Iran–Iraq War

• 1. Introduction

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  The Iran-Iraq War killed around 500,000 people, and that toll does not even count the dead of the related Anfal campaign. No other conventional war between the regular armies of developing countries has been deadlier. It dragged on for eight years. Its battles included trench lines, flooded marshes, attacks on oil tankers and missile strikes on capital cities.

  At the center stood two very different leaders. Saddam Hussein ran a secular Baathist government in Iraq. Ruhollah Khomeini led an Iran that had just remade itself in revolution. Each side came to see the other's system as a threat to its own survival.

  Three questions run through the story ahead. Why did Saddam believe a neighbour in the middle of a revolution would be easy prey? How did that neighbour, with its army gutted, push the invaders out and then carry the war onto Iraqi soil? And why did so many foreign governments choose to feed the fire rather than put it out?

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• 2. Rivers and Revolution

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  In 1937, Iran and Iraq signed a treaty over the Shatt al-Arab river. Iranian ships agreed to pay tolls whenever they used it. In 1969, Iran broke the treaty and stopped paying, and the Shah argued that it had been unfair. Iraq threatened war but did nothing. Iranian naval forces had sailed down the river in a show of force, and Iraq's weaker military was suddenly exposed. The tension brought significant bloodshed, which lasted until the 1975 Algiers Agreement, when Iraq ceded the river's eastern bank to Iran.

  In 1978, relations improved for a brief moment. Iranian agents in Iraq had discovered plans for a pro-Soviet coup against the Iraqi government. When Saddam learned of the plot, he ordered the execution of dozens of army officers. He also expelled Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the clerical opposition to the Shah.

  In July 1979, Saddam gave a speech praising the revolution that had toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a ruler Baghdad also counted as an enemy. He called for friendship built on non-interference in each other's internal affairs. Khomeini rejected the offer and called instead for an Islamic revolution in Iraq. Saddam was alarmed. Baghdad came to regard Iran's new Islamic administration as an irrational and existential threat. The secular Baath party discriminated against Iraq's fundamentalist Shia movement, whose clerics were Iran's allies and whom Khomeini saw as oppressed.

  On the 8th of March 1980, Iran announced that it was withdrawing its ambassador from Iraq and lowering its ties to the level of a charge d'affaires. It demanded that Iraq do the same. The next day, Iraq declared Iran's ambassador persona non grata and demanded his withdrawal by the 15th of March.

  In April 1980, the Islamic Dawa Party tried to assassinate Tariq Aziz, a high-ranking Baathist and Iraq's deputy prime minister. Dawa was an Iraqi Islamist group with supportive ties to Iran. It was striking back at a March decree declaring membership of the party a capital offense. The attempt failed and killed several students instead. Three days later, a bomb hit the students' funeral procession. Iraq ordered the execution of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a Shia cleric seen as the public face of the Dawa movement, along with his sister. On the 30th of April, Iraq organised an attack on the Iranian embassy in London. Baghdad later counted the failed plot as part of its justification for invading.

  Saddam's own ambitions ran deeper than any single plot. He may have wanted to erase what he saw as the wrong of the Algiers Agreement. He also wanted to replace Egypt as the leader of the Arab world and to dominate the Persian Gulf. Iran's weakness, caused by revolution, sanctions and international isolation, made the moment look ripe.

  On the 10th of September 1980, Iraq forcibly reclaimed the territories of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad. The 1975 agreement had promised them to Iraq, but Iran never handed them over. Iran voided the treaty on the 14th of September and Iraq did the same on the 17th. That left one border question standing as the invasion approached. Would Iranian ships have to fly Iraqi flags and pay navigation fees on a stretch of the Shatt al-Arab several miles long?

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• 3. Two Weakened Armies

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  Between February and September 1979, Iran's government executed 85 senior generals and forced many others into early retirement. Sadegh Khalkhali, the new Revolutionary Court judge, ordered numerous executions. By September 1980, some 12,000 officers had been purged from every level of the army. Shortages of spare parts for American and British-made equipment crippled what remained.

  A desertion rate of 60% marked the Iranian army on the eve of the war. In 1978, military experts around the world had ranked Iran's armed forces as the fifth most powerful on earth. Two years later the officer corps was devastated, and its best soldiers and aviators had been exiled, jailed or killed. When the invasion came, many pilots and officers were let out of prison, or had their death sentences commuted, so that they could fight. Iran never fully recovered from this loss of skilled people. Many junior officers were promoted to general, and by the war's end the army was more closely tied to the regime.

  The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rose alongside the army. It was created to protect the new regime and to balance the army's power. It had been trained only as a militia, and it struggled to adapt after the invasion. At first it refused to fight beside the regular army, which produced many defeats. Combined operations did not begin until 1982.

  The Basij paramilitary was founded in response to the invasion. Its volunteers were poorly armed and ranged in age from 12 to 70. Under the Guard's command, they supplied most of the manpower for its attacks. Even so, Iran began the war with at least 1,000 tanks and several hundred working aircraft, and it stripped damaged equipment for parts. Continuous sanctions blocked most purchases of additional heavy weapons.

  Iraq entered 1980 with 242,000 soldiers, 2,350 tanks and 340 combat aircraft. Only Egypt fielded a bigger army in the Arab world. Saddam had spent heavily on weapons from the Soviet Union and France since his defeat by Iran in 1975. Between 1973 and 1980, Iraq bought numerous tanks and Soviet-made aircraft.

  In July 1980, Iraqi military intelligence concluded that Iran "has no power to launch wide offensive operations against Iraq." On the 14th of September, with border skirmishes escalating, it reported that the enemy's deployment "does not indicate hostile intentions" and looked more defensive. Planners also believed the Karkheh and Karoun river crossings were undermanned. In Khuzestan province, where two divisions had stood before the revolution, only a few ill-equipped, under-strength battalions remained. Some believe Iraq wanted to annex Khuzestan or turn it into a dependent territory, though Saddam publicly denied this in November 1980.

  A single worry, the Iranian Air Force, troubled Iraqi planners. Despite purges and missing parts, it had shown its strength during local uprisings and rebellions. It had also been active after Operation Eagle Claw, the failed American attempt to rescue its hostages. Iraq's leaders therefore decided to open the war with a surprise airstrike on the air force's infrastructure, ahead of the main invasion.

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• 4. The Invasion Stalls

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  On the 22nd of September 1980, Iraqi jets struck ten Iranian airfields in a surprise attack meant to destroy Iran's air force. The raid failed. It damaged some base infrastructure but destroyed few aircraft, because Iran had built hardened shelters for most of its combat planes. Iraq could reach deep targets with only a handful of aircraft.

  The next day, Iraq launched three simultaneous ground attacks along a front of 644 km. Four divisions drove into Khuzestan at the southern end, intending to cut the Shatt al-Arab off from the rest of Iran and create a security zone. Two of them besieged the port cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr. Two more divisions crossed in the north and center to block any Iranian counter-attack. Saddam hoped the assault would topple Iran's new government, or at least silence its calls for his overthrow.

  Patrick Brogan described the Iraqi troops who entered Iran in 1980 as "badly led and lacking in offensive spirit." The Arabs of Khuzestan did not rise up as Baghdad had hoped, since most stayed loyal to Iran. The first known Iraqi chemical attack on Iran probably came during fighting around Susangerd. Iranian forces were divided as well. The regular military, police, Basij and Revolutionary Guards each fought separately, so the invaders met no coordinated defence.

  Iran's air force answered the day after the Iraqi raid with Operation Kaman 99. Groups of fighter jets hit oil facilities, dams, petrochemical plants and refineries across Iraq, including Mosul Airbase, Baghdad and the Kirkuk oil refinery. The strength of the response surprised Iraq, which suffered heavy losses and economic disruption. Iraqi air defences hurt the attackers too. On the 24th of September, the Iranian Navy attacked Basra and destroyed two oil terminals near the port of al-Faw. On the 30th of September, Operation Scorch Sword damaged the nearly finished Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad.

  At Khorramshahr, a prolonged battle that began on the 22nd of September eventually left around 7,000 dead on each side. Iraqi mechanised divisions advanced on the city in a crescent. Iranian air attacks and Revolutionary Guard troops slowed them. The Iranians flooded the surrounding marshes, which forced the Iraqis onto narrow strips of land. Iraqi tanks attacked without infantry support, and anti-tank teams destroyed many of them. By the 30th of September, Iraq had cleared the outskirts, but an assault into the city the next day was repelled. A second offensive on the 14th of October forced the Iranians to withdraw. By the 24th of October, most of the city had fallen and the Iranians had crossed the Karun River, though some partisans kept fighting until November.

  The price of that delay soon became clear. In November, Saddam ordered his forces toward Dezful and Ahvaz, but militias and Iranian air power had already damaged the offensive. Iran's air force destroyed army supply depots and fuel stocks, strangling Iraq from the air. On the 28th of November, Iran launched Operation Morvarid, an air and sea attack that destroyed 80% of Iraq's navy and every radar site in the south. On the 7th of December, Saddam announced that Iraq was going on the defensive. Its strategic reserves were depleted, which ruled out major offensives for years.

  Iraq had mobilised 21 divisions for the invasion, while Iran fielded only 13 regular army divisions and one brigade. For the next eight months, both sides stayed on the defensive, apart from one battle. Artillery duels and raids filled the days. Anti-tank weapons made armoured manoeuvre costly for Iraq, so it dug its tanks into static positions. Iraq also fired missiles into Dezful and Ahvaz and used terror bombing against Iranian civilians.

  On the 5th of January 1981, Iran launched Operation Nasr, an armoured offensive from Dezful toward Susangerd. The tanks broke through Iraqi lines but raced ahead with exposed flanks and no infantry, and Iraqi tanks cut them off. When the Iranian tanks tried to manoeuvre, the marsh mud trapped them and many were abandoned. The Battle of Dezful nearly wiped out the Iranian armoured divisions. Iraq lost around 45 tanks, Iran around 100-200, and 141 Iranians were killed. President Abulhassan Banisadr had ordered the attack, hoping a victory would shore up his weakening political position. Instead, the failure hastened his fall.

  On the 3rd of April 1981, the Iranian Air Force surprise-attacked H3 Air Base in western Iraq, near the Jordanian border, where Iraq had moved its battered air force. Combat aircraft were destroyed. Even so, Iran called off its 180-day air offensive and gave up trying to control Iraqi airspace. Sanctions, the pre-war purges and a fresh purge after the Banisadr impeachment crisis had left it unable to survive further losses. From then on, it fought defensively.

  Banisadr's feud with the hardliners who backed the Revolutionary Guard had hobbled Iran's war effort, since he favoured the regular army. After he was impeached, the competition ended and the performance of the Iranian military improved. The government was still distracted by street fighting with the Mujahedin e-Khalq in June 1981 and again in September. In 1983, that group would ally with Iraq after its leader Massoud Rajavi met Tariq Aziz.

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• 5. Iran Takes Back Khuzestan

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  In September 1981, Operation Samen-ol-A'emeh ended the Iraqi siege of Abadan. Iran used regular artillery with small groups of armour, backed by Pasdaran and Basij infantry. In October, Iraqi tanks ambushed a large Iranian convoy. Iran lost many armoured vehicles and gave back the ground it had gained.

  On the 29th of November 1981, Iran began Operation Tariq al-Quds with three army brigades and seven Revolutionary Guard brigades. Iraq had failed to patrol its occupied areas properly. The Iranians built a road through unguarded sand dunes and struck from the Iraqi rear. The town of Bostan was retaken by the 7th of December. This operation marked the first use of Iranian human wave tactics, with Guard light infantry charging Iraqi positions again and again, often without armour or air power. About 6,000 Iranians and over 2,000 Iraqis were killed. Iraqi morale suffered, and the loss of Bostan forced supply convoys onto a roundabout route from Ahvaz.

  On the 19th of March 1982, Iraq tried to get in first with Operation al-Fawz al-'Azim, a strike by tanks, helicopters and fighter jets on the Iranian buildup around the Roghabiyeh pass. Saddam and his generals assumed they had won. In reality, the Iranian forces remained fully intact. Iran had brought its troops straight from cities and towns by train, bus and private car, so the gathering did not look like a normal military buildup. Iraq noticed a growing population near the front but never realised it was an attacking force.

  Iran's next big blow was Operation Fath ol-Mobin in March 1982. Iranian helicopters landed behind Iraqi lines, silenced the artillery and captured a headquarters. The Revolutionary Guard and the regular army then encircled Iraqis camped near the Iranian town of Shush. The Iraqis counterattacked and broke the encirclement, rescuing the trapped divisions. Iranian fighter jets still attacked their tanks, and Iraqi forces were driven away from Shush, Dezful and Ahvaz. Most of Khuzestan province was recaptured.

  Before Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas, Iranian air raids destroyed 47 Iraqi jets, including brand new French Mirage F-1 fighters. That gave Iran air superiority and a view of Iraqi troop movements. In April, 70,000 Revolutionary Guard and Basij members attacked along several axes. Within a month, Iran had cleared the Susangerd area and captured several thousand Iraqi troops and numerous tanks. Saddam placed 70,000 troops around Khorramshahr and ordered a hasty defence line, including metal spikes to deter commando landings from the air. But the city's only resupply route crossed the Shatt al-Arab, and Iranian aircraft bombed the supply bridges while artillery zeroed in on the garrison.

  In the early morning of the 23rd of May 1982, the 77th Khorasan division, with tanks, the Guard and the Basij, began crossing the Karun River toward Khorramshahr. Air strikes and massive artillery barrages came first, then bridgeheads and human wave attacks. Saddam's defences collapsed. In less than 48 hours the city fell, and 19,000 Iraqis surrendered. About 10,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded in Khorramshahr, while Iran suffered 30,000 casualties. Across the whole of Operation Beit ol-Moqaddas, Iran captured 33,000 Iraqi soldiers.

  The Iraqi army's strength fell from 210,000 to 150,000 troops. More than 20,000 of its soldiers were killed and over 30,000 captured. Two of its four active armoured divisions and at least three mechanised divisions shrank to less than a brigade. Iran had taken over 450 tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Even so, Iraq still held 3,000 tanks to Iran's 1,000. Saddam decided his demoralised army could not hold Khuzestan and pulled back to the border, although his troops kept some key border areas, including the Shatt al-Arab. He also ordered the execution of more than a dozen high-ranking officers for the failure at Khorramshahr. This became an increasingly common punishment for those who failed him in battle.

  On the 20th of June 1982, Saddam announced that he wanted peace. He proposed an immediate ceasefire and a withdrawal from Iranian territory within two weeks. Khomeini replied that the war would not end until Iraq had a new government and Iran had been paid reparations. He declared that Iran would invade Iraq and would not stop until the Baath regime gave way to an Islamic republic. Iran backed an Iraqi government in exile, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by the exiled cleric Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim. It recruited prisoners of war, dissidents, exiles and Shias into the Badr Brigade, its military wing.

  The decision to invade came only after much debate in Tehran. Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and President Ali Khamenei led a faction that wanted to accept the ceasefire, since most Iranian soil had been recovered. Others opposed an invasion for logistical reasons. Against them stood a hardline faction of clerics on the Supreme Defence Council, led by Akbar Rafsanjani.

  In Baghdad, the mood was different. At a cabinet meeting, Minister of Health Riyadh Hussein suggested that Saddam step down temporarily to ease Iran toward a ceasefire and then return to power. Saddam asked whether anyone else agreed. When no hand went up, he escorted the minister into the next room and shot him.

  Iran hoped its invasion would spark a revolt by Iraq's Shia and Kurdish populations, and perhaps bring Saddam down. It succeeded with the Kurds but not with the Shia.

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• 6. Money and Weapons

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  In April 1982, Syria closed the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline, which had carried Iraqi oil to tankers on the Mediterranean, and Iraq's budget shrank by $5 billion per month. Patrick Brogan wrote, "It appeared for a while that Iraq would be strangled economically before it was defeated militarily." Only the pipeline to Turkey remained, along with tanker trucks hauling oil to the port of Aqaba in Jordan. The Turkish pipeline could not carry enough to pay for the war.

  Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other Gulf states rescued Iraq from bankruptcy with loans worth $37-60 billion. These monarchies had long distrusted Baghdad, but they feared Iranian ideology more. Khomeini had declared monarchy an illegitimate and un-Islamic form of government, and the Gulf rulers heard that as a call to overthrow them. Journalists John Bulloch and Harvey Morris noted that Iran's campaign against the Saudi regime backfired. The Saudis became "tougher, more self-confident, and less prone to seek compromise." Saudi Arabia was said to give Iraq $1 billion per month starting in mid-1982.

  In June 1982, American president Ronald Reagan signed a directive stating that the United States "would do whatever was necessary to prevent Iraq from losing." That year, Reagan removed Iraq from the list of countries supporting terrorism. Washington restored relations that had been broken during the 1967 Six-Day War. It sold howitzers to Iraq through Jordan and supplied intelligence from American spy satellites on Iranian deployments, along with economic aid and dual-use vehicles and equipment. Iraq relied heavily on that satellite and radar intelligence to detect and counter Iranian troop movements.

  France sold Iraq weapons worth millions of dollars. The United States and West Germany sold Iraq dual-use pesticides and poisons that would later be used to make chemical weapons. The list of Iraq's backers also included the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Italy, Yugoslavia and most Arab countries.

  Iran lacked the money for purchases on that scale. It counted on China, North Korea, Libya, Syria and Japan for everything from weapons and munitions to logistical and engineering equipment. Its wider circle of helpers also included South Yemen, Pakistan, Cuba and Israel, along with the Kurdish parties KDP and PUK.

  There was one strange exception to American support for Iraq. In exchange for Iran using its influence to help free western hostages in Lebanon, the United States secretly sold Iran some limited supplies, including anti-tank TOW missiles. Iran later reverse-engineered and produced those weapons itself. Akbar Rafsanjani writes that the United States supported Iran for a short time and then went back to helping Iraq.

  By the end of 1982, Iraq had been resupplied with new Soviet and Chinese materiel. The ground war was about to enter a new phase.

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• 7. Waves, Marshes, and Gas

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  By 1988, Iraq was spending between 40% and 75% of its GDP on military equipment. Saddam turned his country toward total war and more than doubled his army, from 200,000 soldiers to 500,000. For the next five years Iraq mostly stayed on the defensive, while Iran launched more than 70 offensives.

  Iraq built a Soviet-style three-line defence from barbed wire, minefields and bunkers. It used newly acquired tanks, Chinese copies, truck-mounted rocket launchers and helicopter gunships. The Combat Engineer Corps built bridges over water, laid mines, raised earthen walls and dug trenches and machine gun nests. Iranian assaults might overrun the forward infantry lines. But the static defences behind them bled the attackers and steered them into traps. Air and artillery attacks then pinned the Iranians down for counterattacks by tanks and mechanised infantry. The Iraqi front also lay near the main Iraqi bases and arms depots, while Iranian troops and supplies had to cross mountain ranges to reach theirs.

  Historian Stephen Pelletiere argues that the famous human wave attacks are a misconception. In his account, Iranian infantry moved in squads of 22 men, each pushing toward a specific objective, and the surge of many squads only looked like a wave. The label stuck anyway. Former Iraqi general Ra'ad al-Hamdani described the charges as armed civilians who carried most of their own equipment and often lacked command and logistics. The usual pattern began with poorly trained Basij swamping the weakest Iraqi sector, sometimes even clearing minefields with their bodies. Revolutionary Guard infantry followed through the breach, and the regular army's mechanised units then tried to encircle the enemy.

  In February 1983, Operation Before the Dawn sent 200,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen against the area near Amarah, southeast of Baghdad. Hilly escarpments, forests and river torrents stalled the attack, though the Iraqis could not throw the Iranians back. Iran lost heavily while breaching Iraqi anti-tank mines, and afterward it reduced its reliance on human wave attacks. By the end of 1983, an estimated 120,000 Iranians and 60,000 Iraqis had been killed. Iran held the edge in the war of attrition, with a population of 43.6 million in 1983 against 14.8 million in Iraq.

  Iran launched a series of Valfajr, or Dawn, operations that eventually numbered ten. In early February 1983, Operation Dawn-1 sent 50,000 Iranians westward from Dezful against 55,000 Iraqis, hoping to cut the road from Basra to Baghdad. Iraq flew 150 sorties, and Iran's 92nd Armoured Division broke up the Iraqi counterattack. On the 23rd of July 1983, with Kurdish support, Iran captured the town of Haj Omran and held it against an Iraqi poison gas counteroffensive. That operation pushed Iraq toward indiscriminate chemical attacks on Kurds. Seven days later, during Operation Dawn 3, Iraq fitted attack helicopters with chemical warheads. Seventeen thousand people died on both sides, with no gain for either country.

  In September 1983, Operation Dawn 4 aimed at the northern sector in Iranian Kurdistan. Three regular Iranian divisions, the Guard and elements of the Kurdistan Democratic Party massed at Marivan and Sardasht. They threatened the major Iraqi city of Suleimaniyah and the Kirkuk oilfields. Iraq flew 120 sorties with Mi-8 helicopters carrying chemical weapons and stopped the advance 15 km inside Iraqi territory. About 5,000 Iranians and 2,500 Iraqis died. Iran captured 1,800 Iraqi prisoners, and Iraq abandoned large quantities of materiel in the field.

  By 1984, the Iraqi and Iranian armies were equal in size. By 1986, Iraq had twice as many soldiers, and by 1988 it had 1 million, the fourth largest army in the world. Some of its equipment, such as tanks, outnumbered Iran's by at least five to one. Iran adapted. It trained troops in infiltration, night fighting, marsh warfare and mountain warfare, and prepared thousands of Guard commandos for amphibious operations. Speedboats carried troops across the marshes and rivers of southern Iraq, where they landed and set up pontoon bridges. In the north, Iranian advisers organised Peshmerga into raiding parties of 12 guerrillas, who often targeted the oil refineries of Kirkuk.

  Operation Kheibar ran from the 24th of February to the 19th of March 1984. On the 15th of February, 250,000 Iranians faced 250,000 Iraqis of the Second Iraqi Army Corps. Iran wanted to take the Basra-Baghdad highway. The Iraqi high command had assumed the marshlands above Basra were a natural barrier and had not reinforced them. Iranian commandos landed by helicopter behind Iraqi lines and destroyed artillery. Infantry then crossed the Hawizeh Marshes by motorboat and helicopter and took Majnoon Island, a vital oil-producing site.

  On the 27th of February, Iraqi combat aircraft intercepted a massive formation of Iranian helicopters carrying Pasdaran troops and shot down 49 of the 50. Fighting sometimes took place in water over 2 m deep. Iraq ran live electrical cables through the water, electrocuting numerous Iranian soldiers, and then displayed the corpses on state television. When the Iranians broke out of the marshes near Qurna, Iraqi counter-attacks, including mustard gas, killed 1,200 of them. At least 20,000 Iranians died in the marsh battles. Iran kept hold of the marshes and Majnoon Island as a springboard for later attacks. Four years in, Iran had paid with 170,000 combat fatalities and 340,000 wounded, against 80,000 Iraqi combat fatalities and 150,000 wounded.

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• 8. Ships, Cities, and Ceasefire

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  Early in 1984, Iraq struck the oil infrastructure at Kharg Island and opened what became known as the tanker war. Baghdad declared that any ship traveling to or from Iranian ports in the northern Persian Gulf was open to attack. It enforced the threat with helicopters armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles and with Soviet-made air-to-surface missiles. Iraq hoped to provoke Iran into closing the Strait of Hormuz, since the United States had repeatedly threatened to intervene if that happened. Iran refused to take the bait and limited its retaliation to Iraqi shipping.

  On the 13th of May 1984, Iran hit a Kuwaiti tanker carrying Iraqi oil near Bahrain, and on the 16th of May it hit a Saudi tanker in Saudi waters. Iraq had become landlocked and relied on Arab allies, mainly Kuwait, to move its oil. Iran later attacked tankers from any Gulf state backing Iraq. On the 5th of June 1984, Saudi aircraft shot down a pair of Iranian fighters. Iran moved its shipping port to Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

  Iran leaned on its new Revolutionary Guard navy, whose Boghammar speedboats carried rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. F-4 Phantom II fighters fired Maverick missiles at tankers. Iranian British-built frigates stopped and inspected ships suspected of trading with Iraq, and Iraqi pilots, with little training against naval targets, could not stop them.

  Lloyd's of London estimated that the tanker war damaged 546 commercial vessels and killed about 430 civilian sailors. Iraq launched three times as many attacks as Iran. On the 1st of November 1986, Kuwait formally petitioned foreign powers to protect its shipping. The Soviet Union agreed to charter tankers starting in 1987. From the 7th of March 1987, the US Navy escorted foreign tankers reflagged under the American flag in Operation Earnest Will. On the 17th of May 1987, two missiles from an Iraqi plane struck the American frigate Stark and killed 37 sailors. The ship's radar never picked them up, and the lookout's warning came only moments before impact. Seawise Giant, the largest ship ever built at the time, was hit by Iraqi Exocet missiles while carrying Iranian crude oil out of the Gulf. Iran, for its part, attacked two Soviet merchant ships.

  On the 7th of February 1984, Saddam ordered his air force to attack eleven Iranian cities. The bombardments ceased on the 22nd of February, and an estimated 1,200 Iranian civilians were killed in that month alone. Iraq's air force had been rebuilt with help from the Soviet Union and the West. Strategic bombers made long-range, high-speed raids on Iranian cities, Tehran included. In March 1986, Iraq hit up to 158 targets in more than 30 towns and cities. Iran answered with missile launches, including Scuds bought from Libya and fired at Baghdad. From 1987, Saddam also ordered chemical attacks on civilian targets in Iran, such as Sardasht. Iraq converted its Scuds into al-Husayn missiles with the help of East German engineers, because the original range could not reach Tehran.

  Iran's Operation Badr began on the 11th of March 1985 with 100,000 men and 60,000 more in reserve. Planners assessed the marshy terrain, plotted where tanks could land and built pontoon bridges across the marshes. On the 14th of March, Iran broke through north of Qurna, crossed the Tigris that night and seized part of the Baghdad-Basra Highway 6. Saddam answered with chemical attacks and a second war of the cities, an air and missile campaign against twenty to thirty Iranian population centres. Iraqi forces then pinned the Iranians with air attacks and launched a pincer assault. They flooded the Iranian trenches with water piped from the Tigris. The highway returned to Iraqi hands. The operation cost 10,000-12,000 Iraqi casualties and 15,000 Iranian ones.

  On the 10th of February 1986, Iran opened Operation Dawn 8, sending 30,000 men from the Revolutionary Guard and Basij to seize the al-Faw peninsula, Iraq's only stretch of Persian Gulf coast. After a failed feint against Basra, an amphibious force landed at the foot of the peninsula. Several thousand poorly trained soldiers of the Iraqi Popular Army fled or were beaten. Pontoon bridges across the Shatt al-Arab let 30,000 soldiers cross in a short time, and the peninsula fell after only 24 hours of fighting. Iraq had thought it impossible for Iran to cross the river. Counter-offensives on the 12th and the 24th of February both failed.

  The loss of al-Faw alarmed the Gulf states. Kuwait, with Iranian troops only miles away, increased its support for Iraq. In March 1986, Iran tried to take Umm Qasr, which would have cut Iraq off from the Gulf and put Iranian troops on Kuwait's border. The attempt failed for lack of armour. By then 17,000 Iraqis and 30,000 Iranians were casualties, and indecisive heavy combat on the peninsula went on into 1988.

  In mid-1988, Iraq launched a series of counter-offensives that left the front in stalemate. Years of military and economic losses, falling morale, intensifying relations between Iran and the United States, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians pushed Iran toward peace. It accepted a ceasefire under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which took effect in August 1988. Even then, the two countries kept up low-level fighting until relations improved after Saddam's overthrow in 2003.

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