The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression

259 Pages·1993·10.84 MB·English

by  Rajaee

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title: The Iran-Iraq War : The Politics of
Aggression
author: Rajaee, Farhang
publisher: University Press of Florida
isbn10 | asin: 0813011760
print isbn13: 9780813011769
ebook isbn13: 9780813020198
language: English
subject Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988--Congresses.
publication date: 1993
lcc: DS318.85.I692 1993eb
ddc: 955.05/4
subject: Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988--Congresses.
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1
Introduction
Farhang Rajaee
The Iraqi army crossed the border of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and
occupied the capital city of this small oil-rich state on the southern edge of
the Persian Gulf. The occupation lasted a few months and ended on
February 28, 1991, after an offensive launched by a conglomeration of
forces basically from Western powers and in accordance with the general
guidelines of United Nations resolutions.
This event was not the first in recent years in which the Iraqi army had
committed an act of aggression, one not only against the principle of good
neighborly relations but also against the principles of international law. The
same army crossed the border of Iran on September 22, 1980, and started a
war with the newly established revolutionary regime in that country. For
social, economic, political, and historical reasons, and specifically as a
reaction to the revived Islamic revolutionary ideology, this war lasted
almost a decade with both sides spending about $350 billion. It ended in
August 1987 when Iran formally accepted Security Council Resolution 598
on July 18, 1988, which called for a cease-fire. Neither side could claim
victoryalthough, interestingly, Saddam Hussein did so in a speech on the
anniversary of the Ba'ath party's accession to power on July 17, 1991but the
war left its mark on relations between the two countries, on the region's
political configuration, and on international political alignments.
Considering Clausewitz's famous maxim that "war is a mere continuation of
policy by other means," exactly what type of policy has the Iraqi
government been pursuing?
1 And considering that the strategists of any war argue that they are
pursuing peace and that the war is "to end all wars,"2 and granting that the
Iraqi regime had a clear policy ob-
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Page 100
For a more explicit expression of Soviet support for Iraq, see the two
interviews of Soviet Foreign Ministry officials by the official Kuwaiti
newspaper, Al-Anba, January 30, March 13, 1987.
52. Many Western analysts also argued the need for an offensive strategy
and especially the significance of retaking the Faw to restore the badly
shaken military balance between Iran and Iraq. See Viorst, "Iraq at War,"
esp. pp. 35253 and Karsh, "The Iran-Iraq War." For the best Western
analysis of Iraq's military problems, see Cordesman, The Iran-Iraq War and
Western Security, 198487: Strategic Implications and Policy Options
(Janes, 1987), 92104, and Cordesman and Wagner, Modern War.
53. The estimates of Iraq's arms imports varies according to different
sources, but the fact that Baghdad has been the leading importer of arms in
the Third World throughout the 1980s has not been disputed. For example,
in the 198286 period alone, Iraq imported $31.7 billion worth of arms, of
which $14.3 billion was provided by the Soviet Union and approximately
another $1 billion by other East European countries. During the same
period, France continued to occupy second place after the Soviet Union.
For these figures, see World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers,
1987 (Washington: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1987),
and SIPRI Year Book (1986), 34445. Cordesman's more detailed estimate
indicates the Soviet and French leading position in earlier periods.
According to him, the Soviets in 197983 alone provided $7.2 billion worth
of arms to Iraq, and France and Great Britain followed by $.8 billion and
$280 million, respectively. See Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War, 2627.
54. For this and also a discussion of the details of the Iraqi buildup in 1986,
see Karsh, "The Iran-Iraq War," 2528.
55. According to The Military Balance (London: IISS, 198889), the total
Iraqi military expenditure in 1987 soared to an all-time high of $13.996
billion, 6062 percent of which had been traditionally allocated for
importing arms, indicating the figure of $8.4 billion for the year. A more
conservative U.S. estimate (Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War) has put the
constant Soviet share of Iraq's arms market at 55 percent, or $4.6 billion for
the year 1987. Cordesman's suggested percentage of the Soviet share is
roughly similar to my estimate of $4.44.6 billion yearly during the 198688
period.
56. For a slightly different estimate of Iraqi strength in mid-1988, see
Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War, 42. It is important to note that although his
figure does not include 1988 numbers, it does approximate, and, in certain
categories, such as tanks and artillery, exceeds my estimate for the 1986-88
period. Cordesman's figure on combat aircraft does not include several new
deliveries by the Soviets and the French in early 1988, especially the SU-25
Frogfoot, MIG-29 Fulcrum, and Mirage F. 1.
57. Iraq apparently modified the Soviet Scud missile into two medium-
range SSMs called Al-Abbas and Al-Hussein. Modifications were mostly
on payload range ratio, not on accuracy. Nevertheless, the psychological
and political significance of missile attacks against Iran's civilian targets, as
in the case of Iraq's attack against allied targets in the Gulf War crisis,
largely compensated its purely military

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Page 101
utilities: "[T]he U.S.S.R. provided substantial technical advice and actual
support during their use in combat" (Cordesman and Wagner, Modern
War, 367). In addition, according to Segal, "The chemical munition used
on Iraq's Soviet-made 122-, 132-, and 152-mm guns and its BM-21
multiple rocket launchers appears very similar to the standard Soviet
chemical munitions for these weapons" ("Iran-Iraq War," 962).
58. The Soviet role in providing chemical bombs to Iraq is not clear. To a
large extent, the crisis in the Persian Gulf and the U.S.-Iraqi confrontation
have demystified the stories of Iraq's enormous chemical weapon
capabilities. The West, especially West Germany, played a decisive role in
selling chemical components and technological know-how to Iraq. Iraq's
own indigenous expansion also played an important role. Earlier Iraqi
attempts to use chemical weapons, especially in 1986 during the Faw
operation, had proven ineffective (see Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War, 97). But
the sophisticated and well-integrated application of chemical weapons,
including hydrogen cyanide and nerve gas by Iraq against Iran in the 1980
campaigns, indicated technical and instructive support from outside,
possibly from the Soviet Union. Both the Soviets and Americans had, of
course, long been interested in combat experimentation and the opportunity
of a massive application of these weapons. The interest, in fact, had been
rekindled in the late 1960s by the superpowers' increasing emphasis on
nonnuclear conflict options in Europe. For the role that Western companies
played in Iraq's chemical buildup during the Iran-Iraq war, see a series of
three informative articles by John J. Fialka, "Outlawed Weapons: A
Scourge Returns," Wall Street Journal, September 15, 16, 19, 1988, and
Cordesman and Wagner, Modern War, 50612.
59. For a discussion of the significance of the "manpower struggle"
between Iran and Iraq, see Cordesman, Iran-Iraq War, 40, 41 and
Cordesman and Wagner, Modern War, 35357.
60. Moscow World Service, June 18, 1987, in FBIS-SOV, June 19, 1987, p.
CC2.
61. For Soviet coverage of meetings between Andre Gromyko and
Mohammed Javad Larijani (Iran's deputy foreign minister), see Izvestiya,
July 19, 1987, p. 6. Gromyko had earlier met Taha Yasin Ramadan (Iraq's
deputy prime minister) on July 2, 1987; see Izvestiya July 6, 1987, p. 3.
62. For an expression of Soviet efforts to reconcile the views of Tehran and
Baghdad on UN Resolution 598, see the interview with the chief of the
"Arab Gulf Section" in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign affairs by Al Anba,
August 20, 1987, p. 1. Soviet flirtation with the idea of mediation continued
after the August 1988 ceasefire between Iran and Iraq. For the Iranian
position on the Soviet mediation after the ceasefire, see Tehran IRNA,
FBIS-NES, January 16, 1990, pp. 2032.
63. WAM (Abu Dhabi), September 12, 1987; FBIS-MEA, September 14,
1987, pp. 1213. Al Anba, August 20, 1987, p. 1, warned that the USSR,
"which has concluded important agreements with Iran . . . is placing itself
in the position of being almost a friend of that aggressive state." For a
discussion of the Arab reaction toward the Soviet "tilt," see Saivetz, Soviet
Union and the Gulf, 99110.
64. Elaine Sciolino, "Soviet-Iraqi Ties Hit Snag on Iran," New York Times,

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October 3, 1987, p. 3. See also Patrick A. Taylor, "Hussein Sees Summit
More as a Message to Moscow," Washington Post, November 14, 1987.
65. Saivetz, Soviet Union and the Gulf, 101.
66. Primakov, "Social Development," 17. For a thorough assessment of the
role played by revolutionary Islam, see Primakov, "Islam i protsessy
obshchestvennogo razvitiia stran zarvbezhnogo vostoka," Voprosy Filosofi,
no. 8 (1980): 31; L. R. Polonskaya, "The Ideology of Moslem Political
Movement at the End of the 1970sThe beginning of the 1980s," Soviet
Oriental Studies Annual 1986 (Moscow: Nauka Publisher, 1987), 21819; S.
Aliev, ''Antimonorkhicheskaia i anti-imperialisticheskaia revoliutsiia v
Irane," Narody Azii i Afriki, no. 3 (1979); R. A. Ul'ianovskii, "Iranskaia
revoliutsiia i ee osobennosti," Kommunist, no. 10 (1982); G. F. Kim, "The
Urgent Tasks of Soviet Oriental Studies," in Oriental Studies in the USSR
Annual 1987 (Moscow: Nauka Publisher, 1987), 1127.
67. Polonskaya, "Moslem Political Movement," 21821.
68. Primakov, "Social Development," 14.
69. For Ramadan's comment on the direct and positive linkage between the
U.S. naval presence and the Iraqi war effort, see WAM, September 12,
1987, in FBIS-NEA, September 14, 1987, pp. 1213.
70. For an analysis of the dramatic changes in Soviet-Iranian relations since
1988, see Mohiaddin Mesbahi, "Moscow, Iran and Persian Gulf Security,"
in Reconstruction and Regional Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf, ed. N.
Entessar and H. Amirahmadi (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), and
Moscow and Iran.

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9
Saudi Arabia and the United States: Partnership in the Persian
Gulf
A. Reza Sheikholeslami
The U.S. government has characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran as the
major threat to the stability of the oil-producing countries in the Middle
East. Warning the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf that revolutionary
upheaval, fed by Islamic "fundamentalism" will sweep through their
countries, it has managed to assuage their fears of the notoriety of public
cooperation with the United States. The United States has provided a
military shield, presumably ensuring the security of the states that have
waged war on Iran by massive financial and logistic support for Iraq.
It is my thesis that the major threat to the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf
is the internal contradictions that have decayed the bases of the present
rulerships. The absence of political legitimacy, the regimes' inability to
develop effective bureaucratic structures because of their pattrimonial
nature, pervasive corruption, and the emergence of a new social structure
eventually would have brought down the Arab monarchies and sheikdoms.
However, the rapid economic decline resulting from their support for U.S.
oil policies and the failure of industrial and agricultural programs have
intensified the conflict over economic exploitation between the patrimonial
princes and their immediate cohorts, on the one hand, and the members of
the bourgeoisie who were coopted during the boom years, on the other.
Finally, the blatant association between the United States and the Arab
regimes of the Persian Gulf and the effort by these regimes to put the
Palestinian issue on the back burner and focus instead on Iraq's war against
Iran will, more than any