Forty years ago, a major war between Iran and Iraq set the stage for far-reaching and lasting regional dynamics. The conflict \u2014 which began in September 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, and ended in a stalemate in 1988 \u2014 was the nascent Islamic Republic\u2019s first major military test. It was an existential battle for the Iranian leadership, coming just one year after the 1979 revolution in Iran. The war claimed at least one million lives.<\/p>\n
The legacies of the war are numerous. In the decades since, Iran has developed a marked capacity to mobilize Shiite communities across the region, penetrating previously impervious political and ideological spaces, particularly in Iraq but also in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Moreover, it was in Iraq, during the formative stages of the war, that the Islamic Republic first started to implement a proxy network, one that has expanded region-wide (particularly in Syria and Yemen) in recent years. Finally, in shaping the political and foreign policy outlook of today\u2019s leadership in Iran and in Gulf Arab states, the war additionally sowed the seeds for current geopolitical rivalries that have hampered efforts to secure durable regional peace.<\/p>\n
A key dynamic during the war \u2014 and one that would continue in the decades afterward \u2014 was Iran\u2019s mobilization of Iraqi Shiite opposition groups. Tehran extended its support to other opposition groups, like the Kurds, but it was particularly focused on spurring a Shiite insurgency campaign within Iraq, encouraging mass defections from the Iraqi military, and trying to trigger an uprising among the majority-Shiite population. That was to no avail. Revolutionary fervor in Iran was instrumental to Tehran\u2019s ability to push back against an enemy that had superior technological capabilities and a plethora of backers, including the U.S., its allies in the West, and the Gulf Arab states \u2014 but it could not inspire a similar response in Iraq.<\/p>\n
The opposition groups and fighters Iran backed were immensely divided and lacked battlefield experience or discipline. The international community labeled them fundamentalist Shiite Islamist terrorists, and the Baath regime had an impressive capacity to repress and co-opt, as well as insulate its armed forces from mass defections.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of Shiite personnel within the Iraqi army \u2014 along with Sunnis \u2014 fought loyally during the war. This was not out of loyalty to the regime, necessarily, but to prevent Iraq from becoming colonized by Iran or from following in its theocratic footsteps. Iran-aligned Shiite opposition groups, for their part, emphasized in their publications that colonization would not happen, and they framed the war not as a religious campaign but a campaign to overthrow the \u201cTikriti gang\u201d (a reference to Saddam Hussein\u2019s hometown and that of many of his closest confidantes and subordinates).<\/p>\n
As I have detailed elsewhere<\/a>, Iraq\u2019s Shiites failed to emulate their revolutionary counterparts in Iran and rise up against the Baath regime. In his book \u201cThe Shi\u2018ite Movement in Iraq<\/a>,\u201d the late Iraqi sociologist Faleh Abdul-Jabar argued that such opposition movements failed because they did not sufficiently nationalize their cause. Iraq\u2019s Shiite Islamist movements were forced into exile and integrated into the Iranian war effort, appearing \u201cinternationalist with a national sidetrack\u201d to audiences back home; for Iran\u2019s Islamic leaders, the focus was the reverse. As Abdul-Jabar contended, this isolated Iraq\u2019s Shiite opposition groups from the mainstream of Iraqi patriotism, \u201cwhich emerged during the Iraq-Iran war and was embraced by the majority of the Shi\u2019is who fought Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the best efforts of Iran and its Iraqi partners \u2014 who even recruited and mobilized Iraqi military defectors and prisoners of war to establish the Badr Brigade militia \u2014 they did not come remotely close to overthrowing the Baath regime. They were outmatched by Saddam\u2019s multi-faceted strategy of appeasing and punishing the Shiite community. A charm offensive by the regime included refurbishing and allocating large sums to the holy shrine cities. Saddam stressed the Arab identity of Shiism. He deployed Shiite symbolism throughout the war effort, claiming to be a descendant of Imam Ali and the Prophet Muhammad. Saddam even made Imam Ali\u2019s birthday an Iraqi national holiday. Indeed, Saddam cunningly became more Shiite as war with Iran continued.<\/p>\n In other words, it has taken some time, failure, and painful lessons for Iran to command the proxy network that it does today. From Tehran\u2019s perspective, this has been essential to ensuring that Iran\u2019s international isolation \u2014 felt acutely during the war \u2014 would not become an existential issue again. While Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions may yet be curtailed, its vast armed proxy network is perhaps its single most important defense and deterrence capability, and arguably the most transformational legacy of the war. This network, overseen by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been central to the Islamic Republic\u2019s ability to contain, deter, or eliminate its external rivals.<\/p>\n It was during the Iran-Iraq war that Iran established its single most important foreign legion: Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah. Since its creation in 1982, Hezbollah has achieved a supra-state status in Lebanon, superseding state institutions. It has also become indispensable to Iran\u2019s expansionist ambitions and critical to Tehran\u2019s ability to mobilize, establish, and train militia groups across the region. Hezbollah has itself established affiliates across the region in the years since, with reverberations across conflict theaters. Hezbollah has outgrown its sponsor in this respect.<\/p>\n In Iraq, the Badr Brigade is currently Iraq\u2019s most powerful paramilitary force: It controls the Interior Ministry and has wide-ranging influence across Iraq\u2019s institutions. It dominates the 100,000-plus Popular Mobilization Force, and has extended its reach into Syria to help prop up Bashar Assad\u2019s regime. The organization developed its abilities on the battlefield, its capacity to recruit willing fighters, and its ability to subvert state institutions during the war with Iraq.\u00a0 Hezbollah and the Badr Brigade would not be what they are today were it not for the painful experiences, lessons, and losses of the Iran-Iraq war.<\/p>\n The war shaped the outlook of many of Iran\u2019s current decisionmakers. Its supreme leader today, Ayatollah Khamenei, was Iran\u2019s president at the time. Its president today, Hassan Rouhani, was then the commander-in-chief of Iran\u2019s Air Defense. The leadership of the current IRGC \u2014 Iran\u2019s most powerful military force, and an entity that Khamenei helped form<\/a> \u2014 made their names during the war. This includes the former head of its elite Quds force, Qassem Soleimani, who spearheaded Iran\u2019s vast network of proxies over the past two decades, until his assassination by the U.S. in January. More broadly, the war helped solidify the foundational myth of the Islamic Republic. In the aftermath of a revolution that was driven by disparate political forces, the conflict enhanced the new regime\u2019s ability to consolidate its hold on power.<\/p>\n Today, Iranian leaders continue to stress<\/a> how internationally isolated Iran was in the aftermath of its revolution, left on its own as a nascent government to confront Iraq\u2019s tanks and chemical weapons and U.S. and Western support for Saddam. Incidents like the mistaken 1988 U.S. downing of an Iran Air flight<\/a>, which killed almost 300 innocent Iranians, reinforced the notion that the Islamic Republic had no allies and that the West was bent on Iran\u2019s demise. From Tehran\u2019s perspective, this legacy of isolation necessitates its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and, of course, its continued deployment of proxy groups outside of its borders.<\/p>\nTHE ROAD TO BECOMING A PROXY POWER<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A NEW FOREIGN POLICY OUTLOOK<\/strong><\/h2>\n