VI
War is a divine blessing, a gift bestowed upon us by God. The cannon's thunder rejuvenates the soul.
Khomeini, September 19801
The eight-year Iran-Iraq War was Iran's first major external conflict since the Russo-Iranian wars of the first decades of the nineteenth century. The Iranian mullahs' policy of exporting fundamentalism ("spreading the Islamic Revolution") to Iraq played a key role in the outbreak of hostilities. Indeed, the Khomeini regime's determination to export revolution to Iraq was a major cause of the eight-year war.
Ten years ago, the Mojahedin obtained and published a top-secret analysis of the Iran-Iraq conflict formulated by the leaders of the now defunct Islamic Republic Party after extensive discussions among Khomeini, Rafsanjani, and Khamenei. The analysis reads in part:
There is no need to mention the dangers of an imposed peace in the current circumstances. Everyone has a general idea of the unwelcome repercussions of such a peace. If we win the war, however, the situation will change completely. The euphoria of victory will strengthen the revolution's pillars as never before, and the invincibility of Islam will inject fresh blood into the veins of our tired society. This in and of itself will enable the ruling system to handle any military or political confrontation. Victory in battle will enhance Iran's political stature. Iran's triumph will prove that "Muhammad's ideology cannot be defeated," thus raising the morale of Muslims throughout the region. This will mean more domestic difficulties for America's lackeys.
It must be recalled that in discussing the war, the morale of the Muslim peoples of other countries is an important issue. Our present propaganda capabilities are not equal to the magnificence of the Islamic Revolution. Peace with Iraq would mean confronting the seven-headed dragon of Imperialist propaganda. Any peace with Saddam will be characterized as a defeat for Iran by the international media, even if we succeed in gaining many concessions from Iraq. For us, there is no such thing as a victorious peace. Only a military victory over Iraq can establish in the minds of the Muslims of other countries that Iran has achieved its goal. One should not underestimate the impact of making peace with Saddam on weakening the hope for exporting the Islamic Revolution.
The final significant point to be made in this analysis is that accepting peace will have ramifications far beyond the Muslims' loss of faith in Islam's power to confront blasphemy. One of the principal conditions of any peace agreement between the two countries is noninterference in each other's internal affairs. On the surface, this principle may not seem so important. But [Swedish Prime Minister] Olaf Palme [peace mediator at the time] describes the practical implications of such a peace as follows: Eliminating from Iran's mass media broadcasts and speeches by the Islamic Republic's leaders anything which might instigate the people of Iraq against the Ba'athists, or which urge them to turn to genuine Islam; probably an end to most of Iran's Arabic radio broadcasts; expelling or restricting the activities of the opponents of the Iraqi regime residing in Iran. . .
In this light, the dimensions of this principle [of non-interference] can be better understood. If the Islamic Republic were to be insensitive to the realities beyond its borders or did not want to acquaint other nations with the truth of Islam, the Iran-Iraq War would not have essentially started.2
It is clear from the above analysis, particularly the concluding sentence, that the Iran-Iraq War, or at least its final phase, could have been avoided were it not for the mullahs' obsession with exporting revolution. Other factors contributed to the outbreak of hostilities, among them border claims, the dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, and various historical and national enmities. But in the final analysis, these only became important because of the Iranian regime's policy of export of revolution.
As the post revolutionary provisional government's foreign minister for some time before the war, Ibrahim Yazdi was involved in Tehran's conspiracies to install a vassal government in Baghdad. He has described the Iranian regime's objectives in Iraq as follows:
First, the dispatch of an ambassador knowledgeable about Iraqi affairs and capable of establishing sufficient and secret contacts with anti-Saddam Muslim groups in Iraq. This was an essential step. Another part of our policy against Iraq and other Arabs, especially the Iraqi people, was to broadcast propaganda in Arabic. At that time, numerous meetings were held at the Foreign Ministry to coordinate these aspects of the Islamic Republic's foreign policy. In these meetings, particularly those dealing with Iraq, Iran's ambassador to Iraq was present and the main outlines and principal guidelines were considered and formulated. This undertaking indeed played an effective role.3
About five months before the war, in a meeting on April 13, 1980, Hussein, Ali Montazeri, at that time Khomeini's designated successor, asked him to assume the leadership of the "Islamic Revolution" in Iraq: "These days, Iraqi brothers repeatedly approach us saying, we expect His Eminence Imam Khomeini to lead the Iraqi Revolution as he did the Iranian Revolution."4 The ruling Islamic Republic Party's newspaper constantly wrote about Iraq's "Islamic Revolution" and the conquest of Iraq: "Upon the call by the Imam, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the Forces of the Revolution declared their readiness to conquer Iraq with the support of Muslims."5
But why did the Khomeini regime choose Iraq as the first target for exporting its revolution and installing a client Islamic Republic? The most important reasons are the large number of Shi'ites, who make up nearly the entire population of southern Iraq, and the presence in Iraq of the most sacred Shi'ite shrines - the tomb of Imam Ali, the first Shi'ah Imam, and that of his son, Hussein, known to Shi'ites as "the Lord of Martyrs." For many centuries, Iraq has been the most important center of Shi'ism in the Arab world, and the city of Najaf the main seat of Shi'ah learning and theological seminaries.
Moreover, Khomeini had lived in Iraq for fifteen years and knew that from a geopolitical standpoint, Iraq would be the best springboard for export of the "Islamic Revolution" to the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, Jordan, and Egypt. Iraq's 1,200, kilometer border with Iran and its vast oil reserves (second only to Saudi Arabia's), also made Iraq the most tempting target.
Establishing an Islamic Republic in Iraq became top priority. Such slogans as "liberating Qods (Jerusalem) through Karbala" reflected Khomeini's extraterritorial designs. Iran's clerical leaders even went so far as to produce a map showing the eastward expansion of the Islamic Republic, again depicting Iraq as the staging ground for the subsequent phases of the plan.6
The war also enabled the mullahs to fortify the pillars of their velayat-e-faqih rule and justify domestic repression, thereby providing a readymade scapegoat for every crisis and shortcoming - including the catastrophic economic situation - deriving from the clerical regime's theocratic rule. Khomeini described the war as a "divine blessing," and for many years, his regime insisted on prolonging hostilities when Iraq was willing to negotiate.
Iran's conduct of the war also reflected Khomeini's fanaticism. Following the capture of Iraq's southernmost town, Faw, in 1986, the mullahs saw themselves on the verge of victory. Khomeini formally replaced the slogan "war, war, until victory" with "war, war, until the obliteration of fitna throughout the world." The term fitna, meaning sedition or disorder in Arabic, had been carefully chosen for its vagueness and could be conveniently interpreted by the clerics to include a range of "targets," from Iraq to other Arab or Muslim countries. With the war with Iraq "nearly won," the mullahs now prepared themselves to take on Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries as Iraq's partners and backers in the war.
To legitimize his belligerent policies and lend an Islamic appearance to his decisions about the war, Khomeini issued a voluminous supply of fatwas, or religious decrees. Decrees on Defense and the Front, a book published by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, contains the full texts of Khomeini's decrees on war-related issues. In accordance with the traditional format of fatwas, Khomeini pronounced his decrees in the form of answers to questions from unidentified adherents. One question asks: "Under the present circumstances, is parental consent necessary before [children] can be sent to the war fronts?" Khomeini replied: "So long as forces are needed at the war fronts, serving there is a religious duty and there is no need for parental consent." The objective of this particular decree was to pave the way for the forcible dispatch of hundreds of thousands of children - even 9, and 1O-year-olds - to the fronts despite the opposition of their families. The overwhelming majority of these children never returned; they were used as cannon-fodder or mine-sweepers and made up the bulk of Iranian casualties in each offensive.
Khomeini was also asked whether the killing of elderly men and of women and children who cooperate with the forces of evil is permissible. His reply: "In the name of God, they must be treated as aggressors." (See Appendix.) Khomeini thus gave his Guards free rein to perpetrate any crime against the civilian population. In another religious decree, he sanctioned the execution of prisoners of war. Documents confirm the execution of thousands of Iraqi paws by the Guards Corps.
To counter Khomeini's fanatical commitment to the war - which was to the detriment of the Iranian people - after Iraq withdrew its forces from Iranian territory in May 1982, the Mojahedin leader Massoud Rajavi declared that the war was no longer legitimate. He added that its continuation only served the Khomeini regime's interests, harming the peoples of both countries. The Mojahedin subsequently began a national and international campaign to expose the belligerent policies of the mullahs and counter the hysteria the mullahs tried to whip up in Iran.7 Thus the Mojahedin deprived Khomeini of his most important excuse for brutally cracking down on all dissent: the claim that there was no alternative to war.
The formulation of a comprehensive peace plan by the National Council of Resistance (NCR) of lran in March 1983 was the high point of this strategy.8 The many attacks on the Mojahedin for the peace policy were essentially a smear campaign provoked by the ruling mullahs and did little to lessen the Mojahedin's resolve to pursue peace.
The mullahs' insistence on continuing the war at all costs resulted in tremendous material destruction. Rafsanjani put the colossal war damages at one trillion dollars, equivalent to Iran's oil revenues for the century. He concluded: "Every Iranian became 50 percent poorer during the war."9
Of greater significance, however, was the human toll. Hundreds of thousands of children died on the battlefields. On the Iranian side alone, one million people were killed and an equal number gravely wounded or maimed. Three to four million other Iranians lost their homes and property and became refugees. The scars of the war years still torment the Iranian people, who blame the ruling clerics for continuing and losing a futile war. A sharp reminder of the widespread feeling of frustration on this issue have been demonstrations and protests by handicapped veterans. These victims, daily reminders of the war's human toll, have always been the subject of much propaganda by the government, which called them janbazan (those ready to sacrifice their lives.) Gradually realizing that it was only hollow rhetoric that once incited them to go to the front, the janbazan have begun to voice their protests.10 The authorities have been deeply embarrassed by such strong criticism of the government coming from those who have been much praised by the clergy as "living 63 martyrs." Antigovernment feelings on the question of the war have been fueled by the fact that four years after the cease-fire, the government has not taken any serious steps to reconstruct the war-stricken regions. Officials acknowledge that the budget for construction is one-fifteenth of the military expenditures.
The objectives for which Khomeini fanned the flames of war were finally left unrealized. The regime was defeated, and Khomeini, in his own words, "drank the chalice of the poison of the cease-fire" in July 1988.11 The defeat, however, did not destroy the mullahs' dream of dominating Iraq and installing a client fundamentalist regime. After the cease-fire, the mullahs strengthened their clandestine network in Iraq and waited for an opportune moment to revive their efforts toward realizing the old objectives. That opportunity came at the end of the Persian Gulf War.
When Iraq occupied Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the clerical regime played both sides to advance its goals. The mullahs' best interests lay in the eruption of a bloody war between Iraq and the Allies. Iraq would be eliminated from the regional balance of power, and the Arab members of the Allied coalition would lose credibility in the eyes of their own Muslim populace for relying on foreign powers. War meant Iran would have an opportunity to gain the upper hand. For this reason, the mullahs' policy was to push events toward an inevitable war.
Despite presenting themselves as neutral, in their private dealings with the Western countries the mullahs voiced their support for the Allied campaign and opposed the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Behind the scenes, they also told the Iraqis that should war break out, Iran would rally to their help with all its might. In an editorial in Iraq's Al-Jumhuriya newspaper, Editor in Chief Saad Al-Bazzaz revealed that throughout the Persian Gulf crisis, Rafsanjani had encouraged Baghdad to adopt a hard-line stance:
The top Iranian official said, "I have much more than what you have asked for . . . We are on your side in the Kuwait affair. We request that you not take our official remarks as the only reflection of our stances. We stand beside Iraq and completely understand the circumstances and reasons for Iraq's position. Do not retreat from Kuwait. We will stand by you against America to the extent our strength allows and as much as we can."12
* * *
Iran got the war it wanted in the Persian Gulf. When it ended, Tehran took advantage of the chaos in Iraq to dispatch thousands of Revolutionary Guards and agents to Iraqi cities, with the aim of establishing an Islamic Republic. At the same time, seven Iranian Guards Corps divisions and brigades attacked the bases and garrisons of the National Liberation Army (NLA) of Iran and the Mojahedin along the Iran-Iraq frontier.13 The National Liberation Army, however, succeeded in repelling these attacks, inflicting thousands of casualties on the Guards forces and capturing a number of them.14
Although the mullahs' attempts to install a client regime in Iraq have failed again, they have not forgotten Iraq's unique characteristics or their own objective. For the foreseeable future, Iraq will remain an important target of the mullahs' policy of export of revolution and terrorism.
