The Futile War
During the savage war of 1980-1988 between Iran-Iraq, both dictatorial belligerents needed the war to impose their shaky regimes at home. The 1982 military gains of Iran could actually result into an honourable end of the war, but the Islamic regime refused Iraqi requests for a ceasefire and insisted in continuing the “blessing” war. The IRI’s propaganda machinery promised a “glorious victory” until “freedom” of the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf from Saddam’s “non-Islamic” regime.
Let us have a closer look at the true nature of Khomeini’s “blessing” war and the harsh reality of life in war-torn Iran. In fact, behind the appearance of IRI’s bravura and national mobilisation lies an increasing repression, an economic and political crisis of massive proportions. Those have been greatly exacerbated by the war.
Despite the fact that Islamic regime made aggressive and adventurist statements about “continuing the struggle until Saddam Hussein is overthrown”, the war was eating into the Iran’s resources at an estimated 250 million dollars or more a month.
As a result of the war, and the Islamic regime’s gross mismanagement of the economy, men and women had to queue up for hours to buy their basic food stuff and essentials. Iran, once a major producer of oil, could not (and still cannot) meet its internal needs and demanded (and still demands) for the product. The war had all but destroyed the huge Abadan refinery plant and undermined oil production and export. At the same time, the regime desperately attempted to export what oil was produced in order to shore up its foreign exchange reserve which, having been used to finance the war effort, were nearly depleted.
Short of cash and at war with Iraq, the regime since 1982 has started preparing to sell historic treasures hoarded for centuries by the dynasties of Iran. The sale of antiques was aimed at earning badly needed foreign exchange. During the war oil export was constantly down and Iranian oil was not easily disposablein the current international oil glut.
Iran had to regularly slash her oil prices (even less than Saudi oil), but still was facing trouble finding customers. Most of what was left in foreign exchange was being spent on purchasing arms and spare parts at astronomical prices in fifth- or sixth-party deals on the international black market, little remained with which to buy food and other essentials for ordinary Iranians. Such have been the economic effects of the futile war. While the war worsened the economic crisis, the Mullahs were exploiting the war for political reasons, using it to rally certain sectors of the religious or even nationalistic population behind their position.
The Iranian army once discredited and disarray has been reorganised, reequipped and rehabilitated. It was now an institution fully in the control of the Mullahs. In addition the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) has been mobilised as aparallel fighting force. Finally, another structure was created to mobilise masses of Iranian lower-class youth. Members of this new structure called Baseej (Mobilisation) were invariably young boys who underwent military training at neighbouring mosques after school several afternoons a week. These were the school boys, who were asked for martyrdom and “volunteer” to walk across mine field to clear the path for an attack. “With the Koran at their breast, these boys were assured of a “ticket to heaven.” (Le Mond (24, March, 1982). These two military and paramilitary forces became meanwhile the regime’s organisations of repression. Such was the price the Iranian masses had to pay for a military victory against the Iraqis to ensure a political victory for the Mullahs’ regime. And such is the way that Islamic ideology has been used for political ends.
Wars (as distinct from national liberation struggles against occupying powersand / or totalitarian regimes) have historically been broken out between ruling classes over political powers or territorial ambitions. They are called and organised by influential leaders to fulfil their own interests or conviction. Those that fight the wars are however simple and working people who are drawn into war through obligation and manipulation. Most of soldiers on the Iraqi side were draftees, and it had been alleged that some Arabic “guest workers” had been forced to take up arms and join the front. The lack of morale on the Iraqi side could be attributed to this, and to the fact that invading forces inevitably have difficulties with morale (as was the case with American soldiers in Vietnam, or now in Iraq).
On the Iranian side, the fact that Iranian territory had been trampled was in itself reason enough for Iranian masses to enlist in the war effort, and to willingly undergo enormous sacrifices to defend Iran’s territorial integrity. In the first months of the war, most of the Iranians population had supported the the regime in the face of the Iraqi aggression. Yet, the Mullahs’ greed to continue the war was more complex and could not in any sense be compared to a patriotic war. The 6 further years of the war were not to defend national territory but to export Islamic revolution, it was no more people’s cause, but Mullahs’ ambitions. While it is true that the Iraqi regime was the aggressor, the Islamic regime needed such a war to survive.
There had been enormous tension and hostility between the two countries and charges of provocation had hurled back and forth for about a year before the war actually began. The old issue was control over the Arvand Rood or, for Iraqi, Shat-al Arab waterway that divides the countries. The new issue was Mullahs’ attempt to inflame the Shiite Muslim majority of Iraq to revolt against Saddam’s regime. In reality, the Islamic regime has alwyas had itself an occupying character since khomeini’s many death fatwas against thousands of “unbeliever” people of Iran. Mullahs had no feeling for national interests, let alone patriotism. The war was, besides old conflicts, rather a reaction of Saddam due to the Mullahs’ planned export of Islamic revolution to topple his regime in Iraq.
The Islamic regime had been unwilling to renegotiate the 1975 Algiers agreementin which the Iraqi ceded the river to the former Shah in return for his pledge to withhold assistance to Iraqi Kurdish rebels. The provocative and adventurist policies of the Islamic regime culminated in the Iraqi attack in September 1980.
The start of the war occurred against the backdrop of a deepening political crisis within Iran, and an erosion of the democratic rights by various strata during the rule of Mullahs. During the war, the Islamic regime under PM Mousavi and President Khamenei reinforced its moves against women, opposition organisations and ethnic minorities especially the Kurdish people. The regime continued crushing student movement, closing down all universities, to prepare the declared Islamic Cultural Revolution.
The war broke out in the midst of the US hostage crisis, which was a move by the Islamic Republic Party (IRP), established in 1979 by Khomeini’s approval, to consolidate the clerical regime. Thus the heightening of the tensions between Iran and Iraq were viewed with alarm by many historians as a mantle to cover all this backdrop of economic, social , and political crises. The war was serving as an ideological weapon to protect the shaky regime against the freedom-loving people of Iran.
While the war with Iraq has been raging during 8 years, other developments have been taken place with grave implications for the Iranian people. The hostage crisis, in which Iran gained nothing financially, allowed the U.S to draw Iraninto a lost process in the international Court of Justice. Parallel to this crisis, the regime launched from June 1981 on an all-out war against its critics, and began a systematic campaign to curb, arrest, imprison, torture and execute thousands of political dissidents. The atrocities of Khomeini regime under Persident Khamenei and PM Mousavi against Iranian political prisoners, political dissidents, women, students, workers, journalists, ethnic groups went on during the “blessing” war for the regime and futile war for Iran.
Regime’s officials have repeatedly said they have no desires on Iraqi territory, but they have also frequently called for the ousting of Saddam Hussein and occupation of Iraqi Shiite city of Basreh as part of their peace conditions. Iranian President Ali Khamenei, current Supreme Leader, speaking in April 1982 to a group identified as struggling Iraqi clergy, said in Tehran, “The Islamic theocracy will be the future course of Iraq and Imam Khomeini is the leader of the nation of Islam. Imam Khomeini’s rule belongs to the entire nation of Islam, and is not limited by geographic boundaries.”
Up 1982, after Iraqi withdrawal from the occupied territory, the Iraqis made many peace overtures with offers of war damage to Iran, but they systematically were spurned by the Islamic regime. Vindictive whim of Khomeini continued this futile war another 6 destructive years and finally accepted the truce in 1988 when he was in military troubles. Instead, he decided to release his psychopathic rage by ordering in summer 1988, short after the end of war, the infamous massacre of political prisoners. He issued death fatwa and thus thousands of political prisoners in Tehran and the provinces were executed in the span of that summer.
By presenting the war as one between Islam and infidels, the regime managed to establish its God’s state by rallying vast numbers of Iranian fanatics and mobilisingthe unemployed, youth, peasant migrants and other sectors in the war effort. Without these 6 further years of futile war, Khomeini regime could not probably promote into a totalitarian and completely clerical regime.
