The importance of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) cannot be overstated. Two major countries in the Middle East, one of which was in the middle of a revolutionary transformation, engaged in a bitter war that lasted for nearly eight years. This war had significant ramifications for the internal social and political lives of both countries, transformed their regional and international alliances, contributed to their evolving geopolitical imaginations, and—like any other war—left a landscape of devastation in its wake: lost lives, maimed bodies, dashed hopes, razed villages and cities, destroyed environments, displaced populations, collapsed economies, and lasting memories of horror. The war was a formative phase in the trajectory of each country, helped consolidate particular factions within them, and played a major role in solidifying certain visions of the region's future. It could be linked to the ensuing Gulf Wars that have plagued the region. Given the paucity of studies of this pivotal moment in the history of the modern Middle East, any scholarly addition is surely welcome.
According to Pierre Razoux, the book has been ten years in the making. He has traveled throughout the region (Persian Gulf capitals, Beirut, Cairo, Jerusalem, Amman, and Istanbul) plus major Western capitals (Washington, Rome, and London); interviewed many people; and accessed newly released Iraqi archives, including the now famous Saddam Huseyn audiotapes, to answer a series of interwoven questions: Why the war started; why it lasted so long; how the great powers responded to it; how it related to other violent events in the region, in particular, the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon and terrorist attacks in France; and finally, if it had any winners.
The bulk of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the daily conduct of the war. Readers interested in the military aspects of this historic event will find valuable information about major offensives, their planning, aims and outcomes, divisions deployed, kind and number of military equipment involved, and casualties. The book demonstrates how instead of getting one side closer to victory, or both sides closer to ultimate peace, each episode of the war resulted in further escalation of the conflict, transforming it into a total war that left no target off limits—villages and cities, foreign tankers, European civilians—and no means barred, including systematic use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi forces. Each phase brought new players into the mix, resulting in further militarization of the Persian Gulf. This detailed picture is supplemented by an extensive chronology of the war; the military command structure of belligerent parties; foreign military assistance; the international naval presence in the Persian Gulf; war losses; and financial costs.
The book also covers shifting regional and global alliances. The reaction of Gulf Arabs to the war and the formation of Gulf Cooperation Council; the alliance between Revolutionary Iran and Assad's Syria; Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish resistance operations; the consolidation of economic and political ties between Iraq and France; and the US tilt towards Iraq along with its secret dealing with Iran—Iran-Contra affair—are among the topics that are addressed. A lesser known aspect of the war, the terrorist activities in Lebanon and France and their probable connection with the Iranian regime, is also explored at some length. Razoux's knowledge and use of the French sources are particularly helpful in illustrating how French internal politics played into this war, how their security service viewed Iranian activities in France, and how these activities influenced their ongoing negotiations with Iran. All these topics are interesting and well developed, although not entirely new.
In analyzing the internal political dynamics of the two countries, Razoux encounters a serious obstacle: he is not a scholar of the Middle East and does not know Farsi or Arabic, which translates into serious gaps in his sources. Hashemi Rafsanjani appears throughout the book, but no reference is made to his volumes of published diaries, interviews, or speeches that overlap with this period. Nor is there any other reference to thousands of war memoirs, histories, chronicles, and analysis published in Farsi. Of the seventy-one people listed as interviewees, only ten are Iranian, none of whom were directly involved with the war. One would understand that interviewing high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders would be extremely difficult for a French researcher, but there are many other people with direct knowledge of the war that could have been accessed. For example, the author could have reached out to President Bani Sadr who has been living in France for over three decades, and Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of IRGC now living in the United States, neither of whom has shied away from interviews in the past.
Consequently, the answers given to the main questions—particularly, why the war started, why it lasted eight years, and why it ended when it did—are unconvincing and unsupported by a large body of existing data. The role of Soviet leader in pressuring Iran towards peace is farfetched (pp. 450–51), given the poor state of Iran–Soviet relations at the time. No mention is made to the now famous Rezaee letter to Rafsanjani about the military needs of the IRGC and the army, believed to be the last straw in Iranian war efforts.
The vacuum left by lack of archival material and primary sources is filled with pop psychology. Khomeini is said to have felt “offended” by not being directly addressed by Saddam Huseyn in his telegram and thus attacked him in his speech (p. 64). He later is believed to hold a “fierce grudge” against Brzezinski for not meeting with him (p. 72). Khomeini's “arrogance” is the reason for giving the United States the cold shoulder (p. 65). Bani Sadr, with his unblemished anti-American record, is said to be eager to take revenge on America for “not believing in him” (p. 68). While in exile, Bani Sadr declines to cooperate with Ghassemlou in order to avoid angering Khomeini and to become a target for assassination (p. 208). Rafsanjani and Khamenei are portrayed as unscrupulous political animals in fierce competition with one another from the early years of the revolution to become the next Supreme Leader (pp. 172, 221, 236). Rafsanjani, who in all indications loved Khomeini dearly, is even waiting for “the seventy-year-old Supreme Leader's death” to reach the highest position of power and “put his name in history books” (p. 172)!
The book is riddled with factual errors of differing significance. Here are some random examples:
At the time of the Nojeh Coup there were no Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization members in exile in Iraq to come to the support of conspirators (p. 5).
Contrary to what is indicated in the book, Arvand and Shatt al-Arab are not two different rivers (p. 131). Arvand is the Iranian name for Shatt al-Arab. The river labeled as Arvand Rud in several maps is Bahmanshir.
Chamran was not Minister of Defense at the time of his death and did not die in a plane explosion (p. 171). He was a member of parliament and Khomeini's representative to the Supreme Council of National Defense and was hit by mortar shells.
Mehdi Bazargan was not “Bani Sadr's former Prime Minister” (p. 450), but the first Prime Minister of Iran after the revolution and head of the Interim Government.
Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour was not a “secret service official” (p. 461), but a high profile politician and Iran's minister of interior at the time of the Lockerbie bombing.
The Iranian Tudeh Party was not an insurrectionary force, ready to pick up arms against the regime but a staunch supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini (p. 220).
Ghassemlou was assassinated a year after the war ended in 1989 and not in 1988 (pp. 329 and 544). His assassination did not result in a “definite agreement” between the Islamic Republic and “his successor,” Sadegh Sharafkandi, who was famously assassinated in 1992 in Mykonos Restaurant in Berlin.
The story of “plastic keys” carried by Iranian child soldiers “to open the door to paradise” is repeated with the added flavor that the regime ordered “more than one million keys from toy manufacturers” (p. 346). No such key has ever been seen, or photographed by journalists, or captured by Iraqis. There is no evidence they ever existed outside the Western imagination. Most Iranian volunteers were given a book of prayers, the famous Shiʿi Mafatih ul-Jinan, or “Keys to Heavens.” If this order to “toy manufacturers” was actually documented in the book, it would have ended an ongoing dispute. This is only one of numerous cases that the reader wishes to have the source of information properly cited.
Like any book, this book could have benefited from a thorough editing. Here are a handful of many examples: Qasem on page 48 turns to President Kassem in the next page. (Abd al-Karim Qasim was in fact prime minister of Iraq.) Colonel Moinpour is recorded as Mujunpur on page 179. Gilan-e Gharb is recorded as Geilan Zarb in several pages and maps. Colonel Zahirnejad is called Colonel Nejad throughout the book; this is as misleading as changing Johnson into Son.
It is a combination of all these considerations that makes this book a less than ideal source for scholars of Iran, Iraq, and the modern Middle East history.
