Iran–Iraq War

The morning the river became a frontline

On a late September morning in 1980 the Shatt al‑Arab — the slow, dark artery where the Tigris and Euphrates meet the Gulf — went from being a shared waterway to a line of fire. Iraqi columns moved across marshes and desert approaches. Aircraft and artillery struck towns on both banks. For Iraq’s leaders the timing smelled of opportunity: Iran, only a year past revolution, had purged its military leadership and seemed politically fractured. For ordinary people in Khuzestan and the towns along the river, the invasion was the beginning of a long, brutal unspooling.

The first days were chaotic. Reports of tanks rolling into border towns, of cities shelled from a distance, of bridges and pipelines struck, arrived as fragments. Khorramshahr, a port city of mud, salt, and industry, quickly became the symbol of the assault — a prize on the map and a place where the war’s human toll would be writ in rubble and blood.

A revolution’s echo and a ruler’s risk

To understand why the guns opened when they did, you have to stand a few years back and look at what both states felt they had to gain and to lose. Iran’s 1978–79 revolution overturned the Shah and installed a theocratic republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. That upheaval inspired fear across the Gulf and left Iran diplomatically isolated and militarily shaken: many officers were purged, command structures reworked, and the new state was still consolidating its power.

Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ascended in the Ba'ath party’s inner circle amid a mix of ambition and anxiety. He coveted influence in the Gulf, resented the 1975 Algiers Agreement that had curtailed Iraqi claims on the Shatt al‑Arab, and feared the spread of Iran’s revolutionary politics among Iraq’s Shia majority. Economic pressure from the oil market and the desire to be the dominant Arab power in the region sharpened Baghdad’s calculations. In September 1980, Baghdad formally repudiated parts of the Algiers accord and prepared for what it hoped would be a swift, decisive campaign.

Internationally, the Cold War context mattered. Both Tehran and Baghdad found, at different moments, suppliers and patrons among Western, Soviet, and regional actors. Arms and intelligence flowed — sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly — and that patchwork of support would lengthen a war that was never meant to last.

The first-wave thrusts: smoke over Khuzestan

On September 22, Iraqi forces struck across multiple fronts. The main thrusts targeted Khuzestan, an oil‑rich, ethnically mixed province that fed much of Iran’s economy. The Iraqi plan included seizing ports, cutting off pipelines, and breaking the will of the Iranian state. Advances were made: Iraqi troops took ground, besieged towns, and for a time choked Iran’s oil infrastructure in the south.

By late October, months of fighting had concentrated into brutal, urban engagements. Khorramshahr, squeezed between river and refinery, bore the worst of it. After days of house‑to‑house fighting, the city fell to Iraqi forces on October 26, 1980. The capture was meant to be a triumph for Baghdad; instead it became a galvanizing wound for Iran. Images of battered neighborhoods and displaced civilians fed outrage and a new form of resistance.

The tide that rose in 1982

Iraq had gambled on a quick victory. Iran, faced with occupation and the humiliation of Khorramshahr’s fall, rallied. The new government mobilized everything it could: the regular army, the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and waves of volunteers — the Basij — who answered calls to defend the homeland.

The turning point arrived in 1982. Iranian forces mounted a series of well‑planned counteroffensives, most notably Operation Fath‑ol‑Mobin and Operation Beit‑ol‑Moqaddas. The latter culminated in an arduous campaign that pushed Iraqi forces back out of much of the territory they had occupied. By late May 1982 Iranian troops had retaken Khorramshahr — an event commemorated annually in Iran — and liberated most of the southern provinces.

For a moment it seemed the war might end with Iraq forced back across the border. But the picture would harden into something uglier and longer: Iran, having defended its soil, began to press into Iraq itself, seeking not only security but strategic advantage and, in some quarters, regime change.

When the war dug in for years

From 1982 onward the fighting entered a grim, attritional phase. Iran launched a string of offensives into southern Iraq — costly operations like Ramadan in July 1982 — many of which exacted staggering casualties for small territorial gains. The fronts stabilized in places; trenches, minefields, and barbed wire began to map the landscape, producing pockets of warfare that resembled First World War positional battles.

By the mid‑1980s both sides had learned to inflict pain in new ways. The conflict spilled into the Persian Gulf. Merchant shipping and oil tankers were attacked in what became known as the "tanker war." Mines and missile strikes made the Gulf a perilous place for commerce, and Gulf states increasingly called for outside protection of their shipping lanes.

Worse, the war saw the use of chemical agents on the battlefield. From at least 1983 onward, Iraq employed mustard gas and nerve agents against Iranian military targets. The use escalated in subsequent years and culminated in attacks that killed and maimed civilians as well. The worst single strike came on March 16, 1988, when chemical weapons were used against the Kurdish town of Halabja; thousands died and thousands more suffered injuries that would persist for a lifetime. Those attacks left a moral stain on the conflict and contributed to later efforts to strengthen international prohibitions on chemical warfare.

The Gulf grows crowded: navies, shootdowns, and strikes

The fighting’s reach widened. Attempts to disrupt oil exports and to pressure the other side turned the Gulf into an arena for international intervention. Merchant ships were reflagged for protection; navies from multiple countries, including the United States, began escorting convoys and conducting strikes against Iranian or Iraqi positions at various moments.

Several incidents brought the wider world’s attention. On April 18, 1988, the U.S. launched Operation Praying Mantis in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping, striking Iranian platforms and naval vessels. On July 3, 1988, a U.S. Navy cruiser, the USS Vincennes, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard. Each episode intensified diplomatic strains and focused scrutiny on how the war threatened international commerce and safety.

Resolution by paper, silence on justice

Diplomatic pressure mounted. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 598 on July 20, 1987, calling for an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal to internationally recognized borders, and prisoner exchanges. Fighting continued for another year as negotiations stalled and battlefield fortunes fluctuated. Iran finally accepted the terms in July 1988, and the ceasefire under Resolution 598 took effect on August 20, 1988. A UN observer mission, UNIIMOG, then monitored the fragile quiet.

But the ceasefire did not bring closure on many of the war’s most troubling issues. Chemical‑weapon usage, attacks on civilian populations, and large-scale suffering were documented and condemned, but comprehensive legal accountability at the international level was limited in the immediate aftermath. Prisoner exchanges and returns proceeded, yet reparations and trials for major violations remained largely unrealized.

Counting the ruin: bodies, debts, and a landscape changed

The human and material costs were enormous, and exact numbers remain contested. Scholars emphasize large, but imprecise, totals: many estimates place combined military and civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands, with several commonly cited figures centering around roughly half a million. Some counts are lower; others — using broader criteria or different methodologies — approach a million. Wounded figures swell totals further: combined dead and wounded are often estimated in the order of one to two million.

The physical and economic damage compounded the human toll. Cities and industrial zones — particularly in Khuzestan — were badly scarred. Oil facilities, ports, pipelines, and infrastructure were damaged or destroyed. Iraq accumulated massive external debts during the war; estimates of Iraqi debt by the conflict’s end often point to tens of billions of dollars (figures sometimes cited around $80 billion). Those burdens reshaped Baghdad’s calculations in the years that followed and helped set the stage for later regional conflicts.

Kurdish communities were hit with particular ferocity. Halabja remains one of the war’s darkest markers: a chemical attack that killed thousands and left survivors with lifelong injuries and trauma. For many families, the wartime losses and the aftereffects of chemical exposure have endured for decades.

Small recoveries, big legacies

After 1988 both Iran and Iraq embarked on long recoveries. Reconstruction of oil facilities, cities, and infrastructure began slowly. Iran institutionalized the role of the IRGC and expanded domestic defense industries; Iraq maintained and, at times, expanded military programs despite international condemnation.

The war reshaped regional politics. Saddam Hussein emerged further militarized and heavily indebted, factors that fed later aggression toward Kuwait in 1990. Iran’s revolutionary government, having survived the existential threat, consolidated internal power and wrapped national memory around martyrdom and sacrifice. The conflict’s naval dramas led to new multinational rules and practices for protecting commercial shipping in the Gulf.

Internationally, the documented use of chemical weapons helped propel momentum for stronger norms. The Chemical Weapons Convention, opened for signature in 1993, reflected growing consensus against such weapons, though enforcement and full accountability for wartime use remained imperfect.

What remains unknown — and what keeps being revealed

Historians continue to refine the picture. Declassified documents, survivor testimony, and archival releases have clarified the extent and timing of foreign involvement — arms, intelligence, and diplomatic ties that shifted across the conflict. Researchers are still debating precise casualty totals, tallying economic costs, and illuminating the decision chains that led leaders in Tehran and Baghdad to prolong a war that produced so little permanent gain for either side.

On the ground, scars persist. Veterans and civilians live with chronic injuries, psychological trauma, and exposure‑related illnesses. Minefields and unexploded ordnance contaminated farmland and made return dangerous for years. Cities rebuilt in places, but the social and demographic impacts — population shifts, loss of a generation, trauma — are less easily repaired.

A final quiet that still echoes

When the guns fell silent in August 1988, the border did not suddenly become a place of trust. The war left both countries transformed: militarized, indebted, and politically hardened. The eight‑year conflict altered the map and the calculations of power in the Gulf. It taught a harsh lesson about the limits of quick victories and the long tails of wartime choices.

In Khorramshahr and other ruined towns, people began the slow and stubborn work of rebuilding. Flags rose over damaged masts; fishermen patched boats and returned to the river when they could. Those scenes are intimate and small against the scale of destruction, but they are also part of the story — proof that wars do not only claim lives and resources; they shape memories, politics, and the contours of everyday survival for generations that follow.