The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) is not merely a practical historical reference for a long war of attrition that the Middle East experienced in the 1980s. Its outcomes also formed the infrastructure of the Iran we know today—one that has been at war with both the United States and Israel since the end of last February.
Many fear that the current war could itself turn into a prolonged war of attrition, and the eight-year war is often recalled as an example of Iran’s ability to sustain such conflicts if imposed upon it.
There are many similarities between the current conflict and the Iran–Iraq War, as Annie Tracy Samuel, a history professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, explains to Alhurra. Although this war is not portrayed in this way outside Iran, the Iran–Iraq War was, in many respects, an international conflict rather than merely a regional one.
“At that time, as now, Iran was fighting a broad coalition of states. And as it did during the Iran–Iraq War, Iran had to devise ways to continue fighting against a group of much stronger adversaries. In both cases, Iran did this by striking not only its main opponent (or opponents), but also the countries that actively supported them.”
Four weeks into the current fighting, the costs of war have already escalated for the global economy, and these effects are being felt—and will continue to be felt—in countries around the world for months, if not years, Samuel says. According to the historian, the economic pressures resulting from these rising costs appear to be an incentive for the warring parties to try to prevent the conflict from turning into a prolonged war of attrition.
But what about the approach Iran is using in the current war compared to its war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq?
It is important to note that Iran fought that war primarily with American-made weapons that were in the possession of the Iranian army, acquired during the Shah’s era. According to the book America and Iran: A History from 1720 to the Present by John Ghazvinian, “Iran’s annual arms purchases from the United States jumped from $113 million to nearly $400 million in 1971, then to $2.2 billion in 1973, and then to $4.4 billion in 1974. Between 1972 and 1977, Iran spent a total of $16 billion (about $70 billion in today’s prices) on purchasing weapons from the United States.”
Most of these weapons were seized by the Islamic Revolution in Iran after it took power and were used in its war with Saddam Hussein. However, Iran later faced a shortage of spare parts for American weapons after the new regime openly declared hostility toward the United States, seized the U.S. Embassy, held American diplomats hostage, and severed diplomatic and trade relations with Washington.
Beyond that, Reza Erlich writes in his book The Iran Agenda Today that the religious government that came to power after the Shah was in urgent need of revitalizing its arsenal. Israel possessed many of the same American weapons, such as TOW and Hawk missiles, in addition to spare parts for fighter aircraft.
He cites a report from the U.S. National Security Archive on the Iran–Contra affair, stating that “Iran desperately needed what Israel could provide… and as long as Israel had those weapons in its stockpiles, it was more than happy to supply them.” However, he notes that Israel’s calculations later changed, as Iran became more hostile to Israel than Iraq had been.
The war exhausted both the Iranian and Iraqi armies. Afterward, Iran decided to strengthen its external military presence by establishing the Quds Force (affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard), and by arming and funding militias loyal to it in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip, in addition to Quds Force activities in financing and training Shiite groups in neighboring Afghanistan.
Samuel explains that in both the Iran–Iraq War and the current conflict, all combatants combined conventional warfare methods with a range of asymmetric and non-military tools and tactics. In the current war, for example, Iran has used its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon to open another front against Israel, while the United States and Israel have carried out strikes on Iran’s economic infrastructure and have considered supporting Kurdish forces to take up arms against the Islamic Republic.
In this sense, Samuel says, “both sides are operating outside what we might consider traditional military norms of states. But at this stage of the twenty-first century, these norms have proven to have only limited applicability to modern wars.”
According to Mohamed Ramadan Abu Shaishaa in his book Iran, Turkey, Israel and the Struggle for Power in the Middle East, Iran possessed considerable military capabilities as a regional power. Its armed forces consist of two main structures: the regular Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guard. According to estimates by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (2017), the total number of Iranian armed forces reached about 545,000 soldiers, with reserve forces of around 350,000 personnel. Abu Shaishaa also notes that Iran’s military imports rely primarily on Russia, and that Iran has seven industrial groups that produce weapons, equipment, and ammunition, while also developing weapons and maintaining equipment for both the army and the Revolutionary Guard.
However, the regular Iranian army has been tested in direct warfare only once—in its long war with Iraq. It will not be tested again unless a ground invasion of Iranian territory by the United States or Israel occurs, especially given that concentrated U.S.–Israeli bombardment has destroyed much of Iran’s military infrastructure mentioned in Ramadan’s book, including its air force and navy. Iran now relies primarily on an offensive “entanglement” strategy using drones and ballistic missiles to strike Israel, Gulf states, and U.S. bases there. Notably, the Iranian army has been largely absent from active confrontation, while the Revolutionary Guard has taken center stage.
As is the case today, the Iran–Iraq War contributed to shifting relations between Iraq and the Gulf states into a more tense phase when the war’s flames reached the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as explained by researcher Ahmed Al-Baz in his book Revolution and War: The Formation of Iranian–Gulf Relations. Al-Baz states: “Iran deliberately sought to punish the GCC states for supporting Iraq. The hottest phase of this war was what became known as the Tanker War, which opened the door to U.S. intervention in the Gulf after GCC states—especially Kuwait—called for American protection against Iranian attacks in what became known as the reflagging policy.”
According to Al-Baz, the Iran–Iraq War was one of the most important indicators of regional rejection of Iran’s revolutionary model, as most countries in the region sided with Iraq against Iran, especially as the war dragged on and casualties mounted.
The conflict exhausted both sides, prompting their leaderships to seek ways to de-escalate.
These efforts began in the mid-1980s, when Iran felt increasingly constrained by the pressures of war, in addition to growing dissatisfaction among GCC states over Iran’s attempts to interfere in their internal affairs and to use Gulf Shiite communities as tools for that interference. This pattern is being repeated today with the exposure of cells linked to Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard operating inside Gulf states.
The long and costly war with Iraq at the beginning of the Islamic Republic’s life was the main factor in reshaping Iran’s approach to national security, according to researcher Shahram Chubin in his book Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions.
When reassessing that war, “Iranians became more convinced of the hostility of the outside world toward the Islamic Revolution,” Chubin explains. He continues: “The revolution was consolidated during the war through martyrdom and unity among Iranians, and for this reason it is considered a golden phase and an epic that should inspire all subsequent policies. The war with Iraq served as both a warning and a lesson. Iranians, who were caught off guard by Iraq’s attack, decided never to be taken by surprise again.”
The most important lesson Iranians drew from that war, according to Chubin, is that “reliance on conventional military forces for deterrence is less effective than reliance on nuclear weapons.”
From this perspective, Chubin argues that Iran reconsidered its traditional military doctrine, focusing on its external proxies on the one hand, and on developing its missile system and nuclear project on the other.
Rami Al Amine
A Lebanese writer and journalist living in the United States. He holds a master’s degree in Islamic-Christian Relations from the Faculty of Religious Sciences at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He is the author of the poetry collection “I Am a Great Poet” (Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, 2007); the political pamphlet “Ya Ali, We Are No Longer the People of the South” (Lebanese Plans, 2008); a book on social media titled “The Facebookers” (Dar Al-Jadeed, 2012); and “The Pakistanis: A Statue’s Biography” (Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, 2024).
