Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History

Williamson Murray,

Kevin Woods

3.91 · Rating details · 43 ratings · 7 reviews

The Iran-Iraq War is one of the largest, yet least documented conflicts in the history of the Middle East. Drawing from an extensive cache of captured Iraqi government records, this book is the first comprehensive military and strategic account of the war through the lens of the Iraqi regime and its senior military commanders. It explores the rationale and decision-making ...more

Get A Copy

Or buy for

Hardcover, 412 pages

Published November 7th 2014 by Cambridge University Press (first published July 30th 2014)

More Details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Iran-Iraq War, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about The Iran-Iraq War

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

3.91 ·

Rating details

· 43 ratings · 7 reviews

Filter

Sort order

Mar 18, 2015 Hadrian rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction, war

This is a detailed treatment of a war which is too often overlooked by Western pundits and commentators. In examining the consequences of this, the longest 'conventional war' in the 20th century, one can find almost direct links to the current turmoil in the region, including the rise of DAESH.

The distinctive feature of this volume is its extensive use of translated documents taken after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. There are several hundred of them in the citations; they inclu This is a detailed treatment of a war which is too often overlooked by Western pundits and commentators. In examining the consequences of this, the longest 'conventional war' in the 20th century, one can find almost direct links to the current turmoil in the region, including the rise of DAESH.

The distinctive feature of this volume is its extensive use of translated documents taken after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. There are several hundred of them in the citations; they include everything from direct orders to meeting transcripts to ammunition purchases. These give a new and comprehensive picture of the Iraqi perspective of the war.

The book's history is detailed, and I will give a very brief summary of it and eschew summaries of individual battles (though the book does a fair job of that). The chronology starts with a brief history of Iraq since its time as a British imperial possession, and includes biographies of Saddam Hussein, a comparative analysis of the Iranian and Iraqi militaries in 1980, and the political ideology of Baathism. The more direct roots of the conflict, however, started with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and Hussein's paranoia over Iraq's repressed Shi'a majority. The look at political institutions is particularly well done. It would appear that the Iraqi regime had that flaw so pervasive in dictatorships - a tendency to appoint political or military leadership positions to personal favorites, instead of those with demonstrated ability. Saddam also had a preponderance to emphasize special training and individual morale over equipment or logistics.

The invasion of Iran began on September 22, 1980 without a formal declaration. The Iraqis bombed Iranian air fields (attempts to neutralize the planes leftover from the Shah's regime which were military aid from the United States), and six divisons crossed the border. Four attacked in the south, towards the Arab-majority region of Khuzestan, against the border cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan, and part followed a line of attack towards Ahvaz through Bostan and Susangerd.

Although the Iraqis had first made seemingly-impressive territorial gains, their progress came to a halt by 1981. The forces in the northern Iran and southern Iran were not able to mutually support each other and did not form a cohesive defensive line. After a series of costly counterattacks, the Iranians had scored a major victory in March 1982 with 'Operation Undeniable Victory', which relied on a combination of massed infantry attacks and helicopter infiltration. Though it was an especially costly battle, Iran had managed to recapture most of Khuzestan by June.

By 1983, although the initiative of the conflict had swung in Iran's favor, any drives into Iraqi territory were complicated due to a series of fortifications rush built earlier that year. The next few years often drew parallels with World War I due to patterns of massed infantry attacks, trench warfare, and long stretches of land scarred by artillery. But that is only part of the story - there were continued air battles and ballistic missile strikes, attacks on tanker ships and oil refineries, as well as more gruesome aspects of religious fundamentalism and ethnic cleansing. Although this discussion is very deliberately kept on the strategic and political level, it is horrific, even by the standards of military history, to read about cities marked for air strikes because of the ethnic composition of their population, or the indiscriminate use of chemical warfare. And then there are the suicide squads and forced conscriptions...

In other areas the book has a surplus of detail. To take one example, the Iraqis had dominated Iran in intercepting signals intelligence. This was not due to a special ability for breaking Iranian cryptography, but because the Iranians had so badly implemented it! The Iraqi intelligence agencies had a surplus of radio messages translated without any encryption at all, and they often could not handle the sheer volume of new information. This was to Iraq's advantage, and one of their redoubts against Iran's sheer size.

Foreign policy also plays a major role here. Nearly every other world power had sold at least one of the parties weapons or intelligence at some point. Both Iran and Iraq were suspicious of each other since 1979, but both were paranoid about the Americans and the Israelis. Curiously enough, both sides received some military aid from both the Soviet Union and the United States over the course of the war, although the quantity and types of aid varied widely since 1980. There are some reports of Saddam's regime complaining about the quality of US satellite imagery.

The war finally ended in August 1988, at a loss to both sides. There were no formal territorial changes, and both sides had lost hundreds of thousands of troops and over hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damages. Even so, the violence continued for months after, with state-funded militia groups continuing operations on both sides, as well as Saddam implementing a systematic genocide of the Kurds and other minorities in the al-Anfal campaign.

This history of the Iran-Iraq War is valuable and useful. I should caution that although it is extremely detailed in its analysis of the Iraqi system, it is comparatively light on viewing the Iranians, and even outside intervention (e.g. Israel, the United States, the Soviet Union). Furthermore, it only occasionally discusses an individual or tactical perspective of the war, and that would also require another book (though it turns my stomach just thinking about it). That being said, this is still a well-crafted study of military history and I could seriously recommend it to scholars of the period (certainly those more in depth than myself) or anyone interested in what came after. ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2018 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: middle-east

A long and brutal struggle between two militaries that suffered from high levels of incompetence, the war between Iraq and Iran was marked with largely failed offenses, the use of human wave tactics by the Iranians, the widespread utilization of poison gas by the Iraqis, air and missile bombardments of cities by both sides, and mutually lackluster military leadership and staff work. This book has the advantage over previous works on this war because the authors were able to peruse secret state p ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 24, 2014 Jonathan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-east

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 12, 2016 Ali Tehrani rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book provides a military and strategic history of the Iran-Iraq War based on Iraqi records captured after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Iran-Iraq War has in many ways shaped my life and the life of my family, and so I'm deeply interested to know more about the war.

This book provides a broad overview of the War, but at the same time often delves into a greater level of detail that I need to know. In fairness, the book is titled "A Military and Strategic History," and true to its ti ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 12, 2017 Joe Collins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history-post-1970

Interesting book that covers the military aspects of the Iran-Iraq War, most as seen by the Iraqis as it relies heavily on captured Iraqi after the collapse of their government to US forces in 2003. Each chapter covers a specific time frame and covers all of the aspects of the military operations for that period of time. It does cover some of the political aspects, but not that heavily.

flag Like · see review

Feb 03, 2015 Daniel rated it really liked it

nice that an author covered a War from the Strategic and Operational level of conflict. Two nations slugged it out over 8 years, Iran thought religious zeal and revolutionary fervor could replace sound tactics and strategy, from alienating the west which limited the ability to import arms and repair parts to refusing to make soldiers shave limiting the effectiveness of gas masks. For his part, Saddam Hussein did everything he could to cost hi nation the war, a great example of another dictator w ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 15, 2015 Warren Blore rated it really liked it

A stunning description of incompetence in war and intelligence - neither side showing any awareness of the other's capabilities or intentions even. Granted the book is written from rescued Iraqi archives and not Iranian ones but the prisoner transcripts and defector memoirs paint a damning picture.

flag Like · see review