User:A.S. Brown/Iran-Iraq War
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The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the Imposed War (جنگ تحمیلی, Jang-e-tahmīlī) and Holy Defense (دفاع مقدس, Defā'-e-moqqaddas) in Iran, Saddām's Qādisiyyah (قادسيّة صدّام, Qādisiyyat Ṣaddām) in Iraq, and the (First) Persian Gulf War, was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the twentieth century.[12][13][14] It was initially referred to in English as the "Persian Gulf War" prior to the "Gulf War" of 1990.
Iran-Iraq War | |||||||||
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Part of the Persian Gulf conflicts | |||||||||
Clockwise from above: Iranian soldiers wearing gas masks to counter Iraqi chemical weapons, Iranian soldiers rejoicing after the liberation of Khorramshahr, Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam meeting in Baghdad to discuss US military aid to Iraq, Iranian oil platform burning after attack by US Navy in Operation Nimble Archer | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Da'awa |
Iraq¹ | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Ruhollah Khomeini |
Saddam Hussein | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
600,000 soldiers, 100,000 to 150,000 Pasdaran and Basij, 100,000 militia, 1,000 tanks, 4,000 armored vehicles, 7,000 artillery pieces, 747 aircraft, 750 helicopters[2] |
300,000 in 1980, 1,000,000 by 1988, 4,000 tanks, 4,000 armored vehicles, 7,330 artillery pieces, 500+ aircraft, 100+ helicopters[3] | ||||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||||
500,000 to 1,000,000 dead;[4][5][6][7][8] >[9] Economic loss of more than US$500 billion[6] |
Estimated 300,000 soldiers, militia, and civilians killed or wounded[citation needed] Economic loss of more than US$500 billion[6] | ||||||||
¹ With support from the U.S.S.R., France, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United States, and other Arab, NATO and Warsaw Pact countries for Iraq.[10][11] |
The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of the revolutionary chaos in Iran and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and within several months were repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive.[15] Despite calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988. The war finally ended with a United Nations brokered ceasefire in the form of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which was accepted by both sides. It took several weeks for the Iranian armed forces to evacuate Iraqi territory to honor pre-war international borders between the two nations (see 1975 Algiers Agreement). The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003.[15][16]
The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage—half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as civilians are believed to have died in the war with many more injured—but it brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I,[17] in that the tactics used closely mirrored those of that conflict, including large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches, human wave attacks across no-man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds.