Review Iran-Iraq Naval War, Volume 1: Opening Blows September-November 1980

Cooper, Tom, Ebrahimi, Sirous & Hooton, E.R., Iran-Iraq Naval War, Volume 1: Opening Blows September-November 1980, Warwick: Helion & Company Limited, 2023

 

Helion & Company has released a series of excellent military histories on the Iran-Iraq War. Its latest offering is Iran-Iraq Naval War, Volume 1: Opening Blows September-November 1980. Like its other books it is very detailed going into not only the opening strategy of the two opponents during the war but a history of the two navies, their equipment and the first clashes.

 

Iran-Iraq Naval War does not get off to a good start. It gives far too much background starting with the ancient names of the Persian Gulf. Then it goes through such things as the discovery of oil in Iran and Iraq, the role of England in the Gulf, the Cold War, merchant shipping, etc.

 

It’s not until the book gets to the Shah of Iran’s military build-up that things get interesting. It discusses how in the 1970s the Shah went on a military spending spree hoping to project power not only over the Persian Gulf but into the Indian Ocean as well. That meant the navy was steadily built up with new ships and weapons. He was facilitated by President Nixon who in 1972 agreed to Tehran buying any piece of military equipment it wanted as the U.S. hoped to use Iran as a proxy in the region. As usual with Helion books it goes into all the pieces of equipment that Iran acquired. That can also be daunting as the number of military abbreviations used can be overwhelming.

 

Next is some familiar territory such as how the new Iranian revolutionary regime didn’t trust the Shah’s military and purged it several times. Over 120 naval officers were removed and the force overall went from 30,000 sailors to 22,000. The civilian and religious leadership constantly interfered with mobilization when the war broke out as well causing all kinds of mishaps. The result was that Iran despite having a far larger military and more advanced weapons than Iraq was unprepared. That was actually one of the major reasons why Saddam Hussein decided to invade. He thought Iraq’s longtime rival was weak and could easily be defeated.

 

The authors provide some interesting new history as well. For example, Iranian intelligence had thoroughly infiltrated the Iraqi regime and knew as early as September 1979 that Saddam wanted to exploit the Iranian Revolution for his own gain. It wasn’t until September 2, 1980 however that the intelligence service was able to convince a member of the ruling clique that Saddam was going to invade soon. That was because the agency was considered a part of the Shah’s government and was not trusted. Tehran finally started making war plans and created a task force to control all naval operations only a few weeks before the Iraqi attack.

 

The best part of the book is when the Iran-Iraq War finally started. The Iranian plan was to try to destroy the Iraqi navy and take out its oil facilities in the Persian Gulf. On September 24 the Iranian Air Force tried to bomb Iraqi Navy bases but mostly hit merchant vessels instead. In October an Iranian raid destroyed two offshore oil terminals in Basra province. The next month an Iranian naval and marine raid destroyed the remaining infrastructure leading to a major confrontation between the two sides as Iraq launched a counterattack. Iran claimed it destroyed most of the Iraqi Navy during this confrontation but it didn’t. It did succeed in bottling up the Iraqi ships in their ports however. There’s a blow by blow account of these clashes and the ensuing losses. The amount of information the authors were able to acquire is very impressive.

 

Iran-Iraq Naval War is definitely a niche release for war historians. An average reader probably won’t be interested in all the different ships, missiles, helicopters, etc. which Iran and Iraq bought and used during the war. The actual fighting also only covers the last third of the volume. Still, someone looking for an account of the build-up of the Iraqi and Iranian naval forces and the opening blows in the war could not find a more detailed account than this.

 

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