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Revolution and War: Saddam's Decision to Invade Iran

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Revolution and War: Saddam's Decision to Invade Iran © Middle East Institute. This article is for personal research only and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the permission of The Middle East Journal. Revolution and War: Saddam’s Decision to Invade Iran Chad E. Nelson There are two main motives ascribed to Saddam Husayn’s decision to invade Iran in 1980. One motive is that he invaded for geopolitical gain when international factors worked in his favor. The other is that he invaded to prevent Iran from fo- menting revolution in Iraq. This article argues the decision was taken due to the latter, that the decision to invade Iran was primarily due to the fear of spillover effects from the Iranian Revolution, and considers the broader implications for why revolutions can sometimes lead to war. Why did Saddam Husayn invade Iran in September 1980? The Iran-Iraq War re- sulted in probably around 400,000 deaths, cost hundreds of billions of dollars in de- struction and forgone revenue, and yet ended with a return to the status quo ante bel- lum.1 The war also played a role in consolidating the Iranian Revolution and shaped the strategic landscape of the Persian Gulf, leading directly to the 1990 Gulf War and subsequent conflicts. There are two predominant explanations for Iraq’s invasion of Iran. One explanation is that Saddam struck Iran while it was weak in order to gain geopolitical concessions. Another is that Saddam feared that spillover from the Iranian Revolution was destabilizing his regime and saw war as a means to neutralize the revo- lution’s influence. Some scholars have argued for one factor or the other,2 while others have written that both motivations played a role.3 Chad E. Nelson is an assistant professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback as well as Eric Bordenkircher, Or Honig, Dov Levin, Larry Rubin, Dane Swango, Robert Trager, and especially David Palkki. 1. It is commonly asserted that there were a million deaths in the Iran-Iraq war, but this is unlikely. For a discussion of the casualty figures, see F. Gregory Gause III, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 45fn1. 2. For accounts that stress the opportunistic motive, see Michael Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran: A His- tory of the Islamic Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 188–89; Andrew T. Parasiliti, “The Causes and Timing of Iraq’s Wars: A Power Cycle Assessment,” International Political Science Re- view, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan. 2003), pp. 183–84; Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 262–76; Keith McLachlan, “Analyses of the Risks of War: Iran-Iraq Discord, 1979–1980,” in The Iran-Iraq War: The Politics of Agression, ed. Farhang Rajaee (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1993), pp. 22–31; Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, sec- ond edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004), pp. 182–83; Shireen T. Hunter, Iran and the World: Con- tinuity in a Revolutionary Decade (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 105; Daniel Pipes, “A Border Adrift: Origins of the Conflict,” inThe Iran-Iraq War: New Weapons, Old Conflicts, eds. Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 3–25. For those that emphasize domestic threat to Iraq, see F. Gregory Gause III, “Iraq’s Decisions to Go to War, 1980 and 1990,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter 2002), pp. 63–69; Efraim Karsh, “Geopolitical Determinism: The Origins of the Iran-Iraq War,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 256–68. 3. For example, see Hal Brands, “Why Did Saddam Invade Iran? New Evidence on Motives, Com- plexity, and the Israel Factor,” The Journal of Military History, Vol. 75, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 861–85; Shaul Bakhash, “The Troubled Relationship: Iran and Iraq, 1930–1980,” in Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ✭ VOLUME 72, NO. 2, SPRING 2018 [Continued on next page] HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3751/72.2.14 THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR ✭ 247 These motives coincide with two of the leading explanations for why revolu- tions often lead to inter-state war, which are rooted in different perspectives on the factors that drive relations between states. One tradition in the study of international politics, dating back to Edmund Burke’s response to the French Revolution, asserts that heterogeneous systems where “states are organized according to different principles and appeal to contradictory values” are more conflict-prone.4 Revolutions increase the probability of conflict by changing the ideological composition of the international system. A principal cause of such conflict is when a new way to legitimate power and organize domestic politics is seen as presenting a threat to the status quo.5 In contrast, the realist tradition asserts that international relations are driven by the distribution of capabilities. From this perspective, revolutions that alter the power of the revolutionary state can prompt opportunistic invasions.6 What, then, caused war in 1980? Can the two potentially complimentary mo- tives be distinguished? There is not only an inherent interest in explaining the origins of the Iran-Iraq War but a larger theoretical significance.7 Using primary sources — Iraqi records that were captured by American forces in 2003, including recordings of Saddam Husayn’s deliberations with his advisors;8 American intelligence reports regarding Iraqi war preparations; and interviews with former Iraqi generals — I argue that the cause of the war was primarily Saddam’s fear that the Iranian Revolution would threaten his own regime, rather than that he was using the opportunity of a weakened Iran to further his geopolitical aims. I first examine the possible motives for invading Iran and then assess the empirical evidence for the two motives. I con- clude by examining the implications this case has for the broader issue of why revolu- tions can cause war. [continued from previous page] of War, ed. Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2004), pp. 21–22; W. Thom Workman, The Social Origins of the Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994); An- thony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 31–33; R. K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 62–69. 4. Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker (Garden City, NY: Fox Doubleday and Company, Inc, 1966), p. 100. The most developed account from this perspective is Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 5. Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 43. 6. Paul Ewenstein, “Revolution, War, and Offensive Realism” (PhD dissertation, Boston Univer- sity, 2011); Walt, Revolution and War, p. 32. 7. Some of the main works on why revolutions can lead to war provide case studies on the Iran-Iraq War, see Patrick J. Conge, From Revolution to War: State Relations in a World of Change (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 65–88; Walt, Revolution and War, pp. 210–68; Ewenstein, “Revolution, War, and Offensive Realism,” pp. 147–84. 8. The captured records analyzed in this article are from the Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) at National Defense University in Washington, DC. For more about these records, see Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki, and Mark E. Stout, The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978–2001 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. xi–xiv; Lawrence Rubin, “Research Note: Documenting Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2011), pp. 458–66. 248 ✭ MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL CONTEXT AND MOTIVES FOR WAR One possible motive for Saddam’s invasion of Iran stems from the ideological shift brought on by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the rise of a new regime in Iran that threatened the internal stability of Iraq. The new Islamic Republic of Iran, in contrast to the ethno-nationalist secular monarchy that preceded it, became a model for Islamist revolutionaries seeking to overthrow existing regimes. The new Shi‘i theoc- racy also served as a platform for spreading revolution abroad, in contrast to the Pahlavi regime, which had refrained from interference in Iraqi affairs since 1975. Iraq was particularly vulnerable since Arab Shi‘a were a majority of its population and had been marginalized throughout the country’s modern history.9 In the 1970s, as political Islam was becoming more popular throughout the region, Iraqi Shi‘i opposition groups that embraced Islamism grew in strength, number, and degree of radicalization. The level of discontent was made manifest in 1977 when there were large-scale protests against the Iraqi regime that bordered on revolt.10 Iraqi Shi‘a even had a figure of a stature resembling that of Iranian Revolution lead- er Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a highly re- spected and politically active cleric whom Khomeini was familiar with from his 13 years of exile in Najaf, Iraq.11 In addition, the new Iranian leadership did not hide its intentions. Iran beamed Arabic-language radio broadcasts into Iraq that called on Iraqis, including members of the military, to rise up and overthrow Saddam Husayn. These activities were thought to go beyond just talk. Most spectacularly, Iraq saw Iran’s hand in an assassina- tion attempt on Deputy Prime Minister Tariq ‘Aziz in 1980.
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