Iran-Iraq War | Animated History

[Music] crouched in a trench near enemy lines a 13-year old boy adjusts his oversized helmet like many of his comrades he is a conscript in the Iranian paramilitary militia except for some desultory fire by enemy pickets the front is quiet suddenly an officer shouts jumping to his feet the other soldiers scramble to get in line most of whom are trembling with fear ahead of them atop a gently sloping Ridge covered in minefields and barbed wire the Iraqis stare down their gun barrels waiting for the inevitable attack [Music] sadly the situation faced by the boy and his fellow conscripts will be a common sight during the brutal conflict between the provincial Revolutionary Government of Iran and a few military dictatorship of Iraq I'm Griffin Johnson the armchair historian in today's video we'll be examining the 1980's iran-iraq war a war of contradictions and anachronism with soldiers choking on clouds of mustard gas and struggling through fields of barbed wire while modern jet fighters exchanged fire above their heads and yet for all of its bloodshed this deadly conflict will end in a frustrating stalemate but first I'd like to thank my sponsor raid shadow legends because sometimes the best way to unwind after a long hard day of animating people fighting each other in the desert is to play a game where you don't need to animate people fighting each other in the desert raid shadow legends is the now ubiquitous turn-based RPG for Android and iOS devices assemble a team from 16 different heroic factions then take them on adventures through 13 spectacularly realized locations raid shadow legends even has a feature called multi battle auto mode that allows you to step away for however long you need while battles run in the background with both a PvP area and a fully voiced single-player campaign grade shadow legends is fun for players of both turn-based RPGs and online multiplayer RPGs while you're playing don't forget to check out the weekly tournaments and events for the chance to win the offered prizes and rewards and check out the numerous updates that will be rolling out over the next six months including new factions and a faction war feature check out the description below and use my link to get 50,000 silver and a free champion to start your journey today as pointless as the war was it was an unavoidable product of the volatile situation present in the Middle East at the time the relationship between Iran and Iraq was particularly unstable as Saddam Hussein desperately wanted control over the Shatt al-arab waterway as well as Iran's oil-rich Cruzatte Stan province the 1975 agreement was supposed to have solved this dispute but Saddam chafed under its constraints besides he only signed it to end a Kurdish rebellion supported via Iranian arms shipments his militant attitude only intensified after the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the rise of an Islamic theocratic government that was ideologically opposed to Saddam's secular bathurst dictatorship tensions finally boiled over into open hostility on September 22nd 1980 when the iraqi air force commenced a preemptive strike on iranian air force the following day six Iraqi ground divisions stormed the border aiming at the coos at Stan province and Shatt al-arab waterway but despite the element of surprise the Iraqi Air Assault faltered and thanks to a lack of modern bombers with most of its Air Force safe inside of hardened shelters Iranians retaliated with their own air raids on Iraq's infrastructure and armoured divisions one of these raids operation scorch soared heavily damaged the incomplete office Iraq nuclear reactor 17 kilometers were roughly 11 miles south of Baghdad despite being harried by f4 phantom jet and a age Super Cobra attack helicopters the Iraqi columns rumbled toward quorum sharp here their advance stall bogged down by intense street fighting that produced seven thousand casualties on both sides including 200 Iraqi armored vehicles although a tactical defeat for the Iranians a forty nine day battle delayed the Iraqi advance long enough for 200,000 Iranian volunteers to reach the front lines by early November the sieges of the Cuza t'stand province had set the tone for the rest of the war denied a decisive victory saddam ordered his forces to halt and consolidate their gains in december on january 5th 1981 Iran launched Operation Nasser or victory three massive tank columns smashed into the Iraqi defensive lines around the besieged city of des Ville although intended as a surprise attack the Iranian forces were spotted by observation planes as they crossed the Karka River given time to prepare the Iraqis bunker down and waited for the attack to become mired in the treacherous floodplains surrounding Susan Berg the result was a decisive Iraqi victory with between 100 to 200 Iranian tanks lost the Iraqi is lost fewer than 100 fighting vehicles however while Saddam continued to dominate on land the Iranians exploited their advantage in the skies on April 3rd a force of 8 F 4 phantoms and 4 f-14 Tomcats attacked the h3 airbase the strike occurred behind enemy and was one of the few successful stealth operations of the war by the time the smoke cleared at least 27 enemy planes had been destroyed major damage had been done to the airfield itself and the unscathed Iranians scoffed after these early operations both combatants settled into a rhythm familiar to any veteran of the great war waves of Iranian conscripts would pour themselves an Iraqi fortifications suffering hundreds of lives for a few meters of blood-soaked Sam conversely the Iraqi troops clung to their static defense like limpets their commanders unwilling to risk for wrath of their insane dictator by showing any tactical initiative thus while the Iranians suffered huge losses in each assault even minor breakthroughs quickly snowball into the encirclement of entire Iraqi divisions the stalemate was finally broken when Iranian strategists realized to be crucial flaw with operation victory with this in mind they launched operation undeniable victory in March 1982 although merely an escalation of human wave tactics the Iranians had already been employing the sheer size of the renewed assault was enough to breach the Iraqi defensive line and drive them out of the coos at Stan region fueled by little more than sheer determination the Iranian conscripts continued to advance liberating quorum char on May 24th and pushing the Iraqi military back to the border by late June sometimes a little adjective goes a long way when news reached Saddam heads began to roll anyone considered responsible for the Iraqi retreat was executed at least 300 officers and ten generals by the end of 1983 apparently too busy killing his own people to continue fighting Saddam tried suing for peace in mid-1982 however the Supreme Leader of Iran flatly rejected his proposal declaring his intent to continue the war until the Baathist regime had been replaced by an Islamic Republic this proved to be no idle threat as Iran launched Operation Ramadan on July 13th 1982 sending more than 100,000 Revolutionary Guards and militia some as young as 12 straight toward the entrenched Iraqis at first their fervor proved a match for machine guns and artillery collages but quickly filtered against the Iraqis deployed in clear violation of the Geneva Convention although it temporarily secured a 50 kilometer or 31 mile stretch of Iraqi territory operation Ramadan ultimately more than send 20,000 men to their graves alongside 400 armored vehicles the Iraqis meanwhile lost about 9,000 soldiers and at least 700 vehicles sadly for the troops caught up in this slaughter neither side was willing to compromise Iranian propaganda painted the war as a righteous jihad at a test of their nation's devotion to Allah ensuring a near endless wave of fresh soldiers to replace the hideous losses they were suffering Iraq meanwhile began receiving large supplies of war materiel from the Soviet Union and other countries allowing Saddam to continue his belligerent attitude in spite of a rising economic crisis convinced they could replicate the success of operation undeniable victory Iran continued their assaults throughout 1983 and early 1984 but out of seven major offensives only two were strategic victories on the other hand Iran still dominated the air war despite having fewer than 70 operational aircraft as human waves continued crashing impotently against the Iraqi defensive line Iranian strategists grasped the need for a new approach lacking the equipment to assault Iraqi strongholds the Iranians began probing for weaknesses along the enemy lines taking advantage of favorable terrain whenever possible such terrain was identified in the wetlands covering most of southern Iraq the region was also full of Kurdish guerrillas known as the Peshmerga who were more than willing to cooperate with the Iranians against the genocide 'el sadhana however despite training a large commando force for an amphibious assault Iran's first attack through the marshes in late February 1984 was a disaster Iraqi forces responded with mustard gas and submerged electrical cables turning whole section of marshland into inescapable death traps over 40,000 Iranian troops and 49 helicopters were lost in the assault making this one of the bloodiest battles of the war so far Iraq's economy was also starting to falter around this time Syria a supporter of Iran closed a crucial pipeline which prevented Iraqi oil from reaching tankers in the Mediterranean and consequently decreased the iraqi budget by 5 billion a month in response Saudi Arabia Kuwait and other Arab countries intervened on Iraq's behalf fearing the growing influence of Iran in the region in true Gulf state fashion their aid came in the form of 60 billion in subsidies per year Western European countries and the u.s. were sympathetic to Iraq as well and the u.s. increased support in 1982 by providing diplomatic monetary and military support including billions of dollars in loans political influence and intelligence on Iranian deployments gathered by American spy satellites meanwhile at sea Iraq began targeting Iranian shipping in order to provoke Iran into closing the vital Strait of Hormuz which would almost certainly trigger an American intervention Iran in turn retaliated by attacking Iraqi shipping and the two sides waged a tanker war for the next five years that resulted in damage to 546 commercial vessels and the deaths of 450 sailors unable to conduct offensive ground operations Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi Air Force to begin bombing civilian targets between 1984 to 1985 large-scale air raids racked up a civilian body count in the tens of thousands to counter these atrocities Iran developed a highly sophisticated defense network combining interceptors and surface-to-air missiles successfully the aircraft Iraq then started employing soviet-made Scud missiles and domestically manufactured under all Hussein's while notoriously inaccurate the al-hussein possessed a 1,100 two-pound high-explosive warhead and a 400 mile or 643 kilometer range making it a potent terror weapon during a seven week period in 1988 alpha Sainz killed 2,000 Iranian civilians and injured 6,000 more Russian go unanswered Iran purchased scuds from Libya and launched them against Baghdad back on the front line iran finally won a major victory in the first battle of alpha in early 1986 severing iraq's access to the Persian Gulf Saddam's forces countered by seizing the city of Moran in mid-may but the enemy recaptured it in June desperate to avoid further incursions Iraq adopted a dynamic defense strategy that enlisted the support of the entire civilian population male university students were drafted into the military in droves and civilians were ordered to clear marshlands and help construct static defenses vast quantities of foreign equipment poured into Iraq as well and Saddam was able to expand his military to 600,000 men making it the fourth largest in the world heedless of the odds being stacked against them Iran now staged a three-pronged offensive aimed at capturing the city of Basra on December 25th 1986 Iranian forces attempted to capture the island of ill Malory haces no successful a sustained sixteen thousand casualties in the process but all this was just a drop compared to the ocean of blood spilled during the main Iranian attack operation Karbala v aka the great harvest it was the largest battle of the war hitting three hundred thousand two determined Iraqi defenders against 150 to 200 thousand Iranian invaders but after weeks of assaults and an artillery bombardment that reduced most of Basra to smoking ruins the great harvest had reaped nothing more than 65,000 Iranian casualties this was the beginning of the end throughout the rest of 1987 Iran mounted no more major offensives and the rhetoric of a holy jihad began to falter in the face of war exhaustion already strained by years of warfare and economic sanctions the Iranian economy virtually collapsed under the additional weight of Iraqi missile attacks and bombing campaigns in July 1987 the UN Security Council passed resolution 598 verging a ceasefire and a return to pre-war boundaries but Saddam was far too busy preparing for future offensives to heed this call for peace and his Iranian counterpart were Hollow Kamini still believed in a divine justification for war ultimately for Kamini no amount of zeal for Allah could save the Iranian forces from defeat at the Second Battle of in mid-april of 1988 heard by their victory the Iraqis initiated operation trust in God on May 25th over the next two months Iraqi forces won a series of victories inflicting 32,000 casualties on the Iranians of sustaining only 5,000 for themselves and captured vast quantities of equipment under pressure from his advisers to end the war Khomeini grudgingly accepted the UN's proposed ceasefire on July 20th although pockets of fighting lasted until mid-august the iran-iraq war resulted in tremendous death and destruction on both sides with casualty figures ranging in the hundreds of thousands and total economic loss somewhere around 1.2 trillion dollars above all Iraqi merged from the conflict as the dominant power in the Middle East thereby embolden young Saddam to continue his expansion policy which would lead to a climactic showdown with the West three years later [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Armchair Historian

Views: 2,203,830

Rating: 4.8651075 out of 5

Keywords: Iran-Iraq War, Gulf War, Iraq War, Iranian Revolution, Saddam, Khomeini, Modern History, Modern Warfare, Trench Warfare, World War, First World War, WW1, WWI, Jet Fighters, Geneva Convention, Chemical Warfare, Iran, Trump Iran War, Trump and Iran, Qassem Soleimani

Id: jg5fgqrc4Gw

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DeaththeEternal]

The truly amazing thing is that after eight years of watching Iraq build the fourth largest army in the world with intelligence and WMD help from the USA and massive donations of arms from the Soviet Union and regularly failing against a pitifully led and trained Iranian force....that this same force turned two years later into some kind of mythical juggernaut in a way that convinced literally anyone at all. Measured against all the aid it got from both superpowers, Saddam's army comes across as just the kind of feeble force it proved in two wars with the United States.

Correspondingly, Iran largely alone (minus North Korea and a brief period of aid from the Reagan Administration) sustained the longest conventional war of the Twentieth Century. As a feat this is not to be underestimated, and it indicates one of the biggest gulfs between Iran and Iraq. Iraq can get a lot of help and its armies are woefully incapable of conventional warfare against other state-level forces...and Iran can improvise from shoestrings and bubblegum and prove far more formidable than it really should.