(soft dramatic music)
- One of the most important wars
of the last 50 years is one that we don't hear about much.
When in 1980, two of the Middle East's
most powerful countries, Iran and Iraq,
waged eight years of some of the worst trench
and chemical warfare since World War I,
leaving both countries devastated.
This is the war that fractured the Middle East
into lines that still play out
in nearly every conflict there today.
It set the US and Iraq on a path
that ultimately led to the American invasion.
And it defined Iran's often hostile relationship
with the wider world.
This is the Iran-Iraq War.
It's 1979, and Iran is in the middle of a revolution.
(crowd chanting)
The country is coming off of decades of being ruled
by The Shah, a king that the US and UK
had installed in the 50s after covertly overthrowing
Iran's democratically-elected leader.
But after years of The Shah's corrupt autocratic rule,
a mass uprising violently overthrows him,
creating what becomes an Islamic republic,
headed by an ayatollah named Ruhollah Khomeini.
(soft dramatic music)
Khomeini, and a group of Shia religious scholars,
want to impose fundamentalist rule on the country
and are hostile to both the Western powers
and the neighboring Soviet Union.
They establish a military force
called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard,
which is meant to protect their hold on the revolution
and to suppress the other groups
who helped overthrow The Shah.
The US is watching all of this in shock.
Their biggest ally in the region, and a major oil producer,
has just turned from friend to fierce enemy.
But the biggest tremors of this revolution
are felt in the rest of the Middle East.
(soft dramatic music)
Iran sends out radio broadcasts to Arab countries
like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Iraq,
calling for people to rise up and overthrow
their own rulers.
They're trying to export their revolution to their neighbors
to gain new allies in the region.
Neighboring leaders, most of them Sunni Muslim,
don't like this.
Saudi Arabia's king fears being overthrown
just like The Shah was.
And in Iraq, Saddam Hussein sees this
Shia religious revolution on his eastern border
and worries that the Shia majority that he rules over
will rise up against him too.
But he also sees this as an opportunity.
Iran and Iraq have been fighting
over this border territory for years.
This waterway is a critical access point to the Persian Gulf
where both countries export their oil
to the rest of the world.
In a treaty between the two back in 1975,
Saddam had to give up full control of this waterway,
as well as access to oil-rich regions in what was now Iran.
Saddam hates this treaty
and is considering taking the waterway back by force.
The Iranian revolution has left the country
weak and fractured.
Khomeini and his revolutionary guard are still fighting
other political factions for control.
The Iranian military, which used to be funded
and trained by the United States, is now weak,
its leaders having been jailed
or executed after the revolution.
Iran's military would normally be able to crush Iraq
in an invasion, but maybe not anymore.
Saddam sees this as an opportunity to weaken a major rival.
(soft dramatic music)
Saddam is also riding on a delusion that he himself
is going to unify the Arab world under his leadership.
If he invades Iran,
maybe the rest of the Middle East will rally behind him
against this new common enemy.
He thinks it'll be a quick victory.
So in September of 1980,
he decides to prepare 10,000 Iraqi troops
to cross the border to invade Iran.
(soft dramatic music) (engine rumbling)
What's about to happen here
isn't just the start of a new war.
Saddam is kicking off a dynamic that will dominate
the Middle East for more than 40 years,
the fight between revolutionary change and status quo power.
(soft dramatic music)
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Let's dive back into this story.
The war officially starts when Saddam sends
his air force over the border in a surprise attack
on Iranian air bases. (soft dramatic music)
His 10,000 soldiers cross from Basra into Southern Iran.
Further north, Saddam opens a second front
to seize strategically-located border towns
and put pressure on his enemy.
These air attacks mostly fail,
and Iran responds with airstrikes of their own
into Iraqi territory hitting oil facilities.
Iran still has sophisticated jets that the United States
had given the previous regime.
This gives them an edge in the air.
(bombs exploding)
The war quickly sucks in the rest of the region.
Israel is among the first.
It wants to keep these two adversaries occupied,
fighting with each other, keeping both sides weak.
So almost immediately, Israel secretly sells supplies
and parts to Iran.
This helps the Iranian air force keep planes in the air.
Now, Iran and Israel are not friends,
but Israel sees Iraq as a greater threat here.
So they're willing to support.
Iran needs to get its military organized
if they're gonna fight this war.
So they release military officers
that they had jailed during the revolution.
War tends to unify a nation,
and in this case, the fractured country of Iran
is unifying around Iraq's invasion,
creating this irony that Saddam is the one
who actually cements Khomeini's hold on power.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also step in here,
giving billions of dollars to fund Iraq's war efforts.
They want to weaken Iran and turn back its revolution.
The Middle East is now dividing between,
on one side, Arab states who are ruled by aging,
Sunni monarchies and strong men who fear change,
and on the other side, a Shia Iran
bent on revolution, on remaking the region in its image.
China is also watching this war.
They say they will maintain strict neutrality,
but they take the opportunity to sell weapons
to both sides of the conflict.
They eventually become Iran's top supplier of weapons.
(gentle music)
For most of 1981, the two armies are in a stalemate,
with Iraq holding small
but important stretches of border territory.
The global powers see this stalemate
and try to negotiate a ceasefire,
hoping that this conflict that threatens so much
of the global oil supply will end soon.
What they don't know is that
this is really just the beginning.
Saddam agrees to the ceasefire, but Khomeini does not.
This war has become so useful to his goals,
unifying the country and keeping the military occupied
so that it doesn't become a rival to his power.
Khomeini needs the war to continue.
So Iran demands that Saddam Hussein step down.
They say the war will continue until his rule is ended.
Saddam, of course, refuses.
So Iran goes on the offensive.
Their forces are now organized.
Their officers have been freed from jail,
and they're able to recapture the territory
that Saddam had taken, even pushing into Iraq.
Saddam's hopes of a quick victory
and a gain of some valuable territory are now dead.
So he turns to the United States for support
and the US agrees to help.
They hope to weaken Iran
and its call for anti-American
Islamic revolution across the region.
So the US starts giving Saddam intelligence
and satellite imagery on Iranian troop movement.
(soft dramatic music)
Iraq also gets another big backer, the Soviet Union.
The Soviets are at war in neighboring Afghanistan
trying to suppress another religious uprising,
but they also have allies in this region.
So over the course of the war,
the Soviets become a top supplier of weapons to Iraq.
Now remember the situation between these two.
It's a tense moment in the Cold War,
and the United States and Soviet Union
are suddenly supporting the same side
of this Middle East conflict, both backing the country
that will support the status quo, nothing changing,
allowing their great power struggle to continue as it has.
But by the summer of 1982,
Iran is now pushing into Iraqi territory,
much of their campaign focused on the city of Basra.
If Iran can take Basra, it will cut off Iraq
from the Persian Gulf,
preventing them from shipping out their oil.
Iraqi forces are outnumbered here, so they start to dig in
and build trenches, erecting barbed wire barriers,
planting landmines and surrounding the city
to stop Iran from taking it.
The fighting starts to resemble the brutal warfare
of World War I, waves of artillery strikes,
and the Iranian military resorting to human wave attacks
where thousands of boys and men charge over open fields
leading to huge numbers of casualties.
Iran is not successful in taking the city,
but this attack does weaken Saddam,
showing that he's vulnerable.
And this is where we need to look to the north
to talk about the Kurds.
(soft dramatic music)
The Kurds are a minority group in the north of Iraq.
They've been long suppressed by Saddam Hussein,
and they see this moment as an opportunity
to break away from Iraq to make their own country.
So Kurdish forces start fighting with the Iraqi army,
taking towns and villages.
So now Saddam is fighting two different armies,
one of which lives in his own country.
Iran starts sending support to the Kurds
who have a presence in this mountainous,
oil-rich part of Iraq.
If the Kurds can hold it and keep Saddam's regime
away from all of this oil,
it would have a major effect on this war.
This is a big deal for Saddam, and he switches tactics
to make sure he can control this northern area.
He escalates by using chemical weapons
against the Kurds as well as the Iranians.
Shells filled with mustard gas,
weapons that cause extreme burning and blindness,
a weapon that is illegal under international law,
but even still the global powers
who are supporting him mostly look the other way.
The US starts sending technology and money to Saddam,
even restoring official diplomatic ties with Iraq.
This allows Iraq to buy technology from the United States
that helps them develop their weapons programs,
including the horrific chemical and biological weapons
that he will soon be using on the battlefield.
They need him to keep fighting because this war has changed.
It went from protecting Saddam from revolution
to now using Saddam to weaken Iran.
So they keep supporting him,
showing him that he can use chemical weapons
without being punished.
The chemical attacks help push back Iranian forces,
and the war reaches a new stalemate.
(soft dramatic music)
1984 is the year that the oil war begins in this conflict.
Iraq starts attacking Iranian oil tankers
in the Persian Gulf using new jets provided by France,
a new entrant to this conflict.
Saddam warns that he'll also attack any ship
going into Iranian ports.
Iran retaliates by attacking oil tankers
carrying Iraq's oil.
The oil that the entire globe relies on
is now at the center of this increasingly brutal conflict.
Hundreds of commercial ships are attacked by both sides,
resulting in the death of over 400 civilian sailors.
The US has to send in two frigates
and a guided missile destroyer into the Persian Gulf
to escort US ships, hoping that their presence
will stop these attacks. (soft dramatic music)
Meanwhile, Iran is making progress on the ground,
slowly taking territory from Iraq
and continuing attacks on the vital port city of Basra.
It's 1985 and Saddam is about to escalate to a new extreme.
(soft dramatic music)
He starts shooting missiles and dropping bombs
on Iranian cities all over the country,
including the capitol.
This kills 16,000 people and leaves many homeless.
Iran responds, striking Iraqi cities,
firing these massive missiles,
primarily at the capital of Baghdad.
These strikes hit civilian targets like a school
and a bus station with hundreds of casualties.
Civilians on both sides are now caught in the crossfire
of this brutally escalating war.
Their cities and their homes are not safe, so many flee.
These events leave an entire generation scarred
by the trauma of war and a disdain for the outside powers
that have ripped their country apart.
And speaking of outside powers,
this is when the US starts double dealing.
They start selling missiles to Iran,
which gives Iran an edge against Iraqi forces
who the US is also supporting.
Behind all this is President Ronald Reagan,
who wants to use the money from this deal
to fund an anti-communist militia group in Nicaragua.
It's all supposed to be a secret,
but will eventually come out
and be known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
Meanwhile, Kuwait is asking the US to be more aggressive
to protect their oil tankers.
Iranian attacks on their ships have started to take a toll.
The US is getting more involved in the war.
Their presence in the Persian Gulf is growing.
They start putting American flags on Kuwaiti tankers
to deter Iran from attacking them.
And then in March of 1988,
Iran partners with the Kurdish fighters
to take over the Iraqi town of Halabja.
The Kurds know that this is going to set Saddam off,
and they brace themselves for a brutal retaliation.
But what comes next is worse
than anyone could have prepared for.
The Iraqi army drops bombs in artillery shells
containing deadly chemicals, blanketing the entire town
with a cloud of deadly gas that sinks into homes
and buildings and the underground shelters
where many were hiding for protection.
It's a brutal attack that kills over 5,000 Iraqi Kurds,
mostly unarmed civilians.
And it was a part of a broader campaign
that Saddam was now waging to wipe out
the Kurdish people entirely.
He now had what he believed was a justification.
So the Iraqi army starts going village to village,
dropping chemical weapons on civilians
and executing any survivors.
This resulted in an estimated 50 to 100,000 deaths
in what has now been deemed as a genocide,
one of the many war crimes committed by Saddam Hussein.
The US knows this is happening,
and yet according to now-public documents,
the official government line was to turn a blind eye,
to blame everything on Iran.
Saddam's horrific war crimes project a new fear
onto the civilians in Iran who now worry that a missile
loaded with deadly gas could land on their cities.
Many flee to take shelter in the mountains.
And by now, after eight years of devastating war,
Iran's economy and social order is frayed.
Their leader, Ayatollah Khomeini,
is feeling the pressure to end this war.
More than a million lives have been lost in this war.
All sides are looking for a way out.
And the UN Security Council is pressuring the parties
to accept a ceasefire.
Then in July of 1988, a US ship in the Persian Gulf
shoots down an Iranian passenger jet,
(soft dramatic music)
killing all 290 civilians on board.
The US shakes it off as an unfortunate accident,
saying that they mistook the airliner
for a hostile F-16 fighter jet.
They pay compensation to the victim's families,
and President Reagan sends a letter apologizing,
but the government never formally apologizes.
And the captain of the ship who did this
later received a medal which fed a deep suspicion in Iran
that this attack was deliberate,
that it was a scheme to coerce them into accepting peace.
Fear of more American attacks,
along with a new offensive by Iraq,
pushes the Iranian forces to withdraw from the country,
and both sides finally accept a ceasefire.
(gentle music)
The war is finally over, and after all of this,
the borders were unchanged from before the fighting.
But in some ways, this was really just the first round
in a larger conflict that has continued through to today,
a war for the future of the Middle East,
one that the United States is deeply involved in
but that most expresses itself as a cold war
between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who now fuel civil wars
around the region in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen,
backing their own proxy fighters
and making these conflicts worse.
But another major takeaway here is that this war
defined Iran's relationship to the rest of the world,
especially the United States.
Iranian hardliners came to feel confirmed in their belief
that they could never trust an outside world
bent on Iran's destruction
and seemingly unconstrained in their violence,
leading some leaders to conclude that only nuclear weapons
could stave off disaster from the outside.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq emerged battered by this war,
humiliated by this failure against Iran.
He faced growing internal resistance from his people,
which he suppressed with more and more violence.
He also came out of this with huge war debts
to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Angry that his allies had billed him to fight a war
on their behalf, a few years later,
Saddam invades Kuwait seeking its oil,
taking the spoils that he felt he was owed.
And this is when his one-time backer, the United States,
quickly turns against him, expelling him from Kuwait
and beating him back in a swift 43-day victory,
cutting him off from the world economy
and turning him into a pariah, an enemy.
A decade after Saddam had gassed his own people,
the US finally blamed him for it,
turning it into a byword for his cruelty
and the centerpiece for their demand that he stepped down.
A few years later, George W. Bush would cite these weapons
of mass destructions, the ones that he would never find,
as a reason to invade the country to topple Saddam.
Bush's war room was filled with the same officials
who had covered for Saddam and his war crimes
in the first place, and making it so crystal clear that,
even though this war between Iran and Iraq
ended decades ago, the Middle East we see today
is built off of what happened
during those eight brutal years.