placed full blame for abrogation of the treaty on Iran, claiming that the shah and the new
revolutionary government had failed to carry out their legal commitments.
The war began five days later, on September 22, when nine divisions of the Iraqi
army surged into the oil-producing province of Khuzestan on the Iranian side of the
Shatt al-Arab. The Iraqi air force bombed Iranian air bases and oil fields, causing only
modest damage. Iraq also threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic point
through which all Persian Gulf oil shipments (including those from Iraq) passed.
The prospect of a full-scale war in the Gulf caused widespread alarm internation-
ally. On September 23, the United States and the Soviet Union each pledged neu-
trality in the conflict, and on September 28 the UN Security Council adopted a res-
olution demanding that both Iran and Iraq “refrain immediately from the further use
of force.” Iraq quickly accepted the resolution—with reservations—but Iran flatly re-
jected it on October 1.
The Iraqi offensive caught Iran off guard and succeeded in capturing a large chunk
of territory in western Iran, notably in Khuzestan. Iraq claimed rights to the province
because most of its residents were Sunni Arabs, rather than Persians or Shiites. Iraq’s
advances came at a high price, however. Its army captured the city of Khorramshahr
early in November, but only after weeks of shelling and an intense urban battle that
cost thousands of lives.
Iranian resistance demonstrated serious flaws in Hussein’s assumptions about the
weakness of Iran’s military and the fragility of the revolutionary government in Tehran.
Khomeini’s regime had little difficulty marshaling public support for a massive show
of defense against the Iraqi invasion. Urged on by rhetoric proclaiming the virtues of
“martyrdom,” tens of thousands of Iranians flocked to volunteer militias that the army
threw against the Iraqi advance. Hussein quickly replaced the ousted shah as the chief
villain in Iranian rhetoric.
According to some military experts, Iran’s most important weapon in the early
stages of the war may have been the incompetence of the Iraqi army. Beset by tech-
nical failures and flawed leadership, Iraq’s army quickly proved that it was not the
powerhouse that the Iraqi leader had claimed it to be. By the end of November 1980—
two months into the war—Iraq’s offensive had stalled and expectations of an easy vic-
tory over Iran had proven to be wishful thinking.
Iran exhibited its own military problems in a failed counteroffensive near the town
of Susangerd (just east of the Iran-Iraq border) in January 1981. The failure of this
ill-planned operation undermined the standing of Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-
Sadr, the leading moderate in Khomeini’s government who also served as commander
in chief of the military. Bani-Sadr fled Iran six months later, and Tehran then became
engulfed in a new wave of political infighting, including assassinations of senior offi-
cials by leftist opposition groups.
The first phase of the war lasted a year and was followed in late 1981 by a dra-
matic Iranian counteroffensive, which recovered most of the territory Iraq had gained
at the war’s outset. The war then settled into a stalemate that persisted from mid-1982
until Iran reluctantly accepted a UN-brokered cease-fire in 1988 (Iran-Iraq War and
Diplomacy, p. 430; Conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War, p. 437).
Following is a speech delivered by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to the National
Assembly on September 17, 1980.IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 425