With the foregoing we have tried to show that immediately prior to the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution, Iraq’s internal politics were greatly disturbed. We also have indicated that the country was undergoing profound reorientation—it was in effect turning its face away from western Arab lands and toward the Gulf; Iraq was essaying to become a Gulf power, something it had never been before.
There appears to be no doubt that Iraq originally intended to fight a limited war for specific political objectives. In addition to full control of the Shatt al Arab and return of the islands in the Strait of Hormuz to their original Arab owners, Iraq wanted several small sections of land along the border, which it maintained had been promised to it under the Algiers Accord but never delivered.
To secure its main objective—control over the Shatt—Iraq was prepared to seize a large area of Iranian territory in Khuzistan province. This would give it control over an axis running from Ahvaz and Dezful in the north of Khuzistan to Abadan and Khoramshahr in the south. By dominating Khoramshahr and Abadan, Iraq would effectively detach the Shatt from Iran. By capturing Ahvaz, it would stand astride an important road link for traffic proceeding to the Gulf from the north. Dezful was situated on the main Kermanshah-Sanandaj route.
It does not appear that the Iraqis wanted permanently to control the Abadan-Khoramshahr-Ahvaz-Dezful axis. From statements of the Ba’thists leaders, it appears they meant to retain the area only as long as it took to force one of two outcomes—either the Khomeini government would sue for peace, on Iraq’s terms, or there would be a coup and the Islamic Republic would be wiped out.
Iraq evidently felt confident that, because of conditions in Iran, a coup would materialize. Unrest there was increasing. The various groups that initially had cooperated to overthrow the shah had begun to fall out. After eliminating the liberals of the Barzagan faction, the clerics found themselves confronting militant leftists forces like the Fedayeen e Khalq and the Mujahdin e Khalq. In addition, the army was restive; two months before Iraq’s invasion there had been an attempted coup by army units against the clerics.
Along with this the Ba’thists had received assurances from Sharpur Bakhtiar, Iran’s former president, that dissatisfaction with the Khomeini government was widespread in Iran, particularly among the middle class. Former Iranian military figures who had fled advised the Iraqis to take advantage of internal discord in Iran.
1914: The Opening Campaigns
