The Iran-Iraq War, The Politics of Aggression was the result of a conference held in Tehran in the summer of 1988. It’s a collection of papers that were presented. Reading an anthology is always risky because the quality of writing and topics will often shift from chapter to chapter. That’s especially true for this one. The main benefit of the book is that most but not all of the writers are Iranian giving their perspective of the war.
The main takeaway from the book is that Iran considered itself a victim in the war. Iraq invaded in 1980 which was an act of aggression and against international law. This is the topic for several chapters. That also points to one of the drawbacks of The Iran-Iraq War because the same topic is discussed over and over.
The victimization theme also leads to some interesting exclusions. Foreign Ministry official Ibrahim Anvari Tehrani for instance talked about how since the 1960s Iran claimed the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides the two countries and sometimes demanded Khuzistan province as well. He then discusses various border clashes and Iraq not adhering to the 1975 Algiers Agreement between the two countries. This paints Baghdad as the aggressor always seeking to push Tehran. What he doesn’t mention was that the Shah of Iran voided a 1937 treaty over the Shatt al-Arab and funded the Kurds to fight against the Iraqi government for several years starting in the late 1960s.
Other problematic parts are one by A. Reza Sheikholeslami a chair of Persian Studies at Oxford University who wrote that Iran never tried to export its revolution when Ayatollah Khomeini and his son both called on Iraqis to overthrow their government before and during the war.
Not everything is bad.
Keith McLachlan who was the director of the Geopolitics and International Boundaries Research Center at the University of London has a straightforward piece on how Iraq saw opportunities and a threat after the 1979 Iranian revolution. On the one hand Iran was in complete disarray after the overthrow of the Shah and Saddam Hussein thought this was an opportunity to take control of the Shatt al-Arab. At the same time the revolution was seen as dangerous because Iraqi Shiites might move against the government. This is the traditional explanation for why Iraq invaded Iran.
Elizabeth Gamlen and Paul Rogers from the University of Bradford cover the tanker war showing that Iraq started it with the hopes of limiting Iran’s oil exports and to bring in Western powers to oppose Tehran. Both of those were accomplished.
Mohiaddin Mesbahi who was an assistant professor at Florida International University had one of the more interesting chapters going over Soviet-Iranian relations during the war. Moscow at first reached out to the new Iranian government hoping that its anti-imperialist rhetoric and the fall of the pro-American Shah opened opportunities for a new relationship. That did not work out however as the Soviets were afraid of the effects of the revolution upon its own Muslim population and already had a strong ties with Iraq.
Overall, the negatives outweigh the positives of The-Iran-Iraq War. There are too many parts of the book that focus upon Iran as the victim of Iraqi aggression. Perhaps in 1988 this was up for discussion but today it’s generally accepted that Saddam is the one that started the war. The main draw is that it provides an Iranian view of the conflict when most books in English are western or Iraq orientated.
Link to all of Musings On Iraq’s book reviews listed by topic
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