MER Article

Murray and Woods, The Iran-Iraq War

Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods, The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Nida Alahmad • 3 min read

MER Article

Debating the Iran-Iraq War on Film

For supporters of the Islamic Republic, it is the Iran-Iraq war, and not the 1979 revolution, that evokes the true spirit of the Islamic Republic. In 1979, the plethora of political groups that poured into the streets was united in the desire to get rid of the US-backed Shah, but divided as to the s

Narges Bajoghli • 10 min read

MER Article

Primer: The War

Iraq is a country of 15.5 million people living in an area somewhat larger than the state of California. Most of its land is a plain descending from mountains in the north to desert in the southwest. The area near the Gulf is marshy. This plain includes the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, between which

(Author not identified) • 8 min read

MER Article

Iran and the Gulf War

September marks the seventh anniversary of the war between Iran and Iraq. It now ranks as the longest inter-state military conflict in the Middle East in this century. It has also been the most costly in terms of human lives lost, property destroyed and numbers of people uprooted from their homes. A

• 19 min read

Current Analysis

Argo and the Roots of US-Iranian Tensions

The box-office hit Argo brings back long-faded memories of the Iran hostage crisis for many Americans. News in November 1979 that US diplomats had been taken hostage in Tehran shocked the United States. Students stormed the US embassy, blindfolding 52 Americans and threatening them at gunpoint. The

Narges Bajoghli • 3 min read

Current Analysis

Blisters and Sanctions

It was February 1987, at the front lines near Khorramshahr, in the south of Iran along the Iraqi border. We had been engaged in heavy battles for over a week. Our troops had penetrated fortified Iraqi positions, and the Iraqis were making us pay: Artillery and mortar shells rained down on us with a

Shahriar Khateri, Narges Bajoghli • 6 min read

MER Article

Guilty Bystanders

The Iran-Iraq war was fought entirely within the boundaries of the two combatant nations, but it was nonetheless a regional war. The war machine of Saddam Hussein’s regime was lubricated with billions of dollars in loans from the Arab oil monarchies, which were anxious to see the revolutionary state

Pete Moore • 15 min read

MER Article

A War on Multiple Fronts

Lasting from 1980 to 1988, the war between Iran and Iraq was the longest inter-state war of the twentieth century. Yet standard narratives of the war, or of Iranian and Iraqi political history, for that matter, barely discuss the war’s legacy for the structure of the two states in question or the wa

Arang Keshavarzian, Nida Alahmad • 29 min read

MER Article

Deep Traumas, Fresh Ambitions

The seeds of future war are sown even as parties fight and, depleted or on the verge of defeat, sue for peace. The outcome is rarely stable and may be barely tolerable to one side or the other. This rule holds true for the two belligerents no less than for their respective sponsors, keen to protect

Joost Hiltermann • 19 min read

Current Analysis

Bring In the Dead

Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23. The mourners -- drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes -- were carrying the rema

Rasmus Christian Elling • 16 min read

MER Article

From the Editor (Spring 2007)

Twin specters hang over the Middle East of the American imagination -- the perceived rise in the geopolitical power of the region’s Shi‘i Muslims and the dark shadow cast by the sectarian reprisals that increasingly propel the Iraqi civil war. In the United States, pundits and Democratic presidential

The Editors • 15 min read

MER Article

The Whole Range of Saddam Hussein's War Crimes

On October 19, 2005, in a former presidential palace that had been hastily refurbished to resemble a respectable courtroom, Saddam Hussein went on trial.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam • 15 min read