American Geographical Society

Geopolitical Origins of the Iran-Iraq War

Author(s): Will D. Swearingen
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), pp. 405-416
Published by: American Geographical Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/215091 .
Accessed: 28/12/2012 20:49
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Geographical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GEOPOLITICAL

ORIGINS

OF THE IRAN-IRAQ

WAR*

WILL D. SWEARINGEN
The origins of the Iran-Iraq war are geopolitical in two essential ways.
Territorialissues, including the Shatt al-Arab boundary and five other zones, were a
direct cause of contention. Nonterritorial conflicts also had key roles, but territory has
been the measure in assessing their outcomes. Control of disputed land is the primary
means of demonstratingprevailing power.
ABSTRACT.

T HE Iran-Iraq war, which

began in September 1980, has become the

bloodiest and most destructive military conflict since World War II. The
estimated toll includes more than one million dead, one million refugees, and thousands of prisoners of war. The war costs each combatant
country as much as $1 billion monthly, and the total cost to date may exceed
$300 billion.' The once prosperous economies of Iran and Iraq are seriously
crippled, and full recovery from war damage will probably take more than
a decade. The possible effects of the war on both regional stability and
international security are understood, but the origins of the conflict are not.
In the eight years since the outbreak of hostilities, attacks on oil shipments
in the Persian Gulf, the intervention of the United States and other nonregional governments, and the sensational aspects of the conflict have tended
to obscure the origins of the war. One group of analysts argues that the
primary cause was the dispute about the 105-kilometer-long Shatt al-Arab
boundary. Another group contends that this dispute was a pretext for the
escalation of hostilities of other sorts, all of which were nonterritorial. Both
explanations of the war's origins are inadequate, because they fail to address
the full range of causal factors. A geopolitical analysis encompasses virtually
all the relevant factors:ones intrinsically territoriallike the boundary dispute
and those of a different nature. This article first outlines the chronology of
the conflict and then examines its underlying causes from a geopolitical
perspective.
THE WAR

According to the government of Iraq, the conflict started on 4 September

1980, when Iranian forces shelled Iraqi towns and villages along the middle
border region of the two countries. According to Iran and most observers,
Iraq was the aggressor: the war started on 22 September, when Iraqi forces

* I
thank Amy Budge, Technology Application Center, University of New Mexico, for drafting the
maps.
1 Anthony H. Cordesman, The Iran-Iraq War and Western Security 1984-87: Strategic Implications
and Policy Options (London: Jane's Publishing Co., 1987), 9-10.

* DR. SWEARINGENis a research assistant professor of geography at the Technology Application Center, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque,
New Mexico 87131. He is
currently a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

406

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

launched a full-scale invasion of Iran. From the present perspective, those

events in September 1980 merely represent the breaking point in an escalation of tension that had been under way for many months. Iran contended
that between March 1979 and September 1980 it had experienced 434 attacks
by Iraqi artillery, infantry, and armored forces as well as 363 violations of
its airspace.2 Iraq asserted that it had suffered 544 violations of its borders
and airspace during essentially the same period.3 Since the fall of the Iranian
monarchy and the onset of the Islamic revolution in January 1979, relations
between the two countries had steadily deteriorated. Besides territorial violations, both sides engaged in hostile propaganda, sabotage, terrorism, and
incitements to revolt. In that context of overt hostility, the issue of which
country did what to the other on a specific day or at any location is largely
irrelevant.4
At the outbreak of warfare in September 1980, the two combatants were
more or less evenly matched. Each country had regular armed forces numbering approximately 250,000. Iraq had more tanks (nearly 2,900 versus 2,000)
but fewer combat aircraft(approximately 330 versus 450).5The Iraqi invasion
of Iran in late September established three fronts.6 The main one was in the
south, where Iraqi forces penetrated deep into Khuzistan and captured a
strip seventy to one hundred miles wide along the western border of this
province (Fig. 1). Khuzistan is significant because its ethnic composition is
primarily Arab and because it contains the principal oil reserves and refining
operations in Iran. The other two fronts were in the central and northern
border regions, and the very narrow penetration of Iran there posed no
crucial threat.
From the outset, each side displayed a high level of military incompetence.7 A Pentagon official remarked that the war was "a case of the incompetent fighting the inept."8 Sophisticated weaponry has been misused with
regularity-for example, tanks as stationary bunkers. Iraq seems either to
have had no clearly formulated strategic goals for its invasion or to have
fallen so short of achieving them that they remain a mystery. Six days into
the war and without a stranglehold on Iran, the Iraqi government called for
a cease-fire and issued a set of demands that was promptly rejected. Until
mid-July 1988,the Iraniangovernment was unwilling to negotiate a resolution.
Moeini, The Iranian Position, in The Iraq-Iran War: Issues of Conflict and Prospects for
Settlement (edited by Ali E. Hillal Dessouki; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, Center of International Studies, 1981), 9.
3 J. M. Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran: The Years of Crisis (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 200.
4Tareq Y. Ismael, Iraq and Iran: Roots of Conflict (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 22.
5William 0. Staudenmaier, A Strategic Analysis, in The Iran-Iraq War: New Weapons, Old Conflicts
(edited by Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi; New York: Praeger, 1983), 30.
6 Stephen R. Grummon, The Iran-Iraq War: Islam Embattled (New York: Praeger, 1982), 21-22; Dilip
Hiro, Chronicle of the Gulf War, MERIP Reports 125-126 (1984): 9.
7Arthur Campbell Turner, Nationalism and Religion: Iran and Iraq at War, in The Regionalization
of Warfare: The Falkland/Malvinas Islands, Lebanon, and the Iran-Iraq Conflict (edited by James
Brown and William P. Snyder; New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985), 157-158.
8 Wall Street Journal,7 November 1980.
2 Nasser

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

407

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

As Suloymoniyah
Kirkuk

If,

/'
Khnan 9sr-e
Khonoqin
t

Shirin

K
Ke3rmonshoh

I RAN

Naft Khaneh
,(Manda1;*<
Boghdad
Zarbatiyab,tlMron

DezfulI

PROVINCE

,Ahvaz

Basr

oKhrramshahr
Abadan

Shatt al-Aroa

/s
Iraqi-held Territory
March 1981

/ KUWAIT

/
0

km

miles

PERSIAN/ARABIAN
GULF

100

1o0

SAUDI ARABIA
FIG.1-Theater

of conflict.

The war has proceeded in five distinct phases. The first was the Iraqi
offensive that began on 22 September 1980 and ended by March 1981. The
second phase consisted of a year-long stalemate during which Iraq held
approximately 14,000 square kilometers of Iranian territory but was unable
to advance. The third phase, beginning in March 1982, was marked by an
Iranian counteroffensive that drove Iraqi troops from the occupied territory
and even penetrated a short distance into Iraq. That counteroffensive was

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

408

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

spent by late fall 1983.9The fourth phase, characterized by stalemate, continued to April 1988. The fifth phase, still under way, began with the unexpected Iraqi recapture of occupied territory southeast of Basra. This phase
has essentially shifted the battleline back to the prewar boundary.
During the past five years, the conflict has degenerated into a brutal war
of attrition with resemblances to World War I: trench warfare, long, bloody
battles with minor territorial gains, occasional use of poison gas, and strategic
strikes against cities and vital oil installations. Outmanned, Iraq has been
able to fend off Iran by superior access to new armaments. Neither side
seems able to muster the force to inflict a decisive blow. Yet few analysts
have predicted the turns of events in the war. The only prediction that can
confidently be made is that resolution of the conflict must address its origins.
ORIGINS OF THE WAR

Some analysts contend that the war started primarily over a boundary
dispute, and at least five pieces of evidence support the interpretation. (1)
Iran and Iraq, or their predecessors, have been fighting for centuries over
their border, particularly the Shatt al-Arab waterway. (2) The most recent
boundary treaty, signed in 1975, was a source of deep humiliation to Iraq.
Its government was forced to accede to the treaty by Iranian promotion of
a Kurdish revolt that threatened to dismember Iraq and to deprive it of its
primary oil-producing region. In exchange for Iran's pledge to stop supporting the revolt, Iraq gave up a large portion of the vital Shatt al-Arab
waterway. When Saddam Hussein, the chief Iraqi negotiator, became president of the country in 1978, he vowed to redress the boundary situation.
Hussein saw his opportunity after the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy
brought about a debilitating purge of the military and a paralysis of the
economy. According to this interpretation, the war was an Iraqi attempt to
recover territory ceded in 1975 and to restore national pride. (3) The abrogation of the 1975 treaty by Iraq five days before its invasion of Iran had
the umistakable character of a declaration of war. Hussein vowed, "This
Shatt shall again be, as it has been throughout history, Iraqi and Arab in
name and reality."10(4) After the Iraqi capture of the western part of the
oil-rich province of Khuzistan, a key condition for its return was restoration
of Shatt al-Arab to the pre-1975 status. (5) Iraqi justification of occupation of
Khuzistan emphasized that control of this strategic region would compel
Iran to recognize Iraq's territorial rights and to renegotiate the 1975 treaty.
"The war was an extension of the politics of border negotiations by means
of a military siege."11
Together the evidence that the Shatt al-Arab boundary issue was the
cause of the conflict is compelling. A survey of the historical evolution of
9 Hiro, footnote 6 above, 5-12.
10 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Middle East and Africa, Washington, D.C., 18 September
1980, E5.
1' Claudia Wright, Implications of the Iraq-Iran War, Foreign Affairs 59 (1980-81): 287.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

409

the boundary reveals why Iraq might have gone to war over this issue. The
frontier between Iran and Iraq has been subject to dispute for nearly five
centuries. The first treaty addressing this frontier was concluded in 1535
between the Persian and Ottoman empires. Seventeen additional treaties
have been signed since then.12 The key treaties from the current perspective
were those of 1639, 1847, 1913, 1937, and 1975 (Fig. 2).
In 1639 the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia signed the first treaty to
define a border in the region. That treaty recognized Ottoman control over
what would become the modern state of Iraq and attempted to establish a
boundary between the opposing empires. As was then customary, the boundary was defined according to the loyalties of villages and nomadic tribes
rather than to geographical reference points. Thus a border zone, rather than
a precise boundary, was created between the Zagros Mountains on the east
and the Tigris and Shatt al-Arab waterways on the west.13 Though not
specifically mentioning the Shatt al-Arab, this treaty has provided the foundation for all subsequent boundary discussions.
The Treaty of Erzerum in 1847 directly addressed the issue of the Shatt
al-Arab. The United Kingdom and Russia were parties to this treaty. The
great powers wanted a more precise definition of the Ottoman-Persian
boundary to ease the expansion of their imperial interests in the region. The
United Kingdom planned to develop steamship navigation on the Tigris
River and the Shatt al-Arab, and Russia hoped to build a road linking its
southern territories with Baghdad.4 This treaty ostensibly allocated the Shatt
al-Arab to the Ottoman Empire; however, Iran received Abadan Island, other
small islands in the waterway, and former Ottoman territory on the eastern
bank of the Shatt al-Arab. Additionally Iran was granted right of free passage
on this waterway. The result was a significant territorialloss for the Ottoman
Empire and later for Iraq.
Subsequent treaties confirmed the provisions of the Treaty of Erzerum,
but an important modification appeared in 1913. That year a treaty granted
Iran a five-mile stretch of territorial waters in the Shatt al-Arab opposite
Khorramshahr. From a point approximately four miles above the mouth of
the Karun River to a point almost one mile below it, the boundary was
shifted to the middle of the Shatt al-Arab. The United Kingdom, aiming to
facilitate its oil industry, played a crucial role in effecting this change. Oil
had been discovered in southwestern Iran in 1908 by an agent of the predecessor of British Petroleum. Development of the deposits required a good
port to receive drilling and other heavy equipment. British ships had to
anchor in Turkish territorial waters off Khorramshahr to discharge the equip12 Vahe J. Sevian, The
Evolution of the Boundary between Iraq and Iran, in Essays in Political
Geography (edited by Charles A. Fisher; London: Methuen, 1968), 211-223; Daniel Pipes, A Border
Adrift: Origins of the Conflict, in The Iran-Iraq War, footnote 5 above, 13-20.
13 Alexander
Melamid, The Shatt al-'Arab Boundary Dispute, Middle East Journal 22 (1968): 351;
Ismael, footnote 4 above, 2.
14 Melamid, footnote 13
above, 351-353; Pipes, footnote 12 above, 13-14.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

410

THE GEOGRAPHICAL

REVIEW

KborkKhobahr

l..

~~~RAN~~I

IRAQ

<,

St

NILAN

mm1847S.unsy
.
C--D

1937

Fc.

The

FIG.2-The

Shat
Ari

al

Shatt al-Arab boundary.

ment, a circumstance that involved Turkish customs officials. The United

Kingdom enlisted Russia in an effort to pressure Iran and the Ottoman
Empire to redefine their boundary. The present-day port of Khorramshahr
was developed in waters transferred to Iranian jurisdiction by the 1913 treaty.
A similar boundary shift occurred in 1937. By that time the political
alignments had fundamentally changed. A strong ruler, Reza Khan, had
come to power in Iran in 1921, and Iraq had become a British mandate in
1920 and then an independent country in 1932. However, British economic
interests and behind-the-scenes control remained influential. The United
Kingdom prevailed on Iran and Iraq to rearrange their boundary off Abadan
so that an improved port could handle additional oil exports from Iran.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

411

Along a four-mile stretch of the Shatt al-Arab opposite Abadan, the boundary
was shifted to the thalweg, or the deepest part of the river. Again Iraq lost
territory.
The last important boundary change occurred in 1975. For reasons stated
previously, the entire Iran-Iraqboundary along the Shatt al-Arab was shifted
to the thalweg, and the rearrangement again came at the expense of Iraq.
Measured in square kilometers, the territorial loss was trifling. However, the
psychological effect was enormous. Iraq is almost entirely a landlocked country, and it regards the Shatt al-Arab as its primary connection to the outside
world as well as the raison d'etre of its claim to the status of a Persian Gulf
power.
In sum, in four different treaties Iraq suffered a significant loss of some
of the most important of its national territory. On each occasion, the loss
resulted from political coercion by external powers. Given this legacy and
the especially humiliating characterof the 1975 treaty, it is easy to understand
why Iraq might have gone to war in 1980 when it felt that power and
opportunity were in its favor. The evidence strongly supports this
interpretation.
Yet many observers assert that the boundary issue was only a pretext
and that the actual causes of the war were of a different nature.15 One analyst
has argued, "Anyone who believes that . . . the Shatt al-Arab is the heart of
the conflict ... will also be convinced that Israeli-Palestinian discord centers
on sharing the waters of the Jordan River.... The idea that past border
conflicts adequately explain the origin of the Iran-IraqWar is both an illusion
and a legalistic sham."16In this interpretation four nonterritorial factors are
the keys to understanding the conflict.
Firstly, the personal animosity between Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini has become manifested in state policy. In 1978 Hussein, at
the behest of the shah, expelled Khomeini from the holy city of Najaf in
southern Iraq, where he had been living in exile for thirteen years. When
Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979, he repeatedly called for the overthrow of Hussein. Since the outbreak of the war, the one condition for ending
it about which Iran had been inflexible was the banishment of Hussein from
power.
Secondly, the nearly five centuries of conflict over borders have commonly been viewed as a reflection of ethnic animosity between Arabs and
Persians, or the rivalry between Sunni and Shi'i Muslims. However, it is
most convincingly interpreted as a struggle for status as the dominant regional power. Before 1979, Iran, with strong support from the United States,
had emerged as the dominant military power in the Gulf region. In Iraq a
15 Richard W. Bulliet, Time, Perceptions and Conflict Resolution, in The Iran-Iraq War, footnote 5
above, 65-81; Jack S. Levy and Mike Froelich, Causes of the Iran-Iraq War, in Regionalization of
Warfare, footnote 7 above, 127-143.
16
Bulliet, footnote 15 above, 73-74.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

412

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

goal of the Ba'th Party after 1968 was to make the country the great power
of the Gulf region, and Iraq sought to fill the power vacuum that was created
by the fall of the shah. Iraq also had aspiration to be the predominant Arab
power in the Middle East, and demonstration of its strength by invading an
enfeebled Iran and recapturing Arab territory advanced that goal. The taking
of western Khuzistan and other early Iraqi victories were proclaimed as the
greatest military triumphs of the Arabs over the Persians since the Battle of
Qadisiya in 636. One condition for withdrawal from Khuzistan was that Iran
relinquish three Arab islands in the lower Gulf that the shah's navy had
forcibly occupied in 1971.17 This condition was evidence that Iraq was posturing to become the leader of the Arab countries and the regional superpower. The latter interpretation was confirmed by a deputy prime minister
of Iraq who remarked that one of his country's objectives was "to prove in
battle that it is stronger than Iran and fully capable of defeating it."''8
Thirdly, the prevailing ideology of Iraq is Arab nationalism; in post-shah
Iran Islamic fundamentalism prevails. As practiced by the two countries,
these ideologies are in direct conflict. Arab nationalism is secular. With almost
60 percent of the Iraqi population consisting of Shi'i Muslims, the ruling
Sunni Muslims cannot emphasize religion. Instead they stress Arab unity
and socialism. Islamic fundamentalism in Iran plays on anti-Western, antimodernist sentiments and stresses a return to the true Islamic values of the
past. The war therefore represents a clash between two mutually exclusive
types of legitimacy, two different and opposing sets of values.
Fourthly, the rulers of Iraq fear a Shi'i rebellion. The Sunni Muslims are
clearly the minority in the country. In addition to the 60 percent of the
population that is Shi'i, 20 percent is Kurds who are Sunni but who zealously
retain their ethnic identity and have long been a secessionist group. The
ruling Sunni Arabs thus constitute only 20 percent of the population, and
the Islamic revolution in Iran, chiefly Shi'i in character, presented a threat
to this minority. Shi'i Muslims in both Iraq and Iran regard Khomeini as
their foremost political and religious leader. Since his advent to power in
1979, he has advocated not only the overthrow of the Hussein regime but
also the establishment of a true Islamic state in Iraq. The purpose of the
attack on Iran was to discredit Khomeini and his revolution. But if the
invasion was to bring about his downfall, the result has been the exact
opposite: it enabled the new clerical regime to consolidate its political control
and to rally the Iranian population against a common enemy.
The majority of analysts considers these nonterritorial factors to constitute
the true explanation of the Iran-Iraqwar. This explanation is perhaps more
convincing than the Shatt al-Arab boundary dispute by itself. However in
two ways at least, it fails to address adequately the origins of the war. Firstly,
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Middle East and Africa, Washington, D.C., 29 September
1980, E3.
18 Cited in Abdulghani, footnote 3 above, 205.
17

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

413

it treats the Shatt al-Arab dispute as a pretext for the war, when in fact the
struggle represented significantly more. Secondly, like the Shatt al-Arab
explanation, it does not account for other crucial disputes between the two
countries. Both explanations are too limited and restrictive; even in combination they fall short. In contrast, a geopolitical explanation adequately encompasses virtually all relevant factors.
GEOPOLITICAL

ANALYSIS

The origins of the Iran-Iraqwar were geopolitical in two key ways. Firstly,
territorial issues were a direct cause of the war. Besides the Shatt al-Arab
boundary dispute, there were at least five other major territorial issues.
Secondly, Iraq went to war to capture or recapture territory for its symbolic
importance. In the first instance, acquiring or controlling territory or resources was an explicit political goal. In the second, territorial gain was a
means to achieve other political ends.
Analysts who have emphasized territorial issues as the cause of the war
have focused almost exclusively on the Shatt al-Arab. Other crucial territorial
problems either have been ignored or have been given insufficient attention.
The combined political weight of these problems far exceeded that of the
dispute over the Shatt al-Arab.
In the middle border region there was an intense dispute over the strategic
heights of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad south of Qasr-e Shirin, a total of
approximately 550 square kilometers of territory that Iran had forcibly annexed from Iraq. One of the conditions in the 1975 treaty was that Iran would
return this territory.'9 However, five years later it had not done so. To add
injury to insult, much of the prewar 1980 shelling of Iraqi towns and villages,
including the principal episode on 4 September, came from these heights.
In the Iraqi interpretation, this event started the war. One of the main
objectives of the September invasion of Iran was to recapture these heights.
Oil was also a part of this conflict. The border straddles a large oil-bearing
structure, already exploited by both countries, that underlies this disputed
area.20

A second territorial dispute concerned water rights to rivers shared by

the two countries. Almost thirty rivers and streams rise in Iranian mountains,
flow into Iraq, and then drain chiefly into the Tigris River. Increased Iranian
diversion of water from these streams, which included the diversion of an
entire stream in 1959, created much hardship for Iraqi riverine settlements.
The issue had greatly strained diplomatic relations in recent decades. None
of the boundary treaties had addressed this problem, with the exception of
one concerning a small frontier stream, the Gangir, that had been equally
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Middle East and Africa, Washington, D.C., 18 September
1980, E4; Nita M. Renfrew, Who Started the War?, ForeignPolicy 66 (1987): 99-103; Salah Al-Mukhtar,
The Iraqi Position, in The Iraq-Iran War, footnote 2 above, 16-17.
20 Robert Litwak, Security in the Persian Gulf 2: Sources of Inter-State Conflict
(Aldershot, U.K.:
Gower, for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), 11-12.
19

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

414

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

divided in 1914 but without a specific mechanism for distributing its waters.21
The importance of this factor was established in the Iraqi proposal to end
the war in its early days: a key demand was increased Iraqi rights to the
waters of these streams.22
The third territorialissue involved the Kurds, whose role has been ignored
or misinterpreted by most analysts. From the Iraqi perspective, the concern
is for the territory and its resources. The Kurds are concentrated in northern
Iraq, the primary oil-producing region of the country. Kurdish nationalism
has long embodied a secessionist threat. In 1975 Iraq was forced to sign a
humiliating treaty to stop Iranian support of Kurdish rebels that threatened
Iraq's loss of northern territory.23The disdain of the Iraqi government for
the Kurds themselves has been expressed, in part, by strong military reprisals,
including gassing entire towns and villages.24By 1980the Iranian government
was again instigating Kurdish rebellion to jeopardize Iraqi sovereignty over
the northern oil-producing region. This issue, by itself, might have led to
war.
At the core of the government's fear of a Shi'i rebellion was a similar
territorial issue. Because Iraq has a significant Shi'i majority, the danger of
rebellion among the group is a vital concern to the ruling Sunni Arab
minority. However, the Shi'i are heavily concentrated in southern Iraq, a
counterbalance to the Kurdish concentration in the north. More likely than
Shi'i overthrow of the central government is loss of the Shi'i south either to
Iran or to a new state that would be closely allied with Iran.
Historically Iran long laid claim to southern Iraq. At Karbala and Najaf
are two of the holiest shrines in Shi'i Islam, and the region has the largest
concentration of Shi'i, including many Farsi speakers, outside Iran. To Iraq's
government, the export of the Islamic revolution by Iran into southern Iraq
was a thinly disguised attempt to exert old territorial claims. Khomeini was
a "turbanned shah," pursuing age-old Persian expansionist policies under
the guise of Islam.25Iraq countered with a preemptive invasion of Khuzistan,
which was perceived to be strategically significant because of its largely Arab
population. Iraqi capture of this province was an effective counterthreat to
dismember Iran.
Khuzistan indirectly was a final important territorial issue underlying
the Iraqi invasion of Iran. The status of Khuzistan has been a point of
contention between the two countries for more than sixty years. Under the
Ottoman Empire, western Khuzistan had been part of what would become
Iraq; however, after World War I, the United Kingdom ceded all of the
Pipes, footnote 12 above, 22.
Richard N. Schofield, Evolution of the Shatt al-'Arab Boundary Dispute (Wisbech, U.K.: Middle
East and North African Studies Press, 1986), 64; Turner, footnote 7 above, 154.
23 Renfrew, footnote 19 above, 100.
24
New York Times, 2 April 1988.
25
Ghassan Salameh, Checkmate in the Gulf War, MERIP Reports 125-126 (1984): 16; Al-Mukhtar,
footnote 19 above, 24.
21
22

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IRAN-IRAQ WAR

415

province to Iran. In 1960 Iraq helped establish a popular front as part of an

irredentist campaign to detach the Arabic-speaking portion of the province
from Iran, and by the late 1960s Hussein was a driving force behind that
campaign. After 1975 Iraq ostensibly dropped its claim to the region and its
support of the Khuzistan rebel movement. Nonetheless, the Iraqi invasion
of Khuzistan in 1980 raised speculation that repossession of the province
was an ultimate goal of the Iraqi government.26 This interpretation seemed
to be confirmed by the change of place-names to their historical Arabic forms
immediately after the Iraqi invasion.27
Iraqi military strategy was ambiguous during the invasion. For example,
there was no attempt to cut the transportation lines to Tehran or Isfahan.
With the exception of Khorramshahr, which Iraqi forces captured after intense house-to-house combat with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, there was
no full-fledged drive to take other key urban centers. This pattern raised
speculation that the invasion of Khuzistan was more a strategic, symbolic
action than a concerted effort to repossess territory. Nonetheless, given the
oil wealth and the additional coastline along the Persian Gulf that come with
sovereignty over the province, the potential benefits of acquiring Khuzistan
must have been considered by the Iraqi government before the September
1980 invasion of Iran.28
Territory and resources were direct geographical factors in the Iran-Iraq
war, and its origins were geopolitical in another key way: territory as symbol.
During the twentieth century, the growth of nationalism bestowed a highly
charged significance to the disputed lands along the Iran-Iraqborder. None
has acquired greater symbolic value than the Shatt al-Arab. The progressive
diminishment of Iraqi control there by treaty had little actual economic effect,
but its psychological importance was large. In addition to Iraqi concern about
the essentially landlocked status of the country, loss of the territory represented a tangible symbol of subjugation and humiliation by imperial powers
and an ancient rival. The territorial loss in 1975 was also an embarrassing
display of Iraq's failure to become the preeminant regional power and the
leader of the Arab world.
The actions of Iraq in 1980 were an attempt to redeem itself and to recover
its national pride by recapturing the Shatt al-Arab. To force renegotiation of
the boundary, Iraq invaded and captured western Khuzistan, an area with
both strategic importance as a bargaining lever and symbolism because of
the Arabic-speaking population. Wresting this region from Iranian control,
even temporarily, would help elevate Iraq to leadership in the Arab world.
One of the surprises of the war was the reluctance of the Arabic-speaking
people of Khuzistan to embrace the Iraqis as liberators, a behavior that the
Shi'i population of southern Iraq duplicated in response to the invading
26
27
28

Murray Gordon, Conflict in the Persian Gulf (New York: Facts on File, 1981), 157-159.
Moeini, footnote 2 above, 14.
Pipes, footnote 12 above, 23.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

416

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

forces from Iran. Both governments greatly miscalculated the strength of

ethnic and sectarian ties.
The factors that most analysts cite to explain the origins of the warpersonality differences between leaders, historical rivalries, and conflicting
ideologies-all have an important geopolitical dimension. Territory is the
currency with which the outcome of conflicts on these other levels is assessed.
Acquiring territory with symbolic value is a primary means of achieving
other political goals. The real significance of the Shatt al-Arab derives from
its role as a key symbol in the complex set of rivalries that exist between
the two countries.
In sum, the origins of the Iran-Iraqwar were essentially geopolitical in
two important ways: the immediate objects of dispute were territories, and
control of them was to demonstrate prevailing power. Examination of the
origins of this war eight years after its outbreak is not simply an academic
exercise. Resolution of the conflict will almost certainly have to address
origins, and formulation of foreign policy toward the two countries requires
an understanding of the conflict and its sources.

This content downloaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:49:04 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions