The Iran–Iraq War Begins

Date

1980–1988

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Middle East (Iraq)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Iran–Iraq War, one of the longest and deadliest conventional wars of the twentieth century, began in 1980 when Iraq invaded revolutionary Iran.

On 22 September 1980, Iraqi aircraft struck Iranian airfields and, the next day, six divisions crossed the border in a three-pronged assault aimed at the oil-rich province of Khuzestan. President Saddam Hussein sought to exploit the chaos of Iran's 1979 revolution, seize disputed territory along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and halt Ayatollah Khomeini's efforts to export Islamic revolution. Instead of the swift victory Baghdad expected, the war ground into eight years of static trench fighting, human-wave assaults and the large-scale use of chemical weapons by Iraq. Cities were bombarded, tankers attacked in the Gulf, and an estimated one million people killed before a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1988 restored the pre-war borders. The conflict reshaped Middle Eastern geopolitics, drew in superpower and Gulf-state backing for Iraq, entrenched Iran's revolutionary regime, and left grievances that fed later wars in the region.

Empires active in 1980–1988

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994
• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962
• The September 11 attacks
  11 September 2001
• Korean War
  25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953

Also relevant

• Soviet–Afghan War
  December 1979 – February 1989
• The Sri Lankan Civil War Begins
  1983

Further reading

A History of the Modern Middle East

The wider story

A History of the Modern Middle East

William L. Cleveland

The go-to survey of the region from the late Ottoman era to the present.

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