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Martin DeCaro
April 10, 20206 Martyrs and survivors the Iran Iraq War it was in the
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News Reporter
early hours of this morning that Iraqi tanks ground across the border into Iran. Iraqi's declared aim is to control the Shatt Al Arab water up which ship sailed to the Iraqi port of Basra,
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Iranian Official or Narrator
supported by the arms of the imperialist east and the material and moral support of the imperialist West.
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News Reporter
Look in particular at a regime seeking supremacy in the Gulf and at its remarkable president, Saddam Hussein.
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
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News Reporter
If the Iranians did try to control the straits and stop oil shipp shipments from all the Gulf states, America might feel sufficiently nervous. Besides, seven missiles fell within an hour during this latest round in the war of the cities.
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
With dawn in Baghdad came the first day of truce in the Iran Iraq war. The ceasefire between the warring nations took
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Martin DeCaro
effect at 7am the longest war between two countries in the 20th century was an existential war for Iran. Over eight years, an estimated 500,000 soldiers were killed, including child soldiers sent to the front lines to clear minefields. Missiles and bombs rained down on cities. Chemical weapons were used. The war drained both countries and ended without a victor. But it galvanized Iranian society around its new revolutionary leaders who crushed all dissent and consolidated their power. The regime survived, just as it's surviving another war today. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro. We're going to bring them back to
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
the stone Ages where they belong.
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Martin DeCaro
We had child volunteers. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing, their ears heard nothing. And then a few minutes later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing More to be seen of them. Somewhere widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone. Before entering the minefields, the children wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground so their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to their graves. This story about the fate that awaited child martyrs at the front line was published in an Iranian newspaper in the 1980s and decided by the historian John Ghazvinian in his book America and Iran. And this is what one of those young boys sounded like from an old document. My Lord, open my breast for me and make my affair easy for me, he said. When Iraq invaded in September 1980, Iran was taken by surprise. Its revolutionary government, under the Ayatollah Khomeini, appeared vulnerable. And it was internationally isolated too, because it was holding 52Americans hostage. Since the prior November in Iran, there
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
have been new threats against the hostages, threats inspired by the new United States policy that does not any longer rule
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Hussein Binai
out the use of Force.
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
The 222nd day of captivity. The 285th day of captivity.
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Martin DeCaro
By December 1980, the Iraqi offensive had bogged down after meeting unexpectedly strong Iranian resistance. The quick, decisive victory dreamt by Saddam Hussein was just that, a dream.
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News Reporter
What are Iraq's ultimate objectives and what might they do next? We asked a defence analyst to speculate. Their immediate objectives is to capture the whole of the area around the Shatta Arab waterways, having abrogated the 19.
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Martin DeCaro
And then in 1982, led by the zealots in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran pushed all of Saddam Hussein's armies back across the border. But rather than suing for peace, Khomeini went for the kill. And the war would drag on for another six years at an enormous, enormous cost. In blood and treasure, total casualties may have surpassed 1 million.
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
Today was day one of the long awaited ceasefire in the Persian Gulf War. Iraq has charged Iran with one ceasefire violation. But for all practical purposes, the truth seems to be holding. With dawn in Baghdad came the first day of truce in the Iran Iraq War. The ceasefire between the warring nations took effect at 7am but long before sunrise.
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Martin DeCaro
It was the longest interstate war of the 20th century. But despite that amazing fact, you don't hear about the Iran Iraq War much in the United States. Which may be One reason why U.S. leaders do not understand Iran. In an interview with New Lines magazine, political scientist Hussain Bini says the lived memory of the Iran Iraq War activates a well worn repertoire of wartime governance, rallying the population around sacred sacrifice. Delegitimizing dissent as treachery and drawing on institutional muscle memory built through eight years of total war mobilization.
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News Reporter
The target is the big refinery on the outskirts of Baghdad. This has become an economic war, but even in this sort of warfare, civilians get hurt. Almost 100 killed in the past week.
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Martin DeCaro
The war was as if not more important to forging Iran's post revolutionary identity and cementing clerical rule as the 1979 revolution itself. And it is an integral part of a national narrative, a national chronology, as B', Nai, along with Malcolm Byrne and the late John Turman, wrote in their 2022 book Republics of Myth about the U. S Iran relationship since 1953. They say the overthrow of Mosaddegh, the US support for the oppressive reign of the last shah, the enforced isolation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran Iraq war, the excruciating sanctions imposed for nearly four decades, the false accusations about Iran's compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement and President Trump's withdrawal from that deal, the killing of General Soleimani. These actions, among many others, exemplified America's attempt to control, subdue and undermine Iran. In America, they say Iran's post1979 leadership was depicted as irrational, mad mullahs, violent and deceitful, the very embodiment of the savage. Hussein Binai teaches International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is an expert on U.S. iran relations and Iran's political development. Tap subscribe now in the show notes for ad free listening, early access and all of our bonus content or go to historyasithappens.com Supercast will set you up so you can continue listening to the podcast in the same place you're listening right now. Hussein Benai, welcome to the podcast.
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Hussein Binai
It's wonderful to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.
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Martin DeCaro
You don't hear too often, at least in the US about the importance of the war we're going to discuss here in Iran's modern identity. We hear quite a bit about 1979. Matter of fact, President Trump mentioned 1979 as part of the narrative. You know, Iran's been at war with us since the Islamic Revolution. Why do you think the Iran Iraq War doesn't get enough time or enough attention here in the US
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Hussein Binai
It's a very good question, and I think there are probably two broad reasons. One is this war takes place in the last eight years of the Cold War as well. This is a period in which the US Is kind of super focused on its rivalry with the Soviet Union as well, it's the Reagan administration that is very intent on extinguishing that particular ideological enemy adversary of the United States. The other reason, which is we'll get into here, is that this is a war that largely the United States played, on balance, kind of an unsalutary role. It not only backed one side of this war that it came to very quickly regret Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the Desert Storm, and the first Persian Gulf War comes after this war. You know, America's role in supporting Saddam and the Iran Iraq war is not something that you want to necessarily revisit or talk about, and that's very natural for states in their national narratives, is that you don't talk about the things that don't reflect well on you. So I think that second reason is probably a more dominant role than the first one, which, you know, it's not no small thing managing a superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.
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Martin DeCaro
When you think about the Second World War, which was already now more than 80 years ago, that still plays a huge role in our living memory today, right? In our popular culture, international identity, our sense of greatness as a superpower. So it would make sense that this war, which I. I don't think anyone actually won, but certainly you can say the Iranian regime prevailed, it survived, it consolidated power, it forged its identity. Right? This war is so important to Iran today, wouldn't you say?
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Hussein Binai
What is often overlooked about this war is that it is one of the longest interstate conventional military conflicts of the 20th century, a century that saw two world wars, a major cold War, no shortage of intractable conflicts, proxy wars between the superpowers during the Cold War. And yet this one, lasting eight years between two conventional militaries, is one of the longest. The Iranians have really felt the impact of this prolonged conflict, not in terms of only their domestic politics, shortly coming after the revolution, being a major consolidating force behind the Islamic Republic as a regime, as a theocracy, but also regionally. Iran kind of seeing itself anew in a regional structure after, you know, the Shah has gone from the scene and the Islamic starts to create its own identity, unique identity in the region as well.
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Martin DeCaro
And, of course, when the war started, no one is thinking this is going to go eight years and turn into, you know, a foundational experience for the Iranian, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which starts out the war kind of a wobbly state. It's not clear that the revolutions are going to survive or which direction it might go in or who's going to ultimately lead it. That's why I have you here to clear some of that up. But the point being Iraq, Saddam Hussein, they initiate this war thinking it's going to be quick and easy, not that they're going to be bankrupt with a half a million casualties after eight years. So before we get to September 1980, when the Iraqi tanks roll across the border, a little bit of background here, because this does start as really territorial disputes, which should have been no big deal, but that's easy for me to say. We know that countries place a lot of importance on territory. There was an Agreement in 1975, right? And Saddam Hussein, well, he soured on this agreement. What was that agreement all about?
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Hussein Binai
It's called the Algiers Accord, or agreement that was signed between the Iraqi government at the time in which Saddam Hussein at that point was a president in, and the Shah of Iran. What the crux of that agreement is, it's about a recognition of territorial boundaries and sovereignty of respective states, Iraq and Iran over the Shatto Arab. The Shetul Arab is a river that's formed at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates before it empties into the Persian Gulf. And if you look at the map of the two countries, it is that waterway between the two countries. It had been a source of tension between Iraq and Iran and even before them, the Ottoman and Persian empires for centuries. The core dispute was over where exactly the boundary ran between the two countries. Iraq under the Ba'ath Party claimed sovereignty over the entire waterway up to the Iranian bank of it. And Iran insisted the boundary ran down the Dalwig, which is the deepest part of the river, the middle point, essentially, which was the standard rule under international law for most waterways shared between states. The Algiers Accord essentially recognized the Iranian side of the story and the concession. That's very important part of this context to keep in mind. The reason why the Iraqis conceded to that particular story was because at the time, the Shah, who had a much more powerful military backed by the United States, was supporting the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. And as part of this agreement, that Kurdish insurgency was pulled back. The Shah delivered on that, and Mustafa Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish rebels, was even flown out of northern Iraq. So the agreement came about, the Algiers Accord, as part of that compromise as well.
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Martin DeCaro
By September 1980, we're about two years into the revolution. Khomeini returned to Iran in February of 79. The hostage crisis be in November of 79. So now we're in September 1980. And Saddam Hussein sees an opportunity to revise the borders. Right. What was Iran's status internally? We know that internationally the regime is isolated because of the hostages and for other reasons as well. But internally, can you tell us what Iran's status was right now? What stage, say, the revolution was in and how its economy was doing, how its military was doing? That's a lot to cover there, but go ahead.
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Hussein Binai
No, no, absolutely. I mean, I think it is a country still very much in the very nascent early stages of a post revolutionary order, trying to figure out exactly what the new constitution would look like, what political parties are acceptable to participate in politics, factional infighting, left, right and center, all over the place. But it's also a country that is unmistakably heading towards a theocratic form of. Because Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been in exile, who comes back and basically declares Islamic government to be the only acceptable form of government moving forward, is now backing this theocratic party called Islamic Republic Party. It's setting about eliminating dissidents and potential opponents to that party. That's at the political side, at level of the military. Iran internally at this point looks completely disheveled, whatever term you want to use.
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Martin DeCaro
Discombobulated. How about that?
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Hussein Binai
Discombobulated. In the throes of what is essentially a massive purge of the top brass of the military. Right. You're coming to the power. You don't trust these generals that serve the Shah of Iran and the monarchy. Khomeini and his supporters set about cleansing the armed forces of Iran's top military talent and replacing them with this new entity called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a kind of a Praetorian Guard meant to defend the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. That transition's taking place, but it's, you know, the IRGC is not what it is today. At that point, it's just like a very ramshackle, you know, group of street fighters who are trying to kind of, you know, take over the military. So internally, militia guerrillas, not professionally trained. It is exactly what you would imagine a society in the throes of revolution to look like.
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Martin DeCaro
Yeah, the revolutionary coalition was diverse. You had leftists seeking to fuse Marxism and Islam. There was also the business of just trying to govern the country. Right. There was a provisional government of might call the moderate technocrats, right, who are handling the day to day stuff. A level above them was Khomeini and the hardline clerics. Wasn't it Khomeini who said economics is for Donkeys. Right. He wasn't really too, wasn't too interested in day to day governance.
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Hussein Binai
Exactly.
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Martin DeCaro
But as you said, the country's already moving though toward a more hardline Islamist system. So when the war starts, as in any country, unity is necessary. Right. For instance, there was a really violent crackdown on the Mujahideen Al Khauq, the mek. They were violent leftists I mentioned before. They want to feud, use Islam and Marxism. They were committing acts of terrorism, they often assassinated regime leadership, they blew up bombs, et cetera, and then the regime cracks down on them.
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Hussein Binai
That's exactly right. I think the Mojavenachal, the mek, which is still in existence and some would argue constitutes the only cohesive anti regime political movement. Although they're detested by great majority of Iranians, they've managed to really maintain their ideological identity throughout these years because they were so singularly targeted by Khomeini and his allies. The Mujahideen not only take out a series of attacks to try to assassinate the leadership of this emerging political party, the Islamic Republic Party, but to also make a serious play for power themselves. One context that's important here is that you know, we're not that far by, you know, early 1980 from you know, the time of third world is revolutionary guerrilla move who still imagined the post colonial nation state to look like a kind of a non aligned in the context of the Cold War, a truly revolutionary state. And they thought that theocracy ruled especially by clerics was a traditionalist rule that could very easily be manipulated by the forces of capital, et cetera. So the Mujahideen was highly, highly ideological and wanted to kind of keep the purity of the revolutionary government. You know, much like North Korea, frankly. They're oftentimes paired with that. If they had one in Iran, they would, Iran would look a lot more like North Korea than it did under the Islamic Republic.
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Martin DeCaro
So there definitely was a rally around the flag effect as well.
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Hussein Binai
Absolutely. One of the misreadings that Saddam Hussein has of what's happening in Iran, although he reads the you know, internal chaos pretty correctly, he completely forgets about the Iranian public. He kind of just assumes that this revolutionary takeover by Khomeini runs counter to Iranians views of themselves that they would in fact rally to overthrow the Islamic Republic. The opposite happens in fact.
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Martin DeCaro
Sounds familiar. Let me.
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Hussein Binai
Yeah, it doesn't. It the Iranian people have, you know, had a long experience in this, is that this dictum of, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend really does not apply to countries with long civilizational histories because they have seen multiple episodes where the enemy of their enemy ends up being their enemy again, and they don't want to go down that road. And in this case with Saddam, I think the Iranian public very quickly calculated that this guy has been agitating against the Algiers Agreement for a long time. This is a land grab because he's now pushed into Khuzestan. He's not just stopping at Chateau Arab, which is the oil rich southwestern province in Iran that Saddam pushes into. And so the public says, yeah, we don't like the Islamic Republic, but we're also not going to allow this other madman to exploit this moment and, you know, break up our country.
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Martin DeCaro
So by September 1980, then many Iranians, ordinary Iranians, already have deep reservations about the regime. I mean, it wasn't as unpopular than it is today, but it sounds like people are already starting to have second thoughts about living under Sharia or whatever the Shiite interpretation the clerics adopted to.
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Hussein Binai
No question about it. No question about it. Because, remember, the point of the revolution was to transition out of absolutist rule of a monarch to a democratic system of government. And Khomeini comes in and he basically substitutes secular monarchy with religious absolutist rule.
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Martin DeCaro
So in my preparation for this conversation, I learned a lot about what was motivating Saddam Hussein. And it's not surprising to learn that he miscalculated here, as he did later on with the United States. They say that the appetite comes with the eating. So at first, he may have wanted to just revise the territories that he believed belonged to Iraq, the Shatt Al Arab waterway, concerning that 1975 agreement. But does he then believe he has a chance now to go all the way to Tehran and actually conquer the country and get rid of the ayatollahs? Because he's also worried about the exporting of the revolution in his own country. Khomeini was there in exile in Iraq for a long time, had been there.
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Hussein Binai
You're absolutely right that his appetite grows and, you know, the invasion starts to take shape. His read on Iran's military weakness initially is completely borne by how quickly his forces are able to move in. He sees the political fragmentation internally inside Iran. That is very real. It's remarkable that just as this war starts, internal factional fighting inside Iran still is going on in the early stages. He always saw the ultimate goal of his campaign to, you know, I think, get back at what the Shah was trying to do to Iraq itself by supporting the Kurds in the north. So Iran's fragmentation was, for him, the ultimate goal. Whether there will be different areas ruled by different ethnicities, that would have been okay with him. It's not that he wanted Iraq to all of a sudden take over a bunch of territory and call itself that. But I should also note that it's very important that as he starts this campaign, his appetite is not only fed by what he sees himself or his military is experiencing, it's also the external signals that he's getting from the west and more specifically the United States after the experience of the hostage crisis. You know, 444 days of absolute humiliation at the hand of a bunch of mullahs, which American leaders were just beginning to learn who they are. What an ayatollah is. One of the memos I looked at in my work is this astonishing memo where Alexander Haig writes on side of the Mona, what the hell is a mola? Sorry, an ayatollah. The US Was so scarred and wounded by the experience of the hostage crisis that it wanted to make sure that this new revolutionary government in Iran was weakened. Saddam picked up those signals from them that they were not necessarily opposing what he was doing. And so he continues on that way. And other Arab countries in the region, Arab Gulf monarchy, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, also participate in that too.
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Martin DeCaro
They don't want Khomeini's revolution to be exported to their countries either. And the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was on the outs as well. In Tehran, they had a treaty of friendship with Iran.
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Hussein Binai
That's right.
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Martin DeCaro
But, you know, whatever Saddam Hussein's ambitions were, his armies get bogged down by the end of 1980 and Iran begins to turn the tide of the war. And maybe this will help us understand why the regime today is so resilient. How do they begin doing this? Maybe you can address some of the developments here that also included human wave attacks and the use of child soldiers as martyrs.
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Hussein Binai
This is a very important transition point. So all the way up to 1982, Iran was pretty much on the defensive. As it becomes clear that Saddam is very much intent on pushing to Iranian territory as far as he can get, create buffer zones. The sense of resilience on the part of the population which has to enlist into the new army that the Islamic Republic has now created, the Revolutionary Guards grows as well. This war becomes war against not only an imposed war, that term is formally used. I grew up in this period in Iran, I should say I remember the propaganda and my schooling every morning on the way to school in the radio there would just be like, two minutes of recitation of how important fighting the imposed war against Iraq and its backers in the west is an imperialist war.
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Martin DeCaro
Sorry to interject here, but this is an important point. Point. The idea was that Saddam got a green light from Washington, which was not true. But that's how the Iranian leadership saw it, right? That this wasn't just a war against Iraq. It was a war against the imperialists in the west and the east, which
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Iranian Official or Narrator
has been instigated by the Iraqi regime, supported by the arms of the imperialist east and the material and morads support of the imperialist West. The pretension for the attack has been stated as a violation of the Algiers Agreement. We regard this as a baseless excuse, and we think the attack was fundamentally designed by the imperialist powers and carried out by the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein.
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Hussein Binai
And what they would cite here as justification for how they're framing it in this way was that every other dispute that featured aggression by a neighboring country that took territory is a violation of sovereignty under United Nations Charter. And in this case, even though UN member states were calling it that, the United States in the Security Council had precluded the possibility of a resolution being passed calling this a violation of Iran's sovereignty. So they would say, there you go. There's the naked imperial design here that they're not calling a violation of our sovereignty what it is. Right. And so Saddam interpreted that hesitation on the part of the United States, that blockage in the Security Council, as a green light. It was not an explicit one, but the Iranians said it was implicitly. He read it that way. Right, that narrative.
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Martin DeCaro
Yeah.
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Libsyn Ads Host
I mean, they were wrong.
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Martin DeCaro
They weren't wrong about being isolated against everyone else. But go ahead. Yeah.
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Hussein Binai
And here I want to be even handed and represent also the narrative of the opposition to the Islamic Republic that said, yeah, they weren't wrong, but you also took hostages on that sovereign territory, the embassy of the United States, for 444 days. These are norms that you yourself have not also observed, that you invited a great deal of bad will here on the part of the US as well.
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Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
The government of Iran must recognize the gravity of the situation which it has
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Hussein Binai
itself created in terms of how the public was galvanized. I think that narrative, an unjust usurpation backed by superpower consent at a minimum, and it hadn't even started material support yet, really enlisted ordinary Iranians who did not hold this new regime in Iran in high regard at all, to really enlist in the defense of their homeland. And the IRGC really takes advantage of this. It transforms into a war of sacred defense, sacred sacrifice and defense. These terms. I remember growing up with them all around me. Did you believe that in this cause?
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Martin DeCaro
Were you a believer?
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Hussein Binai
I did at that time. I mean, I remember very well at the dinner table at weekend gatherings with my grandparents, all of whom had voted against the referendum to recognize the Islamic Republic as the official government of Iran. Them nevertheless saying they were very much in favor of the campaign to kick Saddam out.
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Martin DeCaro
If you don't mind me asking, how old were you at the time?
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Hussein Binai
I was born in 1980. The first eight years of my life were dominated by this war.
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Martin DeCaro
So you were too young to be a child soldier? Yeah, I mean, were these truly volunteers? Because this is a big part of the narrative of Iranian survival. Sacrificing teenagers in minefields.
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Hussein Binai
Yeah. No, they were not volunteers. They were manipulated oftentimes from very poor, lower economic class families. The base of this regime, what the regime called the mostazafin, the dispossessed. You know, you would have these lower level recruitment officers go in and basically say, you know, the highest honor you could have is to sacrifice yourself in the cause of your country and the cause of this revolution and that you'll go to heaven, you will be received with the highest honors. And it wasn't as crude as like the kind of jihadi, you know, 72 virgins and all that kind of stuff waiting for you. It was all about this sense of honor and you serving your country. Once they got recruited, to then ask them to go and clear minefields. Right. This is where it gets really sinister because evidence has now emerged that the Revolutionary Guards kind of injected these young kids with drugs, opiates, to put them in a state of hysteria and, and delusion and to then just tell them, go to the arms of the Almighty. And they would go, and all these minds would, would clear this guy. I mean, it is a war crime to use children in this way. But the IRGC really honed its skills in this way to create the highest, if you will, template for sacred defense.
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Martin DeCaro
Well, that tells you about the ideological commitments of the regime. Now, it's not the same exact regime today as it was 40 years ago, but still, I think the Trump administration totally underestimated this kind of thing, this kind of thinking and how strong the regime would be under the bombing campaign. Not to jump ahead here to what's happening now, but exactly.
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Hussein Binai
You know, one of the key components of this is the obviously the inability to appreciate very complex theological justifications this regime uses to recruit, to sustain its membership. But I think much more importantly, how it differs from other varieties of political Islam. Right. In Shia theology and lore, martyrdom of this kind has an entirely different connotation than what you find in kind of jihadi groups on isis, al Qaeda, et cetera.
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Martin DeCaro
And internal dissent is crushed. There's a demand for unity. I think it would maybe be wrong to say that the war saved the Islamic revolution, but the war does serve as an opportunity for the regime to consolidate power. Right. In the name of defending the country. Go ahead.
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Hussein Binai
The state of emergency, which has been written about much in political science and historical literature, et cetera, it's the easiest tool that you could give a new arbitrary ruler with which to consolidate power. We're in a state of emergency. Whatever you say is a betrayal of your country, doesn't even have to be a betrayal of the constitution, of the rules of the new regime. But you're treasonous. You are betraying your own country. And that's what Khomeini and his supporters did to imprison, to kick out Democrats, liberal nationalists, leftists of different varieties, secularists, force them into exile or worse, if they stayed, to, you know, imprison and torture and kill. And so that really justified these kind of very exclusive measures that they employed.
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Martin DeCaro
The conversation continues. Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads. So at the start, it probably did seem like an existential struggle for Iran, given Saddam's early successes. But by 1982 or in 1982, Iran is able to expel all of Saddam's armies back across the border. So we're kind of back to where it started in September of 1980. And at this point, any argument the Iranians might have made about having the victims of aggression goes out the window because they decide to press their advantage and invade Iraq. Why? Why'd they go ahead and do that instead of suing for peace?
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Hussein Binai
There are a couple of good reasons for it. I mean, good meaning in terms of explaining them, not. Not normatively good reasons, because there are people who oppose to this tactic as well. And I would include myself as well. I think Iran lost the narrative when it did that. But first and foremost, the liberation of the Khuzestan province, which really came down to the liberation of one city called Khoramshah Transition City of Blood. It was a fierce battle. The Iranian forces really fought heroically. I cannot tell you the number of legends, myths that have been born out of this particular battle that really gave a sense of purpose to the regime that people not only were signing onto this cause, but they were dying for it in unimaginably heroic ways that the regime turned into this very effective propaganda. This is probably one of my earliest memories as a 23 year old of Horemshat became the big thing. It was the bumper sticker of the war. That campaign to liberate Khuzestan gave the regime this sense of confidence. It was on this holy mission all the way toward liberation of the city of Karbella and Najaf, which are the holiest sites in Shia Islam. Saddam was the new Yazid, that arbitrary ruler that had killed Imam Hussein, this kind of sacred figure in Shia Islam and his 72 defenders. And so Iran started to recast the war and this kind of continues on from the sacred defense language of the war to basically push out all manner of usurpers, cleanse the soil of that area of these kind of unjust rulers. That becomes, if you will, the theological justification for pushing in. Export the revolution, export the revolution. The political, more pragmatic justification has to do with the fact that Iran thought that it needed to establish buffer zones because Saddam had proven to be so reliably tempted by territorial invasions and annexation. Create a buffer zone, make them negotiate, and you give him back, but then get some concessions for him that way as well. One last point I'll make here is that it was for demonstration impact to sort of thumb their noses at the world and say, look what we did to a country that was militarily more put together and supported by Western powers. We can push back against this.
- [36:22]
Martin DeCaro
So the Iranians suffer from the same overconfidence that Saddam Hussein suffered from at the beginning. Some people call that victory disease, and they go too far. But of course, they're not expecting six years of stalemate. No one does when you get into these things. So, yeah, now Iran is on Iraqi territory and the United States says, well, we can't allow this. I think some American official at some point along the way here said, it's too bad they both can't lose. The United States starts to assist Saddam Hussein's armies with satellite intelligence. The historian journalist Stephen Call has written an amazing book about the US Saddam relationship during these years called the Achilles Trap. So the war drags on and on, and it does have global implications because of. You may have heard of this, this waterway, the Strait of Hormuz. I was watching a 1980 television clip. It could have been broadcast today if
- [37:22]
News Reporter
the Iranians did try to control the straits and Stop oil shipments from all the Gulf states. America might feel sufficiently nervous to send in her Indian Ocean task force to open the waterway again. Lloyds have declared the Gulf a war zone and tripled the insurance rates.
- [37:37]
Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
Do you think there's any conceivable way in which a British naval presence might reappear here? Well, I think we've got to get our priorities right.
- [37:45]
News Reporter
There are misconceptions about the strait. It may be narrow but not so narrow you can block it. You'd need to pile tanks us 3 high and 12 miles across to do that. But the strait could be mine.
- [37:56]
Martin DeCaro
How did this become kind of a global conflict as it related to the Persian Gulf?
- [38:02]
Hussein Binai
Late 1985, early 1986 the war basically enters really catastrophic stalemate phase. Both sides are losing soldiers and the war seems like this pointless campaign for, you know, self glory being fought. Both populations are exhausted opposition to the war. Factional politics inside is a consideration for Saddam and for Khomeini and continuation of war. The state of emergency becomes a kind of a raison bet for the continuation of the war in this meaningless way as well. It's very clear that at this point the US entry into this war to be very decisive. And of course Saddam wants US entry to be favoring his country. Iran is trying to preclude that possibility from taking place. The Soviets are not really interested in getting involved. They're in the kind of the last gas.
- [39:00]
Martin DeCaro
They have their own problems in Afghanistan.
- [39:02]
Hussein Binai
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So what happens is that the tanker war becomes a way for Iran to signal that it could really use the Persian Gulf and the flow of traffic going through it to really inflict economic damage. And Saddam does the same. It all starts with basically Saddam attacking Iranian oil positions, the Kharak Island, Iran retaliating the US engaging in reflagging of oil tankers to allow for their safe passage through the strait. Iran doesn't play the same role that it has played today. It did not drive a very hard bargain around the strait at that point. That's because the US was not acting the way it is today against Iran, an all out war. So yeah, the global economy starts to really feel the anxiety around what might happen if there is a major war in that area. And so the relevance of it to today obviously is that the Iranians really learn that this strategic waterway is of massive trump card they have that they can use.
- [40:10]
Martin DeCaro
As you said Hussein, it wasn't until the mid-80s with no end to the war in sight when the Two countries begin attacking each other's oil tanker shipping in the Gulf. Iran also attacked tankers headed to and from Kuwait and the other Gulf states, prompting the U.S. and several Western European nations to station warships in the Persian Gulf to ensure the flow of oil to the rest of the world. The so called tanker war. 100 oil tankers were hit. We're not seeing that today. We're not seeing the US or any Western country eager to send their ships into the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuzits pretty much understood that it would be a fruitless endeavor.
- [40:46]
Hussein Binai
That's right. And I think that is a realization that the Iranian leadership really internalized and started to really incorporate into its strategic doctrine moving forward. And it really puts the Arab Gulf monarchies on notice as well that they can only kind of mess around with Iran or support against Iran so much.
- [41:08]
Martin DeCaro
It ends in 1988, as you just said, with a ceasefire. It doesn't appear that anyone actually wins. Do you agree with that? I mean, the Iranians survive, I guess they can consider that a win, a victory. The regime survived and establish itself, cements itself in power. But what a disaster for both countries, right? Didn't it drain both countries?
- [41:28]
Hussein Binai
Absolutely. I mean, when I teach this in my classes, I say it was one of the longest conventional military conflicts. It was also of the most pointless wars of the 20th century. And that not only did the two sides end up exactly where their borders were, they lost up to a million human beings in this conflict. Untold damage to civilian infrastructure, generations of Iranians and Iraqis that grew up with not only PTSD, but physical ailments related to this war. And both countries emerged out of it with very negative narratives about them in world politics. It did neither of them any favor. When we consider in terms of the lessons drawn from this war for Iran, I think immediately you find that this nascent government in Iran, which by the end of the war is almost nearing being a decade old, feels that it now has a sufficient narrative as an anti imperialist government, anti secular, anti Western and especially anti American. And that becomes the basis of the narrative that the government forms Moving into the 90s and shapes Iranian domestic politics.
- [42:44]
Martin DeCaro
Something really weird happened during that eight year war, the Iran Contra scandal.
- [42:49]
Hussein Binai
Yes.
- [42:50]
Martin DeCaro
It's just hard to understand how it fits into all of this. Because the United States was opposed to Iran, but then was selling weapons through Israel to Iran.
- [43:00]
Hussein Binai
How do you to fund the Contras in Nicaragua?
- [43:04]
Martin DeCaro
According to Reagan, he really wasn't selling arms for hostages because he believed he wasn't selling arms for hostages, we did
- [43:12]
Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
- [43:31]
Martin DeCaro
Make it make sense, the Iran Contra scandal, or at least the U. S Iran part of that, because I know there's so much distrust. Saddam Hussein, although he was getting assistance from the United States, looked at Iran Contra as saying, you know what? I really can't trust these Americans. Look what they did here.
- [43:46]
Hussein Binai
That's right.
- [43:47]
Martin DeCaro
How about for the Iranians? They hated the United States. Death to America. But we'll take your weapons, right?
- [43:52]
Hussein Binai
That's right. I think the key lesson I take away from this is that, and we've talked enough about the ideological solidity and cohesion of the regime and the theological aspects of this is that no human made government is above everyday practical necessities. That even in the midst of a very difficult entrenched war, seemingly inflexible leaders are actually up for negotiation and deal making. And that's what you take away from the Iranian government is that it really does give you the appearance of inflexibility and enmity for enmity's sake, et cetera. But you could actually do business with them and they'll do business even with the, you know, the Zionist entity, quote, unquote, the Israelis, right. Knowing full well what they were doing. So we should never, never think that diplomacy of any kind is off the table and on the American side of it. I would say this is the great power prerogative you can absorb looking hypocritical to your temporary ally because you're a great power.
- [45:05]
Martin DeCaro
Well, Reagan was right about something. Even though he went about it a very wrong way. He said the Iranian revolution or the Islamic revolution is a fact of history.
- [45:14]
Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
The Iranian revolution is a fact of history. But between American and Iranian basic national interests, there need be no permanent conflict.
- [45:22]
Martin DeCaro
He understood that to have any kind of enduring peace in the Middle East, Iran was essential to that. The problem was this was a pretty uncompromising period in the Iranian regime's history, the 1980s. They were pretty hard line here. They were very hostile to the US and there were no intermediaries that Reagan was really working with here. These were con men taking money and weapons and a couple hostages got out. Not to get into the entire history of that fiasco, but yeah, right. So I mentioned before World War II, 1945, during the global war on terror, how often did we hear the term liberating? The United States is liberating Iraq, liberating Afghanistan. It evokes memories of the liberation of Western Europe in 1944. 45. Right. How does this war, war operate in Iranian memory, Iranian society today? I guess that the current war that Iran has so far survived will take its place alongside this one.
- [46:22]
Hussein Binai
It could well do that depending on, obviously, how it ends. We're in this kind of two week ceasefire period. Who knows if the war will resume or not, or, you know, we're at the whim of the President of the United States in this regard, in many respects. So. But it could well do that because obviously the adversaries are a lot more significant than Saddam Hussein ever was in terms of being a threat to Iranian territorial integrity and its defenses, et cetera. So I would divide my answer to that question into two parts. The one is in the eyes of the supporters of the regime and the base of this regime, especially those kind of veteran commanders and their families who experienced the Iran Iraq war, they're still around. We're talking about their sons and daughters now participating in this war. In the eyes of the loyalists of the Islamic regime, this is the second sacred defense, right? If the war against Saddam, you know, it's called bifa al Muqaddas or sacred defense in Persian, really demonstrated that the Islamic Republic could emerge out of it a more cohesive, more energized, maybe more legitimized regime because it defended the homeland, it did not give an inch, and it used every mean at its disposal under sanctions, under global isolation, it can rejuvenate itself. There's a better future ahead for the Islamic Republic. Among the ordinary Iranians who are not loyal to this regime and who very much wish it gone. I think the legacy of the Iran Iraq War, they remember that war, as my family does, as a vast reservoir of resilience, both in terms of narratives, but everyday experience as well. It demonstrated that Iranian society, Iranian culture, can survive a kind of a duplicitous set of international players and attacks from outside, but also a menacing, repressive, duplicitous government inside as well. I've heard a lot of that over the course of the last two weeks, especially among Iranians in the diaspora and my own family member, some of whom are still in Iran, that will survive this. We did it in those eight years that were very dark, and this time around we will as well. And they know it. They know that we're not going to Leave them alone. After this war has ended, we were still going to agitate. We're going to fight for greater rights, representative government, et cetera. So that resilience is a big part of the story.
- [48:54]
Martin DeCaro
Word used before legitimacy. It's simply amazing that the regime which had delegitimized itself, some thought, was on its way out. After the protests, the violent crackdown in January of this year, the water shortages, the economic mismanagement, the isolation, the sanctions, that it now might emerge from this war, depending on what happens, in a stronger strategic position. Holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage, having potentially weakened or accelerated the strategic decline of the United States in that region, the US can't defend its own bases in the Persian Gulf. The fact that it might come out of this somewhat stronger, despite taking quite a beating from the air. The air war here. Right. Wow.
- [49:35]
Hussein Binai
Yeah, it's remarkable. I mean, it's remarkable, as you said, how their fortunes could have changed so quickly in a matter of four weeks, all in the name of a coordinated military campaign that was supposedly completely give us a new Iran. Right. A campaign, we should note, that eliminated senior Iranian leadership at a clip never seen in modern Iranian history, or perhaps ever. And yet this regime or its remnants are going to emerge much stronger with a far better hand and having bloodied the nose of a major superpower and a major regional nuclear power in Israel. I mean, still, this war is not over. I don't want to make it seem like that narrative is going to prevail. This government has a lot of problems in Iran. This regime is still in dire straits. But at where we stand today when we're recording this, there's no question that this ceasefire that has just been reached already generating a narrative of vindication for this regime that it was so desperately hoping to get out of somewhere. And the fact that the President of the United States gave him that narrative is really remarkable.
- [50:45]
Historical Narrator or Archive Voice
But why, you might ask, is any relationship with Iran important to the United States? Iran encompasses some of the most critical geography in the world. It lies between the Soviet Union and access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Geography explains why the Soviet Union has sent an army into Afghanistan to dominate that country and if they could, Iran and Pakistan. Iran's geography gives it a critical position from which adversaries could interfere with oil flows from the Arab states that border the Persian Gulf. Apart from geography, Iran's oil deposits are important to the long term health of the world economy. For these reasons, it is in our national interest to watch for changes within Iran that might offer hope for an improved relationship. Until last year, there was little to justify that hope. At the same time, we seek no territory or special position in Iran. The Iranian Revolution is a fact of history, but between American and Iranian basic national interests, there need be no permanent conflict.
- [51:50]
Martin DeCaro
On the the next episode of History as it happens, the 1956 Suez crisis is remembered as the beginning of the end of the British and French empires. Will the United States war in Iran today be remembered the same way? That is next, as we're joined by historian Saleem Yacoub as we report History as It Happens. Make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search or History As It Happens.