoken. The Pasdaran leader Rezaee advocated a full-frontal assault of the Basra defences. They took their argument to the Supreme defence council and Rafsanjani came down on the side of the Pasdaran but incorporated some of the army’s ideas. It would be split into 2 different operations. The first phase was Karbala 4 and was to take place on Christmas eve 1986 (Not that that would be a date of particular significance for the combatants), the 21st infantry division was to cross again at the island of Um-Al-Rassas, supported by the specialist 41st assault engineer division who we introduced last time as Irans bridging specialists. However, signals decrypt meant the Iraqis were prepared for this, and had presighted their mortar and artillery on the target beach and had dug in machine gun posts all over the place. The 6th armoured division, lead by the generally capable General Rashid were held in reserve to attack any beachheads. So Iran landed in the night and were pinned down on the beachhead almost immediately, the Iranian General Kossari who was commanding the operation called for more reinforcements and adding to his 10’000 troops committed to the original assault another 30’000 Pasdaran fighters disembarked over the next 2 days. Iraq responded with heavy bombing of the bridging area, as 6th armoured started a sweep up the coast of the Shatt-Al-Arab and were essentially unstoppable in doing so. The scattered Iranian forces couldn’t bring enough to bear to oppose the Iraqi tanks and over 3 days of combat would completely destroy the Iranian positions, pushing them back across the river, inflicting heavy losses killing nearly 7’000 Iranians and an unknown but certainly large quantity of wounded. Iraq suffered only 800 dead in return with 2’000 wounded. It was an excellently executed defensive operation. However this was only a precursor of things to come. General Al-Duri who is in command of the northern edge of the fighting however now badly undermines Iraqi readiness in the area, he reported massive casualties to the Iranians in their attacks in an attempt to outshine General Rashid, claiming that his area had killed 10’000 Iranians, which lead to the perception in the Iraqi high command that Iran has suffered such casualties that they could not attack again for at least six months. This results in many Iraqi forces being sent on leave and a general relaxing of tensions in the Basra area. Khomeini is furious, and Rafsanjani is under heavy fire from his rivals, there was even danger of him being removed as commander in chief of the armed forces, but he would eventually secure Khomeinis support. Largely because he commanded the loyalty of much of the Pasdaran, and to remove him now would risk a large schism that would wreck any oncoming offensives. So the wheels of the next inexorable assault would continue to turn. Karbala 5 - The Mother of All battles  Iraqi defences in fish lake Plan of the battle. That is where that phrase, later popularised by Saddam in his description of gulf 1, originates, it would be coined by Khameini some time into the offensive itself. The plan with Karbala 5 was fairly sophisticated. Iraq had been digging in since 1984 in this area, they had minefields, bunkers, barbed wires, emplaced guns and a massive embankment around the area of Fish Lake and bits of the eastern segment of the Basra canal. These were all protecting the two main bridges over the Shatt-Al-Arab which lead into the heart of Basra’s urban centre. Irans plan was to circumvent as much of this as possible and try to catch the Iraqis off guard by going round the side. Iraqi 3rd corps responsible for the area was under the command of General al-Duri, the man whose name you may recognise as responsible for many of Iraqs early woes, a psychopath with indifferent command skills he maintained his position entirely through Saddams patronage and had survived a dozen cock ups who would have got any other man shot. And here he is, positioned right in the sector that Iran would attack. He had 7 divisions, 5 infantry, 1 mechanized and 1 armoured in the area, however 5 of those were deployed further north to guard against the original threat from the Iranian attack through the marshes, they were stuck the other side of a canal from Basra proper and particularly the area enclosed by the canal systems. Only two divisions were available in the Basra area directly. Iran decided to circumvent much of the Iraqi defences by attempting to cross Fish Lake. The assault began on January 8th with two Pasdaran divisions crossing the lake while one of Irans remaining armoured divisions began a diversionary attack on the 8th Iraqi Infantry division. While engaging Iranian tanks the Iraqi division was flanked by the amphibious attack via the lake, this caused a breakdown of the 8th division who retreated quickly to the north. The Pasdaran took control of the east side of the canal and immediately began preparations to cross, quickly establishing a pair beachhead of around a kilometre each on the other side of the canal. However they were prevented from advancing further by the Iraqi 5th Mechanized division. But they would sweep north causing the virtual disintegration of the 8th Infantry and capturing their General. Further south Iran pours three divisions into the town of Du’aiji. They run almost straight over the first line. The Iraqi commander was prepared for this but not the sheer scale of the attack, he had maybe 5-6’000 men against the Iranians nearly 40’000 and was forced relentlessly back to the town of Du’aji though maintained his retreat in good order, he was ordered to retreat across the canal by al-Duri and did so quickly, stopping the attacking Iranians with the aid of the artificial channel. This along with the containment of Iranian bridgeheads further north leads to the end of this phase of Karbala 5, however they have successfully circumvented about 4 layers of prepared Iraqi defences and destroyed an entire division. They would launch diversionary attacks elsewhere before continuing the assault.  An Iranian observer in the blasted palm groves of eastern Basra. At this point Saddam sacks al-Duri for letting himself get into this situation and appoints his successor General Jamal, a Shia native of Basra who swore to die rather than let his hometown fall to Iran. However he did this without consulting the general in overall command of the area General Dhannoun, his chief of military staff who took offense at his authority being so undermined, so Saddam sacked Dhannoun and sought volunteers to replace him. But nobody did, displaying perhaps a health desire to survive. Eventually he chose General Aziz, a man who had retired before the outbreak of the war but had displayed tenacity against the Kurds in the 70’s and summoned him to his palace to receive his orders, Aziz had been trained at Sandhurst and had a good reputation but would prove average at best. To respond to this Saddam ordered the evacuation of Basra, 850’000 of the cities 1 million inhabitants would leave over the coming months, the shelling was likely to get very intense as now all Iranian artillery was in range with a gap of around 8 miles between Iranian positions and the city. He also rushed the finest Republican Guard armoured division and for the preparation of a second line of defence along the Euphrates in the event of Basra falling. He also restarted the war of the cities on January 12th, ordering the IQAF to cease battlefield support and gulf attacks and to start to bomb cities. Perhaps not the best idea he ever had, however there would be intense bombing of over 30 Iranian urban centres including the cities of Tehran, Qom and Esfahan by long range Iraqi MiG-25’s and the border cities of Dezful, Ahwaz and Kerman Shah would be targeted by Iraqi Scuds. Iran promptly retaliated with their artillery against Basra and other border cities and missile attacks on Baghdad. Karbala 6 - Diversionary attack  Mohajer drone used by Iran. Iran arrayed 100’000 men to attack in the centre of Iraq at the town of Mandali outside Baghdad as a distraction, It also had 150’000 fresh troops ready to assault Basra itself. Directly following on from Karbala 5 on January 13th this began with the assault on Mandali. Iran committed 2 of its remaining armoured divisions to this attack with 5 other divisions in support, using 600 of its remaining 1’300 or so tanks in this attack. They also employed derivatives of Israeli drones for the first time, some of these had been retrieved by Hezbollah following the second Lebanese war and had been delivered and copied by Iran. Initial Iraqi defences were stretched thin in this sector, with 6 infantry divisions stretched over a wide front, many of whom could not redeploy as they would just leave a huge hole in the line of they did. However critically he did have use of two Armoured divisions, one of them a guards division as his mobile reserve. The Iranian attack fell on January 13th on a concentration of 3 Iraqi divisions who were holding the key high ground areas around the abandoned town of Mandali. They made good initial progress but were unable to take the town before Iraqi tanks arrived. This is one of the largest tank battles of the war with Iraq bringing 700 tanks, mainly T-72’s and T-62’s against Iran, who had 600 which were chiefly Type 59 with some more modern Type 69 tanks. However Iranian tankers badly lacked training over the preceding years with a shortage of tank shells meaning that some crews had fired maybe a dozen rounds before. Iranian tanks were savaged, losing nearly 200 tanks in the clashes. However, Iraq would overextend in its excitement into Iranian positions and would suffer similar losses to a hail of TOW and other associated missile fire which brought the battle to a grinding halt. However, at 1300 tanks in total involved it is one of the larger armoured clashes of the 20th century.  Iranian defensive positions around Mandali. Saddam would hold a conference in Baghdad to decide on the best response, he dispatched more reinforcements to Basra, two armoured and one mechanized division, The 5th Mechanized and the Medina Munawara Republican Guard armoured division successfully pushed the bridgeheads established on the other side of the canal near Tanuma back into the water, drowning many Pasdaran who couldn’t swim. The 3rd armoured attempted to push down the far side of the canal but made less progress. However the offensive was broadly successful, Saddam addressed Iran via a radio broadcast, renouncing his territorial claims and proposing a peace plan which was basically status quo, no renegotiation of the border. Tariq Aziz pushed this in Moscow and Taha Ramadan pushed it in Beijing, there were also efforts via the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to try and get the people with any influence over Iran to get them to accept it. However Iran would reject it utterly. Karbala 5 would roll again. Karbala 5 continued, then also 7,8,9 and 10.  The state of the various offensives across the front. So Iran would launch a massive assault against the Jassem canal, it was the shortest water gap and was the most lightly defended. 40’000 Iraqis of the 3rd corps under the command of General Jamal were in the triangle east of Basra to oppose the 150’000 Iranians that were assembled. Iraqi troops as outlined were at a decreased level of readiness as they did not expect an attack for some time. However, on January 29th, the attack came. A three-day constant assault fell on the canal front which inflicted brutal casualties on the attackers, however on February 1st Iran broke through the canal area forcing Iraq to fall back to their penultimate prepared defensive line. Iran was now in sight of the city. This retreat caused exaltation from Rafsanjani who pushed for more assaults, however now that Iraq had disengaged from close quarters fighting as the Iranians reorganized, they were free to shell at will with both conventional and chemical munitions, bringing their Il-76 napalm bombers to bear as well. If you look at the satellite view of the area even today the heaviness of the fighting has left a distinct mark on it with the outlines of Iraqi defensive positions and shell craters still clearly visible. The assault was however stopped on February 3rd. However, crossing the canal had rendered Irans logistics perilous, They had extended too far for it to be possible to launch an immediate attack and needed to resupply. Iraq would reinforce its own line by rotating out its exhausted infantry divisions and replacing them with reinforcements from 6th and 7th corps. Iran would receive fresh troops from a mass call up of Basijj militia to reinforce Pasdaran forces for one last big set of assaults, Khomeini himself would call on the 11th of February, the anniversary of the revolution, for all young Iranians to join the army and go to the front without delay. That assault would come on February 19th. The fresh waves of troops would drive the Iraqis out of their penultimate line into their ultimate line of defences. Adnan Khairallah, Defence Minister and one of the truly very capable Iraqi generals travelled to assist General Jamal in preparing the last line by lending his authority and expertise to the proceedings. General Aziz had proven too old for his post as chief of staff and vacillated, issuing no real orders. He would be quietly replaced soon with the also capable General Khazraji, he had proven himself as leader of 1st corps in the north of the country previously. However, on 23rd of February Iran would launch its last assault, at the end of their logistical tether and facing dug in tanks among the Iraqi trench lines, the Iranians were repulsed in a three-day running engagement where they failed to make significant progress leading Iran to eventually call an end to Karbala 5 and to stop to breathe. Iraq would employ this time well however and would be ready when they returned. During this period of rest Iran would launch Karbala 7, this attack fell in the north on March 3rd , it was a two division size assault with the support of the KDP. It initially went steadily but slowly, Iraqi forces had been stretched thin responding to Basra and the attacks in the centre. However, the Iranians got a little unlucky, Turkey had simultaneously launched a major offensive against the PKK and were nervous about Iranian activities in the area of operations. Turkey issued an ultimatum that they would not permit Iran to seize Kirkuk or Mosul, so the assault was stopped within sight of the city of Rawanduz in order to soothe Turkish nerves. Karbala 9 would also fall in the central area of Iraq near the Iranian city of Qasr-e-Shirin. Using 2 infantry divisions against the Iraqi 1 they tried to break through into the hilly area north of Baghdad, however the Iraqi division retreated in good order to pre-prepared positions further back and held without the need for further reinforcements which were all needed in Basra. Iran was truly preparing for their last offensive on Basra, Karbala 8. Their logistics were badly stretched, they were having trouble supplying troops the other side of the canal with food and water, let alone bullets and other vital supplies. Iraqi artillery was relentless in their harassment of Iranian positions. On April 6th three Pasdaran divisions of 40’000 men would attack the Iraqi lines once more, they ran straight into pre-sighted BM-21 and Katyusha rockets firing from the rear which broke up the attack, when they did successfully break through, they were immediately counterattacked by Iraqi tanks and pushed back over the line. Iran would attempt a chemical attack using phosgene gas, however Iraq was prepared, and this had little effect. Iraq would respond with heavy use of mustard gas which would bring the assault to an end. This three-month long series of battles would end on April 11th causing them nearly 120’000 casualties of which at least a third were KIA, a very high proportion as medical extraction was very hard to achieve. The Pasdaran had lost a quarter of their officer corps, particularly from their experienced amphibious units. Iraq had suffered 10’000 deaths with 30’000 wounded. There would be one last gasp, Karbala 10 in Kurdistan was an indifferent assault involving 3 divisions of Iranian regulars and the majority of PUK fighters attacked the cities of Sulaymaniyah and Halabja, however with little support they were easily repulsed and took only a few kilometres of territory. Iran had essentially run out of steam. Saddam was delighted, showering his generals in gifts and praise for their fantastic victory. Rafsanjani was embittered, having declared Iraq would be defeated by the end of March 1987. The remainder of the year would be fairly quiet with little activity outside of the gulf. Iran overplays its hand. With the failure of the last big push Iran is actually in some fairly serious trouble in early 1987. Pasdaran forces in Tehran have started protesting the regime, demanding an end to the war, supported in this by Ayatollah Montazeri, there are reports of cross border fraternization in quiet sectors. Iran quiets these problems by promoting many prominent Pasdaran figures and announcing an increase in the martyr’s family pension allowance. They also decided to try and win the war via attrition, provoking a widening of attacks on tanker traffic in order to try and get the Arab monarchies to pressure Iraq to stop attacking their oil traffic, they also planned to bully Kuwait via silkworm attack from the bottom end of the al-Faw peninsula. On land they intended to siege Basra and try to provoke an uprising in Kurdistan more generally. They have given up on the big push approach, it is costing them too many lives and their states stability will no longer stand it. However, this approach would backfire, bringing the USN among others into the gulf and putting an end to their ability to pressure the gulf monarchies monetarily at all. Iran would approach the USSR for improved relations but their continued support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan along with their increased attacks in the gulf would aggravate them to such an extent that the USSR would directly court the gulf monarchies, selling them a significant quantity of BMP 2 and 3’s. They would also offer to transport Kuwaiti oil through the Iranian attacks, Iran would test this assumption by attacking the Soviet vessel Ivan Korotoyev, the Soviets responded by putting a dozen warships in the area and threatening severe retaliation which put an end to the Iranian activities. Iran would approach the US afterwards but were rebuffed, and their increased attacks on shipping and mining operations would eventually bring the US into the gulf in force. Development of Iraqi capabilities.  Iraqi MiG-29 Baghdad wants Iran to do exactly what it is about to do, provoke more interest in the Gulf among the west. They step up their attacks on Iranian oil export yet again, trying to harm their finances but also to push Iran into blocking the straits of Hormuz, necessitating the intervention of the great powers at that stage. They also begin planning to exploit Iran’s exhaustion to recapture their lost ground. Iraq would also approach the USSR and secure the purchase of 15 MiG-29’s, 30 Su-25’s and 40 SA-13 SAM’s and a significant quantity of spare parts. China delivered 4 Tu-16’s armed with the hardware necessary to launch silkworms, however these would prove less effective than the Exocet armed Mirages. Though they would nearly gently caress everything by attacking the USS Stark by accident in this period. Iraq now has almost parity in numbers with Iran, its army has swelled to 800’000 and most critically the Republican guard are now a very mobile and effective force. Road expansion has been under way for years and is now complete. Iraq had acquired 3000 tank transporter trailers and appropriate towing vehicles. This enabled them to shift the republican guard corps, now comprised of 6 highly mechanized divisions to any area on the Iraqi southern front within 48 hours with the completion of the 6-lane highway between Baghdad and Basra. They are starting to contemplate going on the offensive. War of the capitals, 1988 The war of the cities has been going off and on for some time now, however Iraq is about to do something that makes the Iranians start it off into its final, most vicious stage. The IQAF successfully struck the Tehran oil refinery on February 27th 1988 doing serious damage to it and hitting Irans economy again. Iran would retaliate by firing missiles at Baghdad hoping to provoke Saddam away from attacking their oil infrastructure. However they would get something more than they bargained for. Iraq had been working on modifying the Scud-B, doubling its range by halving its payload, creating the Al-Hussein missile. Saddam would respond by firing four missiles a day for the next 52 days at Tehran, He would also employ his stock of Tu-22 and MiG-25’s to keep up the pressure with forty air raids taking place on Tehran and other cities, losing 1 Tu-22 and 3 MiG-25’s to Iranian interceptors doing so. This sparked a fear of chemical attacks which lead to almost a third of Tehrans population fleeing to the countryside, including Khomeini who was evacuated to a clinic elsewhere. Iran would respond with two missiles a day at Baghdad, however the campaign would last until both sides were essentially out of ammunition. Iraq would fire a total of 193 missiles, all the larger Scud or Al-Hussein, Iran would fire 180 or so missiles, around 80 of which are the larger Scud and the remainder the Oghab, a smaller missile, equivalent of the FROG-7. This would end with both sides agreeing to stop on April 20th, after the UN secretary general brokered an agreement, but it was hardly a great achievement of peacemaking. Both sides had only single digits of missiles left. The Kurdish offensives - Al-Anfal and Halabja.  Ali Hassan al-Majd. Chemical Ali. It had taken years, but the PUK and the KDP were now at long last getting along, they had united with Iran in an effort to drive the Iraqis out, there was a combined force of around 30’000 kurdish fighters that conducted a half dozen serious raids against Kirkuk, Mosul, Erbil and Sulaymaniah. They even brought in the Syrian Kurds, the Kurdistan Democratic Socialist Party. However there was still an undercurrent of extreme tension in Kurdish affairs. But they had come together in a united front, this was dangerous for Iraq who to that point had believed that the Kurds would eventually come around, but in April they would narrowly miss killing Saddam in an attack on his convoy, killing 11 of his entourage but missing him. Saddam would retaliate with a brutal campaign against the Kurds. He appointed Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali) as governor of Kurdistan and gave him authority over the two-army corps in the area. They immediately established a cordon area near the border beyond which Kurds were not permitted to live. He issued a directive saying that any Kurd who was arrested by the security services for any reason would be executed after interrogation. He had 250’000 men under his command for the operation to enforce this. Al-Anfal which began after Majids appointment in early 1987. Though it was building on the fighting that had been brewing for years, Saddam had not been tolerant of Kurdish fighters before this point but it had been far less systematic and vicious. These soldiers would rampage through the countryside, destroying Kurdish villages from the air and deporting their inhabitants to swampy areas in the centre of Iran, anyone with a weapon was executed. The teaching of Kurdish was forbidden in schools and anyone speaking it in public was subject to imprisonment. The death of any Iraqi soldier would be met with the execution of a dozen Kurdish civilians. The PUK was hit particularly hard by this. Turkey also helped by conducting a simultaneous campaign against the PKK which limited the room of Kurdish forces to flee over the border. This campaign would continue and would destroy active Kurdish resistance in the area for the remainder of 1987. As 1988 arrived however, Iran returned in force. They mobilized 19 divisions and around 350’000 men, and intended to destroy Iraqs electrical generation capacity in the Kurdistan region, to destroy their oil industry by starving it of power by taking their two largest hydroelectric dams at Dukan and Darbandikham. Iraq faced them with 15 divisions, unfortunately one of their two corps was commanded by General al-Duri. The Iranian assault commenced on March 14th where they overran the Iraqi infantry division guarding Halabja and pushed hard for the Darbandikhan Dam but they were stopped by heavy air attack and reinforcements arriving from the south. Two Pasdaran divisions quickly overran Iraqi forces around the Dukan dam as the brigade assigned to them pulled out rather than be destroyed. A crime for which the commander of that brigade was shot, along with dozens of other lower level offices. Al-Duri however escaped unharmed once more. Saddam then ordered Chemical Ali to raze the city of Halabja with chemical weapons, it was a major center of Iranian and Kurdish soldiers, and as for the Kurdish civilians who lived there, they were to die as well. The IQAF dropped several dozen containers of napalm surrounding the city, setting it and its major roads out alight. Then crop duster type planes went overhead spraying the city with mustard and nerve agents, with the city then being shelled for the next 6 hours. The death toll is around 5’000 from this attack and it caused Tehran to pause in response to its sheer brutality as they were concerned about employing mass formations in the face of such liberal use of CW’s. They would dig in around the ground they took and await the Iraqi response. Turkey also threatened Tehran to stop its offensive in Kurdistan or else be subject to embargo which doubtless also played into the decision. They have successfully taken one of Iraq’s major hydroelectric plants which would cause electricity shortages, particularly in the north, and around 600 square km of land. This would however strip much of the rest of the front of personnel which left them vulnerable. Assault on Al-Faw - Ramadan al-Mubarak (Blessed Ramadan)  So Iran’s plan has been to try and bleed Iraq up in the highlands of Kurdistan, they have taken some critical points, particularly the major hydroelectric dam at Dukan. This is dangerous but not yet actually critical for Iraq. Their power grid still functions, there is a reduction in oil production to compensate for that, but they still hold Dardanbikan and their credit line is still good. So they decline to rise to the Iranian bait and fight where they are at a disadvantage. Following a meeting in Saddams palace in Baghdad they intend to retake the Basra section. This will have several advantages for them. Iran has stripped their front bare to launch that last offensive up north and they do not have the same capability to redeploy quickly that Iraq enjoys. They will be able to compensate for the drop of oil production by retaking the pipeline section in Al-Faw which leads to Um-Qasr, their export port, which enables them to begin export by sea again. By recognising the Iranian plan however, it presents them with a very good opportunity. It can perform its own deception operation. It increases radio traffic artificially in the Kurdistan area and Adnan Khairallah conducted a very publicised tour of the northern front, accompanied by any journalist he could find and actively did not deny questions speculating about an offensive in Kurdistan. Iraq would step up their light reconnaissance in this area. While this was going on, they quietly manoeuvred 5 of the 6 Republican guard divisions down to Basra and prepared the troops of the 3rd Corps and brought in troops from the central 4th Corps reserve to accompany them in an attack on Al-Faw. Iraq would array nearly 100’000 men, 2’500 AFV’s and 1’400 artillery pieces. Facing them were two beaten up Iranian infantry divisions of around 20’000 men, 100 AFV’s and 150 artillery pieces. Iraq would time its offensive to fall on the first day of Ramadan to coincide with the regular rotation of troops out of the frontline to permit observance of Ramadan. Iraqi deception operations were so successful that these rotations were going ahead as planned.  KS-14 Kedge missile. Their plan was fairly simple, attack along the coast road and the Shatt-Al-Arab to meet in the rear and encircle the Iranians on the peninsula and destroy them. General Rashid was given command of the river assault, commanding 5 regular Iraqi divisions, General al-Rawi was given command of the operations and also the 5 Republican guards divisions who were to attack down the coast road. Iraq assembled a huge stockpile of chemical weapons which hit Iranian positions on April 17th at 4.30, shortly after the call to prayer. The Iraqi army was hot on the heels of the attack and immediately broke through in short order. Unfortunately, further chemical attacks on Iranian rear echelons were affected by a wind change which blew them back on to the advancing Iraqis and disorganized their assault, killing 200 and wounding a further 800. This plan was accompanied by the Iraqi’s using stand off munitions. Su-22’s carrying the recently acquired As-14 Kedge missile loitered out of range of Iranian air defence while Mirages carrying laser designation and ECM pods illuminated the Iranian pontoon bridges and several missiles struck them, managing what conventional bombing had failed to do so far and destroying several segments of it at once. This made rapid repair impossible and cut off the retreat of forces on Al-Faw. They also hit the two major bridges over the Karun river behind Khorramshahr which cut the reinforcement routes at another point further back. Iraq managed an advance of 20 miles on the first day and had completely taken the peninsula before the end of April 18th. They had inflicted 5’000 dead and captured 10’000 prisoners along with all tanks and canons remaining on the island for paltry losses of their own. They had also captured intact the entirety of the Iranian silkworm battery at the tip of the peninsula. In two days of assault they had completely undone the entirety of the Iranian assaults of the previous year. Saddam would visit Mecca to give very public thanks to god for his victory. Iran was stunned and had lost much of their hold over Kuwait with the loss of that silkworm launching point. However, they would launch a Scud-B in a fit of pique to try and retain their hold over Kuwait diplomatically. But the spell was about to be shattered entirely. Further Iraqi offensives - Tawakalna ala Allah (Trust in God) offensives.  Barzargan. Rafsanjani was in trouble, his government nearly fell in the election of May, with the Association of Combatant Clerics taking 60% of seats in the Iranian parliament. The fractured nature of the Iranian parliament meant that he had to make many more compromises and deals to stay in power. Ayatollah Montazeri was running cover for the peace party lead by Barzargan as part of his ongoing power struggle against Rafsanjani and Khameini, they would attack Rafsanjani personally for being responsible for the current state of the war, and he would retaliate by arresting 40 of Barzargans supporters, but couldn’t touch Barzargan himself due to Montazeri. Rafsanjani would replace the Chief of Staff of the Iranian army General Sohrabi with General Shahbazi. Sohrabi had been very effective at his role, he hadn’t managed to make the Pasdaran and regular army play nice all the time but he had gotten them to coordinate well enough to pull off their particularly brilliant attacks of 86 and 87. He had taken the post in 1984 when cooperation between the two was still completely non-existent. However, someone needed to take the fall. Shabazi was not a brilliant soldier, he had largely avoided front line posts and had spent the last 2 years as Khomeinis military advisor rendering him both impeccably politically connected and willing to suborn his pride to the ultimate goal of deflecting blame for the defeat away from the Ayatollahs. And those defeats would come thick and fast. Saddam, riding high on his victories would redeploy forces from Al-Faw to the area east of Basra, 150’000 men and 3’000 AFV’s and 1’500 artillery pieces would fall upon the 50’000 Iranians in the area with their 90 AFV’s and 150 artillery pieces. This offensive would take place on May 25th, a scant month after the last one. The Iranians were surprised but resisted heavily, The Iraqi general would employ large quantities of tabun nerve agent which caused havoc among the Pasdaran forces in the area who were still sorely lacking in comprehensive protective equipment. The IRIAF attempted to intervene, however the IQAF’s new MiG-29’s would make an appearance and drive them off in short order. In the first day of the assault the Iranians had been driven out of their positions to a depth of 10km, the next day they would flee all the way to the border, a simultaneous assault was taking place in the marshes to the north as the Iranians were also driven out of large areas of the marshland. Iraq would push into Iran itself taking the town of Shalamcheh which enabled them to threaten Khorramshahr.  Dukan dam in Kurdistan. Iran would attempt a counterattack against Shalamcheh on June 13th, employing 15’000 Pasdaran and 100 tanks they would temporarily break through into the town past the Iraqi infantry divisions guarding it. However the Republican guard armoured divisions behind the line swiftly counterattacked and drove the Iranians off. Iraq would take this opportunity to launch a small-scale offensive which retook the Dukan dam in the north, along with another set of small attacks focused around the ruins of Halabja. Though those attacks were repulsed they served their purpose of keeping Iranian eyes on Kurdistan and to pin down troops deployed there holding Iraqi territory. The Iraqi high command would agree in conference to focus their efforts in the South and Centre where their forces were at their most effective and to remain on the defensive in Kurdistan as much as is possible, excluding ongoing efforts against the Kurds. To that end they planned to resecure the Majnoon islands in operation Tawakalna ala Allah 2. They would launch an assault on Mehran on June 18th using the NLAI, or national Liberation Army of Iran, the standing army wing of the Peoples Mujahedin (MEK). This was a 20’000 strong formation of Iranian exiles, mainly Arabs. They were equipped reasonably well with light weapons and armoured vehicles, and alongside elements of an Iraqi armoured division they would overrun the 10’000 strong Pasdaran defenders of the area and drove twelve miles deep into Iranian territory. Iran would redeploy its southern reserves to that area in preparation to retake it, leaving Majnoon vulnerable with only 40’000 men there and few reserves.  The assault began on June 25th with 160’000 Iraqis involved, Saddam would send his armoured divisions supported by paratroopers deployed by helicopter to successfully encircle the entire marshland area which they achieved by June 28th. Cutting off the retreat of the forces in the marshes who were subjected to heavy chemical and artillery attack, their morale shattered, and they fled, inflicting 11’000 casualties and capturing 4’000, the units involved had disintegrated completely and would largely disappear into the Iranian landscape. On a roll however Saddam would not stop there. Chronologically at this point Iran Air flight 655 would be shot down by the USS Vincennes that I have covered in depth elsewhere, but that would drive home the fact to Iran that literally nobody was on their side anymore. Saddam would launch his third operation less than a month later on July 12th, this was targeting the Iranian city of Dehloran in the central area, employing 140’000 men that he had redeployed from the south, This involved 5 of the 6 Republican guard divisions, including both the armoured divisions, and 6 regular infantry divisions, they were facing four understrength Iranian divisions of 40’000 men. This was originally intended to resecure Iraqi oil fields that had been held since 1982 however their attack took them deep into Iran, they seized the town of Dehloran as the Iranian armed forces routed under intense Iraqi pressure. Three of the divisions were completely destroyed with 10’000 casualties and 5’000 captured with the remaining soldiers largely vanishing into the Iranian countryside. They had also lost huge amounts of equipment, losing nearly 600 AFV’s and 300 artillery pieces. In the entire Khuzestan area Iran had maybe 200 tanks remaining now, facing against the Iraqi’s ability to seemingly endlessly redeploy and push with the full 1000 strong armoured strength of the Republican Guard at every opportunity. The Iraqi formation of the Republican Guards as a specialised highly mechanized force that could redeploy rapidly and create a push in any zone with only short preparation was bearing results beyond the dreams of Saddam and these offensives could contribute massively to their reputation, which was not entirely unearned. Iran seeks peace At this stage Saddam threatens to take the entirety of Khuzestan if Iran does not retreat from Kurdistan. Iran has to take this very seriously and calls an all hands meeting. Khomeini while he is too ill to attend the meeting explicitly instructs them that no option is off the table and they should discuss matters in the interests of the Islamic republic, making the very pointed comment that religious principles may have to be suspended to protect the nation. Taking stock, they have lost 6 of their divisions in 3 months, they are now outnumbered by Iraq and have put up no more than token resistance against them. The Pasdaran are protesting openly in the streets. Their bank account is dry, their ability to attack in the gulf is gone with a massive western naval presence in the area, the Iraqi airforce now has the technological edge with the introduction of the MiG-29 and the compromised performance of their F-14’s at this stage. At the end of the meeting held on July 14th to 15th Rafsanjani would announce the unilateral withdrawn from Iraqi Kurdistan which started the next day. Rafsanjani would visit the Ayatollah and place himself at his mercy, Khomeini would decide to take all the blame for the failure on himself to shield Rafsanjani and Khameini. He wanted Iran to remain as it was governmentally and those two had proven the most reliable of his proteges. Montazeri was out of favour but still influential. His speech would come on July 20th. Saddam would dictate his terms which were as follows: 1: Direct negotiations between Iran and Iraq. 2: Immediate UN lead cleanup of the Shatt-Al-Arab 3: A guarantee of free navigation in the Persian Gulf 4: An immediate end to attacks on all maritime traffic 5: Exchange of prisoners. He would reciprocate by withdrawing his own forces back to the international border, however peace would not come quite yet. Iraq would announce that offensive operations would continue until the Iranians intentions were confirmed, they were taking the opportunity to get a last few kicks in while they could. They orchestrated an aerial ambush over Kharg using their MiG-29’s which destroyed 2 F-14’s and 1 F-4 and convinced the IRIAF to suspend operations. The war had reduced them to 8 operational F-14’s, 20 F-4’s and 20 F-5’s remaining. The UN would attempt to start negotiations in New York on July 20th, inviting both regimes to come, however Iran refused to negotiate directly with Iraq, claiming that they saw Saddams regime as illegitimate. Iraq would respond by launching another offensive, Tawakalna ala Allah 4 was to take place on July 22nd would comprise the bulk of Iraq’s armoured might, all Republican Guard armoured forces and available tanks from other sectors were committed in the central and southern zone for a total of 2’000 tanks and 3’000 other AFV’s. This quickly overran Iranian positions which were sparsely occupied, Iraq quickly advancing 30 miles into Iran taking Qasr-e-Sirin and Sar-e-Pol-e-Zahab in the center, and in the south they took Hoveyzeh and Hamid, pushing to the banks of Karun and threatening Ahwaz, they captured 5’000 Iranians and caused the disintegration of two Iranian divisions.  Kermanshah and its relative position to Baghdad. However as negotiations began Saddam would seek to rid himself of a troublesome roadblock that might derail negotiations by their presence, the NLAI forces, or MEK, were sent to attack Kermanshah, they advanced rapidly nearly 60 miles against minimal resistance, however Iran panicked that this would set off a general insurrection again and launched a massive counterattack of around 80’000 soldiers, which were ordered to take no prisoners. The IRIAF would cause heavy damage with their attack helicopters against the NLAI armoured vehicles, Iraq would withhold air support and left them high and dry, they would be encircled and destroyed en masse. Strafed heavily from the air the NLAI were finished, 5’000 of them would die and many more would be wounded or captured and subsequently executed. Iranian actions were egregious to the extent where Montazeri, who had been in the Shahs prisons alongside many of the MEK, would protest it and criticise Khomeini for not stopping it. This put an end to the power struggle between him and Rafsanjani and Khomeini, he was ignominiously sidelined from this point onwards. Saddam would intensify bombing against Iranian oil installations, causing only moderate damage but underlining his point and Iran would at last agree to direct negotiations with Iraq under heavy pressure from the USSR. Saddam would announce the ceasefire so long as Tehran agreed to his terms and Iraq would retain its navigation rights on the Shatt-al-Arab. No mention was made of changing the border arrangement and so Saddam openly accepted a complete return to status quo, including the Algiers accord of 1975. After 8 years of incredibly bloody war that was started by him for the express purpose, in part, of redressing that very agreement they were back where they started. Iran accepted his speech and combat would come to an end. The ceasefire would come into force on August 20th 1988, Iraq would withdraw from where it had occupied and the two sides would eventually come to accept UN security council resolution 619. This would set up a UN observer group headed by Yugoslav General Slavko Jovic and Swedish civilian observer Jan Eliasson. This was a 26 nation group comprised of Non Arab, non permanent security council members. It would endure in its mission of observing the ceasefire until February 1991 and Gulf 1. Costs and casualties Both sides would inflate their casualty numbers for political gains, it would take a very long time to establish more reliable estimates. Iraq claimed 350’000 dead, Iran 600’000. More modern estimates place it at 180’000 Iraqis and 500’000 Iranian dead, with 1’500’000 long term wounded and maimed in combat. There are estimated to be 4-5’000 Iraqis who would die in Iranian captivity, total POW numbers were 45’000 Iranians and 70’000 Iraqis, those numbers are somewhat vague as many thousands refused to return to either side for fear of execution or disgrace. Around 100’000 of those totals were civillians who would die in the war, but only a small percentage as a result of strategic bombing by either side. 12’000 of those were Kurdish civilians killed by both sides in large numbers, 69’000 Iranian and 19’000 Iraqi civilians. The war would reduce the populations of both nations by around 1-1.5% over the course of the war, compared to 4% for WW1 over a shorter timespan. This disparity is due in part to the very long periods between offensives and large period of static warfare, as two nations with relatively poor industrial bases had to wait and build up the supplies to attack. It was a slow grinding war in which both sides really grappled to gain any advantage. Material losses would be very high, 4'600 tanks, 4'400 other armoured vehicles, 1650 artillery pieces, 485 planes, 465 helicopters and 30 warships along with 72 commercial ships of varying sizes were destroyed. As I mentioned previously the total cost of the war would be around $1.1tn to both belligerents. Continued in post 2. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 17:52
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Continued from previous. Matters outstanding Iraq  Saddam would immediately proclaim a great victory, one that would be remembered in 1’000 years as the greatest victory over the historic Persian foe. He would order the immediate construction of the triumphal arch while he sent Tariq Aziz to finalize the peace in Geneva. He would take the moment to enact his revenge on the Kurds, undertaking massive military operations in the area and driving 100’000 refugees out of Kurdistan to neighbouring countries. These operations would finally end in September 1988. Adnan Khairallah, minister of defence, would die on May 5th 1989 in a “tragic helicopter explosion” in Kurdistan. He was effective, charismatic and popular. It seems most likely that Saddams sons rather than Saddam himself were responsible. He was at this stage the man most likely to contest Saddams legacy as leader of Iraq and they wanted him out of the way. Iraq was in trouble, its army had ballooned in size to 800’000 men, a fourfold increase over the 8 years of war. Iraq’s oil revenue had decreased by 50% in the same period, and now the war was over the loan cash would stop coming in. Saddam was faced with a no-win situation, he could try to demobilize which would likely create mass unemployment and social unrest associated with it, he couldn’t really afford to pay for their retraining and reintegration into society and so he would place a sudden and significant shock on the Iraqi nation by doing so. There was certainly endemic mental health damage to many of them that was poorly understood and cared for at the time. His other option was to maintain his military and find a way to pay for it. He would opt for the second option. Saddam had ambitions of regional leadership, their standing army now outnumbering the entire GCC by a factor of three and was far more effective and efficient. The GCC would slide deeper into the Wests orbit to defend them. Saddam would believe himself well educated in military affairs and had begun to equate stubbornness and the will to win with success. He would make the fateful decision to invade Kuwait without burdening himself with military advice on the matter. Emir Jaber of Kuwait would insist on maintaining low oil prices which was ruining Iraq and did not write off Iraqi debt which was eyewatering. The KSA would forgive Iraqi debt simply as the costs of doing business. The last Iraqis would withdraw from Iran on 20th of August 1990, 18 days after Saddam invaded Kuwait, many sycophants had crept back in after their well-deserved firing and were telling him of his own genius that clouded Saddams often questionable judgement. The consequences of the war however were obscured by Saddams swagger, much of the best and brightest of Iraq’s youth had been killed or maimed by the war. The Iraqi army had scraped up all available manpower and as a result was less impressive in its readiness for war in terms of its soldiers education and health than might otherwise be expected. Many of them were not exactly eager to continue the fight but saw no other option. Saddams position was secure and there was nobody to tell him no. He ensured great central control over his forces which is precisely where the Coalition would hit him hardest in 1991. Iran  Salman Rushdie’s book Iran would return to lick its wounds and would turn inwards, deeper into its fanaticism. It would not risk the peace with Iraq again however, Khomeini would issue a Fatwa in early 1989 for the death of Salman Rushdie (writer of the satanic verses) which would drive a wedge between them and the west, this was probably done to provide a new external enemy to distract from the convulsions of demobilisation and rebuilding the nation. It would force Iran even deeper into isolation for years. Khomeini himself was to die in June of 1989. At this stage Rafsanjani and Khameini would split the kingdom, Rafsanjani would relinquish the post of Supreme Leader to Khameini despite his own very strong claim to that position, he had greater credentials and a stronger base of support. He would decide to prefer the presidency, believing that his stronger position would enable him to sideline Khameini, who lacked Khomeinis charisma in Rafsanjanis view and would let Rafsanjani take a much greater role in shaping Iranian affairs directly. They would dispose of the position of Prime Minister, tightening Islamic control over the nation even further and ensuring Iran would remain the Islamic Republic of Iran. The previous Prime Minister, Mousavi would fade into obscurity until he returned in 2009 to contest the presidency. The war would result in the crushing of most major dissent, the country had started as all revolutions do with a hundred factions with a hundred differing aims. The hardline Islamists would beat out the nonreligious element lead by Bani-Sadr and Bazargan, the more liberal Islamists lead by Montazeri, the socialists and communists (MEK, Tudeh and Peykar), the Kurdish, Balochi and Azeri seperatists. However, they had made something of a rod for their own back, the Pasdaran were a state unto themselves and would not be dislodged, unrest among the veterans of the war for the power held directly by the clergy and the bazaar would lead to the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running on a populist ticket in 2005. Iran would not and still has not emerged back into the world stage properly for many different reasons. The structure of their state is on a hair trigger where they will often be compelled to massively overreact to slights and setbacks which makes the process of normalisation with them deeply challenging. That is really based in the radical tools employed to win the power struggle by these two men, among many others. Over time Rafsanjani and Khameini would fall out over a myriad issues, with Khameini referring to him as a traitor on more than one occasion. This would end with Rafsanjanis death of natural causes in 2017. Iran would focus on economic recovery and rebuilding its oil industry with extensive aid from the USSR who appreciated the in for as long as the USSR were able to exist, coming in to assist them with their nuclear power program and rebuilding oil infrastructure as well as large quantities of high-tech arms. Concluding remarks. The Iran-Iraq was is one of the most futile endeavours in war. 8 years of fighting for both sides to end back where they started. There was no good solution achievable the second that Saddam invaded. The amount of hammering it took to get an Iran even on its knees as it was at the end of the war to even agree to meet is just staggering. There was realistically only one end other than the one that was achieved, that of staying back and letting Iraq lose by cutting off arms supplies, Iran was never going to accept peace. Iraq would not be permitted to collapse for a wide variety of reasons, too many powerful nations had too much invested in containing Iran by propping up Iraq. The constant use of terrorism was not a complete novelty in war but it certainly in my view really created the conditions where that would continue. We had mass attacks with hundreds of dead in Mecca and the cities of the gulf, bombs exploding on the streets of France, Invasion of the Iranian embassy, the Beirut bombings which was probably one of the most traumatic events for US power in the area, dozens of assassinations on the streets of both European and Iranian cities and attacks of all kinds in Lebanon. From a purely cynical point of view, everyone who wasn’t involved in the fighting won by the war dragging on as long as it did; as was expressed by Kissinger at the time, "it was a pity that both sides couldn’t lose", a typically heartless but also probably accurate expression of the view of most nations. The expected result for the majority of nations in the event of Iraqi defeat was that Iran would carve out a Shia state comprising most of Iraq and encourage unrest and further war throughout the area. It was pretty much their stated aim at the time in the creation of a wider Shia or set of Shia states which has shown itself very willing to export terrorism and would only increase in its capability to do so. In my view this probably ends in another new war between KSA and Iran. Navel gazing counterfactuals aside. Both sides seemed determined to outdo each other in their incompetence. They must accept their share of the blame for the utterly staggering amounts of dead Iranians that they caused by continuing to push their war aims. This is not to say they should have just accepted driving Iraq off, but Saddams increasing desperation for a deal throughout the war to me indicates that there was an option for significant reparations to be extracted for them. But they wanted to trigger a general Shia uprising and just kick off with everyone in the middle east like a caricature of a drunkard in town on a friday night and would not relinquish that aim for years, and they were willing to throw away lives in staggering numbers to do i. Iran ultimately were the ones that ultimately turned it into a war of annihilation, they sought the complete destruction of the Iraqi state, Iraq may have started it but they didn’t seek to destroy the Iranian state in the same way. Iraq in turn would resort to eye wateringly brutal measures to win on the battlefield, normalizing chemical weapon use on the battlefield and carrying out attacks with them on civilian populations against the Kurds in the north, not the first historical incident of that, but certainly the first that was widely publicised. It thought it could steal a quick victory against a disorganized foe and instead got a war that would be the starting point of the chain of events that would be the end of Saddams regime. The consequences of the war have really shaped how the middle east is today, the majority of conflicts were created or exacerbated to their current state by the whole affair. The Sunni-Shia split, which had been at a low ebb for quite some time before the war. Arab nationalism as typified by Nasser and Saddam would lose its influence to be replaced by the ideology of religious conflict fed by the Ayatollahs in Iran and the Salafists in the KSA pitted against each other. That split would worsen again and again before really boiling over in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Lebanon particularly has been utterly devastated by the war between Israel and the Iranian backed Hezbollah which was created in this very war. The conflict in Lebanon threatens to spill out everywhere around Israel constantly; not to put the blame for this entirely on Iran I hasten to add, Israel has a lot to answer for but that isn’t a topic relevant to address in great detail at this time. The Kurdistan issue really became insuperable as a result of the actions of the belligerents and Turkey in this time, the history of the PKK and Turkey I haven’t really touched on, but the militarisation and devastation of the area lead to more intense and long lasting fighting in all 3 nations, and Turkey views all Kurdish militia as linked to the PKK. There had been long running low level conflict in the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq but it was really kicked into high gear by the events of the war. The drawing of the US in particular, deeper into the Middle East was caused by the GCC’s very rational fear of what Iran would do to them, along of course with Gulf 1. However, the specifics of that are for another time. I’ve enjoyed doing this, I hope you all have too, it was something that I really felt was under-explored and seldom mentioned when I started it and I found it fascinating. I didn’t really set out to do much more than present the factual events as I could confidently establish them. The events of it are also at the start of the era of wide scale obfuscation and propaganda and so are often wrong or intentionally misrepresented, particularly the actions of Iran in the modern day became a lot clearer to me why they do what they do as a result of this all. I will present my main reading list for your comfort and convenience if you want to explore. A bunch of stuff hasn’t made it onto here because I used it more sparsely. I’m going to take a break and do something not at all to do with war for a while before perhaps considering doing this again. Potential topics include: Boxer rebellion leading into the Russo Japanese war, The Yugoslav wars, Gulf 1 or more of a deep look at the Holodomor and Soviet famines in the central republics. All very uplifting topics to be sure. Bibliography. Iran-Iraq: Pierre Razoux. The Iran Iraq War: A military and strategic history: Murray and Woods. The Iran Iraq War: Ephraim Karsh. The Twilight War: David Crist. Immortal: Steven Ward. Saddams Generals: Woods, Murray, Nathan, Sabara and Venegas. The Saddam tapes: Woods, Palkki and Stout. America’s first clash with Iran: Lee Allen Zatarain. The Pasdaran: Emmanuele Ottolenghi. Vanguard of the Imam: Afshon Ostovar. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Nov 12, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 17:52
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Saint Celestine posted:Amazing series on the Iraq-Iran conflict. Can you speak more to the increased effectiveness of the Republican Guard formations? Was it changes in tactics? leadership? equipment? that made them better as the war went on? Its some combination of the above. The Republican Guard as we would come to know it didnt really exist until the mid-war, i think they had 3 brigades or so at wars outbreak and were mainly there as your standard presidential guard. However as the war went on this would expand to 6 divisions and the best and the brightest would be recruited into it, paid better and equipped better in order to ensure their loyalty and make them the most effective. They were the designated rapid manouever group that Iraq needed in order to respond to Iranian attacks anywhere on the front so by definition they were the ones who were best taught to use those tactics and received the most modern tanks and APC's. This was done in the context of the Iraqis learning how to conduct a mobile defence over the course of the war rather than just digging in hard and praying which reflects earlier approaches. Solaris 2.0 posted:Absolutely fantastic series of posts, thank you. This was a conflict I (and I suspect many people from the west) knew almost nothing about, despite it's huge importance to understanding the current state of affairs in Iran, and how Iraq ended up igniting the Gulf War. Kind of, Assad and Saddam had fallen out very publically in 1979. Iraq and Syria were friends-ish-kinda before that, Syria being ostracised by the oil monarchies for their secular repuiblican nature. However Syria needed help because it was poor as poo poo and had no oil to crutch on and was knee deep with the war in Lebanon against Israel. There was an attempt to create a union of the two nations in the 70's but when Saddam took power in 1979 he denounced Syria for a plot to assasinate him that didnt exist. So Syria needed friends and found that in Iran, this enabled Syria to feel protected against Iraqi aggression and also to aid their continuing war against Israel. Syria would violate Iraqi airspace and get into a bit of a fight in the midwar to provide an excuse to close the Iraqi pipeline that ran through the nation which angered Saddam greatly but realistically Iraq never had the muscle to credibly threaten Syria after the war began. There were credible allegations of an anti Assad coup in 1982 backed by Iraq and both sides would rail at each other constantly throughout the war, a lot of tapes of Iraqi meetings about Syria boil down to them saying "loving Assad amirite". Or more eloquently "The Syrian position is conspiratorial and malicious which has been expressed in their spiteful acts". Incidentally Saddam would take a similar view on Gadaffi.
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Oct 16, 2019 19:11
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Epicurius posted:Wasn't thwarting the attempt at unification one of the main reasons Sadaam decided to take power in the first place? It was certainly one of the reasons, though negotiations would continue for a short while after he took power, i believe that it broadly broke down due to Sadams firm belief that Iraq should be the central leader of the Arab world after Sadat screwed the pooch and therefore it was only natural that he should be the senior partner in the coalition. Syria told him to get stuffed. There was a bit of an idealogical split in the Iraqi Ba'athist party as to how best proceed in diplomatic quarters, where Saddams predecessor al-Bakr wanted to approach Syria, Saddam wanted to approach the gulf monarchies.
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Oct 16, 2019 19:40
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Milo and POTUS posted:Why the euphrates and not the tigris? The Iraqi army is largely sitting in its positions along the Tigris and there are more major shia population centers along the Euphrates than the Tigris (Much of Iraqs population had been evacuated from the border regions of the Tigris), it also cuts the Saudi-Iraqi and Jordanian-Iraqi roads more efficiently blocking the Iraqi tanker overland route
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Oct 19, 2019 21:56
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Cessna posted:I know this may sound a bit silly and maudlin, but we really appreciated those letters. On the subject of the mail something i have come across was that the Saudi censors really wanted to get into the coalition mail system in order to check letters and parcels for bibles, girlie mags and Christmas decorations. It was decided to let them into the mail operation upon which the like 20 or so members of the Saudi religious police that came along walk in the door and come face to face with the 4 C-5 galaxy flights a day worth of mail and parcels that was delivered (Something like 3-400 tons of mail). They gave up fairly quickly.
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Oct 23, 2019 18:40
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zoux posted:Haha, but also why was the US going to permit that. There is a whole song and dance (and i mean REALLY elaborate) that the hosue of Saud are doing. Remember that until 2004 Jews werent allowed to enter Saudi Arabia, non muslims are still not allowed in Mecca and parts of Medina. I dont think non muslims were allowed into Medina until the 2000's, maps of Saudi Arabia even are sufficiently sensetive topics that T-Shirts being sold with maps of Saudi Arabia were brought up in a meeting between the US and Saudi commanders in chief (Norman Schawzkopf and Prince Khalid). A significant Iraqi propaganda message is about non Muslims and non Arabs in the holy land going to go and defile up a storm, the structure of Saudi society is loving nuuuuuts. So you have the house of Saud who really want the US there, and are fighting a significant internal battle against the really nutty Islamists to do it. The US also wants to be there but they and the House of Saud together are having to try to keep things to the state where these clerics arent going to try and overthrow the government. So in that context i suspect it was a nice confluence of just let them wear themselves out on this so we dont have to have the very difficult conversation about say Jewish US service members having their services in the kingdom (For reference that was solved in part by flying them out into the gulf to worship there.) Or the slightly (but only slightly) less vicious topic of Christian ceremonies. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Oct 23, 2019 |
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Oct 23, 2019 19:04
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Soon after the US arrived and there were women soldiers driving trucks around in public a bunch of Saudi women staged a protest where they drove in public too and were promptly all arrested. Nearly 30 years later, there has actually been movement of any kind on that topic again. Sort of. Maybe. But no, the rate of crimes and disruption from troops in Desert Storm were very very low for i believe a number of reasons. 1: It was doubly emphasised to not. 2: No alcohol permitted 3: They were generally kept outside of civillian areas in large tent encampments 4: A high level of general activity in preparing to actually fight 5: The very closed off nature of Saudi society
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Oct 23, 2019 20:04
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zoux posted:So is it true that the mere presence of Western forces in KSA radicalized fundamentalist Muslims (Wahabists?) and created Osama bin Laden's obsession with destroying America or is that just an easy narrative Its a very difficult question to answer. What we perceive as an acceptable rate of misdemeanour is certainly not what the salafist lot think is acceptable. The very presence of so many foreigners on KSA soil was an affront to them so there was no good solution. It was probably part of a societal unhappiness with the even glacial pace of saudi "liberalisation" of society of which that was a focus point. So its an oversimplification based on a lazy narrative.
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Oct 23, 2019 20:31
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Solaris 2.0 posted:What if you're American or from Europe? Your local Imam would certify you.
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Oct 23, 2019 21:26
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