192 ISLAM AT WAR
attack that took Mehran, in Iran, which the Iraqis then offered in exchange
for Faw, but Iran refused.
Throughout the remainder of the war neither side accomplished much
militarily. In 1987 stalemate ended when continuing attacks on merchant
shipping and the presence of the American and other navies in the gulf to
protect tanker traffic provoked the United Nations to end the war. In July
1988 the UN forced Iran to accept a cease-fire. Estimates are that the war
produced 1.5 million casualties and failed to resolve the issue of access
to the Shatt al Arab.
The situation Iraq faced when the war broke out was certainly one that
a well-coordinated and managed army could have successfully exploited.
However, instead of large-scale, coordinated operations, the Iraqi invasion
was characterized by engagements between small, brigade-sized units.
Indeed, the initial invasion force was only five divisions. It was far from
an all-out assault. The 1991 Gulf War made it clear Iraq had little ability
to manage large-scale operations, shown by its policy of falling back onto
prepared defensive positions and surrendering the initiative to the Iranians.
A defense is much easier to manage than an offensive, and the Iraqis
proved themselves capable of holding an enemy whose tactical skills were
limited to human-wave attacks. Iraqi tactics on the battlefield placed heavy
reliance on minefields, heavy artillery barrages, and poison gas. The Iraqi
efforts at strategic operations, that is, air strikes and Scud missiles
launched against Iranian cities, were ineffectual.
The Iranians, on the other hand, proved themselves even less capable
of modern warfare than the Iraqis. They used brute force and willingly
sacrificed thousands of lives in uncoordinated, futile, and unsophisticated
frontal assaults that charged directly into the Iraqi killing zones. Stories
have emerged of children roped together and sent forward to clear mine-
fields. As the war progressed the regular army was little used in favor of
the more politically reliable Pasdaran and Basij.
The reduced use of the regular army and its trained officer cadre prob-
ably shared two influences. First, the army was the Shah’s creature and
was, as a result, probably not well trusted by the new government. The
lack of trust induced a purging of senior officers, the very men capable
of implementing large-scale, combined-arms operations. The second prob-
lem was that Iran’s army had been outfitted with American equipment.
With the seizure of the American embassy during the Iranian revolution,
the flow of spare parts and ammunition from the United States ended
abruptly. It is impossible to prosecute a modern war without spare parts
and munitions. In addition to the lack of spare parts, the multitude of
American advisers and contractors who had trained the Iranians in the use