regime be terminated in the name of Islam. He knew that apart
from the human cost, the war had turned out to be more ruinous
to Iraq than to Iran. Iraq, oil-rich before the 1980 invasion, within
eight years found itself some $40 billion in debt to foreign nations,
largely as a result of its military spending and war-related losses.
However, Khomeini’s radical demands and his fighters’
willingness to die martyrs’ deaths were countered chillingly by
Hussein’s sheer ruthlessness. Hussein ordered the use of chemical
weapons—not just against Iranians but, when necessary, against
his own people. Late in the war, after Iranian forces captured
the Iraqi town of Halabja, Hussein had the town bombed
with poison gas. Among the casualties were, according to some
estimates, more than five thousand Iraqi civilians.
It became obvious to the Iranian regime that while Hussein
was failing in his bid to conquer them, he would stop at nothing
to avert defeat. Stalemate, in the end, would be the wise solution.
A cease-fire finally was arranged in the summer of 1988. It had
been one of the longest and most deadly conflicts in modern
Middle Eastern history.
The effect of the overall turmoil on the Iranian people was
incalculable. Historian Roy Mottahedeh, in his 1985 book The
Mantle of the Prophet,wrote:
In the past five years, as Iran has moved through a political
and cultural revolution with dramatic and often violent
aftermaths and entered a long and bitter war with its neigh-
bor Iraq, many thousands of Iranians have been executed,
tens of thousands have died in battle, and hundreds of
thousands have chosen to live in exile. Any consensus on
the meaning of the Iranian past has been torn up by the
deeply felt disagreement among Iranians over the meaning
of the Iranian present.^54
Throughout this period, Iran’s leadership functioned under
a strange method of operations, by most definitions of
government. In every matter, Khomeini was the ultimate
decision-maker—yet, he was in weakening health and literally
A Troubled Decade 73