The 1980s Iran-Iraq War should have warned us not to underestimate Iran

Five weeks in, despite a shock-and-awe pounding from the world’s two best air forces, the hardline Iranian regime still stands. Not only has the regime held onto its highly enriched uranium, but it also still controls the vital Strait of Hormuz and has shot down two American warplanes.

How this turns out is anyone’s guess, but it appears that — just as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — the U.S. arrogantly underestimated the enemy’s resilience. 

As an example, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) rejected arguments that an assault on Kharg Island would bog the U.S. down in a war of attrition. “We did Iwo Jima, we can do this,” he boasted, referring to the brutal World War II battle to take a Japanese-held Pacific island, which cost the lives of nearly 7,000 Marines.

Did Graham, Trump, and the administration hawks know that, in the Iran-Iraq war, Iran fought and won battles just as bloody as Iwo Jima?

In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq launched a surprise invasion of Iran. After a long and bloody war, Iran drove back the invaders, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers’ lives. It did so despite the Iraqi army’s relative sophistication and use of chemical weapons, as well as support for Iraq from the Soviet Union, France and, indirectly, the U.S.

The unheeded lesson of that war is that Iran is a dangerous foe when cornered.

Iran’s tactics against Iraq were as brutal as anything seen in modern warfare.  Capitalizing on the religious devotion of Iranians to Ayatollah Khomeini — newly in power after overthrowing the pro-Western government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi — Iran recruited tens of thousands of child soldiers, some barely a head taller than their rifles.

“We loved Imam Khomeini and we were happy to answer his call,” one 15-year-old later recalled. “I think we went with joy.” They argued with one another over who should have the honor of being the first to step on an Iraqi landmine at the start of a human mine-clearing operation. They were sent on suicidal assaults into enemy lines. Iraqi chemical weapons and economic exhaustion eventually forced Iran to reluctantly agree to a ceasefire in 1988 along the pre-war border lines.

Today’s Iran may have less religious fervor than in the 1980s, but the regime’s ruthlessness in preserving itself has not changed — witness its slaughter of 30,000 or more protesters earlier this year. “From a medical standpoint,” said a doctor who treated injured protesters, many suffering from close-range gunshots and severe stab wounds to the chest, eyes, and genitals, “the injuries we observed demonstrate a brutality without limit — both in scale and in method.”

Iran is now reportedly mobilizing its population to fight the U.S. and Israel “in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq.” The regime has mounted drives to recruit “millions of Iranians, including children” and organized nearly 900 pro-regime demonstrations since the start of the war. The harm done to Iranian civilians and infrastructure from the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes has divided the Iranian opposition, which makes regime change even more unlikely. 

Trump’s swaggering rhetoric — “it’s more fun” to sink Iranian ships than to capture them — hardly warns the American public of the sacrifice that may be necessary to stop the Iranians from winning the war that he started.

Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”

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