The Iranian Revolution and Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 shocked the world and turned the West against the new Islamic revolutionary government of Iran. Less than a year later, the neighboring nation of Iraq, a secular dictatorship under former army officer Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. For eight years, the two Middle Eastern nations fought an intense and brutal war, generating the largest industrialized military conflict since World War II. The Iran-Iraq War featured modern weaponry and tactics, including the extremely controversial use of chemical warfare. Both superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—became involved as arms suppliers. The US even experienced armed attacks by Iran, influencing US-Iran relations for decades.
Setting the Stage: Rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq
A young Iraqi man named Saddam Hussein joined the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party in 1957, beginning his controversial path into politics. Six years later, after having fled into exile, Saddam returned to Iraq following a US-supported regime change. As a member of the Ba’ath Party, he was jailed but ran for political office anyway. In 1968, a Ba’ath-led coup replaced the government, and Saddam Hussein, having risen up the party ranks, became vice president of Iraq. The young vice president quickly sought to remove any potential opponents to the Ba’ath Party’s control of Iraq.
In 1972, Saddam nationalized the oil industry in Iraq. A year later, this paid tremendous dividends when the OPEC oil embargo skyrocketed the price of oil. Thanks to rising oil revenue, Saddam was able to rapidly urbanize and industrialize Iraq, including providing education and health care to citizens. In 1979, Saddam was elected as the secretary-general of the Ba’ath Party, becoming a totalitarian ruler of Iraq. This occurred around the time of a substantial purge of senior party membership, allegedly to remove potential challenges to Saddam’s power.
Setting the Stage: The Iranian Revolution of 1979
As Saddam Hussein consolidated power in an increasingly wealthy Iraq, the nation of Iran was beginning to suffer political turmoil. Many intellectuals and young people were dissatisfied with the rule of the pro-Western Shah, or monarch. This monarchy had been established in 1953 by an American and British-backed coup. Many Islamist protesters disagreed with the Shah’s focus on building a Westernized state, which had become a major US ally. In 1978, increasing waves of protests heightened tensions between young Iranians and the Shah’s security forces. By December, there were mass protests to replace the American-backed Shah with the religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In early 1979, the Shah began making some requested reforms. Khomeini was allowed to return and promptly urged protesters to rise up and ignore government-imposed curfews. With the military refusing to engage the protesters, the Shah fled into exile on February 11. The US embassy was attacked days later, but the government dispersed the crowds. Between February and October, Iran formally became an Islamic Republic with the creation of a new constitution. In October, the Shah traveled to the United States for medical treatment, with the US hospitality condemned by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Setting the Stage: The Iran Hostage Crisis (1979-81)
A few weeks after the deposed Shah of Iran entered the US for medical treatment, thousands of student protesters stormed the US embassy in Tehran, the capital city. This began the lengthy Iran Hostage Crisis, which pitted the administration of US President Jimmy Carter against the radical Islamic regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini refused to negotiate with Carter’s emissaries, and the US froze all Iranian assets it could access. As the 53 hostages were often threatened and paraded before news cameras, President Carter approved a military rescue mission known as Operation Eagle Claw.
The special operations mission, launched on April 24, 1980, failed due to equipment malfunctions and poor weather. For another nine months, the Carter administration used diplomatic efforts to free the hostages. This lengthy timeline frustrated many Americans, and the hostage crisis, combined with the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, made Carter look weak on foreign policy and national defense. In November 1980, Republican challenger Ronald Reagan won the presidential election, replacing Carter. On January 20, 1981, a departing Jimmy Carter finally secured the release of the hostages in Iran.
September 1980: Iraq Invades Iran
The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which sparked the Iran Hostage Crisis, was viewed as a threat by Saddam Hussein. Despite Iran and Iraq being neighbors and predominantly Muslim, Iran had become a strict theocracy while Iraq was a secular dictatorship. As a result, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was wary of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Specifically, the Iranian Revolution led to Shia Muslim protests in southern Iraq, with Saddam resorting to martial law to check the minority group demonstrations. Violence by Iranian-inspired Shias continued into 1980, leading Saddam to expel up to 100,000 Iraqi Shias to Iran.
With Khomeini defiantly resisting Western demands during the ongoing Iran Hostage Crisis, Saddam felt increasingly threatened by his religious counterpart. He seized the initiative to target Iran, taking advantage of both his nation’s recent oil wealth and Iran’s status as a reviled and isolated state. Militarily, Iran had a major weakness: its Shah-era arms supplier, the United States, had placed it under an embargo, making it difficult to repair damaged equipment. Finally, Saddam felt the time was ripe for a leader of the Arab world to rise again, renewing its vigor after defeats by Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. On September 22, 1980, he invaded Iran.
Superpower Support for Iraq
International reaction to the new war was complex. Few nations supported the radical theocracy of Iran, which threatened to mobilize minority Shia Muslim populations across the Middle East. Iran had directly struck the United States with the hostage crisis and also criticized the Soviet Union. Thus, both superpowers saw Khomeini’s regime as a threat: it hated both American (imperialist) capitalism and Soviet (atheistic) communism. While the USSR had little direct reason to oppose Iran, it was incentivized to publicly support Iraq to appeal to Muslim nations in the aftermath of its recent invasion of Afghanistan.
Both superpowers feared their new discovery of Islamic fundamentalism, which they viewed as akin to terrorism. In response, both gave Iraq plenty of aid. The United States supplied funds and intelligence on Iran, while the Soviet Union provided military equipment, including fighter jets. Funds and weapons poured into Iraq throughout the eight-year war as Iran proved to be a powerful adversary. Despite lacking as much heavy firepower, Iranian forces were considered more skilled, adaptable, and determined.
Complex: Israel and China Support Iran
Iraq was largely supported by the West, especially France, and the Soviet bloc during the 1980s. However, as one of the Arab aggressors in the Yom Kippur War, Iraq was strongly distrusted by Israel. Despite being a staunch American ally, Israel backed Iran, and not Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War. This was ironic given that Ayatollah Khomeini was not supportive of Israel or Jews. Despite the religious animosity from Khomeini’s regime, Israel felt that it was important to militarily aid Iran to both weaken Iraq and to “buy” some support for Jews living in Iran. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, alleging that it was being used to attempt to develop nuclear weapons.
China, despite being communist, was no friend of the Soviet Union in the 1980s due to the Sino-Soviet Split of 1960. As a result, it supported Iran instead of the Soviet-backed Iraq, though likely more as part of growing its arms exports than for any political affinity. China also sought to develop its own international ties and break free from the Cold War dichotomy, which meant avoiding following the lead of either superpower. This relative isolation helped forge sociopolitical ties between Iran and China, both of whom felt rejected by the two superpowers.
The Iran-Contra Affair
Although Iran had arms suppliers in Israel and China, the bulk of its pre-revolutionary equipment came from the United States. Under current sanctions, it struggled to repair this equipment and keep it battle-ready. Therefore, Iran secretly reached out to the United States with a request to purchase American arms in 1985. Time had passed since the Iran Hostage Crisis had been peacefully resolved, and the US now had an incentive to work with Iran: US hostages had been taken by Hezbollah radicals in Lebanon…and Iran insinuated that it could secure their release.
The Reagan administration agreed to sell the arms to Iran and send the money to anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. This allegedly violated a 1984 law passed by Congress stating the US would not aid the Contras, who supposedly used violence against civilians. When the American public learned of the “arms-for-hostages” deal, Reagan apologized and weathered the scandal. It remains debatable how much Reagan himself knew about the situation and, therefore, how culpable he was for breaking the law. The complexity of the Iran-Contra Affair (as compared to the Watergate scandal) likely prevented it from becoming a bigger problem for Reagan.
Post-War Politics: Iraq (Over)Confident in Western Support
Iran and Iraq battled back and forth, with Iran using human wave attacks and special forces operations to counter Iraq’s reliance on Soviet-supplied machine guns and armor. Both nations inadvertently damaged US ships in the Persian Gulf, exasperating the superpower that had provided weaponry to both combatants. Finally, Iran sued for peace in 1988 after Iraq threatened to increase the use of chemical weapons…which were allegedly made possible by the United States through “dual use” equipment. Khomeini’s regime agreed to accept a UN cease-fire agreement in July, with some observers crediting increased US support for Iraq in 1987-88 with forcing Khomeini’s hand.
Despite no territorial change, Iraq was largely seen as the geopolitical victor, as it had more international support and was on the offensive when Iran agreed to the UN peace deal. The US had also largely blamed Iran for the accidental 1987 Iraqi missile strike on a US ship in the Persian Gulf, claiming Iran’s escalation of the war led to Iraq’s mistake. With much of the world focused on the end of the Cold War in Europe, Saddam Hussein thought the time was ripe for his regime to seek increased power. In August 1990, he invaded his oil-rich southern neighbor, Kuwait, to access its resources and eliminate debts owed from the Iran-Iraq War. This triggered the Gulf War, with most former allies swiftly turning on Iraq.
Post-War Politics: Western Wariness of Iran
Although Iran was far from victorious in the Iran-Iraq War, it had fought well against overwhelming odds. This made the West wary of Iran as an adversary, as the isolated nation had fought with tenacity and skill. Khomeini’s regime would not give up easily and apparently only backed down in 1988 after threats of widespread chemical weapon usage against cities like Tehran. Unfortunately, it was Iraq’s chemical weapons use—allegedly aided by the United States—that led Iran to pursue its own weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) after the conflict.
After the Gulf War decimated Iraq’s military, though Saddam Hussein was allowed to maintain his position, Iran became the dominant military power in the Middle East. In fact, Saddam’s sudden invasion of Kuwait brought Iran back into international affairs, with Iran hosting fleeing Iraqi fighter jets and assuring the Coalition against Iraq that it would not return those jets. Iran went a step further and apparently incorporated most of the fighter jets into its own air force, irking the West. With Iraq having been toppled as a regional power, Iran returned to prominence, much to the chagrin of the West.
Aftermath: The Axis of Evil & Russia Ties
Iran’s geopolitical isolation since 1979 led to it developing deep ties with other “rogue states” like North Korea. Reviled by the West due to the Iran Hostage Crisis, as well as other hostage-taking in the Middle East during the 1980s allegedly backed by Iran, Iran was forced to develop ties with China and its allies. This has created a split, with Iran oriented toward the West prior to 1979 but being rejected by the West during the Iranian Revolution and afterward. China, however, agreed to sell arms to Iran and is a growing trading partner.
Arms sales from China and North Korea, coupled with Iran’s own post-1980s WMD ambitions, got the nation named as part of the Axis of Evil by US President George W. Bush in 2002. Politically, this term has colored American views of Iran ever since. The Global War on Terror included close examination of Iran, which had been considered a supporter of Islamist terrorism since the Revolution. In addition to alleged links to terrorism, Iran was condemned for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, leading to strong diplomatic efforts to curtail them. While Iran has agreed to such limits, it has provoked Western ire in recent years by strengthening ties with Russia during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
