The Iran-Iraq War: New International Perspectives ed. by Nigel Ashton, Bryan Gibson (review)

This edited volume is an excellent contribution to the ongoing attempts to study and understand the different aspects of the twentieth century’s longest conventional war after the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) claimed the lives of at least a million Iranians and Iraqis and caused huge economic damage in both countries. The strength of this study lies in its tackling of the war from different perspectives. The introduction by the two editors, Nigel Ashton and Bryan Gibson, about the historiography of the war is insightful and helpful in its approach. By discussing the four phases of this historiography, they clearly show how each phase was triggered by events in the region. The fourth and current phase began with the opening of the Iraqi archives that were captured by U.S. troops and transferred to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and to the National Defense University.

The volume is divided into five parts with twelve articles: waging the war; economic dimensions of the war; regional perspectives; American policy; and international perspectives on the war. By looking at these components, the reader can see how, on one hand, regional and international forces influenced the events during those eight years of ferocious battles and, on the other hand, how they were affected by its developments.

Many previous studies of the Iran-Iraq conflict have looked at the war from a single perspective (such as military or economic), but here we have a multiple approach: inter alia two interesting articles about the economic dimensions; three fascinating articles about U.S. policy that explore different aspects of the U.S. involvement and relations with both sides in the conflict; and two regarding the attitudes of the Gulf countries and Turkey. Similarly, France’s involvement and the Soviet Union’s position are surveyed throughout the 1980s, when the Cold War underwent dramatic changes that, in turn, had a significant impact on decision-making in the United States, the Soviet Union, and France.

Many crucial questions are addressed: Ibrahim al-Marashi analyzes the role of the Iraqi military and its relations with the Baath Party; Rob Johnson tackles the “striking enigma of the war,” which “was the willingness of the Iranians to endure a long, costly conflict” (p. 65); Glen Rangwala discusses Iraq’s financing of the war; Chris Emery explores the Carter administration’s response to the war and attempts to uncover what the Americans knew and whether they gave tacit or active encouragement to Iraq to launch the war; and Malcolm Byrne examines how the “Critical Oral History” method helps in understanding the actions of U.S. and Iranian decision-makers. Curiously, although many of the authors discuss Israel’s indirect involvement in the war (supplying arms to Iran and playing the mediator role between the Reagan administration and the Iranians), there is no specific chapter dealing with the subject.

Some of the authors used the newly available Iraqi archives and audiotapes of the meetings of the senior Iraqi leadership, but apart from al-Marashi the authors seem to have conducted almost no research in the Baath documents housed at the Hoover Institution Archives. These documents are important in understanding issues such as how the Iraqi leadership tackled the increasing number of deaths and how “martyrdom” became part of the underlying ideology and led to major financial rewards for the families of the “martyrs.” Another aspect that could have been further explored is how Saddam Hussein managed the economic crisis and allocation of resources, and how party members were enlisted for this effort. An additional element that would have benefited from use of the Baath Party documents is the important topic of desertion, which is discussed by Williamson Murray and Kevin Woods (p. 46) but solely on the basis of materials available at the National Defense University.

The studies of the international perspective reveal how all the countries, including the two superpowers and France, were mostly groping in...