The Iran-Iraq War Flashcards
0
Q
The Background
A
- 637 A.D. the Arabs destroyed the Sassanian Empire in the Battle of Qadisiyya.
- Persians adopted Islam, but did not accept the Arab-Bedouin culture as superior to their own culture.
- In the 16th century, after the Safavids took power in Iran, the Gulf became a battleground between the Ottoman Empire and the Shiite Persian Empire.
- Present day Iraq (or parts of it) exchanged hands several times in the past.
1
Q
How to describe the conflict?
A
- The Iran/Iraq War “was a thoroughly modern inter-state war for thoroughly modern reasons of national interest and regional hegemony in which ideology, ethnic rivalries and religious fervor played their part, but were not central to the main issues.”
- The aforementioned contentions regarding ideology, ethnicity and religion should be examined.
2
Q
The Background2
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- In the late 1960’s and early 1970s the Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was not aspiring, at least not overtly, to conquer the whole of Iraq, a feat that Ismail Shah succeeded at in 1510. However, Iran was determined to subvert the Pan-Arabic Ba’th regime in Iraq and to alter the status-quo along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which was under complete Iraqi control following a 1937 agreement.
- Moreover, Iran and Iraq were in dispute about water and oil resources along their shared border, the control of oil rich Khuzistan/Arabistan, and the future of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the newly established United Arab Emirates
3
Q
The Background 3
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- In 1968 Britain announced that it would withdraw its forces from the GUlf in 1971. The British withdrawal mostly affected the Trucial states, Bahrain and Qatar. It left a huge vacuum to be filled after 150 years during which Britian acted as an important balancer in the region.
- The US did not inted to replace Britain as the new heavy weight in the region, at least not directly
- At that time Nixon’s doctrine and his retrenchment policy dicated American reliance on regional allies to ensure the balance of power and American interests. From that perspective, Iran was to serve, in Kissinger’s own words, as “the eastern anchor of our Mideast policy.”
4
Q
The Background4
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- Kissinger Further explained: “our choice in 1972 was to help Iran arm itself or permit a perilous vacuum” Such Vacuum might have allowed Iraq (which was a Soviet protege) to achieve hegemony in the Gul.
- During his May 1972 visit to Iran, Nixon promised to sell Iran “any US conventional weapon system the Shah desired,” to include F-14 tomcats and F-15eagles.
5
Q
The Background5
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-In 1970, a year before the British pullout, Iran’s defense budget stood at $880 million, by 1976 and 1977 it surged to $8,8925million and $9,400million respectively-more than fifteen percent of Iran’s GNP-making it the seventh largest defense budge in the world to be topped only by that of the five permanent members of the Security Council and West Germany.
6
Q
The Power balance-early 1970s
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- An IISS evaluation of the military balance in the gulf shows that as early 1972 Iran’s defense budge ($915million) was almost double the defense budgets of Iraq ($237millon) and Saudi Arabia ($383million) combined together.
- Iran’s military forces (191,000men) were far greater than those of Iraq (101,800men) and Saudi Arabia(40,500men).
- Moreover, Iran’s military advatage over its neighbors was qualitative as well as quantitative.
7
Q
The power balance-early 1970s (2)
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-Other indicators of hard power also showed Iran’s supremacy in the region. Its 1971 GNP ($12.1 billion) was almost four times bigger than that of Iraq($3.66billion) and three times bigger than of Saudi Arabia($4.3billion). And, Iran’s population (30,500,000) far exceeded those of Iraq (9,750,000) and Saudi Arabia (7,960,000).
8
Q
Iranian sense of entitlement
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- In 1969 Iranian warships escorted an Iranian vessel in the waters of the Shatt al-Arab.
- Immediately after Britain annouced its descision to leave the Gulf, Tehran renewed its claim to the predominatly Shiite Bahrain, which was an intergral part of Iran until the late eighteenth century. Furthermore, Iran objected to the creation of an Arab federation of the emirates. Eventually, in 1970, Iran surrendered its claim to Bahrain and in 1971 both Bahrain and Qatar became independent states whil the other seven emirates formed the United Arab Emirates(UAE). After the ayatollahs seized the power in Iran in 1979 they reclaimed not only Bahrain but the UAE as well.
9
Q
Iranian sense of entitlement (2)
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- On the eve of the British withdrawal from Oman, asserting its dominace in the gregion, Iran landed forces (30 November 1971) on three Arab Islands (Abu Musa and the Tunbs) that were under UAE jurisdiction.
- Although these islands were tiny and uninhabited, they were located at an important geo-strategic position, close to the Strait of Hormuz, and held the prospect of hosting massive oil resources on ground and in the waters around.
10
Q
Iranian sense of entitlement (3)
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- The Shah explained that “as a successor to Britain in the role of protector of the gulf, he had to control the islands.”
- This was a refined version of his Sept 1971 statement that “No power on earth will stop us.. I have a war fleet, Phantom aricraft and brigades of paratroopers. I could defy Britain and occupy the islands militarily.
- There was no need to defy Britain. London that had just concluded a 100million pounds worth military deal with the Shah’s gov’t clarified to the UAE Sheikhs that Britain would not intervene on their behalf and advised them to pursue conciliation with the Shah.
11
Q
Iranian sense of entitlement (4)
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- Baghdad, the principal proponent of the idea of an Arab Gulf, cut its relations with Tehran as a result of the Iranian takover of the three islands.
- However, Iraq could not do much in the face of what it perceived as Iranian aggression. Between 1970 and 1975 it was torn and weakened as a result of a civil war.
- The smaller Gulf monarchies were caught between the hammer (Iranian ambition) and anvil (Iraqi demands for Kuwait and socialist revolution in the monarchies)
12
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt
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- Iraq: An artificial creation of the British Empire-is an amalgam of diverse ethnic, cultural and religious communities.
- In the 1970s around sixty percent of the Irqis were Shiites living mostly in the southern part of the country. The remaining thirty-five to forty percent were SUnnis-divided evenly between Arabs in the northwest and Kurds in the northeast.
- Notwithstanding, since its creation the Sunni Arabs, merely one-fifth of the population, had been dominating Iraqi politics.
13
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt (2)
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- Kurds nationalism and Arab nationalism collided time and again since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
- During the reign of the Hashemite family in Iraq the premier, Nuri al-Sa’id, considered giving the Kurds limited autonomy. However, strong opposition of other Arab politicans, who feared a domino effect that would bring about a similar Shiite deman, killed the ida.
- In March 1970 it seemed as if the fierce fighting between Kurds and Arabs that had severly taxed the Iraqi economy since the late 1960s would come to an end as the Ba’th regime offered the Kurds local autonomy.
14
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt 3
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- However, the Kurds demanded that oil rich Kirkuk would be within their jurisdiciton. They also insisted on the right o have an independt Kurdish milita and to receive budgetary allocations to commensurate the size of their population in Iraq. These demands blew the opportunity for Kurdish autonomy. Later the Kurdish leader, Barzani, would claim that Iran, the United States and Israel pushed him to reject the Iraqi offer.
- The fierce figthing in northeren Iraq continued. The Shah, who collbared in the past with the monarychy in Iraq agaisnt the Kurds, fully suppported his lost and found “Aryan” brothers in arms.
15
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt 4
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- Iraq tried to pay back Iran in Iran’s own currency. In 1969 the Ba’th blamed Britain for not stopping Iran from annexing Arabistan in 1925.
- In June 1969 Iraq established the Popular Front for the Liberation of Arabistan. Baghdad also supported the Baluchi rebellion on the Pakistani side of the Iran Pakistan border, hoping that it would spill over to Iran.
16
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt 5
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- The tension between Iraq and Iran resulted in skirmishes along their mutal border. For example, in February 1974 Baghdad requested an urgent mettin of the UN security Council, claimin gthat the Iranian Army had seized five kilometers of Iraqi territory.
- In response Tehran accused Iraq of shelling Iranian border posts and supporting Arab dissident groups in Ahvaz(Arabistn).
- On 7 March 1974 the United Nations managed to broker a cease-fire along the disputed border. It was to last less than six months.
17
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt 6
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-Tension reached its climax between Dec 1974, and March 1975. On 14, 15 Dec1974, Iran used Hawk missles to down Iraqi planes that were flying over the Kurdsh region in Iraq. A month later two Iranian regiments crossed the border into the Kurdish region. Iran and Iraq were on the bring of war.
18
Q
Iraq-Iran and the Kurdish Revolt 7
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- However, war did not breakout. THe Shah realized that war would play havoc with the Iranian oil industry along Shatt al-Arab.
- Moreover, war would have invited the superpowers, including the Soviet Union, to intervene in the GUlf, merely four years after the British pulled out.
- This could have worked to the disadvantage of Iran, especially at a time when the Shah wanted to prove that Iran could fulfill the role of hegemon and balancer in the region. “The English were packing their bags… The safety of the Persian Gulf had, however, to be guaranteed, and who but Iran could fulfillthis function?
19
Q
The March 1975 Algiers Agreements
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- Iraq was also eager to reach a settlement with Iran. The fighting in the Kurdish region severly taxed the Iraqi economy and worn down the Iraqi military. Iraq was in urgent need of respite, and feared tha without such it might lose its territorial intergrity.
- That and the growing Iraqi disappointmen of Arab and Soviet apathy in the face of Iran’s belligerency encouraged Baghdad to cede in the March 1975 Algiers Agreement to Tehran’s demands for control over half of the shatt al-Arab waterway, making the thalweg the new border line between the countries.
