General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

Iran–Iraq War

The Iran–Iraq War (Persian: جنگ ایران و عراق), known in Iran as the "imposed war" (جنگ تحمیلی), was a war between Iraq and Iran that began with Iraq's invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980 and ended with the bilateral acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598 on 20 July 1988, with a ceasefire taking effect on 20 August 1988. It has been called the longest conventional war of the 20th century and cost roughly one million casualties and $1.19 trillion.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Dates	Began 22 September 1980 with Iraqi air raids and a ground invasion; ceasefire 20 August 1988, after seven years, ten months, and twenty-nine days¹^•²
Cost	About 1 million casualties and $1.19 trillion (Hiro, 1989)¹
Iranian official losses	213,000 killed, 335,000 disabled, 40,000 prisoners of war; more than 1,000 villages destroyed and over $1,000 billion in damage³
Territory at ceasefire	2,400 km² of Iranian land remained in Iraqi hands when Iran accepted the ceasefire under Resolution 598³
UN action	Security Council Resolution 479 passed six days after the invasion; Resolution 598, accepted by Iran on 27 Tir 1367 (July 1988), ended the fighting⁴^•⁵
Turning points	Liberation of Khorramshahr on 3 Khordad 1361 (May 1982); fall of the Faw peninsula in early 1367 (1988) shifted the war decisively in Iraq's favor³^•⁴

Background and causes

Relations between the two countries deteriorated steadily after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, driven by personal hostility between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, the political ambitions of both states, and ideological and territorial disputes. Khomeini had resided in Iraq as an exile from 1963 onward, and at Mohammad Reza Shah's government's behest that country forced him to leave on 4 October 1978. After the revolution, Iranian leaders vilified the Ba'ath regime in Arabic-language radio broadcasts, and Iraq accused Iran of supporting the banned al-Daʿwa Party and separatist insurgents in Khuzestan; Iraq also carried out attacks on Iranian border towns in 1979 and during the first half of 1980.¹

The central territorial dispute concerned the Shatt al-Arab (Arvand Rud) waterway. Under the 1975 Algiers Accord, Iran had implicitly accepted the thalweg (The deepest channel line marking a river boundary between states) line on the waterway in exchange for ending its support for Iraqi Kurds; Hussein's prewar speeches revived claims to the whole Shatt al-Arab, and he also advanced claims to Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tonbs, islands near the Strait of Hormuz far from the Iraqi border.⁶^•¹ Iraq framed the invasion as a defensive war, claiming it was obliged to recover its territories by force.¹

The Iraqi invasion, 1980–1982

On 22 September 1980 Iraq opened the war with simultaneous air raids on ten Iranian civilian and military airports, including Mehrabad Airport, and a ground invasion along the entire border, on a front more than 600 kilometers long.¹^•⁴^•⁷ Six days later, on 28 September, the UN Security Council called on both countries to refrain from further use of force; Iraq declared willingness to negotiate only if Iran accepted demands articulated by deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, including recognition of Iraqi sovereignty over the Shatt al-Arab.¹

Iran's regular military, purged and disorganized after the revolution, had no central command-and-control system at the outbreak of war, and senior Iranian leaders expected defeat; Iraqi intelligence assessed in mid-1980 that Iran could neither launch wide offensive operations nor defend itself on a large scale.⁸ The willingness of Iran's population to defend the country after the invasion, and the return of imprisoned air force pilots to service, stabilized the front.⁹

The Iranian offensive, 1982–1988

The first period of the war, from the Iraqi attack to the liberation of Khorramshahr on 3 Khordad 1361 (May 1982), lasted about two years. After that victory Iran decided to carry the war into Iraqi territory, with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein's regime and obtaining war reparations; Iranian forces entered Iraq from 22 Tir 1361 (July 1982) with Operation Ramadan, beginning roughly six more years of fighting on Iraqi soil.³^•⁷

Iran could not convert its offensives into a decision. Iran's Karbala operations, carried out in 1986 and the opening months of 1987, showed that it lacked the capacity to keep up major conventional attacks on Iraqi soil, while Iraq's defensive strength clearly exceeded anything Iran could field. Recognizing the limits of its conventional forces while pursuing expansive war aims, Iran developed an asymmetric strategy aimed at Iraq's perceived weaknesses rather than its strengths.¹⁰

The war's final turn came in 1988. After the fall of the strategic Faw island in the second battle of Faw in Farvardin 1367 (spring 1988), a sequence of Iraqi victories suddenly shifted the course of the war to Iran's disadvantage.⁴ In the same year the United States launched Operation Praying Mantis, its second military intervention against Iran during the war.¹¹

End of the war

Iran accepted Security Council Resolution 598 on 27 Tir 1367 (July 1988), and the ceasefire took effect on 20 August 1988.⁵^•² At the ceasefire, 2,400 km² of Iranian territory remained under Iraqi control.³ Exchanges of prisoners of war between the two countries began in 1369 (1990–91).⁴

Legacy

The war shaped Iran's state and strategy for decades. Concepts such as self-reliance, "holy defense," and the export of the revolution entered the military lexicon during the war and were codified as doctrine in the early 1990s.¹² The Revolutionary Guards, one of the two pillars of Iran's theocracy alongside its nuclear program, have their origins in the war.¹³

The war also fixed Iranian distrust of the United States. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has cited American aid to Saddam during the war and the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian passenger airplane among instances of US hostility, and Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stated in 2013 that when Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, the United States not only failed to condemn it but blamed Iran for the use of chemical weapons.¹⁴ Scholars of Iranian security policy argue that Iran's nuclear and security policies are molded by the war's experiences, that Iran's leadership views the country as having been on the defensive and fighting for survival, and that Iran believes it must be self-reliant in key areas such as national security.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Conflict and security › Wars, campaigns, and incidents › Conflicts of 1945 to the present › Middle East conflicts since 1945 › Iran–Iraq War 1980–1988

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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