Iraq is Iran' s western neighbor, whose Baath government imposed an eight-year imposed war on Iran on 22 September 1980.

Iraq is a country in Southwest Asia bordering Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the south, Jordan and Syria to the west, Iran to the east and Turkey to the north. In the south, this country has a small water border with the Persian Gulf. The two rivers Tigris and Euphrates flow from the north to the south of this country and empty into the Persian Gulf. The area of Iraq is 438,317 square kilometers.⁠[1]

70 percent of the people of Iraq are Arab, 20% Kurd, 4% Persian and 6% Turkmen and other ethnic groups.⁠[2] About 60% of the population of Iraq is Shia, 37% Sunni and 3% followers of other religions.⁠[3]Shia Arabs, who constitute most of the population of Iraq, generally reside in the south and center of this country.⁠[4] Sunni Arabs are concentrated in the northern part of Iraq; Kurds also reside in the mountainous regions of the northeast of the country.⁠[5]

Iraq has a very ancient historical background. Before Islam, Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Amorites, Chaldeans,⁠[6] Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians and Sasanians ruled Iraq.⁠[7] With the arrival of Islam in Iraq, during the rule of Imam Ali (AS) and the Abbasids, Kufa and Baghdad became the center of the caliphate.⁠[8] In 913 AH, Iraq was captured by the Ottomans and became known as Baghdad Province.⁠[9]

With the Ottomans coming to power in Iraq, border disputes and tensions between Iran and Iraq began and with changes of governments and the Baath Party coming to power in this country, intensified. The border disputes of the two countries, before the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, led to the conclusion of agreements including the Istanbul border agreement,⁠[10] the 1937 border treaty,⁠[11] the Erzurum treaties,⁠[12] the 1913 supplementary agreement,⁠[13]the Saadabad military pact,⁠[14] the friendship treaty,⁠[15] the treaty for peaceful settlement of disputes⁠[16] and the 1975 Algiers Agreement.⁠[17]

The Islamic Revolution of Iran coincided with Saddam Hussein coming to power in Iraq' s Baath Party. Before this, Baath Party officers had once staged a coup led by Abdul Karim Qasim against the government of King Faisal II⁠[18] and a second time led by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr overthrew the government of Abdul Karim Qasim.⁠[19] After the Baath Party coup led by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr in 1967, Saddam was practically Iraq' s number one man.⁠[20] In 1979, al-Bakr was forced by Saddam Hussein to resign and Saddam reached the presidency, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and secretary-general of the Baath Party.⁠[21] Saddam, who before reaching the presidency had experienced two coups by Baath Party officers, on the one hand massacred all his opponents in the party and on the other tried to improve his position among the Iraqi people by improving the welfare conditions of society.⁠[22]

In such a situation, the establishment of a new political system in Iran and its doctrinal effects in the region which called all Muslims to unity and solidarity was not tolerable for the Baath Party and this party faced a powerful rival in the Islamic world which challenged the claimed unity of Arab countries. Of course anti-Iranian sentiments were an inseparable part of the identity of the Iraqi government and Baath Party and Saddam himself⁠[23] and this added to the cause and paved the ground for this country' s attack on Iran.

The Baath Party took many political actions, support of the opponents of Iran' s nascent revolution to defeat it being among these cases. While meeting Shapour Bakhtiar (the last Pahlavi prime minister), Saddam published Bakhtiar' s anti-Iranian and anti-revolutionary positions in the Iraqi press⁠[24] and after the failure of the Nojeh coup led by Shapour Bakhtiar and with the help of the CIA in Iran seeking the fall of the revolution, launched two radio stations against the Islamic Revolution named Radio Iran belonging to Bakhtiar and Free Voice belonging to Gholamali Oveisi (fugitive Pahlavi general).⁠[25] Of course Saddam' s actions toward Iran were not limited to these and a long list of his actions to destroy the Islamic Revolution is available.

Published documents show that Bakhtiar traveled to Iraq on 25 September 1980 after Saddam' s nationwide aggression against Iran to perhaps form his government in areas occupied by Baath forces.⁠[26] Also very close cooperation was created between SAVAK members and fugitive military of the Pahlavi government and domestic separatist groups with the Baath army before, during and after the start of the imposed war.⁠[27]

On the eve of Saddam' s attack on Iran, pressures on Shia currents inside Iraq also increased. To pressure the Shias of this country and prevent the spread of the Islamic Revolution to this country and also possible Shia opposition after the attack on Iran, in an unprecedented action Saddam drove about 15,000 Shias residing in Iraq toward Iran' s borders on 6 April 1980 whose number gradually reached more than 33,000.⁠[28]

Attack on the houses of religious scholars and Shia marjas and arrest and martyrdom of some of them were among the Saddam government' s actions in this period.⁠[29] Arrest and martyrdom of Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer Sadr and the attempt to arrest and execute all members of al-Dawa Party who were influenced by the Islamic Revolution and its supporters were Baath Party actions on the eve of the attack on Iran.⁠[30]

Saddam also on 22 June 1979, 6 days after coming to power, carried out an extensive purge in the Baath Party known as the massacre of comrades;⁠[31] with this action all Saddam' s opponents were eliminated and the path opened for his boundless dictatorship.

Outside Iraq also Saddam took actions; efforts to create regional coalitions, develop relations with Arab and Western countries, turn in foreign policy and claim of defending the interests of Arab countries against Iran were examples of Iraq' s new view of international relations. Saddam by using as a pretext the ownership of three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf and claiming they belong to Arab countries sought to gain prestige and attract their support in his future war with Iran.⁠[32]

The Baath Party considered Persian Gulf security as an inseparable part of Iraq' s national security and accordingly sought military participation to ensure its security in the Persian Gulf with the accompaniment of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.⁠[33] Also to help Saddam' s army before the start of the war with Iran, units from the Egyptian and Jordanian armies with Saudi financial help joined the Iraqi army⁠[34] and it was supposed that one million Egyptian soldiers would also join Saddam' s army.⁠[35] Arab League Secretary-General Chadli Klibi also before Saddam' s warmongering claimed Iraq wants to obtain its lands and must be supported.⁠[36]

All of Saddam' s effort was to obtain financial, technical, logistical, military and human support of world superpowers and its regional partners, the numerous trips of Brzezinski (then US national security advisor) to Baghdad before the war evidencing this claim⁠[37]and Saddam dared to attack Iran after receiving the green light from the United States.⁠[38] Of course these secret relations which continued for a long time later became revealed.⁠[39]

Iraq at the start of the imposed war relied on its 35 billion dollar financial reserves; reserves sufficient to finance multi-year social and economic programs of this country even without relying on oil revenues. Of course financial aids and support of Iraq' s neighbors and 20 to 30 billion in grants and interest-free loans added to Saddam' s financial capabilities.⁠[40]

After US-Iraq rapprochement, the US government and its European allies undertook the supply of weapons needed by Iraq. Of course before that, from August 1980 Iraq bought weapons from the Soviet Union, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and spread weapons and ammunition depots in Iraq.⁠[41] In this period France sold more weapons to Iraq than others; secret shipment of 700 new tanks was only a small example of France' s aids to Iraq before the official start of the war.⁠[42] French military and civilian experts also entered Iraq.⁠[43] Simultaneously the US agreed with the sale of jet engines for Iraqi warships.⁠[44]

In this period, the Iraqi army' s border movements on the border with Iran also increased; movement and deployment of armored equipment in the border strip, strengthening border posts, digging trenches and creating positions in the border strip, engineering activities and construction of military roads, troop movement, deployment of artillery near the border, conducting reconnaissance and photography, air aggressions and light and heavy shootings into Iranian soil and creating border clashes and dispatching patrol groups were among these movements.⁠[45]

Strengthening and increasing the power and order of battle of the Iraqi army was another Baath regime action; conclusion of military contracts and equipping this country' s army with advanced weapons to transform the army' s order of battle, increasing training courses and improving the quality and quantity of forces and strengthening the military cadre, announcing a call to attract more forces and raising the number of official cadre of the army ground force from 175,000 to 195,000-220,000 in a short time are examples of rapid strengthening of the Iraqi army to attack Iran.⁠[46]

At the start of Iraq' s imposed war against Iran, this country' s army ground force as the main lever of ground aggression was 12 divisions consisting of 5 armored divisions, 2 mechanized divisions and 5 infantry divisions and also in addition to border guard units, 15 to 20 independent brigades including 10 infantry brigades, 1 mechanized brigade, 3 special forces brigades and 10 Republican Guard brigades in the form of 3 corps. This army was supported with 600 to 800 artillery pieces, 5,400 tanks and APCs, 400 anti-aircraft guns and about 366 fighter aircraft and 400 helicopters. The Iraqi air force also had 20 squadrons of interceptor and bomber fighters stationed in 9 air bases of this country. Also several ground-to-air missile brigades were present in sensitive areas. The Iraqi navy also had two main bases.⁠[47]

Finally after much preparations over two years and in unsuitable conditions of the Iranian army, on 8 September 1980 Iraq occupied these lands by force under the pretext of Iran' s disruption in the transfer of lands related to the 1975 Algiers contract and on 17 September 1980 unilaterally abrogated the 1975 Algiers Treaty which it had long prepared the grounds to eliminate and informed the Iranian embassy in Baghdad via a memorandum. The Iraqi government in this official memorandum announced the unilateral abrogation of the 1975 treaty and after a week, on 22 September 1980 aggressed Iranian soil with 12 combat divisions; simultaneously started bombing airports and military-economic installations of Iran in Tehran, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Tabriz, Hamedan, Bushehr, Shiraz, Dezful, Abadan and Ahvaz. The armed forces of the Iraqi Baath Party from sea, air and ground attacked Iranian bases and military installations and commercial ships⁠[48] and imposed an eight-year war on Iran. Full sovereignty over Arvand Rud, separation of Khuzestan Province from Iran and weakening leading to the fall of the Islamic Republic system were on Saddam' s government agenda.⁠[49]

Although Iraq had the necessary motives to attack Iran, the two superpowers of that day, including America and the great powers, by providing the necessary grounds for the Baath regime encouraged Saddam to attack and assisted him. America which before the imposed war had placed Iraq in the list of terrorist-supporting countries, after the start of the war removed this country from the list and expanded relations with Iraq. America also when Saddam' s defeat in the war with Iran became clear, came to help this country by sending military equipment, intelligence aids and providing expertise and finally itself got involved in the war and spared no effort to save Saddam including attack on Iranian oil platforms and even attack on the Islamic Republic passenger airplane and killing hundreds of civilians.⁠[50]

Of course finally despite all the efforts of Saddam, the ruling Baath Party and all its supporters, Saddam' s dream to occupy Iranian soil and overthrow the Islamic Republic did not come true and Iran remained Iran thanks to its youth and combatants.