Geopolitical Determinism: The Origins of the Iran-Iraq War

Geopolitical Determinism: The Origins of the Iran-Iraq War 

Author(s): Efraim Karsh 

Source: Middle East Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 256-268 

Published by: Middle East Institute 

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GEOPOLITICAL DETERMINISM: THE 

ORIGINS OF THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR 

Efraim Karsh 

XVAR, like any social phenomenon, has both its general and specific causes. 

On the general level, war can be an occasional outburst of a deep-rooted historical 

conflict. Such a conflict may arise from ethnic, national, or religious enmity, from 

competition over natural resources or territory, or over regional or global 

hegemony. The specific causes of war lie in the subjective interpretations of such 

historical conflict and assessments regarding adequate means for handling it at a 

given moment. Assessments derive from such factors as the world views, images, 

and beliefs of the relevant leaders, from bureaucratic politics (power struggles 

within the ruling elites), and from a combination of these factors. 

In the case of the Iran-Iraq War, the general cause is often attributed to the 

ethnic and religious divide that has separated Arabs and Persians, Shi'i and Sunni 

Muslims since at least the seventh century. One scholar's view is that, "Seen in 

a long-term historical perspective, the current Iran-Iraq War is just another phase 

in a struggle between the two countries that stretches back a millenium or more. " I 

The war is "the latest outbreak in an age-old struggle between the Persians and 

Arabs for domination of the Gulf and the rich Tigris and Euphrates Valley to its 

north," according to another observer of the conflict.2 

1. Stephen R. Grummon, The Iran-Iraq War: Islam Embattled (New York: Praeger for the 

Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982), The Washington Papers Series, no. 

92, p. 1. 

2. Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), p. 291. For 

a similar view on the origins of the war see Jasim M. Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran: The Years of Crisis 

(London: Croom Helm, 1984), chapter 1. 

Efraim Karsh is a lecturer on regional security at the Department of War Studies, King's College, the 

University of London. He is the author of The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis (London: 

International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987) and the editor of The Iran-Iraq War: Impact and 

Implications (London and New York: Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1989). 

MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL * VOLUME 44, NO. 2, SPRING 1990

IRAN-IRAQ * 257 

On the immediate level, the outbreak of the war is commonly explained by 

what may be called the grand design theory. According to this theory, the Iraqi 

invasion of Iran in September 1980 reflected President Saddam Hussein's ambitions. 

These ranged from the occupation of Iranian territory (the Shatt al-Arab and 

Khuzistan), through the infliction of "a humiliating and perhaps decisive defeat on 

the Iranian revolution, which he found troublesome,"3 to the desire to assert Iraq 

cas the preeminent Arab and Gulf state. 

This article offers an alternative explanation for the occurrence of the 

I]ran-Iraq War. It argues that geopolitics is the most important single factor that 

has influenced Iranian-Iraqi relations for generations and, in consequence, accounts 

for the outbreak of the war. The eruption of the war, according to this 

theory, is neither the direct extension of the ancient Arab-Persian rivalry nor the 

outcome of a premeditated grand design; rather it is the product of the geopolitical 

interaction between two disparate neighbors. More concretely, the war began 

because the weaker state, Iraq, attempted to resist the hegemonic aspirations of 

its stronger neighbor, Iran, to reshape the regional status quo according to its own 

image. 

ORIGINS OF IRANIAN-IRAQI RELATIONS 

Intriguing as it is, the emphasis on the deep-rooted historical animosity 

between Arabs and Persians suffers from two major flaws. First, it overlooks 

lengthy periods of cooperation between these two groups, motivated both by 

shared religious and cultural affinities and by converging economic interests such 

as trade. Second, intensive as it was during the Umayyad (661-750) and the early 

Abbasid (750-945) caliphates, Iraqi-Persian interaction was disrupted in the latter 

part of the tenth century, with the de facto demise of the Abbasid Empire, to be 

resumed only in the aftermath of World War I. 

Thus, from 945 until the early sixteenth century, the vast territories occupying 

present-day Iran and Iraq were controlled, with occasional intervals, by 

successive dynasties, mainly of Mongol and Turkish origins: the Buwayhids 

(945-1055), the SelUuk Turks (1055-1157), the Hulagu, Timur, and Il-Khan 

Mongols (1219-1408), and the Turkoman Turks (1408-1499). With the reemergence 

of Persia as an independent regional empire under the Safavid dynasty 

(1500-1736), the area that is now Iraq became the battlefield for intermittent wars 

between the Ottomans and the Persians. These wars, nevertheless, had nothing to 

do with Persian-Arab animosity; rather they were the manifestation of a power 

3. Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London: Counterpoint, 1986), p. 125. For a 

similar view see also R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East 

(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 57; Anthony Cordesman, The 

Gulf and the Search for Strategic Stability (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 645-46; William 

0. Staudenmaier, "A Strategic Analysis," in Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi, eds., The 

Iran-Iraq War (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 37.

258 * MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL 

struggle between the two empires, colored with strong religious elements, for 

hegemony and domination. 

In other words, geopolitical realities formed the major impetus for the Safavid 

policy while ideological-religious factors played a supportive role, however 

important, by rallying public will behind the regime's strategic goals. Although 

religious zeal would occasionally cause Safavid rulers to overlook geopolitical 

considerations, to the Persians the landmass to their western frontier was merely 

a medium of advance for expansion or, alternatively, a useful buffer zone to 

separate Persia's holdings from its major regional rival, the Ottoman Empire. 

With the mutual decline of the Turkish and the Persian empires over the centuries 

and the appearance of new and more menacing threats from other directions- 

Russia and Great Britain-these two rivals were gradually driven toward accommodation. 

Then followed a long host of bilateral treaties, most notably the 

Erzerum agreements of 1823 and 1847. Indeed, the vagueness of these two 

agreements on the issue of border demarcation, not dispelled by the 1911 Tehran 

and 1913 Constantinople protocols, was to remain a major bone of contention 

between Iran and Iraq into the late twentieth century. Just as the geopolitical 

factor had figured prominently in Persian-Ottoman affairs, so has it constituted the 

framework for twentieth-century Iraqi-Iranian bilateral relations. By and large, 

this relationship has reflected both the inherent problems and the converging 

interests emanating from direct physical contiguity between two uneven powers. 

To the newly established state of Iraq (1921) geography posed an existential 

challenge. Virtually a landlocked country, whose coastline on the Gulf is only 15 

kilometers long, and surrounded by four countries with at least two-Turkey and 

Iran-larger and irredentist, Iraq suffered from an inherent feeling of insecurity 

from the early days of its statehood. This "encirclement complex" is understandable. 

First, Iraq's major source of income, oil, cannot be exported without the 

goodwill of its neighbors, Syria and Turkey, or "without coming so close to 

Iranian territory in the south that it cannot be said to enjoy territorial security at 

all for its principal means of survival."4 Second, as one of the successor states to 

the Ottoman Empire, Iraq inherited not a few Ottoman privileges- particularly 

favorable border agreements-without at the same time enjoying the imperial 

power or stature to support these gains. This state of affairs aroused Turkish and 

Iranian irredentism, which in turn exacerbated Iraq's feeling of vulnerability.5 

The proximity of Iraq's major strategic and economic assets to the Turkish 

and Iranian frontiers has been no less worrisome for Baghdad. The northern 

oil-rich provinces of Mosul and Kirkuk, for example, lie close to Turkey and Iran. 

whereas Baghdad and Basra are only 120 and 30 kilometers respectively from the 

Iranian border. The Shatt al-Arab, Iraq's only outlet to the Persian Gulf, could be 

4. Claudia Wright, "Implications of the Iran-Iraq War," Foreign Affairs, vol. 59 (Winter 

1980/81), p. 277. 

5. Indeed, there is a long-standing Turkish claim for the province of Mosul. Moreover, in 1922 

Turkey backed up this claim by military action.


easily controlled by Iran. Finally, Iraq's internal fragmentation along ethnic and 

religious lines-Kurds versus Arabs, Sunnis versus Shias-has had a weakening 

effect on the country by impeding the crystallization of an Iraqi national identity 

and by constituting a lodestone for external interference.6 

Compared with these geostrategic predicaments, Iran's position seems enviable. 

Not only is Iran a much larger country in territory and population, but its 

major strategic centers are located, by and large, deep inside the country-Tehran 

is some 700 kilometers inside Iran-and enjoy better topographical protection 

than do their Iraqi counterparts. Also, and in sharp contrast to Iraq's highly 

restricted access to the Gulf, Iran possesses a long Gulf coastline of some 2,000 

kilometers which makes it the major contender for regional hegemony and 

prevents a crippling encirclement similar to that faced by Iraq. 

Yet, Iran faces a prime geostrategic constraint that for a long time mitigated 

its relative advantages over Iraq-namely its 1,700-kilometer border with the 

Soviet Union. During the two centuries since the early 1720s, when Peter the 

Great for the first time captured Persian territory, to the seizure of power by the 

Bolsheviks in 1917, Russia gradually emerged as the principal security threat to 

Iran. Employing a wide spectrum of means that ranged from diplomatic pressures 

to economic penetration, to direct military intervention, czarist Russia conducted 

a persistent drive southward. In the peace treaties of Gulistan (1813) and 

Turkumanchai (1828), Persia lost to Russia most of its Caucasian possessions, 

gave up its right to maintain a navy on the Caspian Sea, which thereby became a 

Russian lake, and paid a humiliating indemnity of 20 million rubles.7 

The fact that the Russian thrust southward coincided with a growing British 

interest in the Persian Gulf did little to ease Iran's position. On the contrary, from 

the nineteenth century onward, Persia became yet another arena for Great Power 

competition with its adverse implications for this country. In 1907, following 

Russian-British reconciliation in the Triple Entente, the two powers partitioned 

Persia into spheres of influence, leaving a buffer zone between them as an 

independent and neutral entity.8 

Ending the Russian military presence in Persia and abrogating all the treaties 

and concessions secured by the czarist regime, the communist revolution aroused 

Persian hopes of a modification in Russian policy. Yet Persia's rulers were quick 

to realize that Bolshevik Russia was not willing to distance itself from the 

traditional czarist ambitions in their country, and, in May 1920, Soviet forces 

invaded and established the Soviet Republic of Gilan, the first case of a 

Soviet-sponsored communist regime in Asia. 

6. Marr, History of Iraq, p. 5: Majid Khadduri, Republican Iraq (London: Oxford University 

Press, 1969), pp. 3-5; Uriel Dann, Iraq Under Qassem (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 1-2. 

7. It is interesting to note, however, that these treaties followed decisive Persian defeats in 

two wars initiated by them, not Russia. For the full texts of the treaties see J.C. Hurewitz, ed., 

Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand 

Co., 1966), vol. I, pp. 84-6, 96-102. 

8. For the full text of the 1907 partition agreeement see Hurewitz, ibid., pp. 265-7.


Persia's apparent advantages in comparison to Iraq were also mitigated by 

Baghdad's special relationship with Great Britain. Until 1932, Iraq constituted an 

integral part of the British Empire, and from that date to 1958-when the 

Hashemite dynasty was overthrown by General Abd al-Karim al-Qasim-it was 

an important block in the edifice of Britain's regional position. Thus, it was the 

British factor that improved Baghdad's bargaining position vis-'a-vis Tehran 

during the 1930s, as illustrated by Iraq's gains in the 1937 Shatt al-Arab 

agreement. During the 1920s, Britain had also shielded Iraq from Saudi encroachments. 

BALANCE OF WEAKNESS 

This was the geopolitical background against which Iranian-Iraqi relations 

developed. On the one hand, there was Persia with its marked geopolitical and 

geostrategic preponderance over Iraq, yet heavily constrained by its contiguity to 

a Great Power and fully mindful of Iraq's close association with Great Britain. On 

the other hand lay Iraq, plagued by domestic fragmentation, suffering from an 

inherent "encirclement complex," and smaller and weaker than Persia. This 

delicate "balance of weakness" dictated mutual caution and restraint and led to 

a peaceful coexistence that lasted, with occasional vicissitudes, until the late 

1960s. To be sure, overriding interests to coexistence did not prevent the 

occasional emergence of differences or frictions, most of which revolved around 

territorial issues. Yet both sides were equally inclined to resolve their disagreements 

through peaceful means, and even in those crises that most uncharacteristically 

involved the risk of a frontal confrontation, such as the 1959 and 1961 

crises, realism prevailed over rhetoric, dictating strategic retreats. 

Recognizing Iran's fundamental superiority, especially in the Gulf, Iraq 

directed its energies toward the Arab world, a potentially more rewarding arena. 

This resulted in Hashemite Iraq's (1921-1958) championship of the cause of 

pan-Arabism and its efforts to unite the Fertile Crescent; it also explains in part 

Iraq's repeated attempts to bring about a union with Syria, as well as its 

occasional encroachments on Kuwait. 

Iran for its part, largely preoccupied with the elimination of foreign interference 

in its domestic affairs adopted a two-pronged policy. In addition to dealing 

successfully with Great Britain and the Soviet Union on a bilateral basis,9 Reza 

Shah (1921-1941) opted for closer relations with Iran's Muslim neighbors, 

Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq. Accordingly, on April 25, 1929, Iran extended 

official recognition to Iraq, thereby paving the way for the evolution of close 

9. Reza Shah succeeded in maneuvering Soviet troops out of Iran and destroying the Gilan 

Republic by signing a treaty of friendship with the Soviets in February 1921. The treaty, nevertheless, 

opened the door for possible Soviet military intervention in Iran if Iranian territory were to become a 

springboard for external aggression against the Soviet Union. For the full text of the treaty see 

Hurewitz, ibid., vol. II, pp. 90-5.


Iranian-Iraqi cooperation which culminated in King Faysal's official visit to Iran 

in April 1932. The general direction of bilateral relations was set earlier in 1929 by 

a provisional agreement, and was followed during the coming years by mutual 

collaboration in quelling the Kurdish insurgency in both countries.10 

On July 4, 1937, having debated the issue at the League of Nations' Council 

for three years, the two countries signed a boundary treaty (outside the framework 

of the league) that sought to resolve the disputed territorial legacy of the 

Ottoman Empire. According to the treaty, the Iraqi-Iranian frontier was to run 

along the lines delineated by the Constantinople Protocol of 1913 and the findings 

of the Frontier Commission of 1914. This, in turn, meant complete Iraqi 

sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab, with the exception of a four-mile anchorage 

area near Abadan where the border ran along the thalweg (median) line. 

Furthermore, Iraq assumed responsibility for the navigation regime in the Shatt, 

namely such duties as pilotage, collection of dues, and health measures.'1 

Requiring mutual concessions-substantial on Iran's part, minor on the Iraqi 

side12-the 1937 treaty clearly reflected a keen recognition of the need for 

accommodation, if not cooperation. Reinforced as a result of the gathering war 

clouds in Europe and the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, this awareness was 

further illustrated by the conclusion of a bilateral treaty of friendship and, 

perhaps, more significantly, by the signing of the Sa'adabad Pact between Iran, 

Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan on July 18, 1937. This treaty represented the first 

attempt after World War I to ensure regional security through exclusive reliance 

on the combined resources of indigenous leaders.13 

POST-WORLD WAR H 

This delicate balance of weakness, which had stood at the root of friendly 

relations between Iran and Iraq, extended into the post-World War II era. Greatly 

alarmed by the transformation of the Soviet Union into one of the two most 

powerful states on the international scene, 14 both Iran and Iraq sought to 

counterbalance the Soviet presence by drawing closer to the Western powers and 

by continuing their peaceful coexistence. In June 1949, during an official visit to 

10. Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran, p. 10. 

11. These responsibilities were rendered to Iraq on a temporary basis-for a period of one year, 

or more if an extension was effected-so as to enable the two parties to sign a convention regulating 

the navigational regime in the river. The fact that such a convention was not reached was exploited by 

Iran in justification of repeated demands to alter the delimitation of the frontier along the river, in 

general, and in justification of its 1969 unilateral abrogation of the 1937 treaty, in particular. 

12. Prior to 1937 Iran was adamantly opposed to the Constantinople Protocol of 1913 which it 

viewed as favoring Iraq. The Iraqi concessions in the 1937 agreement were confined to recognition of 

the principle of thalweg near Abadan. 

13. For the full text of the Sa'adabad Pact see Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle 

East, vol. II, pp. 214-16. 

14. This development was of particular concern for Tehran in view of the manifest Soviet 

interest in northern Iran as evidenced by the establishment of the communist Azarbayjan republic and 

support for an independent Kurdish republic.


Tehran by the Iraqi regent, Prince Abd al-Ilah, a treaty of "good neighborly" 

relations was signed, and the two countries embarked on a joint effort to resolve 

their unsettled territorial problems. As late as 1957, only a short while before the 

overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq, the two sides reached an agreement to appoint 

a joint commission for the administration of the Shatt al-Arab and to submit the 

issue of boundary demarcation to a Swedish arbitrator. 15 Cooperation reached its 

peak with the participation of the two states in the Baghdad Pact (1955-58). 

The overthrow of the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq by General Qasim in July 

1958, with its attendant surge of communist power in Iraq and intensified 

Iraqi-Soviet relations, aroused deep concern in Tehran and drove Iran to enter 

into a defense agreement with the United States in 1959. To a certain extent, until 

that time bilateral relations had been governed by a spirit of royal solidarity 

similar to the one characterizing the monarchical post-Westphalian European 

state-system; geopolitical interests apart, neither regime had sought to discredit 

its counterpart since both derived their legitimacy from the same principle of 

dynastic sanctity. With the delegitimization of the Iraqi monarchical system, Iran 

could only hope that the new regime would also recognize a basic convergence of 

interests between the two countries. 

Tehran soon realized that geopolitical realities were stronger than revolutionary 

rhetoric. To be sure, Qasim's break with his predecessors' pro-Western 

conduct and the reorientation of Iraq's foreign policy in the direction of the Soviet 

Union was by no means a minor development. As noted by a long-time observer 

of Iraqi politics, however, "Qasim's foreign policy was governed by essentially 

the same forces that shaped the foreign policy of the Old Regime. " 16 A protege of 

the former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, Qasim apparently inherited a measure of 

his patron's awareness of both Iraq's relative weakness vis-a-vis its non-Arab 

neighbors and its common interests with them. This awareness was already 

reflected in the proclamation of the July Revolution, which stated Iraq's intention 

to cultivate brotherly ties with Arab and Muslim states and to honor previously 

signed international undertakings. Accordingly, Qasim was extremely reluctant to 

dissociate Iraq from the Baghdad Pact, taking the ultimate step of withdrawing 

from the defense organization on March 24, 1959, only in the face of heavy 

internal and external pressures.17 

Notwithstanding two severe bilateral crises-December 1959-January 1960 

and February-April 1961 ,18-the general pattern of Iraqi-Iranian relations, 

namely, Iraq's awareness of Iran's potential and Tehran's inability to transform 

its inherent dominance into regional hegemony, was fundamentally maintained 

15. R. K. Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 1941-1973 (Charlottesville: University Press of 

Virginia, 1975), p. 402. 

16. M. Khadduri, Republican Iraq, p. 181. 

17. Ibid., pp. 182-4. 

18. For a detailed description of the crises see Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, pp. 401-2; 

Shahram Chubin and Sepehr Zabih, The Foreign Relations of Iran, (Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1974), pp. 172-6; Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran, pp. 15-6.


during the Qasim years and further consolidated in the post-Qasim era. It was not 

accidental that Egypt, rather than neighboring Iraq, spearheaded the Arab 

campaign against Iran during the 1950s and the 1960s. Indeed, while Egypt was 

voicing the claim for Arabistan (that is, Khuzistan), Iraq was preoccupied with 

removing sources of bilateral friction, such as Iranian support for the Kurds in 

Iraq and offshore oil concessions. Within this framework, the Iraqi president, Abd 

al-Rahman Arif, dispatched a high-ranking delegation led by the foreign minister 

and minister of state to Tehran in February 1964 to discuss bilateral issues. In late 

1965 a vigorous exchange of notes took place between the premiers. Relations 

between the two states reached their peak in March 1967 when President Arif paid 

an official visit to Iran. 

Although failing to produce any concrete results, these contacts alleviated 

mutual apprehensions and distrust and, above all, depicted the persistent joint 

interest in accommodation. Yet this spirit was soon to give way to antagonism and 

bitter rivalry as external developments upset the long-held balance of weakness, 

thereby driving Iran to attempt to translate its geopolitical superiority vis-a-vis 

Iraq into the concrete currency of hegemony. 

Iran's Road to Regional Hegemony: 1968-1975 

The 1970s witnessed a gradual evolution from a balance of weakness to Iran's 

ascendancy to military leadership in the Persian Gulf. This process, which began 

in the late 1960s and became an established fact in 1975 with the conclusion of the 

border agreement between Iran and Iraq, was the result of Shah Muhammad Reza 

Pahlavi's ambitions-a combination of hegemonial, indeed, even imperial, aspirations 

and a desire for absolute security. 

Because of a series of events, the shah embarked on an ambitious drive aimed 

at asserting Iran's position as the leading power in the Gulf: the announcement in 

1968 of Britain's intention to withdraw from its military bases east of Suez, Iraq's 

growing alignment with the Soviet Union, the diminution of a direct Soviet threat 

following the significant improvement in Iranian-Soviet relations beginning in the 

early 1960s, and rising oil revenues. To justify this policy, the shah argued that the 

responsibility for maintaining Gulf security lay solely with the local states and that 

no external powers were to be allowed to interfere in the affairs of the region. As 

the largest and most powerful Gulf country, Iran had a moral, historical, and 

geopolitical obligation to ensure stability in this region not only for benefits locally 

but also for the benefit of the world.19 

19. The shah on many occasions emphasized his views as reported by the Guardian (London), 

October 9, 1971; Agence France-Presse, June 24, 1974, from Foreign Broadcast Information Service 

(FBIS-MEA), June 24, 1974, p. RI; Deutsche Presse Agentur, June 10, 1976, from FBIS-MEA, June 

11, 1976, p. R2.


The shah's perception of Iran as the "guardian of the Gulf,' '20 a regular theme 

in his pronouncements in the 1970s, manifested itself in an impressive expansion 

of Iran's military capabilities that turned it into the most powerful country in the 

Gulf. This new prowess was highlighted by a series of Iranian actions intended to 

signal-both to the Gulf countries and the Great Powers-exactly who had the 

final say in the region. These included, inter alia, the occupation on November 30, 

1971, of the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, near the 

Strait of Hormuz, which were at the time under the sovereignty of the emirates of 

Shara and Ras al-Khayma respectively. Also included was the military intervention 

in Oman from 1972-76 at the request of Sultan Qabus to suppress the Dhofari 

rebels then operating along Oman's border with South Yemen (and supported by 

the latter). 

The most salient manifestation of the shah's mounting ambitions was the 

intensifying pressure on Iraq, a neighbor that was clearly less powerful but one 

that constituted the only potential obstacle on Iran's road to military supremacy 

in the Gulf. In July 1969, Tehran was implicated in an abortive coup attempt 

against the Baath regime in Iraq.21 During that same year Iran had already 

challenged the prevailing status quo by unilaterally abrogating the 1937 agreement 

on the navigation regime in the Shatt al-Arab. These actions were followed by a 

series of Iranian moves in the early 1970s that severely exacerbated bilateral 

relations: among them, attempts politically to isolate Iraq from other Arab states 

of the Gulf through the establishment of a regional defense organization comprising 

Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and the provision of extensive economic and 

military assistance to the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. The growing hostility 

between the two countries erupted into violence in the winter of 1974-75 with 

fierce border clashes involving tanks, heavy artillery, and aircraft which virtually 

left the Iraqi army on the verge of collapse. 

Unable to suppress an insurgency that imposed an intolerable burden on its 

domestic system, Iraq had no alternative but to seek some kind of agreement with 

Iran that would lead to the withdrawal of Iranian support for the Kurds. This took 

the form of the Algiers Agreement of March 6, 1975, which contained significant 

Iraqi territorial concessions, including the demarcation of the Shatt al-Arab 

waterway's boundary on the basis of the thalweg line.22 

20. See, for example, Tehran Domestic Service, October 6, 1970, in British Broadcasting 

Corporation (BBC), Summary of World Broadcasts, October 8, 1970, ME/3502/A/1; Guardian, 

October 9, 1971; Financial Times, May 31, 1973; Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1973. 

21. Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1979), 

p. 274. 

22. The Algiers Agreement stipulated the demarcation of the land frontier in accordance with 

the 1913 Protocol of Constantinople and the verbal accord of 1914; agreement to demarcate the Shatt 

al-Arab waterway's boundary on the basis of the thalweg line; agreement to "re-establish security and 

mutual confidence along their common frontiers" and undertake to exercise a strict and effective 

control with the aim of finally putting an end to "all infiltrations of a subversive character from either 

side"; the pledge of both parties to regard the provisions negotiated at the 1975 Organization of 

Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting as indivisible elements of a comprehensive settlement, such


The Algiers Agreement opened a new era in regional relations, the era of Pax 

Irana. The agreement reflected Baghdad's painful realization that an effective 

enforcement of Iraq's internal sovereignty depended on the goodwill of its 

neighbor to the east. Within less than a decade, the shah had managed to achieve 

his goal-to substitute a relationship that presupposed unquestioned Iranian 

dominance for the old Iraq-Iran status quo based on the 1937 agreement. Having 

attained this goal, Iran naturally evolved from a revisionist into a status quo power 

and began to advocate the perpetuation of stability in the Gulf. Iraq, for its part, 

was neither in the position to undermine the newly established regional order nor 

did it have any inclination to do so. Instead, the Baath regime turned inward to 

halt the Kurdish insurgency, to reconstruct its armed forces, and to stabilize the 

country's social, economic, and political systems. Consequently, the Algiers 

Agreement was followed by a period of much reduced tension between Iraq and 

Iran, a period that lasted for four years until the overthrow of the shah. 

GOING TO WAR: IRAQ AND REVOL UTIONAR Y IRAN 

The Iranian Revolution and the inception of the Islamic Republic changed 

Iran's strategic relationship with Iraq fundamentally, as the revolutionary regime 

sought to overturn the status quo provided for by the Algiers Agreement. Even 

though revolutionary ambitions were also related to the rest of the Gulf states as 

well, several factors made Iraq the primary target for the export of the revolution. 

With Shias accounting for approximately 60 percent of Iraq's total population, the 

revolutionary regime in Tehran could, and certainly did, entertain hopes that this 

community, which had always viewed itself as a deprived group, would emulate 

the Iranian example and rise against its "oppressors." These expectations were 

further fueled not only by the secular "heretic" nature of the Baath, which was 

adamantly opposed to the very notion of an Islamic political order, but also by the 

location of the holiest Shi'i shrines-Karbala, Najaf, and Kazimiyya-on Iraqi 

territory, a combination that could serve as a potentially powerful weapon in the 

hands of the Islamic regime. 

Above all, however, the mullahs in Tehran were confronted with the same 

geostrategic dilemma faced by the shah a decade earlier: Iraq's position as the 

major potential obstacle to Iran's quest for regional hegemony. Just as the shah's 

road to supremacy involved subduing Iraq, the replacement of the status quo in 

the Persian Gulf by an Islamic order had to begin with the removal of the primary 

hindrance to this goal, the secular Baath regime. In the words of Hujjat al-Islam 

Sadeq Khalkhali, "We have taken the path of true Islam and our aim in defeating 

that a breach of any one would be considered a violation of the spirit of the Algiers Agreement. For 

the English text of the agreement see the New York Times, March 8, 1975.

266 m MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL 

Saddam [Hussein] lies in the fact that we consider Saddam the main obstacle to 

the advance of Islam in the region.' '23 

Interestingly enough, Iraq's initial response to the shah's departure and the 

emergence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was by and large positive. Not only 

did the Baath regime not attempt to take advantage of the civil strife in Iran to 

revise the Algiers Agreement, but it was also quick to indicate its willingness to 

abide by the status quo between the two states. As then-Vice President Saddam 

Hussein put it, "A regime which does not support the enemy against us and does 

not intervene in our affairs, and whose world policy corresponds to the interests 

of the Iranian and Iraqi people, will certainly receive our respect and 

appreciation. "'24 

This positive attitude toward the revolutionary regime continued throughout 

the spring and summer of 1979. The Iraqi government took the opportunity of 

Iran's withdrawal from the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) to offer its good 

offices in case Iran should decide to join the Non-Aligned Movement, and as late 

as August 1979 Iraqi authorities extended an invitation to the Iranian premier, 

Mehdi Bazargan, to visit Iraq.25 The Iraqi leaders at the time referred to Iran as 

a brotherly nation, linked to the Arab people of Iraq by "strong ties of Islam, 

history and noble traditions," and praised the revolutionary regime in Tehran for 

pursuing a policy that underlined these "deep historical relations." 26 

Tehran did not, however, reciprocate this goodwill. In June 1979, the 

revolutionary regime began publicly urging the Iraqi population to rise up and 

overthrow the Baath regime.27 A few months later, Tehran escalated its anti- 

Baath campaign by resuming its support for the Iraqi Kurds (which had ended in 

1975), providing aid to underground Shi'i movements (in particular the Da'wa 

Party) in Iraq, and initiating attacks against prominent Iraqi officials, the most 

significant being the failed attempt on the life of Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy 

premier, on April 1, 1980. 

To check these pressures, Baghdad resorted to suppressing Shi'i underground 

organizations, expelling Iranian citizens (as well as Iraqi citizens of 

Persian origin) en masse, attempting to organize a united Arab front, and 

supporting Iranian separatist elements such as the Iranian Kurds and the Arabs in 

Khuzistan. These countermeasures failed to impress the revolutionary regime, 

and, responding to Hussein's pledge to take revenge for the attempt on the life of 

Aziz, Ayatollah Khomeini called on the Iraqi Shias on June 9, 1980, to overthrow 

Saddam's government. Iran's foreign minister, Sadegh Ghobtzadegh, revealed on 

the same day that his government had made the decision to topple the Baath 

23. Tehran Domestic Service, July 24, 1982, in BBC Summary, July 27, 1982, ME/7088/A/2. 

24. Iraqi News Agency, February 14, 1979, from FBIS-MEA, February 15, 1979, p. El. 

25. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran, pp. 58-9. 

26. See, for example, interview with President Ahmad Hasan Baqr, in BBC Summary, May 22, 

1979, ME/6122/A/1-2. 

27. See, for example, BBC Summary, June 8, 1979, ME/6144/A5 and June 9, 1979, ME/ 

6145/A7.


regime. The same theme was reiterated two days later by the Iranian president, 

Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, who also warned that Iran would go to war in the event 

of further deterioration in the situation on the border.28 In April 1980, the 

Iranian-Iraqi confrontation entered a new phase with clashes along the common 

frontier; in August these escalated into heavy fighting involving tank and artillery 

duels and air strikes. 

Iran's activities in general, and the protracted and escalating border fighting 

in particular, led Iraqi decision makers to the conclusion that Baghdad had no 

alternative but to contain the Iranian threat by resorting to arms. Faced, for the 

second time within a decade, with Iran's determination to reshape the regional 

status quo according to its own design and with the bitter memory of armed 

conflicts with Iran in the early 1970s, the Baath leaders seriously doubted that the 

Iraqi political system could sustain another prolonged, exhausting confrontation 

with Iran. Added to these concerns was the view of the nature of the new 

theocratic regime with its uncompromising and revolutionary goals and the 

growing evidence that the Iranian regime was set upon destabilizing the Baath. 

Consequently, the Iraqi government gradually came to realize that the only way 

to contain the Iranian threat was to exploit Iran's temporary weakness following 

the revolution and to raise the stakes for both sides by resorting to armed force. 

CONCLUSIONS 

Iranian-Iraqi relations in general, and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 

particular, illustrate the validity of the general rule that "vicinity, or nearness of 

situation, constitutes nations [sic] natural enemies."29 These factors also describe 

the limits of this rule. On the one hand, the elements of competition and rivalry 

inherent in almost any neighborly interaction have not been absent from Iranian- 

Iraqi relations, as evidenced by the various crises and wars between the two 

states. On the other hand, notwithstanding the ethnic and religious divisions 

among Persians and Arabs, the periods of convergence and cooperation between 

twentieth-century Iran and Iraq have exceeded by far those of hostility and 

antagonism. 

This state of affairs stems from the marked geopolitical inequality between 

Iran and Iraq that moderated the acuteness of the inherent sources of antagonism 

and generated a mutually recognized modus vivendi. This compromise was 

maintained for nearly five decades and was characterized by Baghdad's awareness 

of Iranian geopolitical superiority and by Tehran's inability to impose its 

hegemony over Iraq. Moreover, even after the disappearance of the balance of 

weakness and the consequent Iranian drive for regional hegemony, Iraq, after a 

28. Guardian, April 3, 1980; Financial Times, April 12, 1980; International Herald Tribune, 

April 10, 1980; Daily Telegraph, April 9, 1980. 

29. Alexander Hamilton, as quoted in Martin Wight, Power Politics (Harmondsworth, UK: 

Penguin, 1979), p. 157.


brief period of resistance, proved willing to abide by the new status quo 

established by the Algiers Agreement. 

It was only after 1979 when the revolutionary regime in Iran had begun its 

determined thrust to replace the regional setting with the hitherto unprecedented 

idea of an Islamic order-a thrust that inscribed on its ideological flag the 

overthrow of the Baath regime-that Iraq no longer felt able to live with Iran's 

position of superiority because of the simple fact that acquiescence could 

eventually lead to the regime's demise. In the Iraqi view, then, the geopolitical 

relationship between Iraq and Iran was transformed by the revolution from a 

.'mixed motive game" into a zero-sum game. The shah, for all his military power 

and ambitious objectives was perceived by Iraqis as rational, even if unpleasant. 

Certainly his goals from the late 1960s onward were opposed to Iraqi national 

interests, and he could satisfy them only at Iraq's expense. With the exception, 

however, of the 1969 plot, the shah was not so much interested in toppling the Baath 

regime as he was in preventing Iraq from competing militarily with Iran. Once the 

shah's aspirations for Gulf hegemony were recognized, a deal-disadvantageous as it 

was for Iraq-was struck and both parties were expected to live up to it. 

Paradoxically, the Gulf war, the most acute direct outcome of Iran's attempt 

to export its revolutionary message, introduced a fundamental, though not 

precipitous, shift in Iran's perception of its regional role toward the direction of 

the shah's geopolitical world view. With Iran's ill-equipped armed forces unable 

to breach the Iraqi line of defense, the civilian population decisively exhausted, 

and the economy largely devastated, most of the Iranian decision makers 

increasingly became disillusioned with the far-reaching aspirations to shape the 

Gulf along Islamic lines; they opted instead to agree to a cease-fire on the basis of 

the 1975 status quo. As Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, then speaker of the 

Iranian parliament and the strongest political figure in Tehran after Khomeini, put 

it in February 1986 at one of Iran's brightest moments in the war, the capture of 

the Faw Peninsula, "We do accept that half of the Shatt al-Arab belongs to Iran 

and the other half to Iraq. We do accept the thalweg which is international law. 

We seek nothing more than that."30 

In short, Tehran's acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 

598 and its insistence during the peace talks on the perpetuation of the 1975 status 

quo depict a keen awareness on the part of the revolutionary regime of the 

reemergence of the balance of weakness in Iranian-Iraqi relations and, therefore, 

the consequent need to scale down, however temporarily, Iran's regional ambitions. 

Whether and for how long this newly established balance will survive still 

remains to be seen. 

30. Tehran Domestic Service, February 24, 1986, in BBC Summary, February 26, 1986, 

ME/8193/A/3, emphasis added.

Geopolitical Determinism: The Origins of the Iran-Iraq War

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