The Iran-Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum

by Stephen C. Pelletiere

This book is a major reinterpretation of the Iran-Iraq War and is a source for reexamining the U.S. involvement in the Gulf. Pelletiere demonstrates that the war was not a standoff in which Iraq finally won a grinding war of attrition through luck, persistence, and the use of poison gas. Instead, Iraq planned the last campaign almost two years prior to its unfolding. [The Iraqis] trained extensively and expended enormous sums of money to make their effort succeed. What won for them was their superior fignting prowess and greater commitment. Gas--if it was used at all--played only a minor part in the victory.'

Pelletiere concludes that the key to understanding the war is the Extraordinary Congress of the Ba'th Party held in July 1986. It was there that the initial planning for the final campaign was done, and this campaign is what decided the fate of the conflict. The study centers around the last Iraqi campaign, which Pelletiere argues was based upon World War II blitzkrieg tactics, but he also treats the background, the politics, and the history of the conflict, and analyzes the significance of the war to the Middle East and to the position of the United States there.

Genres: Iran, Middle East

167 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 1992

Reviews

[Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still holds up to this day. Except for several minor, inconsequential errors, the book is one of the most objective and analytical on the Iran-Iraq War until now. The author was the senior CIA analyst on the war and had an informed look based on hard intelligence data on every stage of the war.

Another review mentions Halabja as the "worst error" by the author. This is not the case. It wasn't merely a US Department of State statement and Pelletiere wasn't an observer. He was working at the CIA and later Strategic Studies Institute analyzing all the first-hand evidence and had as much insight and evidence possible. Multiple investigations and studies were conducted and came to the same conclusion about Iran's culpability. Among the intelligence data gathered included intercepted communications from the Iranian side about the attack and what are still unfortunately classified reports went into great detail. Both Iranian doctors inadvertently and Doctors without Borders proved through toxicology labs that cyanide gas was the primary culprit, a type of gas Iraq never possessed but Iran was known to. As Pelletiere has written: "We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds" and he's correct. After occupying Iraq, the US had access to everyone and everything. Despite that, they have no more evidence today to incriminate Iraq than they did in the late 1980s-2003.

The story started to shift, without new evidence against Iraq to this day despite the invasion and occupation of Iraq, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the US government started to adopt a line created by Iran on the day of the massacre, "only Iraq did it and 5000 died", as its own to gain support for sanctions and military actions against Iraq. This story became solidified after 9/11 in George W. Bush's frequent mention in his push to invade Iraq. This was said in the same vein that Iraq had highly developed WMDs and programs including nuclear weapons, Iraq was the benefactor of Al Qaeda and behind 9/11, and dozens of other lies. We should remember that US government official Peter Galbraith's similar lie about Iraq conducting mass chemical attacks on Kurds in September 1988 was debunked by the United Nations, Red Cross, Turkish and Iranian doctors and authorities, and other organizations as never having happened.

In another work, the author co-wrote a study with the US military on how to attack Iraqi forces in the Gulf War. He actively aided war effort against Iraq. He's not insufficiently critical of Iraq in this book or others, but for some, anything short of flinging every falsity created against Iraq like Saddam throwing people in plastic shredders is "insufficiently critical".

I did not see "every major Arab state is a military government" in the book, but this statement is more or less correct. The major Arab states at that time in terms of influence and militarization, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Algeria, were effectively military governments. The one outlier may be Saudi Arabia, although it was hardly as prominent and major in its influence and military involvement in the 1980s as it is today.

[Ryan Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

“War is politics by other means.” Nowhere is this clearer than in the works of Stephen C. Pelletiere. Though perhaps simplified by trying to recount eight years of war in ~150 pages, the analysis of the war is both direct and illuminating. It also dispels many perceptions that, if one even knows about the war, might have.
To call the war simply the result of Saddam’s corrupt dictatorship trying to score a quick win over a revolutionary society would be misguided. The book recounts the logical, if tragic, steps that the Iraqi Ba’ath took in deciding to invade. Saddam as a person is only relevant in as he is a stand in for a civilian wing of society seeking state stability and national development. Given Pelletiere’s description of Iran, it’s not at all clear which country is the more revolutionary, and which is more reactionary and regressive.
The book also brings me back to a great lesson I learned in reading Black Reconstruction: the POWER of war. Not power to kill and destroy, but power to profoundly change the societies fighting said wars, power that took hold of Iraq as the war dragged on. During the Iranian offensive phase, and particularly 1986 onwards, the war dramatically changed Iraqi society, perhaps turning it into the first “modern” Arab state, in Pelletiere’s words. I find this modernity in stark contrast to most of the Arab world today, and thus it is clear to me why we had to wage a decades long war on the Iraqi Ba’ath. Would a country as powerful as Iraq had allowed this genocide in Gaza to go on for so long? Not sure, but it is clear from the book how much Israel hated any Arab society reaching such a level of development as Iraq did on the eve of the first Gulf War.

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amusingly obsolete
It refers to how the Irangate controversy is still going on
Many things that the author talks about as being unknown have become known since
I think the author is a bit anti-Iranian, and insufficiently critical of Iraq, Iraq always gets a pass in his eyes for no good reason

The worst error of the book, I believe, is that he wrongly blames Iran for the chemical attack on Halabja - this is not the majority opinion, it is accepted that this attack was the Iraqis. He does because he glibly accepts a US state dept statement on the matter, and does not consider other sources.
Generally the author did too limited reading / research

poor understanding of economics, Arab politics (at one point he said "every major Arab state is a military govt" What?! not true, sort of a glib generalization, sort of a lazy and incorrect stereotype)

[Καιρὸς · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Stephen C Pelletiere as a writer, I would recommend this book for those who wanna read about the war but can sit through wars of modern Babylon which is like 900 pages long.