Impact of Ideology On The Iranian Military in The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)

INFORMATION TO USERS
This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films
the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and
dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of
computer printer.
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the
copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations
and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper
alignment can adversely affect reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted.
Also, if unauthorized
copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by
sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing
from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced
xerographically in this copy.
Higher quality 6 x 9 black and white
photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing

in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.
ProQuest Information and Learning

300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA
800-521-0600
R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
The Impact of Ideology on the Iranian Military in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Department of Politics
School of Arts and Sciences
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor o f Philosophy
Copyright
All Rights Reserved
Joseph T. Gerard
Washington, D.C.
2002
UMI Number 3047137
Copyright 2002 by
Gerard, Joseph T.
All rights reserved.
UMI*
UMI Microform 3047137
Copyright 20C2 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
ProQuest Information and Learning Company

300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
The Impact of Ideology on the Iranian Military in the Iran-lraa W ar 1980-88
The depth of interaction between a political system and its military is

dynamic and complex even in peacetime. When that political system is a
revolutionary regime at war, the civil-military relationship can be put to the
severest test. Ideological regimes may not only proclaim absolute war aims
(ends) but also impose upon the armed forces extreme methods (means).
Conversely, military institutions tend to be conservative and often seek a long
term professionalization of their organizations, creating separation between
themselves and politics. Military efforts to professionalize may be opposed by
radical political leaders to whom ideology must override military effectiveness. In
the midst of conflict driven by revolutionary ideology, military professionalism can
be fundamentally transformed, either complementing aims of the ideology or
subordinating military professionalism to the point the war effort itself is
diminished. The tradeoff between the two can mean the difference between
victory and defeat.
The 1979 Iranian Revolution imposed a new ideology (militant Shiism)
upon Iran and radically altered all existing institutions. Iraqs invasion of Iran in
1980 severely tested Iran both politically and militarily. Irans leaders attempted
to islamicize the military by marginalizing the Army and creating a politically
reliable force, the Revolutionary Guards. Strategically, Shiite ideology caused
the expansion of war aims from recovering Iranian territory to toppling Saddam
Huessein. Iran also alienated itself from virtually from all regional and global
powers because of ideological reasons thus further reducing their chance of

achieving total victory.
The mandated transformation of the military during wartime has historical
precedent. Samuel Huntington in his book, Soldier and State, outlined the basis
of civil-military relationships and whether these relationships foster professional
military growth. Huntingtons analysis is used as a start point in a framework that
examines in depth the historic patterns, methods and means an ideological
regime uses to control a military at war. Issues such as training, leadership,
organization and use of elite political troops are examined in detail. The impact
of the ideology at the tactical, campaign and geopolitical level are used to assess
the effectiveness of the Iranian war effort.
This dissertation by Joseph T. Gerard fulfills the dissertation requirement

for the doctoral degree in Politics approved by Wallace M. Thies, Ph.D., as
Director and by James P. O'Leary, Ph.D., Reader.
Wallace M. Thies, Ph.D., Director
James P. OLeary, PhflD., Reader
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1- Introduction
Chapter 2 - The Nature of Ideology and Iran
14
Chapter 3- Historical Framework
44
Chapter 4- Professionalism and the Imperial Army
126
Chapter 5- The Rise of the Revolutionary Military
172
Chapter 6- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
239
Chapter 7- The Decline of the Revolutionary Military
259
Chapter 8- Conclusion
297
iii
Chapter 1
Introduction
As long as there has been war there has been political involvement in war's
direction. It is often assumed that the starting point of this relationship is the need
for rational political thought to exert control over a violence-prone military. Military
theorists, like Carl von Clausewitz, assumed that politics exerts a limiting effect on
the potential violence of military operations. Clausewitz, however, did not fully
account for the incendiary effect of ideology arising from totalitarian states or
revolutionary movements. When these political systems go to war their belief in
their own righteousness often leads to harsh means to achieve the lofty ends. The
comprehensive nature of these ideologies demand that all aspects of state and
society conform to its ideological tenets, including the institution of the nations
armed forces, and that these forces use violent and uncompromising methods to
achieve the ideological goal.
History is replete with examples of ideological regimes going to war armed
with new concepts of waging war. Whether it is the revolutionary army of Napoleon,
the militarized Bolsheviks or the Nazis, the governing ideology demands not only
unconditional victory, but often prescribes the means by which to achieve it. These
military forces undergo a transformation governing all aspects of their existence.
From training to leader development to organization and tactics, these ideologically
driven military forces seek to remake themselves, if not the entire concept of
1
warfare, to match the new view espoused in the ideology. Invariably, such
revolutionary efforts are at odds with established military tradition, but often they go
beyond that and threaten the concept of a professional force, in essence generating
a force that, while a perfect mirror of the ideological political body, is one that forfeits
the usual characteristics of a professional force. In these systems, the concepts of
independence and military professionalism can be subordinated to the ideology to
the point of hurting the war effort. In cases where the existing military lacks
consistent professionalism to begin with this tension is exacerbated.
Such was the case in revolutionary Iran, where a feudalistic force formed and
nurtured by the house of Pahlavi had made only cosmetic changes toward
professionalism by the time it was overthrown by the Islamic revolutionaries. The
clerics who took power proved unable either to create a truly professional force or to
promote their vision of an Islamic military in the war with Iraq. Their insistence on
uncompromising military victory was not matched by the actions of their divided,
under-trained, poorly organized military forces who relied more on passion than
sound military concepts in prosecuting the war. The result was a bloody war that
dragged on well past the point it should have.
Prior to the 1979 Revolution, the armed forces of Iran were a force beholden
to the autocrat, the Shah. While amply equipped with the latest Western hardware,
the force lacked truly independent professionalism. The 1979 Revolution caused
further disruption through a series of purges and general confusion. The Iranian
revolutionary regime was in the midst of converting its military into an armed force
guided by Islamic principles when attacked by Iraq in 1980. The Iranians embraced
a revolutionary ethos as a prime component at all three levels of war, often at the
expense of military professionalism. At the strategic level, the Iranians expanded
their war aims to include the expulsion of the secular Baath regime under Saddam
Huessein. Some Iranian leaders even went as far as demanding the establishment
of an Islamic republic in Iraq as a war goal. At the operational level, the Iranians
failed to integrate the efforts of their two armed forces, the army and the
ideologically driven Revolutionary Guard. At the tactical level, they used the zealous
spirit of religiously inspired troops, with mixed results. The failure to balance the
professional with the ideological was very costly in both lives and money and
eventually caused Iran to settle for peace short of its political goal.
Clausewitz, emerging from the Prussian military caste at the time of
Napoleon, saw a professional military as a machine that tended toward the most
violent execution of its battlefield task if left unbridled by its political masters. The
friction that resulted from political control was not always a negative thing as it
limited the scope and intensity of war and its destructive aftermath. Clausewitzian
theory assumed a rational political actor directing and limiting this violence. What if
this assumption should fall short as in the case of a political regime motivated by
intense emotion? The combination of either an irrational or passionate political
leadership with a capable military portends intense and irrational violence. The
marriage of an industrial German state with its professional military and Hitlers
National Socialist theories readily comes to mind. In fact, history holds many
examples of such a liaison and with the common political factor being one of
ideology.
National strategy is determined by the politicians while tactics are the realm
of the generals. In between strategy and tactics lies the more slippery concept of
the operational art. In this middle area both the political decision-maker and military
professional must coexist to translate higher strategy into actual plans and orders
that will be executed by the military on the battlefield. Even in well-established,
stable systems, the interaction of politics and the military is complex and subjective.
When politics becomes radical and revolutionary that relationship can become even
more problematic, especially when that nation is at war.
Revolutionary regimes seek the destruction of the old order and the
establishment of a new, idealistic system. Armies in revolutionary societies are
often the guardians of the old order and therefore a threat to the new regime. When
revolutionary regimes go to war before they have consolidated their control, the
interaction of politics and military professionalism undergoes profound contortions.
The established demarcation between the two forces is thrown out and new rules
written, ail while troops are engaged in combat. The revolutionary regime may feel
the need to be involved not only at the strategic and operational level of war but also
at the tactical level to ensure that revolutionary ideals permeate the military.
Doctrine, training, tactics, and command and control are all affected by the
revolutionary ideology of the new regime. This increased involvement serves the
political aims of the new regime but may be resented by the professional elements
in the military. If the political goals of the new regime are at odds with professional
military thinking, then the political goals will have preeminence. Often though, the
revolutionary regime will attempt to overlay its political goals on the military and
justify them as a new and innovative way to wage war. In the Iranian example, the
religiously inspired revolution emphasized the human spirit over technological
proficiency. The results of this on the battlefield were mixed at best but not without
precedent.
Despite technological advances throughout history the human element
remains a critical component of fighting and winning wars. Revolutions tap into the
raw energy of alienated elements of the population and mobilize them toward
accomplishing the regime's goals. Regimes that successfully meld the fervor of this
dynamic force with the profession of arms can be successful on the battlefield. The
French Revolution is one such example.
The French Revolution was a pivotal point in ending autocratic rule and
introducing the concept of full citizenship for all the nation's inhabitants. The
concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity were radical at the time, and they
revolutionized politics in Europe. These concepts ended the monopoly of power of
the ruling oligarchs and, according to historian Michael Howard, "enabled large
numbers of the population to see in that state the embodiment of some absolute
Good for which no price was too high, no sacrifice too great to pay."1
1Michael Howard, War in European History (London: Macmillan, 1976), 75.
When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, France embarked on a series of

wars lasting nearly two decades and which nearly resulted in French conquest of
Europe. This sustained military effort was due in part to the Revolution allowing for
the mobilization of the entire population to fight a national war. The energy created
by the Revolution provided a dynamic force to motivate soldiers in combat and
allowed many capable leaders to rise from the lower social classes to high positions
in the army. The French also benefitted tactically from the Revolution. Napoleon
tapped into the force of nationalism and combined it with tactical innovations, such
as the effective use of the Division as a combat formation, the employment of
skirmishers, better use of mobile artillery and the employment of the column instead
of the line which increased speed and mobility.2 These organizational innovations
were possible because the nationalist loyalty of the army enabled Napoleon to relax
the rigid controls used previously by royal rulers to protect against large-scale
desertions. The new citizen army was not made up of mercenaries but rather loyal
citizens who were self motivated.
The Iranian situation of 1979-88 is similar to the French model in that the
Iranians used both the Revolution and the war with Iraq to mobilize support on a
national level. Much of the ideology of the Iranian revolutionaries centered on
empowering the lower, alienated classes of Iran called the mostafazin, or
dispossessed. Whereas Napoleon used the levee en masse to tap into all classes
2lbid. 76.
of French society to wage war, so too did the Iranians use ideology to mobilize
those elements of society that were repressed or ignored by the Shah.
The principal difference between the revolutionary French Army and the
Iranian Army in the Iran-lraq War was in the extent that the profession of arms was
allowed to operate unhindered by ideology. The tactical innovations of Napoleon
provided clear advantages for the French, at least until their opponents caught on.
In sharp contrast, the clerical leaders of Iran distrusted the army and constantly
berated the regular forces for their performance. Specifically, the leadership twice
purged the military and created a separate, politically loyal force. Overtime, the
regular army of Iran was eventually rehabilitated, but not until after suffering huge
casualties. Although Napoleon was eventually defeated on the battlefield, the
French system of melding the cold profession of arms with the fiery passion of
revolution allowed for sustained military success that stands as a singular example
many subsequent regimes sought to emulate.
Not all revolutions produce such a successful synthesis. The Bolshevik
revolution of 1917 produced a clash between the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and
the established military. The revolution was a direct result of Russia's failure on the
battlefield in World War I and the general war weariness that followed. When the
Bolsheviks seized power they faced the daunting task of resolving the war with
Germany without complete defeat, then dealing with a succession of Allied landings
intended to overthrow their new regime as well as a host of internal enemies who
sought to roll back the revolution by violence. Whereas Napoleon sought to use the
French Revolution as a means to enhance the established military, the Bolsheviks

were committed to the complete overhaul of state and society. The old army of the
Czars was singled out as an institution badly in need of a complete overhaul.
The Russian Imperial Army was viewed by the Bolsheviks as an institution of
the aristocratic and capitalist classes and therefore an enemy of the new regime.
What Lenin envisioned was a new military that would, first and foremost, protect the
revolution and eventually be used to export communist revolution worldwide. From
its inception in February of 1917, the new Red Army was above all a political army,
representing the workers and peasants, which had as its highest priority the
protection of the communist party.3 Unlike Napoleon's army, the Red army was not
motivated by patriotism, but rather by ideology. The goal was the establishment of a
classless society and the eradication of poverty by first tearing down the existing
social and economic structures, then building new ones using the industrial workers
as the vanguard of the nation. The ideology went further and proclaimed that
revolution worldwide was inevitable and that the Red Army would be a catalyst in
that global struggle.
In this regard, the Red Army under its leader Leon Trotsky saw itself as a
unique phenomenon in world history. Dialectical materialism and the history of class
warfare provided a concrete sequential path toward victory.4 The classless and
3Michael Garder, A History of the Soviet Army (London: Praiger Publishing, 1966), 3236.
4lbid., 49.
internationalist outlook of the Red Army convinced them that no other army in
history was oriented and motivated as they were. The problem for the Red Army lay
in the implementation of this ideology on the battlefield.
The first thing Trotsky did was to recruit old Czarist officers who had
supported the Bolsheviks takeover of power. Despite the fact that most Czarist
officers supported the forces of counterrevolution, Trotsky found several able
officers who were loyal to the Bolsheviks. They formed the nucleus of the new Red
Army leadership that used a variety of volunteer and coercive methods to recruit
competent military leaders at all levels to join the new force. These officers proved
crucial in defeating the forces arrayed against the new Soviet state.
Despite many setbacks, the new Red Army eventually defeated the various
Allied and counter-revolutionary forces. This was because of a combination of
factors including lack of unity of effort by the counter revolutionaries, the use of
military professionals, and the absolute dedication of the Bolshevik leadership to
their ideology and revolution. In doing so the Red army was able to overcome the
contradictions between the destruction of the old officer class system and the use of
remnants of that class to attain victory on the battlefield.
Ultimately, the Bolsheviks were able to impart their vision of what Russia
would look like after final victory to their soldiers and leaders-something the
counter-revolutionaries never did. This idea of a classless utopia appealed to many
soldiers and provided the necessary motivation to overcome many hardships in the
field. Marxist-Leninist ideology in these early days became a sort of religion that
10
justified the cruelty of the Russian Civil W ar-a parallel that the Iranians would use
some sixty-seven years later in motivating their military in the war against Iraq.
Although Marxist-Leninist ideology presented a framework for looking at all
aspects of life, it was officially atheistic. To find a revolutionary army that used
religion as a motivation it is useful to look further back in history to the English Civil
Wars in the 1640s and Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. In the mid-seventeenth
century there was a struggle for power between King Charles of England and the
two houses of Parliament. Oliver Cromwell, a member of Parliament, ably led the
cavalry troops of the Parliamentary side to a series of victories over the Royalist
forces. In doing so, Cromwell combined both tactical innovation on the battlefield
with a reliance on the revolutionary spirit of his troops. This spirit was based both on
the new nationalism of the yeoman class who were recruited as soldiers in the
parliamentary army and on their religious conviction that they were doing the Lord's
work in overthrowing the tyrannical yoke of absolute royalist power.
Embarking upon reforms in 1644 in what would be called the New Model
Army, Cromwell despaired at "the profaneness and impiety and absence of all
religion (in the ranks), the drinking and gaming, all manner of license and laziness."5
Cromwell insisted that the New Model Army be composed of all English nationals
versus the previous habit of noblemen impressing locals into purely regional forces.
Cromwell imposed strict military discipline on his troops and insisted that the
sRoger J. Howell, Cromwell (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977), 69.
11
government provision and pay them regularly. He instituted a new system of

promotions whereby the commanders chose their subordinates instead of
Parliament choosing all officers.
To match these purely military reforms, he ensured the religious purity of his
forces by monitoring recruitment. The key according to Cromwell was to recruit men
of the proper spirit, especially leaders. Cromwell stated, "A few honest men are
better than numbers....If you choose Godly honest men to be captains of horse,
honest men will follow.6
Cromwell's beliefs were tested and validated in the Battle of Naseby in 1645.
There he led a cavalry charge against the Royalist forces that demonstrated the
value of combining military discipline with motivation. Attacking the right side of the
Royalist line, Cromwell's initial charge broke part of the enemy. Cromwell
maintained the cohesion of his force and quickly organized a second charge,
something most cavalry units of the day were incapable of executing. This second
charge broke the enemy.
For his part, Cromwell attributed his success "to none other than the hand of
God." Although he created a religious environment for his army, Cromwell realized
that a balance between the motivation of his soldiers and their professional conduct
was critical. He saw the need for a reformation of the Army predicated on selfmotivation of the individual soldier, each one a believer in a higher cause. Following
6lbid., 48.
12
the victory at Naseby he wrote to Parliament on the issue, "Surely God delights that
you have endeavored to reform your armies; and I beg it may be done more and
more."7 Whether God favored the New Model Army or not is debatable, but what is
not is that the men of that army believed he did and that belief coupled with their
discipline, organization and sound military leadership led them to victory on the
battlefield.
Cromwell's New Model Army is similar to the post-revolution Iranian military in
its use of religion. The essence of the Iranian Revolution was the establishment of
an Islamic Republic. This meant that every institution in Iran would have to be
Islamized. Although Cromwell envisioned a Christian society for England, there was
no insistence on a particular type and, in fact, Cromwell advocated toleration of
other denominations. The difference between these two cases is in performance on
the battlefield. Cromwell first and foremost stressed discipline, organization and
cohesion. He insisted on arming and equipping his troops with the best equipment
and used conventional tactics to achieve victory. In contrast, the Iranians opted for
tactics that produced high casualties and mixed results at best. The Iranians chose
their tactics thinking they would revolutionize warfare. The political leaders
expected to win with these tactics although they knew the price in casualties would
be high. They counted on the revolutionary zeal of the Iranian people and armed
forces to accept these casualties and fight on to victory.
7lbid., 71.
13
Both nationalism and religious zeal fired the Iranians during the war.
Certainly most were motivated by patriotism in defending their land from the Iraqi
invaders. Their leaders, however, framed the conflict in nationalistic terms,
consistently referring to Saddam Hussein as "Satan or "ungodly." Beyond this
rhetoric the Iranians defined their strategic goals, not in terms of merely recovering
occupied territory, but in waging a religious war to remove Saddam Hussein from
power. This extreme view would have repercussions at the strategic, operational
and tactical levels of war for Iran.
Chapter 2
The Nature of Ideology and Iran
Understanding how an imposed ideology affected the war effort of Iran in its
war with Iraq requires first a clear understanding of the concept of ideology and then
of the fundamentals of Twelver Shiism. Simply put, ideology is the systematic and
interrelated series of ideas that explain the past and present and predict or prescribe
the future. A quick examination of the evolution of ideology in the modem political
world gives insight into its comprehensive nature and helps to define how it can be
applied to the case study at hand.
The modem definition of ideology originated during the Enlightenment with
the French scholar Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) who coined the term and identified
it as the study of the process of forming ideas into a science."1 In what was then the
new, rational world of the enlightenment it was important for de Tracy and his
contemporaries to explain how ideas could be organized into a coherent body and
used to explain the political, social and economic universe. De Tracy believed that
the environment stimulated ideas, not by supernatural or spiritual phenomena, but
physical experience. In place of faith-based intangibles, de Tracy substituted
materialism as the measure of the belief system.2
1Leon P. Baradat, Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1979), 30.
2Baradat, 31.
14
15
An important contemporary of De Tracy was the German philosopher Georg

Hegel. Hegels contribution to the development of ideology was his rejection of the
notion that there was a sharp distinction between reality as it appeared to the
human mind and reality as it actually existed: in other words, the difference between
reality and perception.3 For Hegel, the progression of history, politics and faith was
one that continually closed the gap of understanding, allowing man (and God) to
move toward perfection. While Hegels thoughts can certainly be considered an
ideology, the unitary nature of his view compresses man together with God and
good with evil, making it less attractive to religious idealists.
Karl Marx picked up Hegels dialectical view of history as well as de Tracys
theme of materialism in an effort to explain both the past and future in systematic
manner. Curiously, Marx recognized the power of ideology but considered it a
fabrication used by the ruling class to justify repression of the masses.4 It apparently
did not occur to him that his explanation of the world as driven by materialism and
destined for class warfare was an ideology itself.
Since Marx, many other social scientists have commented on ideology. Karl
Mannheim agreed with Marx that ideology could be used to oppress but stressed
understanding of ideology within a historic nature.5 Others, like Frederick Watkins in
3James L. Wiser, Political Philosophy: A Search For Order (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 983), 336.
4Baradat, 31-32.
sBaradat, 32.
16
his the Age of Ideology, continued to stress the rationalist thinking from which
ideology first emerged. Watkins argued that ideology placed great faith in human
potential based on inherent virtue and a desire to accomplish social good. If there is
conflict in ideology he attributes it to the fact that it spawned political extremes such
as reaction and revolution.6
Other modem writers on ideology, such as David ingersoll, have expanded
on the theme of materialism as a measure of an advanced ideology seeking a better
social structure. Ingersoll sought to differentiate between a philosophy (a set of
beliefs) and an ideology (explanation which seeks to improve conditions) by
focusing on the action plan associated with the latter.7 This focus tied together the
comprehensive manner in which ideology addresses mans political and social
existence, the structure to make sense of it, and the actions needed to improve
conditions.
Early ideologies replaced the faith associated with religion with a
comprehensive, politically based system of beliefs meant to explain the universe to
the masses. By way of explanation L.T. Sargeant wrote in his book, Contemporary
Political Ideology, Ideology provides the believer with a picture of the world both as
it is and as it should be, and in so doing...organizes the tremendous complexity of
6Baradat, 32.
7Baradat, 33.
17
the world into something fairly simple and understandable.8 While an ideology need
not be exclusively secular, there is an overriding political and social message that
addresses the here and now, as well as the future.
Expanding on this, Kenneth Minogue explains that since ideology aspires to
the capacity to explain all that was and will be, then mistakes and excesses are
logically impossible. Everything is part of a larger plan, which may appear to be
misguided or excessive, but in reality gets at the larger truth and, therefore, can
condone apparent misdeeds.9 This explanation bridges the gap for many
proponents of a particular ideology by maintaining the infallibility of the pure
ideology as divinely inspired while accounting for the human faults in its pursuit and
execution.
Baradat comes to grips with the gap between secular and religious ideologies
with an explanation of key characteristics in five parts. First and foremost is the
political nature of all ideologies. Whether secular or religious, all ideologies find their
way into the political world because that is where man exists on earth. Second is a
comprehensive view of the present and the future, seen as attainable in a single
lifetime. The allure of this is clear, because as a substitute for traditional religious
faith, ideologies promise redemption on earth. Third is the action-oriented nature of
8L. T. Sargeant, Contemporary Political Ideologies (Homewood III.: Dorsey Press, 972),
1.
9Kenneth Minogue, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology, (New York: St. Martin
Press, 1985), 5.
18
ideology, placing the promise of redemption squarely in the hands of the individual,
in essence, making him master of his own fate. Fourth, ideologies are directed
toward the masses and have universal appeal. Finally, ideologies have a simple
motivational tone and require sacrifice to attain the ultimate goal.10
Describing the comprehensive nature of ideology led Roy Macridis to create
three broad categories of ideology that include religion. Macridis divided ideologies
into status quo, or rationalizing systems; revolutionary ideologies, namely those
seeking wholesale change; and reformist ideologies that seek evolutionary
change.11 The three categories appear broad enough to cover the spectrum of
political regimes from a developed, free market democracy (Western liberal
ideology), to new regimes that would completely remake their societies
(revolutionary ideological). Regardless of the nature of a particular ideology,
Macridis believed that all ideologies contained certain characteristics or criteria.
They all must be cohesive in that they contain a broad scope and structure. All
ideologies must also be extensive by having widespread support, and they must be
pervasive by providing a comprehensive explanation of the world. Finally, all must
have a high level of intensity reflecting a high degree of spirit, loyalty and emotional
commitment.12
10Baradat, 33-34.
11Roy C. Macridis, Political Ideologies (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1986), 13.
12Macridis, 14-15.
19
Minogue acknowledges that ideology helps explain the political world

regardless of the type of regime involved but also recognizes the combative or
adversarial aspects of ideology. He sees this competition as ua form of theoretical
conscription where everyone is smartly uniformed and assigned to one side or
another.13 Using Marx as an example, Minogue explains that ideologies are
politically oriented and help construct a sense of a violent world that generally
consists of two groups, the oppressed and the oppressor. He believes ideology got
its start with Marxs description of mans alienation from the state as a result of
capitalism. The rise of capitalism replaced older, established orders of religion and
philosophy, but left many victims in its wake. These dispossessed seek redress
through application of a new set of ideals, codified into Marxism and its variants, but
having in common the right to seek change through the violence of revolution.
Minogue combines aspects of universal explanation with violent change by
further defining ideology as an analysis which explains evil and facilitates
change.14 Clearly this line of logic leads away from ideology as something that can
be applied to all political belief systems and toward those systems that pursue an
aggressive, revolutionary tone. With power as the root of all ideological goals,
Minogue identifies some common similarities in ideological systems. He sees them
as openly hostile to modernity, liberalism in collective politics, individualism in moral
13Minogue, 2.
14Minogue, 33.
20
practice, and the market in economics.15 He concludes, "The most remarkable thing
about ideology is the attempt to generate liberation out of a pure theory of social
change."16
In Minogues theory, it is clear there is little room to consider Western, liberal
political tradition as an ideology. Minogue sees ideologies as forces of change,
designed to overthrow. This thinking is consistent with allowing religious-based
revolutions that reject both Western-liberal and socialist-evolutionary variants.
Much of this ideological thinking is relevant when considering the political,
social and economic situation in Iran in 1979 as the Shah struggled to retain power
in an authoritarian state that was simultaneously pursuing modernization while
repressing political change. The rise of ideological Shiism directly counterpoised the
royalist, feudal and western oriented regime of the Shah. The ideology of Iranian
Shiism was comprehensive in nature with a strong historic component and sought to
improve life here on earth. It stressed the individual and his role in a community
focusing on the radical and emotional nature of change needed to do so. It stressed
the concept of justice for the dispossessed in an adversarial setting. Finally, it
justified violence in pursuit of this justice to achieve the necessary goals. The
specifics of these components now need further examination.
15Minogue, 4.
16Minogue, 4.
21
Shiism as Ideology
If true political ideologies must be temporally comprehensive, adversarial,
and violent, then extending the ideological battle into the religious sphere portends
even greater struggle. Religious ideology introduces elements of faith that go
beyond mere political views of state and society as it enters the realm of life beyond
death. The purity of ideas contained in these struggles leaves no room for
compromise. In religious ideologies those who oppose the stated views are at a
minimum misguided, and at worst, evil. In its essence these ideologies seek to
transcend explanation of simple political differences by understanding the basic
struggle of man, that of good versus evil. This is evident in the broad ideology of
Islam and specifically in the branch called Shiism.
Islam is readily an ideology because of the totality of the Islamic tradition in
regard to mans political and religious actions. Islam itself means to surrender ones
will to that of Allah requiring complete submission to His higher authority. This
authority is transmitted via law with a divine origin that recognizes no boundary
between religious and secular authority.17 By definition there is no difference
between political and religious affairs thus creating a unifying ideology that covers
mans earthly and divine life.
Islam's comprehensive tenets derive firom the body of doctrinal beliefs
handed down by the Prophet Mohammed and inscribed in the Islamic holy book, the
17John Sabini, Islam: A Primer (Washington: Middle East Editorial Association, 1990)
25.
22
Koran. In addition, Islamic practice is influenced by the traditions and interpretations

of the Koran by learned clerics many of whose lessons are contained in the Sharia
(meaning path to the watering place) or body of religious law. The main contributors
to these interpretations come from Islams two main branches, the Sunni and Shiite
traditions.
While both branches agree that Mohammed is the prophet of Islam there
exists a schism between the two over who rightfully succeeded him upon his death.
Sunnis believe that Mohammed left no specific instructions on succession, therefore
the "people of tradition and consensus of opinion" would choose the next leader.18
Since only God can chose a Prophet, the Sunnis believe that Mohammed's
successor would be caliph, or community leader, beginning a tradition of Ijma,
meaning those chosen by consensus of the Islamic community based on God's
revelation.19 The Sunnis believe the Caliph can be any devout believer with the
proper religious qualifications. Shiites, on the other hand, restrict eligibility to those
who trace their lineage from Mohammed down through his nephew and son in law
Ali in an almost royalist manner. This tradition is so strong in Shiism that some
sects trace the lineage back past Mohammed to Adam.20 Shiites also believe that
18Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972),
149.
19Sabini, 44.
Sabini, p. 45.
23
the successor has to have esoteric knowledge to interpret religious issues beyond
that of laymen.21
The Shiite branch disputes the legitimacy of succession after Mohammed,
believing that Ali was the rightful successor. In fact, the name Shiite comes from the
Farsi words Shiat Ali, or Party of Ali" and reflects the historical rift between the
Shiites and Sunnis that is central to Shiite ideology.22 In the Shiite tradition Ali was
denied his rightful place as successor by what eventually would be known as the
Sunni community.
The Shiites further believe that a series of divinely inspired Imams, or spiritual
leaders, are descended from Alis line and will be revealed to the world to guide the
true believers. As part of these beliefs, the Shiites maintain that the true successor
to Ali was his second son Hussein, himself unjustly persecuted and murdered when
he tried to press his claim to succession. Hussein died leading a valiant but
hopeless charge against those who opposed his claim at the battle of Karbala.
Hussein's martyrdom for a righteous cause became enshrined in Shiite theology and
tradition and remains a key pillar of the religion.
The largest of the Shiite sects, the Ithna Ashariya, or Twelvers, believe that
there were twelve legitimate descendants of Ali. The last of these Imams was
Mohammed al Mahdi who disappeared following his fathers death around 878 AD
21Hossein, p. 150.
Sabini, p. 44.
24
when he was only an infant.23 Shiites believe the Twelfth Imam is not dead, but only
in hiding and will return someday to lead the faithful.24 In the interim, Shiites believe
that God appoints a righteous person each generation who is the legitimate leader
of the Moslem community and all of humanity.25 These Imams provide temporary
leadership and prepare the way for the eventual return of the Twelfth Imam. As with
Islam in general, the realm of these Shiite Imams authority is both religious and
political. While these interim leaders are not prophets themselves, they are chosen
by God to succeed Ali. As such, these anointed successors are the only ones who
can claim legitimate authority over the Shiite and Islamic worlds and, at the absolute
level, all of humanity.26 The leader is entrusted with the physical and spiritual well
being of the entire Islamic community.
The split between the Sunni and Shia branches widened over time and
inevitably took on political aspects that were part of the wider politicization of Islam.
The transformation of Shiite Islam into an ideological body of thought was a gradual
process caused, in part, by a reaction to outside political influences often imposed
on Iran. Introduction of Western political themes such as church-state relations,
liberalism, Marxism, capitalism, and democracy were alien to the purist teachings of
23John Kelsay, Islam and W ar A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville Kentucky,

Westminster/John Knox Press, 993), 38.
24Sabini, 47.
25Kelsay, 37.
Kelsay, 37.
25
Islam, especially in regard to separation of church and state. For true Moslems, the
Koran contained the universal truths needed to be in accordance with God's will,
both on earth and in the hereafter. There was no need for a secular authority to
interfere with the legitimate authority already in existence within the Koran. Islam
stressed obedience, comprehensive thought, and community, thereby making
Western ideologies seem redundant or irrelevant to the true Islamic society.
But like early Christian societies in Europe, there were disputes over the
interpretation of the true meaning of the religious truth contained in the sacred
writings. The spread of Western political thought into Islamic countries caused the
creation of a variety of political ideologies that centered on Islamic thought.
Attempts were made to adapt concepts like socialism to include the historic Islamic
view of community. But while there were similarities, the analogy could only go so
far because of the historic, cultural and social differences. The biggest stumbling
block to the marriage of Western ideologies with Islamic societies was the
dominance of secularism in Western thought stemming from the Enlightenment.
Secular ideologies could not mobilize the masses in Islamic cultures because
they were essentially alien to the culture, and therefore, the religion. Some attempts
were made by groups such as the Tudeh (Communist Party) and Baath Socialist
Party to combine nationalism with socialism. These movements stressed the
Western concepts of class, race and economic status, while purely Islamic
movements transcended those classifications. Although many Iranians and other
Moslems shared poverty and oppression with their Western counterparts, they could
26
not find salvation in Western style political parties and slogans. They yearned for a
comprehensive, Islamic solution to their problems.
Within the narrower Shiite community, Western thought only touched the
periphery of the cultural and psychological base of most Iranians. More successful
were homegrown ideologies that stressed Islamic and, particularly, the Shiite
tradition. One of the earliest theorists in Iran was Mahmud Taleqani (1911-?). Bom
the son of a low ranking mullah, Taleqani was trained in the holy city of Qom. In
1949 he became a supporter of opposition leader Saddeqh Mossadegh and was
arrested and imprisoned on and off from 1959-1963 by the security forces of the first
Shah, Reza Pahlavi.27
Taleqani tried to walk the fine line between traditional Shiism and the
Western revolutionary theories to describe how Iranians, all Muslims actually, should
fight against tyrannical regimes. Taleqani believed that Moslems were justified in
waging Jihad, or Holy War, to defend their interests. He stated:
Waging war to defend ones rights defines ones creed for justice. A true
religion cannot be sustained without waging war in self-defense. Should a
just individual be found to act as custodian of the Muslims, then Jihad, not
for the sake of particular country or nationalist sentiment, not for any
system, but for God, for truth-is lawful.28
Throughout the 1960s Taleqani developed close relations with the Marxistoriented Mojahedin opposition group citing the historical need for Moslems to be
27Mangol Bayat, Taleqani and the Iranian Revolution, Shiism, Resistance and
Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer, (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985), 68-71.
28Bayat, 76.
27
revolutionary. While against the atheism present in all Marxist theory, Taleqani
attempted to capture the essence of class warfare in the context of the right to wage
defensive Jihad against an Iranian regime he considered exploitative and foreign
dominated.29
Taleqanis ideas were based on the belief that the ulama, or community, had
the right and responsibility to provide leadership, especially to the youth. He viewed
Iran's growing Westernization, which was embraced by the Shahs royalist regime,
as undermining the values of Islam. He considered the Iranian leadership part of an
evil conspiracy to create a gap between the people and their true Islamic leaders.30
Taleqani believed that negative Western influence manifested itself mostly in the
area of science and technology. While not opposed to technical innovation and
progress, Taleqani thought that these material solutions to mans earthly challenges
left a gap in the more important spiritual aspect of life. This gap had to be filled by
the leadership offered by the chosen religious leaders. This emphasis on the
spiritual over the material would continually emerge as many of Taleqanis thoughts
appeared later in the writings and policies of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme
religious jurisprudent of Shiism in Iran.
Another man who influenced the Ayatollah Khomeini was his contemporary,
the Ayatollah Muratizi Mutahari. Mutahari believed there was a need to translate the
Bayat, 77-78.
Bayat, 72.
28
collective consciousness of the Shiites into a clear ideology that could guide the
Iranian Revolution. The key, as Mutahari saw it, was the rejection of any secularbased ideology and the implementation of a totally Islamic one. Mutahari refined
this further by differentiating between two basic types of ideologies, human and
corporate. Mutahari saw it as follows:
Human ideologies are addressed to the human species, not to some
special nationality, race or class, and have for their motive the salvation of
the whole human...species. Corporate ideologies (on the other hand) are
addressed to a certain group, class, or stratum and have for their motive
the liberation, or hegemony, of that group....Beyond all doubt, Islamic
ideology is human and arises form the primordial nature of man.31
Mutahari made a connection between the development of Western political
thought and the concept of a corporate ideology. He considered the corporate
ideology as impersonal and far removed from the spiritualism of human ideology,
while Islam's ideology remains human because of a universalistic appeal. Mans
natural, or primordial state, was that of an individual inspired by faith in God through
the Koran, and integrated into the greater community by adherence to the common
Islamic laws.
Using this as a starting point, Khomeini and other Islamic clerics viewed
Western, corporate ideology as alien to Shiism. They would seek their own
solutions to Iran's problems that would be at once Islamic, anti-Western and
humanist in nature.
31Hamid Dabashi, Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Mohammed to the Umayyad
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1989), 19.
29
The translation of this collective memory into a workable political ideology

was facilitated by a phenomenon unique to Shiism, the role of the cleric. The
velayat e faqih, or "rule of the jurist, vested both temporal and religious authority in
a learned religious scholar, in this case Khomeini. Khomeini developed the concept
of the velayat e faqih in the 1960s when he began opposing the Shah openly. In
Khomeini's view, Iran's future ruler must have both political and religious power in
order to be an Islamic leader. While many Iranian clerics disagreed with this
interpretation, Khomeini viewed the velayat e faqih as a combination of powers that
bound secular authority with ideology by investing authority in the religious leader, or
Imam, who had authority overall decisions, political as well as metaphysical.
The combination of these ancient cultural/religious beliefs and the modem
Iranian political experience created the needed components for an ideology that was
at once Shiite and anti-Western. The anti-Westemism of this thought was not new.
Earlier in the century the Islamic philosopher Jalal Ali Ahmad described the
fascination with Western thought as Gharb-Zadigi, or "Westoxification." His was an
apocalyptic view of Western influence on Islam in which the West is seen as an evil
machine that would overwhelm the culture and purity of Islam. His solution was for
the people to return to the Koran. Ironically, Ahmad was a member of the
communist Tudeh Party-the party that had adopted Western thought more readily
than any other. Despite this, Ahmad clearly understood the use of Islamic symbols
and the negative effect the West had on Shiism. The key was how to translate it
into a political body of thought that would appeal to the people.
30
The Ayatollah Mutahari captured the essence of al Ahmads work by

connecting religion with politics. He said of this:
What will give unity, direction and shared aspirations to the man of
today... and to the man of tomorrow, what will serve as his touchstone
of good and evil, of musts and must nots, is an elective conscious,
inspirational philosophy armed with logic-in other words, a
comprehensive ideology.32
As with most ideologies used in the pursuit of revolution, radical Shiism was not
averse to violence in pursuit of its goals.
Khomeini and Revolutionary Shiism

Think of it-a political clergy! Well, why not? The prophet was a politician!33
Khomeini was astute at harnessing both traditional Shiite beliefs and the
effects of modem alienation that occurred throughout the Shahs regime. He
melded these forces into an ideology that was at the same time comprehensive,
violent and grounded in ancient Twelver theory. The key elements included
emphasis on sacrifice, as in the manner of Hussein and Ali, the belief in clerical
elitism to provide leadership to the faithful, the esoteric nature of truth (requiring the
elite's interpretation) and the charisma needed to hold and sway the population.34 In
32Dabashi, 17.
33Jean-Marie Xaviere, Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini (Hew York: Bantam Books,
1980), 11.
^Marvin Zonis and Daniel Brumbers, Shiism Interpreted by Khomeini: An Ideology of
Revolutionary Violence, in Shiism, Resistance and Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer
(Boulder: Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), 48.
31
fostering the revolution and prosecuting the subsequent war with Iraq, the Ayatollah
Khomeini and his followers stressed the Shiite collective memory with its emphasis
on the supreme symbols of suffering, injustice, perseverance, rebellion and the final
establishment of the "peace of the rightly guided" as the core of those beliefs.35
Overarching these specific beliefs were the complementary use of unification
(brotherhood aspect and universal nature of Islam) and violence (the righteous fight
for justice) that legitimized the bloody overthrow of the Shah with the promise of a
new paradise in the future.
Within these general beliefs, Khomeini further developed the ideology to
provide legitimacy for revolution, clerical rule, and the specific manner in which he
waged war later against Iraq. These principles have eight major themes that help
explain the subsequent ideology.36
First was an explanation of the roles of passivity and activism. While Islam
calls for submission to Gods will and Shiism recognizes no ultimate religious
authority until the arrival of the Twelfth Imam, Khomeini argued that the fight against
injustice was a greater calling and would hasten the arrival of the latent Imam.37
Additionally, the individual's struggle against political and religious injustice
Dabashi, 15.
36AII eight principles in this section originated in Zonis and Brumbers, Shiism
Interpreted by Khomeini: An Ideology of Revolutionary Violence, in Shiism, Resistance
and Revolution, ed. Martin Kramer (Boulder CO., Westview Press, 1987)
37Zonis and Brumbers, 49-50.
32
legitimizes the human element in the world and gives it added meaning in a world
that often seems pre-ordained.
The second is the illegitimacy of the rule of non-believers while awaiting the
arrival of the Twelfth Imam. Within Shiism, all states are technically illegal and
unjust until the Imam returns, but in reality the state is tolerated as long as it
respects basic Shia beliefs and culture. In this construct Sunni states are judged by
their willingness to self-reform and to fall in line with traditional Twelver thought.
Toward that end Khomeini said the following: "We would like to be brothers of other
countries. Even though they may have deviated, if they reform and stretch their
hands of brotherhood toward us, we only have their interests at heart."38
Of course, failure to voluntarily reform justified aggressive action to make
other states reform. The specific action that Khomeini wished was a rejection of the
superpowers and an end to reliance on the West. Khomeini put the warning this
way:
I would like to warn the governments of Islamic countries not to repeat
their past mistakes but extend the hand of brotherhood toward each
other. With humility toward God and relying on the power of Islam,
they should cut the cruel hands for the oppressor and world devouring
plunderers; especially the United States, from the region.39
Singled out for special contempt by the hard-line clerics was Saudi Arabia.
Khomeini felt that the Saudis had forfeited any legitimacy to the claim of guardian of
Zonis, etal., 50-51.

39Zonis, etal., 50-51.
33
the Islamic holy sites and were in fact a great fraud and supporter of Satan itself.
Again Khomeini in his own words:
Although all the leaders claim to be Muslims you see there is
absolutely no similarity between those leaders and Islam... they make
lots of claims but there is no practice. Look at the character of the
Prophet and look at your character....What was the Prophets
approach toward the Satans and what is your approach...apart from
the fact you are Satans yourselves. The Prophet says be united with
one another, yet you divide people. The Koran says: Hold ye fast to
the rope of God yet you are holding the ropes of America or the Soviet
Union.40
Khomeini did not hesitate to criticize those, like the Sunnis, who were in the
majority and in fact he seemed to prefer being in the minority from which he claimed
to have the more moral position.
The third principle was the rejection of any majority position based only on
the question of numbers. As part of the battle of the Prophets succession it did not
matter to Khomeini, nor to his theological predecessors, that the Shiites were not in
the majority. The righteous few were still the legitimate successors to Mohammed
and they had not only a right but also a duty to lead the immoral majority to a more
righteous life. The remedy for this immorality allowed for violence to return justice to
its proper place.41 Through violence the wicked majority could both be punished and
shown the error of its way. As this was true at the individual level, so was it true
between nations.
40Zonis, etal., 51.

41FBIS 17 August 1983.
34
Why there was often a need for minority rule was explained in the fourth
principle, the concept of mans inherent weakness, fallibility and vulnerability to
temptation. This principle is based on mans deep-rooted desire for selfish
aggrandizement. For the sake of the greater Islamic community this selfish desire
had to be suppressed or rooted out. Western influence, as represented most overtly
by materialism, was part of a great evil influence that was akin to a cancer in the
Islamic body. The only remedy for this was a true Islamic state which had to do
everything it could, including the use of force, to eradicate this evil influence. While
this required self-abnegation on the individual level, it also required sacrifice by the
community as a whole to achieve the desired end state.
This leads directly to the fifth principle, the role of martyrdom. Central to the
core of Shiism is the need for emotional sacrifice not only to prove oneself worthy,
but also to protect the larger community. Sacrifice needs to be more than a
symbolic gesture in this ideologynamely, a real contribution to the elimination of
evil influence on Islamic society. The Shiite tradition of dying in the fight against
outside influence was strong and was used for centuries as a way to regenerate
opposition to a series of foreign occupiers. While the concept of sacrifice in defense
of Islam was also present in the Sunni tradition, Khomeini transformed it into an
offensive weapon by expanding the definition of the threat to Islam. In this ideology
fighting and dying for Islam in an offensive action was as justified as defending
ones own home, although this was contrary to the concept of Defa, or Islamic
defensive war. This aspect of martyrdom would be crucial to the Iranians both as
35
they expanded their war aims and in their execution of battlefield tactics against the
Iraqis.
Shiites consider themselves the truest believers in Islam and martyrdom is
the price they have paid to attain that status. As a minority in Islam they had
suffered the most on earth yet have remained steadfast in their beliefs. The holy
time of Ashlira, when Shiites demonstrate their faith by physically whipping
themselves to show their devotion to God, had its foundation in the original battle of
Karbala. A common slogan during the Iranian Revolution and the ensuing war with
Iraq was "Everyday is Ashura and every place is Karbala, denoting the constant
need for struggle and sacrifice.
Khomeini was able to use the concepts of Jihad and martyrdom at several
levels to mobilize internal public support for the revolution. At the international level
the clerics blamed many of Iran's problems on the West in general, and the United
States in particular. Khomeini and his followers painted the United States as a great
evil that sought to roll back the revolution.42 The long-standing ties between the
Shah and the United States were used as proof of the evil of Westernism and the
need to find an Islamic solution to Iran's problems. The continued struggle against
this evil was therefore righteous and would require sacrifice to ultimately be
successful.
42Zonis et al, 55.
36
To Shiites, the fight against injustice, however desperate, is the most

important thing, even if the result is death for the Shahid, or martyr. The two
requirements to attain martyrdom were to make the sacrifice consciously and to do it
for a sacred cause. Mutahari defined a Shahid as, T h e death of a person who, in
spite of being fully conscious of the risks involved, willingly faces them for the sake
of a sacred cause."43 The sacrifice is made not just for the successful admittance to
a perfect afterlife, but to inspire the earthly community to greater deeds. Mutahari
again comments, T h e Shahid can be compared to a candle whose job it is to bum
out and get extinguished in order to shed light for the benefit of others....The Shahid
are the candles of society. They bum themselves out and illuminate society."44
To induce the type of emotional hysteria needed to produce those willing to
martyr themselves, Khomeini again mixed the old and new. The sixth principle he
used was the idea of the oppressed peoples. Khomeini constantly characterized the
Shia as the oppressed, both historically and in modem times. As the historic
minority in Islam there was a natural foundation to this thought. As a revolutionary,
Khomeini also cast the dispossessed and alienated classes as by definition being in
opposition to the Shah and the ruling elite. Using both the concepts of class war
and the historic Shiite position of being repressed, Khomeini tapped into an
43James A. Bill, Morale Versus Technology, The Power of Iran in the Persian Gulf
War, in Iran Iraq War, ed. Farhang Rajaee (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida,
1993), 205.
Bill, 206.
37
emotional vein in the Iranian body politic. This enabled him to rally large segments
of the population to his side and neutralize many of the Shahs supporters.
In the war against Iraq his use of these ideas allowed him to mobilize public
support for years despite huge casualties and battlefield stalemate. At an even
higher level, Khomeini saw the Iranians as a rally point for all the oppressed nations
of the earth. This is evident in the following statement he made in the midst of the
war, Pray to God, today the might of the Iranians and the strength of Islam in Iran
are such that they have become the focus of attention of all oppressed nations.45
The appeal of this message lies in the need for the lowly and downtrodden to rise up
against the rich and tyrannical. As to the question cf leadership for those oppressed
within and outside of Islam, Khomeini had the answer to that as well.
The seventh principle was the moral right of the Shiite clerics to lead the
masses to moral and physical ascendancy. In the absence of the Hidden Imam,
Khomeini preached the right and duty of the clerics to lead the nation. As Khomeini
said, Even when people behave well, they still need advice."46 As mentioned earlier,
Khomeini used the idea of the velyat-e-faqih as nothing less than a divine power
that inspired the Supreme Guide (himself).47 While Khomeini did not see himself as
the Twelfth Imam, he was referred to as the nayab-e Imam, or representative of the
^FBIS, 24 May 1983.

^FBIS, 24 March 983.
47Zonis and Brumbers, 58.
38
Imam. To Khomeini this meant one who heralded the return of the Imam but not the
One Himself, a sort of Islamic John the Baptist, one sent to prepare the way. The
other clerics assisted the Supreme Leader in this regard and constituted both a
senior religious body and the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution.
The need for this body of religious clerics to show the masses the way was
based on the eighth principle, the esoteric nature of the truth. If the truth was
obvious everyone would see it, but since it is hard to find the enlightened are
needed to show the rest the way to it. This insight into the truth is based foremost
on the proper succession of the Prophet. In addition, the clerics had to undergo
years of theological study and reflection to gain insight into the ways of the Prophet
in order to understand the truth. They compared it to penetrating the veil of
ignorance that hides the truth from the weak and tempted masses.48
Collectively, these eight principles describe an ideology that is at once
traditional and revolutionary. It was one that could justify violence in pursuit of its
goals up to and including war. An examination of war in the context of Islam and
Shiism is thus warranted.
War and Shiism

While it is a common myth in the West that Islamic leaders call for Jihad, or
Holy War, at their whim, the reality is more complex. Although the Imam can call the
^Zonis and Brumbers, 59.
39
faithful to war, this power is not absolute and has to be justified within the context of
Islamic teachings and law.
As with mainstream (Sunni) Islam, Shiism cites the Koran as authorizing war
in defense of Islam and to further the cause of God. Religious conversions under
the Prophet Mohammed were not to expand temporal rule, but to bring about the
rule of God, or Daral-lslam. Wars not conducted for this purpose are called Dar al
Harb, or territory of war. This division recognized that man makes war for his own
purpose but only God could sanction war for the advancement of mankind. The
Koran explained it as such: "Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto
you; but it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you and it may
happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows, you know not.49
Ayatollah Mutahari further described Jihad as both "a garment of piety" and
"impenetrable armor of God."50 He saw Islam as an active force that could use Jihad
as both a physical and moral force, as evidenced by the following: A Muslim
community equipped with the spirit of jihad is not vulnerable to enemy assault. The
Muslim community is community of power and force. Islam is a religion of power."{X}
Thus, fighting against a materially superior force strengthens the cause of
Jihad rather than weakens it. In this regard the Khomeini stated:
Those who fight Jihad against the external enemy never fear superior
numbers, for the Prophet said that he would never turn back even if all
49Koran, 2:216.
Bill, 205.
40
the Arabs united against him. His cause was the cause of God, and
the cause of God can never be defeated, nor is there any turning
back.51
Within Shiism, this division of war continues with the concept of Dar al Islam
becoming Jihad, or Holy War. To Shiites, Jihad is the fight against unjust
oppression with words and, if necessary, the sword. However, there is more depth
to the Shia approach to war than merely Jihad in the cause of Islam. The question
is one of legitimacy of leadership. Given the theoretical illegitimacy of any political
regime not sanctioned by the legitimate heirs to Mohammed, the Shiites needed to
find reason to justify violence in defense of Islam. The early Shia clergy developed
the Defa concept to explain violence in the protection of interim regimes awaiting the
return of the Twelfth Imam.52 The reasoning was that these regimes, although not
blessed by God, served as a host awaiting the rebirth of a true Shia state sometime
in the future. Therefore, violence that preserved the host also served the larger
cause yet to come, although it still did not reach the standard of Jihad.
There were limits on the use of Defa by religious and political leaders. As an
act unsanctioned by the Twelfth Imam, a Defa could only be defensive in nature. It
authorized war to defend the people and interests of Islam but not to conduct a full
scale Jihad to implement the goals of Shiism worldwide. That authority could only
51Bill, 84.
52Kelsay, 38.
41
come with the reappearance of the Hidden Imam himself meaning that the most any
religious or secular leader could do was defend territory.
This conceptual difference would arise in the Iran-lraq War in 1983 once the
Iranians had reclaimed their own territory yet continued the war with expanded war
aims. In the time leading up to the Iran-lraq War, many Shiite theologians sought to
explain new interpretations of Jihad. While some of these explanations may seem
simple rationalizations to justify the actions of revolutionary Iran, many of the hard
line clerics found common cause between promotion of the Shiite ideology and the
justification of the use of violence, including war, to attain it.
Conclusion
While Khomeini and the clerics sought to construct an ideological explanation
of mans relationship to God and place in the universe they were also keen to
emphasize the human aspect of conflict. This human aspect stressed the spiritual
and revolutionary nature of man overcoming the physical world. Just as the creation
of man by God represented His ultimate work, so in Shiite ideology the individual
believer was the key to remaking an ailing and disconnected society. A similar
thought arose in revolutionary France in the late eighteenth century whereby the
aggressive nature of revolutionary man was viewed as a weapon itself. This human
spirit was viewed as the ultimate engine of change and could be employed to recast
every aspect of state and society to achieve the goals of the revolution. In the
military sphere it manifested itself in the concept of elan, or the spirit of the offense.
42
Once the Iran-lraq War started the concept of an elan-based ideology was
transferred to the three levels of war. At the strategic level, Iran claimed to be
fighting for Islam against a Baathist regime that was secular, corrupt and evil.
Khomeini and the clerics could not accept the validity of a state that had a
population of over 50 percent Shiites, yet was ruled by a secular dictator. On the
operational level, the Iranians knew their military was weakened by the 1979
Revolution and had to rely on the dedication of its soldiers to hold off the attackers
until they could bring their larger population to bear against the Iraqis. The call for
sacrifice, combined with an appeal to patriotism, could provide the breathing apace
needed. On the tactical level, new tactics would be developed that would
emphasize the human element in combat over the technological. Iran's international
isolation seemingly made this the only option as the country had few sources for
spare parts and replacement equipment.
However, this ignores the fact that at the beginning of the war Iran made no
attempt to modify its international position or reestablish the severed ties with the
West, its chief arms supplier during the Shah's rule. Iran chose its revolutionary
path willingly and believed this path to be correct, even during wartime. The
emphasis on the human element in Islamic terms was real and reflected a rejection
of Western political tradition and, if necessary, the technological advancements that
went with it.
This belief in the Islamic solution was reflected directly on the battlefield in
terms of tactics and training. Many in the West would describe the Iranian tactics of
43
human wave assaults in the war as irrational. The Iranians recognized that they
lacked sustained technological superiority to win and instead relied on the emotion,
or elan, of their individual soldiers. They considered their position not one of
weakness, however, but of strength because it would be innovative and true to the
core beliefs in Islam.
Iran would use raw emotion as its chief weapon against Iraq. Patriotism
and revolutionary fervor would be the glue to hold the Iranian war effort together.
While Iran mustered a considerable ideological passion against Iraq they used
the historic animosity between the two peoples as a starting point. The ancient
Arab-Persian feud found willing participants under the Islamic banner. The
combination of traditional hatred and religious ideology found residence at the
strategic, operational and tactical levels of war. Strategically, Iran saw itself in a
life and death struggle, or Jihad, with the forces of evil embodied by the
superpowers, chiefly the United States. Operationally, Iran's campaign plans
centered on the use of the offensive spirit to overcome the material weaknesses
of the armed forces. Tactically, Iran believed the sheer will of the Iranian soldiermartyrs would prove the decisive factor in battle.
Chapter 3
Historical Framework
The impact of ideology on the Iranian war effort has precedent in history
and, in fact, shares many of the characteristics of previous ideologically
influenced military efforts. To help understand the scope and nature of this
influence it is useful to examine some common aspects throughout history.
This examination is organized in the form of a framework, i.e., a basic
structure for suggesting factors and their relationship as applied to empirical
cases. It is not a theoretical scheme nor formal model, meaning it does not
proscribe a specific and detailed paradigm that describes abstract relationships.1
Rather, it is a method that allows a general examination of similarities and
differences of specific situations over time. The framework allows a systematic
look at relationships and interaction by focusing on a series of critical topics.
These categories are useful in comparing similarities and differences of military
forces influenced by ideology throughout history. Similar frameworks, such as
1liana Kass and Bard O'Neill, The Deadly Embrace, (National Institute for Public Policy
and University Press of America, Inc. London) 1997, xiv.
44
45
the work done by Bard 0 Neill on insurgency and revolution, provide a guide that
helps breakdown and study the critical components of an area of study.2
The framework dealt with here limits most comparisons to revolutionary
regimes,3 reflecting a greater degree of ideological influence than found in other
political systems.4 As this examination is part of a broader look at civil military
relations, a useful start point is the concept of objective and subjective political
control of a military, as outlined by Samuel Huntington in his book, Soldier and
State. Examining subjective and objective control allows an accounting of how
military professionalism and political domination interact and influence military
development and performance. The framework then examines different types of
ideologies and different types of militaries to establish what types of relationships
are possible between the two with particular emphasis on what type of military
leadership and training is fostered in such regimes.
Once the basic relationships between ideology and military institutions are
established, there is a detailed examination of the patterns and specific methods
20 NeiHs book is entitled, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modem Revolutionary

Warfare.
3The terms ideological and revolutionary are used in a similar vein throughout this
chapter. While not all ideologies are revolutionary, most revolutions have an ideology.
The common ground is the innovative political focus, rejection of the old regime, and
pursuit of subjective means to control the military.
4While a wide variety of historical examples are available, the focus here is on the
French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the later Soviet example, the Nazis and
some examples from the Chinese Civil War.
46
of political control used in such regimes. It is here that a clear deviation from
normal civil military controls found in democratic states is found. Following that
is a look at how all of this ideological control affects the military in wartime.
Specific examination is made of use of elite forces that are politically reliable, the
interface between these forces and traditional units, tactics, and overall
effectiveness. The focus of this area is the first two levels of war, the tactical and
operational where the impact of ideological policies are translated into battlefield
realities
Following this is the effects of waging ideological war both at home and
abroad, which covers the third and final level of war, the strategic. Completing
the framework is the effect of ideological war on the nations military.
Assisting in the comparison of different regimes are specific historical
cases include the French Revolutionary Army of Napoleon, the Bolshevik forces
in the Russian Civil War, and the Nazi-lead German forces in World War II.
References are also made to the Communist Chinese Peoples Liberation Army
and Parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. The
framework identifies broad areas of commonality cutting across time and
indicating a pattern of relationships. The framework is developed using these
historic examples and applied later to the Iranian case.
Objective and Subjective Civilian Control
While the relationship between a revolutionary ideology and its military in
war has its own particular dynamics, it also remains part of the larger question of
47
civil-military relations. A useful starting point for this discussion is Samuel

Huntingtons seminal work on the interaction between politics and the military.
The Soldier and the State. Ironically, Huntington sees the origin of civil-military
relationships in modem states as ideological in nature. In the 17th and 18th
centuries rising legislatures sought to wrest more control from absolute
monarchs. This gave rise to military formations beholden, not to the monarch,
but to institutions and ideas. Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentary Army of
England best represent this group. The aristocratic and bourgeois classes of the
18th and 19thcenturies struggled for control of the military. The rise of liberalism
as a competing ideology sought to reduce the power of the landed elites and
make the military more responsive to popular control.5
Huntington uses that starting point to divide the civil-military power issue
into two categories, subjective and objective control. In the case of subjective
control, civilian control is identified with the maximization of the power of
government institutions, social classes or constitutional forms.6
Objective control represents the maximization of military professionalism
and, according to Huntington, it distributes political power between military and
civilian groups which is most conducive to the emergence of professional
sSamuel, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1957), 80.
6Huntington, 81.
48
attitudes and behavior among members of the officer corps.7 While subjective
control seeks to subdue the military as a direct tool of the state, objective control
tries to maximize the contribution by making the institution more professional,
and therefore, more effective.
Within the category of subjective control there are often competitions
between various civilian power structures for control over the military because of
the militarys ability to serve as the ultimate instrument of power. Competition
between various government institutions, social classes, or constitutional forms
further reduces the independence of the military. As power is a zero-sum game,
often multiple, non-military sources have varying degrees of control over the
military.
This has a direct effect on the level of military professionalism, in effect
reducing the militarys capacity to perform its intended role. Conversely,
objective control minimizes the political role of the military, allowing it to
concentrate on its primary role, battlefield competency. According to Huntington,
objective control creates a competent military willing to carry out legitimate
orders while producing the lowest amount of military political power.8
Huntington clearly favors objective control and describes subjective
control as fundamentally out of place in any society where there emerges a
7Huntington, 83.
8Huntington, 84.
49
distinct class of specialists in the management of violence. While objective

control may provide a nation with a more formidable tool externally, the lure of
subjective control remains strong. Whether liberal or authoritarian, many
regimes wish to regulate their militaries very tightly. Many have a background of
distrust for large standing forces, while others have traditions of military
involvement in domestic politics, including coup d'etat. In totalitarian systems,
the nature of political rule is to tolerate no other institutions that rival the state or
party, making subjective control essential. Huntington describes several patterns
of civil-military relations based on the relationships of three variables: whether
the regimes ideology is pro- or anti-military, how much political power the military
has, and the level of military professionalism.
Types
Combinations of these three characteristics yield four broad types of
militaries:9
Fledgling
The first combination consists of an anti-military ideology, high military
political power, and low military professionalism, which could be described a
fledgling force. The army can influence or take power, but is neither highly
9Huntington, 85.
50
thought of nor effective in a traditional role. Examples of this type would be

developing nations with ineffective armies that nevertheless secure political
power for themselves.
Militia
Militia is the second type, based on anti-military ideology, low military
political power and high military professionalism. This characterizes a society
that suffers from few physical threats and sees no need for large standing forces.
The forces that do exist are competent enough but carry little political clout. An
example of this would be the U.S. up until World War II.
Mobilized
A third type is what Huntington calls a mobilized force, reflecting a pro
military ideology, high military political power, and high military professionalism.
This combination usually exists in societies where there are continual external
threats that require an effective military machine and a nation virtually always on
a war footing. An example of this would be the Confederacy during the Civil
War, Prussia in the 18th and 19thcenturies and modem Israel.
Expeditionary
An expeditionary force is a fourth type, based on pro-military ideology, low
military political power and high military professionalism. This type may be seen
51
in societies relatively safe from foreign threats but that are actively engaged in
worldwide military operations. The reliance on an active military as part of
foreign policy creates politically sympathy for the military as long as remains
apolitical. Examples would be Britain in the Victorian era and many current
Western powers.
Huntingtons categories of ideology, political power and level of
professionalism provide a useful jumping off point to examine these relationships
in more detail.
52
Figure 1
Fledgling
Militia
Mobilized
Expeditionary
Internal Focus
External Focus
War is Inevitable
War not Inevitable
Purpose of War is Punitive & Self Evident
Less Professional
(-)
Purpose of War is Political & Explicit
More Professional
(+)
Types as They Relate to Professionalism

Having described the various types of militaries, it is important to place
them in the context of how professional they are and how they fit into the nations
view of warfare in general.
Insight into this can be discerned by the focused threat of the military as it
performs its primary function. In his book The Professional Soldier, Morris
Janowitz describes the traditional outlook on war and the militarys role in it.10
Janowitz states that given the internal chaos that characterized the Greek citystate political environment, war was considered inevitable. The purpose of war
10Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (London:
Free Press of Glencoe, Collier-MacMillan Limited, 1960), 263.
53
was thus to punish those who threatened the established order. This view of war
concentrated on local threats and made the military focus inward.
The professionalization of the military led to a shift in attitudes toward war.
Military theorists such as Carl von Clausewitz saw war as an extension of
politics, not merely a punitive tool. This changed the purpose of war from one
that was self-evident (regime survival) to one that was situation dependent, or
political, in nature. The continued expansion of state power caused a change in
focus as well. Given the political nature of war, militaries were required to be
more flexible and to respond to external as well as internal threats.
While the universal role of the military may be to safeguard the nation and
method of government, if the threat is internal then the military has a more
subjective focus and is, therefore, likely to be less professional. The evolution of
military duties beyond internal security reflects a growth in military
professionalism (see Figure 1).
The thrust of Huntington's argument is that objective control is much more
desirable than subjective control because it provides the nation a much more
professional force. The essence of this professionalism is a military with an
external focus that is competent in the management of violence. This focus
permits the military to serve legitimate political ends with well-defined means.
War, while still violent, need not always be completely punitive in nature and, as
such, is not always inevitable. Such a military gives rational states the
opportunity to apply force in a more flexible, but still effective, manner.
In the modem world this is crucial as conservative, well-established

professional militaries normally do not seek conflict and tend to be rational in the
application of armed power in a world with hugely destructive weapons. In many
cases these militaries perhaps even discourage an aggressive foreign policy by
their political masters. A clear example of this is offered by the American and
Soviet military leaders throughout the Cold War. Aware of the impact of a
nuclear exchange (even at the tactical level), it was often the uniformed leaders
who argued for restraint against the more strident and ideologically oriented
civilian leaders.
In the end, however, professionalism means serving the political regime in
power. When that regime is radical or revolutionary and has at its disposal an
effective tool of violence, the results can be extreme and widespread.
Ideology
Huntington explains in some detail the relationship between the ethics of a
professional military and different types of ideologies. He starts with the
assertion that a military will have only one set of ethical beliefs that are
concrete, permanent and universal."11 He contrasts that with the civil world,
which by its nature is more diverse and without absolute defining characteristics.
This sets the stage for a natural tension between the two ethics.
"Huntington, 89-91.
55
Liberal/Conservative
Huntington argues that in a truly liberal system there is a zero-sum game
between liberal ideology and the military. Taking the United States example, he
puts it this way: The tension between the demands of military security and the
values of American liberalism can in the long run be relieved only by the
weakening of the security threat or the weakening of liberalism."12 Fortunately for
America, strident liberalism was modified over time, allowing a more professional
military to emerge. In fact, while the nation retains a belief in a strong militia
system, the post World War II environment requires a standing military that is
both effective and professional, in essence fostering objective control.
Revivalism
A society in change may seek direction through an ideology based on
traditional values. The goal is the revival of an older system, often based on
religion, which is held as virtuous and worthy of emulation. Military forces in this
system revert to subjective control in order to demonstrate that they are part of
the rebirth of culture. Objective military control is tied to a corrupt preceding
regime, which is discredited and to be rejected. Traditional values become part
of a codified ideology during times of national or religious resurgence (often as a
12Huntington, 457.
56
result of crisis). Francos Spain is an example of this in that the Falange Party
drew support from monarchist, Church, Army and landholders, all conservative
elements. The Spanish Army, as a result, was politicized and tied directly to the
party.
Hyper-rational
The history and development of communist and Marxist thought need not
be dealt with in detail here. Suffice it to say that Marxism sees a clear scientific
explanation for everything. Rational thought, begun in earnest during the
Enlightenment, is taken to an extraordinary level to explain the world in a
comprehensive, linear manner, hence, hyper-rational. This ideology sees
economic forces as the driving force of history, the state and society. When
aligned with theories of class development they form bodies of thought that chart
the historical evolution of man from medieval systems through the dictatorship of
the proletariat and eventual withering away of the state.
The application of Marxist thinking to the military in the Soviet Union took
time to develop. While the Bolsheviks desired to create a truly revolutionary
army, actual revolutionary forces fell short of the idealized goal. As war
commissar, Trotsky used a mix of traditional military and revolutionary forces.
Later, during the consolidation of power by Stalin, the full impact of hyper-rational
thought (Stalins interpretation of Marxism-Leninism) was applied to the military
through totalitarian (subjective) control.
57
The Soviet use of the hyper-rational model applied to military thought is

focused on the use of detailed force ratios and firepower computations to
determine how victory can be achieved. The reasoning is that if enough
firepower can be brought to bear against the enemy the result was a scientific
inevitability. The emphasis was on the proper application of scientific formulas,
not traditional principles of war in pursuing state goals. The Soviet military
schools taught that war was a precise science that was predetermined by the
amount of firepower applied at a given point. While the firepower emphasis and
structure of the Soviet Army was widely respected and feared in the West during
the Cold War stand-off in Europe, the application of this theory proved ruinous to
the Soviets in Afghanistan. The lack of flexibility in the Soviet-applied hyperrational model demonstrated that war remains an art as well as a science, and
that factors such as the enemy, terrain, nature of conflict, morale and maneuver
must be considered alongside such cold facts as force ratios and firepower
equations.
Mythic
While the hyper-rational system extols the science of war, its Fascist
counterpart takes the opposite tack altogether. Rejecting the notion of scientific
dominance in political thought, the anti-rationals extol the virtues of emotion.
This approach rejects both the rational thought associated with democracy and
liberalism and the hyper-rational thought of communism. Virtue is found in
58
traditional culture, nationalism, imperialism and glorification of struggle. Taken

together, the relationship between this ideology and the military is one that
emphasizes the mythic aspects of military service. One of the leading slogans of
the Fascist era was feel dont think, as if man and society could regain a
comfortable place in a chaotic universe by reverting to a natural or primordial
state, in which struggle and conflict are a way of life.
The key aspect of mythic thought was the glorification of the ancient past.
For both the Germans and Italians, an ancient empire was seen as the pinnacle
of the collective culture. The Germans glorified the ancient Teutons while the
Italians venerated the Roman Empire. Ideologically, this led to expansionist
aims that could only be fulfilled by military conquest. As struggle was the
essence of man and national honor demanded the restoration of empire, war
was inevitable. Mussolini sought to create an African and Mediterranean Empire
for Italy while Hitler sought the conquest of Europe to acquire the living space
needed for his expanding Aryan race.
Fascist ideology in the interwar years bred a pro-military attitude that
fostered rearmament and growth of military forces. As many of the Fascist
states were revisionist, they were more open to considering new applications of
doctrine, tactics and technology. The Germans, in particular, sought to create a
new operational concept to overcome the historical advantages of their natural
enemies, those of landmass, population, and time.
59
The result was the blitzkrieg, designed to break the stalemate of attritionbased trench warfare by putting emphasis on maneuver over firepower-centric
warfare. This would negate the advantages of superior size and strategic depth
of Germanys historic enemies, France and Russia. This type of innovation
seemed improbable in a status quo, or non-revolutionary, state at the time.
While France, Britain and Russia all had innovative thinkers that espoused ideas
similar to the blitzkrieg, only the Germans pursued it through organizational,
doctrinal and technological application.13
Professionalism
The second key aspect of the overall political-military relationship is
military professionalism. All militaries have certain defining characteristics such
as hierarchy, centralized command, and authorization to commit violence. How
effective a military is depends on how efficient and effective it is in developing
these attributes and how it executes them in support of the political forces it
serves. Ideological regimes do not start with a blank slate; they must determine
what the value of the military they inherit.
13ln the 1920s, British military thinker. Sir Basil Liddel-Hart wrote of the expanding
torrent," which was a precursor to the blitzkrig. Harts theories were not widely
accepted by prominent military theorists or political leaders in the Western democracies
at the time.
60
Professionalism in the Old Regime

While the concept of objective control seems a worthy goal, the historical
reality is that many revolutionary regimes do not inherit a well-honed instrument
of national power. Many of the armies of the ancien regime are beset by a host
of problems ranging from leadership to weapons to tactics. Armies supporting
old and doddering regimes often reflect the sloth, obsolescence, and nepotism of
the political regime they support. As such, they are not optimized for battlefield
performance. Others may be more organizationally and operationally advanced
and thus pose an even greater challenge to the new regime because of how
their competency may be used. A more detailed examination of the state of
these militaries is in order.
Reactionary/Feudal
At the most unprofessional extreme of the spectrum are reactionary/feudal
military forces that are so steeped in tradition culturally, technologically and
organizationally that they lack a professional character. These militaries are
characterized by nepotism in the officer corps, a class structure that so
permeates the force it allows for little advancement by merit, a reliance on
outdated weapons and tactics, and a strong resistance to change.
An example of this type of military would be the army of Czarist Russia.
Despite a humiliating loss to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-06, the
61
Russian Army had not managed to reform itself to the point where it could be
considered the peer of any major European state. The force was organized on a
base of conscripted peasants who served long tours (up to 16 years) for little pay
and reward. When World War I started, many units could not be equipped with
rifles and for many offensive operations the plan called for the unarmed rear
ranks to pick up the weapons of the first rank. Russian doctrine emphasized the
spirit of the offensive, in the form of massed infantry charges often unsupported
by artillery, with the major weapon being the bayonet.
The Czars army counted mostly upon the courage and blind obedience of
the ordinary soldier, marching into battle under religious icons. The
backwardness of these soldiers was so profound that many fled in fear when
they saw their first airplane, fearing it was the Anti-Christ hovering above them.
Officers in such an institution owed their allegiance to the Czar. Commissions
could be issued and cancelled at the whim of the autocrat and there was much
political intrigue that deflected attention and resources away from training and
readiness.
Veteran Revolutionary
The army Napoleon inherited when he took power in 1799 was far less
revolutionary and far more professional than the one the leaders of the National
Convention took charge of from the royalists 10 years previously. Nevertheless
the effects of the revolution, coupled with extended wartime experience, created
a veteran revolutionary force that Napoleon forged into an even more potent
weapon with his leadership. By the time Napoleon was crowned Emperor, the
French Army was a formidable and thoroughly professional force capable of
winning campaigns. The ideals of the revolution had not disappeared, but were
subsumed and embedded in the professional army. Thus Napoleon inherited a
force with many outstanding characteristics fueled by the revolution, such as
promotion based on merit, the ability to conduct independent operations,
innovation in tactics and doctrine. S.E. Finer said of the revolutionary army:
The armies with which the Republic fought were not truly
insurrectionary or revolutionary armies. Their nucleus consisted of
the old regular troops....But the army of 1795 (by which date the
amalgam of the old and new elements was complete) was a new
military phenomenon nevertheless. First of all, its officers were no
longer the old aristocratic class but freely drawn from the ranks of
professional talent; it was therefore imbued with a zeal for the
Republican social principles of equality which had permitted them
to rise. Secondly, the volunteers, brigaded with the old regiments,
leavened the mass with the fervor for the nation and the Revolution
and so gave the whole force a dynamic and self-conscious
ideology.14
While the veteran revolutionary force may capture the best of the regular
army and the energy of social forces and forge them into a professional force, it
takes time. Some regimes do not have the luxury or good fortune to create
such a force systematically over time.
14S.E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (Boulder, Colo.
Westview Press, 1988), 6.
63
Cadre
The most developed and professional of the inherited militaries are the
cadre type. Cadre militaries are characterized by a central core of professional
leaders, attuned to the art and science of military affairs. Because of their
leadership capabilities, they can form the core of a rapidly expansible force. The
clearest example of this was the German military Hitler inherited when he
assumed power in 1933. This 100,000-man force, limited in size and ability by
treaty, was comprised of seasoned veterans of the First World War, almost all of
them non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and officers. When Hitler rearmed and
expanded the military, this force provided the framework to accept the thousands
of new conscripts into the force and train them to professional standards.
Without this cadre, Hitlers armies would never have conquered most of Europe
by 1941.
The raw material the ideological regime inherits gives it a starting point
from which to shape its military. How it chooses to lead that force is another
question.
Military Leadership
Ideological regimes struggle to translate political domination into an
effective controlling mechanism over the military. No problem vexes the
ideological leaders more than that of effectively dealing with conservative, if not
outright counterrevolutionary, elements of the officer corps. Commenting on this
64
Lenin said, Thousands of former officers, generals and colonels of the Czarist
Army betrayed us and sold us, and thousands of Red Army men perished as a
result.15Wartime demands rule out a complete overhaul of the officer system,
yet the first priority of the new regime is self-survival. How well this problem is
addressed is often critical to the ultimate wartime success or failure of the
regime.
Even the most revolutionary of political movements must attempt to
leverage the abilities of the military forces under their control. The new regime
finds itself in need of whatever military professionalism the old army has to offer,
especially when the new regime finds itself at war before they have had time to
incorporate the old army into the new ideology. This is the ultimate test between
the theoretical purity of an ideology and the battlefield requirements of war.
One measure of professionalism is the level of experience of the mid
grade leaders, both officers and non-commissioned officers. It is they who must
train, lead and inspire men in war. A good indication of professionalism among
the leaders is the status of the NCO corps, the backbone of all armies.
Professional militaries place an emphasis on the education and training of NCOs
as leaders, not merely overseers. Trust in the officer corps is equally important
to ensure broad political goals are realized on the battlefield by encouraging
initiative and responsibility. How officers and NCOs are developed and trained is
15V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Gosizdat, 941-65, vol. 30), 403.
65
therefore critical to an effective military. There are several methods used to

produce such leaders.
Self-Generated Leaders
The goal of every new regime is the remaking of the military and its
leaders in the image of its ideology. The ability to self-generate its own officers
through a revamped military education program and promotion policy is central
to this. The French officer corps of 1790 was almost 90 percent aristocrat with
the remainder non-nobles who received direct commissions from senior
aristocrats. The small, but growing, French middle class had no access to the
officer corps. In February 1790, the Constituent Assembly opened the officer
ranks to ail and increased pay to attract the lower classes. Later that year
another decree mandated that 75 percent of the new officers should be admitted
by merit examination and the other 25 percent come from the NCO ranks.
Promotions of two-thirds of the senior field grade promotions were based on
seniority and the other one-third by decree of the king.16 The revolutionary
leaders had clearly adopted a go-slow approach with the nobles by working more
aggressively from the bottom up in growing new, revolutionary leaders, and
allowing many of the older ones to continue and be promoted. This attitude
changed later, after the treason of several leading generals.
16John Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic (Urbana, III.: University of Illinois Press, 984),
69.
66
As the revolution became institutionalized overtime, many of the
aristocratic officers resigned or fled the army and France. By 1794,87 percent of
the officers who were on active duty in 1789 were out of the army.17 Despite
efforts by the revolutionary government to broaden the make-up of the officer
class, there were acute shortages in 1791, as the entrance exam policy could
not keep pace with the growing needs of an army at war. Desertions had left
5,000 officer shortages throughout the force, causing the government to
authorize direct nominations of sergeants and members of the reservist National
Guard. By 1793, the make-up of the officer corps more closely mirrored that of
French society with nobles comprising 10 percent, the middle class
(manufacturers, students) 34 percent, the working class (artisans, shopkeepers)
18 percent, and peasants 16 percent.18
The egalitarianism of the French system still had its problems. The
revolutionary army was led by recently promoted NCOs and officers elected to
command positions from the volunteer units. This created a situation whereby
older men were occupying slots normally held by younger, stronger men more
suited to the physical demands of war. The army still suffered from a lack of
unity owing to the great social upheaval, and there were problems with discipline
and fraternization. In its pursuit of a politically reliable instrument the French
17Lynn, 72.
18Lynn, 72.
67
government restructured the leadership of the armed forces seeking to

encourage revolutionary spirit as a substitute for experience and training.
Several senior officers of the time commented on this phenomenon. The
Minister of War, Jean Baptiste Bouchotte said of the issue, Officers ought to
have zeal and above all, patriotism, which often makes up for talent.19 General
Etienne Ambroise Berthelemy, a regular, responded with an implication that
professionalism was needed: It is a great deal to be a patriot, it is the first thing,
but it is not all.20
The final tally would contain both positive and negative aspects of this
struggle. On the negative side, many of the new officers were too old for some
of the junior officer positions and many of the newly commissioned officers were
pure political appointees with less professionalism than the nobles they replaced.
There was also the loss of some skill at the senior leader level. No sergeant
could be expected to lead a squad one day and take over a regiment the next.
On the positive side the new leaders did take charge and performed
adequately. They were not tied to old methods and were eventually successful
in driving out the most professionally incompetent of their peers. The old
sergeants who took over were much better trainers of new troops than the
19Lynn, 90.
Lynn, 90.
68
nobles who preceded them and there was more leadership by example. Most
importantly, the system facilitated the rallying of the nation behind the cause.
By 1794, the promotion system succeeded in filling the officer ranks with a
broad cross-section of France's population, but more than that, it allowed the
nation to tap into hidden talent. In 1793 as part of the levee en masse system,
promotion was based one-third on seniority, two-thirds by election. By 1794, it
was altered to one-third filled by the National Convention, one-third by seniority,
and one-third election.21 It was a time of endless possibilities, as exemplified by a
young 20-year-old Corsican named Bonaparte who was an artillery lieutenant in
1789 and an army commander six years hence.
A more successful example of the self-generated leader program was that
of the Chinese Communists in the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), who were
largely successful in creating over time a reliable and competent officer cadre.
Starting as a small guerilla force in 1927, the PLA grew its own leaders during
the long struggle. Although there were disputes and even purges, there was
remarkable continuity over the long-term. Five marshals actually had served in
warlord or Nationalist armies before 1927. By 1955, with the communists firmly
in power, five of the ten Chinese marshals in the PLA had large-scale troopleading experience dating back to 1927.22
21Lynn, 74.
John R. Elting, Swords Around a Throne (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 101-103.
69
The starting point of the PLAs success in fusing professionalism with

political reliability was the Communist Party. Virtually all PLA leaders were party
members (by 1950,11 of 12 Central Committee members were pre-civil war
veterans). This shared experience produced a unique senior leader cohesion.
As described by Andrew Nathan, the Chinese Communist Party and its army
have formed throughout their history a single institutional system with a single
elite performing simultaneously the function of political and military leadership.23
Leveraging Existing Leaders

Another approach is to harness the professionals more directly to the
cause. This approach can be fraught with danger because of questions of
loyalty, but expediency has often demanded this solution. A case in point is the
Bolsheviks under the direction of War Commissar Leon Trotsky.
The Peace of Versailles in November 1918 meant anything but peace for
the new regime in Moscow. Bled white during the war, the newly installed
Bolshevik regime barely controlled the center of Russia. Opposing forces
consisting of Czarists, right-wing militarists, non-Russian ethnic movements,
disaffected leftists, anarchists and just plain criminal bands, challenged the
authority of Lenin and his policies.
23Andrew Nathan, A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics," China Quarterly, no. 48,
(January-March 1973): 58.
70
While the new government received thousands of requests from former

members of the Czars army to join the Bolsheviks (8,000 alone in the winter of
1918) they were received with great skepticism by the new regime.24 Lenin said
of them, Nine-tenths of the military specialists (voenspets) are capable of
treason at any moment."25 Despite this the Bolsheviks employed 1300 senior
voenspets as colonels or above, and more than 48,000 junior voenspets below
the rank of colonel.26
Egalitarian Promotions
A third type of leader development is egalitarian promotions. In this
system those who served in more junior positions in the preceding military are
promoted both for military need and because they were not from the ruling class
of the old regime. The Bolsheviks used this system heavily during their Civil
War. They promoted over 215,000 ex-sergeants from the Czars army to officer
positions allowing them to fill 13 percent of the total officer corps with
experienced soldiers.27 Although limited in number, their effect on the Red Army
rank and file was large. Said future Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgii Zhukov
24Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the
Soviet Socialist State 1917-1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 23-24.
25Jonathan R. Adelman, The Revolutionary Armies (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press), 88-89.
26Adelman, 88-89.
27Adelman, 90-91.
71
of them, The backbone of the old army were the NCOs who instructed and knit
together the mass of soldiers.28 In addition to experience, the sergeants were
more trustworthy, as many were inclined to support the revolution.
Despite these advantages, many NCOs were ill suited to higher
command. Most were from peasant background and had limited civil and military
education, critical to maneuvering and supplying complex formations. Said
former NCO and future Soviet Marshal Semon Budyenni: "For us, commanders
and political workers of the young Red Army, things were incomparably harder
than for the former ex-Czarist officers and generals. Very few of us had the
necessary military education."29 Even given these shortcomings, the Bolsheviks
found it necessary to put almost 90 percent of these men in mid to senior level
leadership positions (company command and higher).
Political Power
Patterns of Civilian Control over the Military

The final leg of Huntingtons triad is the political power relationship
between militaries and the political systems they serve. Huntington believes that
the power relationship should be such that it maximizes the professionalism and
28Adelman, 108.
Huntington, 84.
72
independence of the military, rendering it politically neutral, but more effective in

performing its primary purpose, fighting. Achieving this requires that the military
neither possess nor seek political power for its own purpose. This creates a
competent military willing to carry out legitimate orders while producing the
lowest amount of military political power. This search for objective control is best
realized, according to Huntington, with the maximization of the power of
particular government institutions, particular social classes, and particular
constitutional forms.30 This idea can be further developed by the establishment
of specific patterns of subjective control used by the political elite to control the
military. Whatever means are used, the successful control of the military begins
with the political legitimacy of the regime in power. How this legitimacy is
represented sets the tone for that relationship.
Political Leadership
Ideological regimes face a challenge in that the essence of their political
movement is to challenge the basis of authority of the previous regime. Having
undermined both the legitimacy and supporting institutions of the former rulers,
they must enforce a discipline and obedience to authority. There are several
methods used to reestablish legitimate authority over the armed forces as part of
that struggle.
Huntington, 84.
73
Codification
One source is the codification of the ideology through the establishment of
a new, written, legal basis for rule. Leaders of France followed this path in the
1790s, explaining to soldiers that discipline was critical because it was ultimately
tied to the new Rights of Man Constitution formulated in the 1789 Revolution.31
Obedience to the law was emphasized over obedience to the former royalist
officers. While this system was prudent given the armys counter-revolutionary
tendencies, it raised serious problems later. Soldiers theoretically could, and
sometimes did, disobey even the simplest order if they felt it represented
counterrevolutionary or royalist thinking. Soldiers took advantage of the situation
to refuse to perform the mundane, but necessary, tasks required of a disciplined,
hierarchical organization. It fell to the political officers (Representatives On
Mission) to try to restore the authority of commanders or assume the role
themselves. Often systems such as these must find their way back to a more
regularized system of discipline.
Charismatic Leader
A second source is charismatic allegiance whereby the leader of the
regime embodies the values of the ideology and unquestioned trust is placed in
31Lynn, 97.
74
him as a result. This is often physically manifested by an oath to the leader as in

the cases of Hitler and Napoleon. In both cases the oath a soldier previously
took was altered to one that has the soldier swear personal allegiance to the
charismatic leader, as well as the nation. An advantage to this system is an
avoidance of disrupting unit discipline, which remains unchanged. A
disadvantage is to discredit the institution and tradition of the army if the
charismatic leader and his cause should fail. For the German Army after World
War II, this meant a wholesale culture change.
General Will
The third system is best described as general will, taken from the phrase
French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau used in his Social Contract
Rousseaus general will is the aggregate, true interests of a people in society. It
is the innate sense of all citizens to know instinctively what is right for society and
state. In Rousseaus words, the common good is everywhere clearly apparent
and only good sense is needed to perceive it.32 In this way Rousseau maintains
that man is naturally inclined toward goodness, but he accounts for mans
miseries by attributing them to the flawed institutions man himself has
established. Rousseau believed that to create a more moral society man must
32Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book IV, Chap 2., p. 425.
75
return to the essence of his original goodness by use of the general will. The
general will was infallible in Rousseaus doctrine.
Rousseaus emphasis on individual freedom and the natural goodness of
man as expressed through the notion of a general will represented a radical
break with tradition and established a foundation for many radical philosophies.
By describing a general will that supplants traditional forms of state and societal
order, Rousseau completely redefines the sources of legitimate authority. This is
a dual-edged sword, which on one hand could underpin a political theory that
endorses human freedom, independence and opposition to tyranny. On the
other hand, it could also be used to justify a darker, authoritarian viewpoint that
legitimizes a newer form of tyranny under a populist fagade. It is in this latter
mode that general will is applied to ideological regimes.
To describe the source of legitimacy of their respective political parties,
both the Bolsheviks and Chinese Communists have used the general will. As
both systems emerged from autocratic regimes, it was critical that they be able to
justify complete control as coming from the people. The general will, or words to
that effect, justify control of the military as well as all other institutions in the
nation.
Types of Control
Once regimes have established political legitimacy they must assert
political control over the military within their political framework in which they
76
exist. There are several broad types of control available, depending on the
regime type.33 By combining thoughts of both Welch and Huntington, a fairly
comprehensive list of patterns of control emerges.
Constitutional Constraints
The first is a constitutional constraint that uses the rule of law to define the
role of the military. Normally, this is clearly a subordinate role usually focused on
maintaining military readiness to safeguard the nation from external threats.
While constitutions are normally associated with liberal democracies, they may
control ideological regimes as well. The revolutionary French followed a
constitution even under Napoleon. An early application of this form of control
emerged in the 17th century when the British Parliament sought to reshape the
balance of power with the king. The resulting English Civil War firmly
established the legislative body as a co-equal force in British politics. The
means of their victory was battlefield success under the leadership of Oliver
Cromwell.
True constitutional control emerges overtime with the institutionalization
of legislative powers at the expense of royal power. This change allows the
33The list of types of control is a compilation of Huntingtons work and thoughts from
Claude E. Welch, Jr., Civil Control of the Military: Myth and Reality (New York: State
University Press, 1976), 5-6.
77
development of a more professional military, focused on honing its skills rather

than supporting one internal faction or another.
Ascriptive
The second pattern of civil control is ascriptive, which means assigning
groups into categories based on their defining characteristics. Ascriptive factors
include divisions along class, ethnic, or racial lines. Traditionally, the aristocratic
class had a controlling interest in the military because it had the monopoly on
supplying its officers. Because of this tradition, the aristocratic class maintained
much civil control of the military. Marxists would argue that this pattern
continued with the rise of the proletarian class and its struggle to gain armed
control of the state. Regardless, there has been distinct influence upon the
military based on social divisions, whether it is class or some other distinction.
Party Control
The third type is party control and is the most relevant to modem
ideological regimes. The natural tension between civil and military ethics is
further exacerbated in this system. The comprehensive nature of ideologies not
only demands the subordination of the military to political rule but also requires a
more complete subjugation of the military ethic to the overarching goals of
ideology. Many of the traits associated with the military ethic, such as elitism,
professional autonomy, detachment from society, and heroic individualism are at
78
odds with the ideological values of egalitarianism, ideological dominance,

societal integration, and especially the subordination of the individual to the
collective. The holistic impact of party control is evident by looking broadly at its
interaction with the concept of military professionalism, outlined earlier, and
connecting it in general to the ideas of subjective and objective control. What
sets party control apart from the other patterns of civil control is its desire to
change many aspects of the characteristics earlier used to describe a
professional or objective military.
Party control and the professional military

Hierarchy, centralized control, discipline, and esprit de corps universally
characterize professional militaries. While specific impacts vary, an ideological
political party will more systematically influence the hierarchy and the centralized
control, often by restructuring the military to make it more responsive to political
tasks. Parallel hierarchies may be created and more power placed in the hands
of non-professionals. If the old officer corps is mistrusted as reactionary, soldiers
will be told to spy on, or disobey these officers. This strikes at the heart of the
discipline by undermining the existing chain of command. Both the Bolsheviks
and the Chinese Communists experienced long periods during which the control
systems was decentralized into local soviets, party cadres and local cells while
the center struggled to institute a system of standardized management.
79
Esprit de corps is affected as the new regime seeks to infuse a new

sense of purpose into the armed branch of the revolution. Unit traditions and
symbols are banished or minimized, and are replaced by efforts at promoting an
egalitarian zeal. In extreme cases, the concept of a professional military will be
questioned as the ideology seeks to create an egalitarian armed force usually in
the form of a people's militia to replace the standing army. This is the ultimate
form of subjective control.
Specific Methods of Control

All political systems seek to promote their values through state
institutions, such as the military. A quick examination of their universal methods
of influence and control provides a foundation in which to look at the unusual or
strident measures ideological regimes pursue historically. There are three basic
means to influence a military.34
Remunerative
The first method is remunerative, whereby the authorities control material
resources and rewards, such as land, pay, or booty, in return for military service.
More applicable to past centuries when looting was part of war, remunerative
control is much less of a force in the modem world. While it is clear that
General thoughts on types derived from Lynns Bayonets of the Republic.
80
professional soldiers should receive decent pay and benefits to help maintain
morale, there is no illusion of becoming wealthy. Nonetheless, there are
examples of ideological regimes using material rewards to affect behavior
Some Red Army soldiers of the fledgling Soviet Union were given special
benefits for joining or staying in the army. The soldiers families were
guaranteed some form of support while the husband was away serving the
revolution. These benefits included houses and food subsidies for the families.
The French government of the 1790s offered better pay for volunteer units above
that of the regular units to encourage enlistment.
Normative
The second method is normative and consists of giving or withholding
symbolic and psychological rewards and punishments, such as acceptance,
commendations or condemnation.35 The world of the soldier differs greatly from
that of the civilian in that substantial material (remunerative) rewards are neither
expected nor granted. A soldiers satisfaction must come from the intangibles
such as esteem from his comrades and a sense of duty. Herein lies the
enormous power potential of the normative. Because of the nature of combat, a
soldiers internal value system is a strong source of motivation. He arrives in the
military from society carrying the values that his collective society has imparted
Lynn, 25.
81
upon him. If that society has an ideological nature than then will be apparent in
his behavior Spartan soldiers arrived in their units carrying an embryonic
militarism shared by Spartan society. There can be nothing more motivating to a
soldier than to have his mother say, Come back with your shield (victorious) or
upon it (dead). No drill sergeant can have the same impact as that simple
statement.
The concept of what a soldier is in the eyes of the nation is a natural
starting point. For revolutionary or ideologically driven regimes, society must be
remade and so must the soldier be remade. These regimes will seek to change
the status of the soldier from one who was naive or an oppressor to one who is
enlightened with ideology and can now take his rightful place as guardian of
those values. The change in status from oppressor to guardian carries with it
explicit political missions alongside the traditionally soldierly duties. Thus
enlightened, he is expected to safeguard and promote the values that have
brought about his own and the nations liberation.
Historically, the starting point again is the French Revolution. In pre
revolutionary times the soldier in France was an outcast from society. Officered
by the elite only, those who could not avoid military service filled the rank and
file. Soldiers received minimal training and pay and were billeted in the worst of
conditions, isolated from the rest of society. On campaigns, soldiers were prone
to wanton looting and debauchery and learned vices of the vilest sort. This
condition prompted Comte de Saint Germain, the French War Minister, to
82
remark, In the present state of things, armies can only be composed of the slime
of the nation and of all that is useless to society.36
The French Revolution transformed the status of the soldier from outcast
to defender of country and constitution. This transformation was made possible
by the new ideology that embraced all Frenchmen as citizens and gave them
basic rights. The change in the soldiers status was directly linked to the need
for citizens to have duties corresponding to those rights. Thus the concept of the
citizen-soldier emerged. Jean Jacques Rousseau himself said of the change,
every citizen ought to be a soldier and every soldier a citizen.
The need to reconcile the rights of every soldier as a citizen and the need
for traditional military discipline was best expressed by Charles Dumouriez,
Commander of the Armee du Nord, who said, The man who binds for a time his
liberty in order to defend public liberty loses none of his rights as a citizen.37
Thus, the French soldier was bound by the intangibles of loyalty and commitment
to revolutionary virtues, a normative measure of control.
Normative behavior can be broken down to a series of sub categories that
include socialization, education, and military indoctrination.
Lynn, 62.
37Lynn, 64.
83
Socializing
Socialization and education are the universal means of imparting values
into society's youth. The values are imparted from the society from which the
soldier emerges. In democratic nations this could be in the form of basic lessons
on civics while in totalitarian regimes the message reflects the strident tones of
the ideology. Often there are mandated programs beyond basic education for
the children. In Nazi Germany, children joined the Hitler Youth at a young age
and were all mandated for some state service either in the Labor Front or the
military following secondary schooling. The same was true in the Soviet Union
which had its own youth organizations, the Young Octobrists and Komsomol
organizations, directly tied to the state and party. It is this state connection that
separates the ideological youth training from normal civic participation, such as
the Boy Scouts in America. While both are organized activities focused at
building values, the totalitarian examples are more holistic and the message is
one of radical ideology.
Military Indoctrination
Military indoctrination takes the soldier from society and prepares him for
war. This process in any regime is, by nature, designed to impart new values
upon the soldier. When this indoctrination includes an ideological focus, the
results can be intense. Successful military indoctrination can create an entirely
new breed of soldier, ready to carry out the political, as well as military mission.
84
One of the first ideological regimes to use this method was the
revolutionary government of France following the overthrow of the monarch.
Fearing a counterrevolution from the aristocratic class, the French government
appealed directly to the troops for loyalty via an indoctrination program.
The revolutionary French government was quite adept at formulating and
executing an information campaign aimed squarely at the rank and file of the
French army. To ensure their loyalty, the government financed a series of
bulletins, journals, and newspapers sent directly to each unit to continue the
revolutionary education process. These periodicals explained the role of the new
army in the France, reinforced its basic ideals and warned soldiers to watch their
officers for treason.38
The trend of indoctrinating soldiers in the new armed forces continued
under the Bolsheviks. They started with a literacy campaign laced with
ideological and political lessons. Experts at agitation and propaganda, the
Bolsheviks institutionalized political indoctrination as part of military education.
They set up a separate Revolutionary Training and Recruitment Branch of the
Army under Nikola Podvoiskii who said: our word is our best weapon. Words
blow up and scatter the ranks of the enemy, disintegrate his soul, paralyze his
nerves, split him into warring camps and class factions.39
Ibid.
39Von Hagen, 65.
85
Leon Trotsky, war commissar of the Soviet Union in the early days of the
Russian Civil War, echoed the nature of this transformation the Bolsheviks
sought in a speech to new Red Army commanders: ...we have not only a
combat mission but a great cultural and moral mission."40 This mission was
nothing less than the creation of the new Soviet man, a citizen-soldier educated
and enlightened in the nature of class struggle and prepared to fight to achieve a
classless society and certainly more aware than the brutish, illiterate, peasants
who populated the Czars army.
Although Bolshevik general propaganda was a success, attempts at
formalized military and political education were uneven. The austerity of the
Russian Civil War made Bolshevik schools short, blunt, and inadequate. Poor
facilities, lack of qualified instructors, and a continual need to fill combat positions
hampered the establishment of an adequate military education system.
Nevertheless, it provided a core of marginally competent and politically reliable
officers.
By 1922, the Bolsheviks had devised a Manual for Political Indoctrination,
with the following chapters: Red Army Mission," Class Structure of the Soviet
State, History of the Red Army," Threats to Peace," Friends of the Working
Class," and Soviet Laws and Policies. This document reflected the
^ o n Hagen, 93.
86
comprehensive efforts to indoctrinate young troops with the ideology of the
regime.41
For most ideological regimes, it is critical to harness the spirit of
volunteerism, loyalty, nationalism and revolution to build an armed force that is
responsive to the regime. While stronger measures are available, the normative
means is the most effective in harnessing the dynamism of popular feeling to
ideology.
Coercive Means
The third method is based on coercive means. Certainly all-military
systems have both the carrot and stick to alter and promote behavior. Frederick
the Great remarked, Soldiers should fear their own officers more than the risk of
battle." Although Frederick was a tough taskmaster, there was no doubt of his or
his generals loyalty to Prussia. For ideological regimes, the concern over both
political reliability and battlefield performance induces them to adopt harsh
collective coercive measures to maintain power. It is in this realm that
ideological systems demonstrate a stark difference from conventional political
entities through a wide variety of punishments or threats to instill discipline and
obedience.
41Von Hagen, 170-171.7
87
Embedded Measures
Embedded measures are employed to ensure political control using
existing systems and procedures. In France, organizations were set up formally
in 1793 to investigate those suspected of disloyalty. Normally, local
governments were recruited to set up these committees, which tapped into local
political clubs that sprang up in the atmosphere of revolution. In Russia, the
Cheka, or secret police, were enmeshed in the workings of the Red Army to
bolster battlefield units and to act as a counterweight to internal threats to the
regime. As the Red Army developed, more overlapping security organs were
created to watch its leaders and one another.
Embedded systems may include the use of the existing court systems to
routinely charge those who oppose the ideology with treason against the regime.
To avoid prosecution, many nobles in France would solicit certificates of civism
from the local political groups or their own soldiers. These certificates would
attest to the republican character of the officer and allow him to avoid dismissal,
prison, or execution.
In July 1794, the Committee of Public Safety issued a decree that
required enlisted men (considered the paragon of the soldier-citizen concept) to
evaluate their officers along patriotic lines. Many took the opportunity to
denounce their former leaders (not always for patriotic reasons). In fact,
denunciations of officers by political clubs, enlisted men, or representatives from
the Republican government culled many of the nobles from the ranks of the
88
army. While many ineffective snobs were removed from command, there was
also a loss of quality, experienced officers. Replacements often came directly
from the ranks of the most ambitious and rabid republicans. Although their
revolutionary rhetoric soared, their military expertise was often lacking. One
experienced officer commented on such a republican: Tromentin, a citizen
devoted to his patrie [homeland] and full of courage, ignored the first elements of
the art of war and literally believed what is ceaselessly repeated from the podium
of the Convention and the Jacobins that all the talent of a general consists of
charging at the head of his troops against the enemy wherever he may be
found.42 The use of surveillance, informers, the courts, and other procedures
allows the regime to leverage the full state apparatus to ensure maximum
subjective control.
Commissar System
Perhaps no system was more threatening to military commanders than
one that placed immediate control over the day-to-day command of units in the
hands of non-military authorities. Commonly known as the commissar system,
its purpose was to ensure the preeminence of politics in the daily affairs of
armies beyond merely socializing soldiers and inculcating national values. It
created a new political chain of command concerned, first and foremost, with the
42Comte Jean Baptiste Jourdan, Lynn, 90.
89
survival and enhancement of the political regime. This was accomplished by

monitoring political loyalty and enforcing it. It often involved the creation of
multiple bureaucratic layers watching military commanders and other organs to
maintain an internal balance of power.
While the commissar system is most associated with the Soviet Red Army
under Stalin, the idea got its start in revolutionary France. The overthrow of the
monarchy in August 1792 left the Legislative Assembly and Provisional
Executive Council in power as an interim measure. In September 1792, the
National Convention replaced the Assembly to facilitate the writing of a new
constitution. It was this National Convention and its successor committees that
instituted many of the coercive measures deemed necessary to ensure the
survival of the revolution.
To ensure political control, the regime employed two organizations to
keep the army in check. The first were agents from the Ministry of War,
appropriately named Commissars of the Executive Council. They were tasked
with watching "individual officers who manifest opinions contrary to liberty,
equality, and the unity and indivisibility of the Republic.43
Not satisfied with the Council's efforts at political control, the National
Convention instituted a second means-that of a direct commissar system. The
most overt element of this system was the Representatives on Mission. Each
43Lynn, 83-4.
90
Representative was an elected member of the National Convention, and all were
granted temporary commissions in the army. They were charged with directly
implementing the directives of the Convention in the field army. To aid them in
this mission, they were granted limitless power to appoint or relieve officers,
requisition recruits from local communities, decree regulations, and conduct
judicial proceedings against those they suspected of wrongdoing.44 At any one
time, there were up to 60 of these Representatives on Mission, most of whom
were at the higher levels of the force. They often established a network of
soldier informants to gather information on officers suspected of disloyalty to the
revolution. Although their methods seemed extreme, the revolutionary regime
felt it had no choice.
Throughout this period, France was locked in combat with Austria and
Britain over territory in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, and the
survival of the regime was at stake. Several prominent French generals, left
over from the Royalist Army, had already deserted and taken up with the
Austrians. Many had tried to recruit their own soldiers to fight against France.
The commissar tradition was passed on from republican France to the
communists of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China. In the Red
Army, for example, political commissars were assigned down to the company
level, and often had rank equal to a unit commander but power beyond that.
Lynn, 106.
91
Officers of the old army sent the first Bolshevik commissars to units in November
1917, after the Armistice of World War I, to prevent acts of sabotage and
treason.45 As with the French before them, the Bolsheviks both needed and
mistrusted the professionals from the preceding autocratic regime.
Dual Command
The extreme level of commissar involvement results in dual command.
The Bolshevik-established, All Russian Bureau of Military Commissars
(Vsebiurvoenkom) devised the principle of dual command whereby control of a
military unit would no longer be the sole province of the military chain of
command. Instead, a political officer would share command responsibility. In
addition to regulating the commissars, Vsebiurvoenkom expanded their authority
to investigate the moral and political profile of the rank and file, command staff,
and their relations. Another party organ, the Vsevobuch, or Universal Military
Training Administration, planned political training on a regional basis.46
Dual command underwent several modifications over time and was
alternately abolished and reestablished. From 1917 until 1920, dual command
required all commanders orders to be countersigned by a commissar before a
soldier was expected to obey them. By 1936, the Soviets let dual command
45Von Hagen, 27-28.

^Von Hagen, 51.
92
lapse and restored the supremacy of the conventional chain of command. When
Stalin began the massive purges of 1937, dual command was resurrected, only
to be suspended during the crisis of the 1939-1940 Winter War with Finland.
After the Nazis invaded in 1941, Stalin blamed the regular army for the nations
calamity and reinstituted dual command. Seeking to restore a sense of military
professionalism needed to prosecute the war, Stalin finally abolished dual
command in 1942.
Superimposed
Regimes that leverage the military preserve the old structure of discipline
and organization but superimpose political values from the top. The Nazis
utilized this system by first expanding the army (Wehrmacht), then gradually
politicizing its leadership by instituting personal oaths, removing key
commanders, and political promotions, by co-opting leaders and by changing
command structure. The military acquiesced because it was rewarded with an
expanding force structure and generally left to its own internal discipline system.
While commissars were never used in Hitlers armed forces, the imposition of
Hitlers will from the top was sufficient to co-opt the army as an institution.
Purges
The most radical of the coercive measures is the purge. Virtually all
ideological regimes have used it to some extent as a means of ensuring that the
93
military leadership is loyal to the political goals established. Purges may take the
form of removing leaders from command, as Hitler did with several senior
generals he inherited in the mid-1930s. It could also take the form of arrest, trial,
and execution as it did in the Soviet Union in the 1937 Great Purge.
Purges are a result of the regime seeking the reformation of the
institutions of government. Because most military organizations are conservative
by nature, there is often a reluctance to implement change, especially when that
change is antithetical to the traditions of the military. Whether it is the Junker
class in Germany, the aristocrats of France, or the warlords of China, established
military leaders do not often embrace the ideology of revolutionary regimes.
When those regimes attain power, they are compelled to change military leaders
to ensure the main instrument of violence does not subvert the revolution.
The French Revolution began its purge following several well-publicized
defections of senior generals to the Austrians. First in July 1792, the Marquis de
Lafayette (of American Revolutionary fame) publicly opposed the overthrow of
the monarch and tried to move his troops against the revolutionary forces at
Sedan. When his own troops refused to follow him, Lafayette quickly defected to
the Austrians.47 This act was followed by the defection of Charles Dumouriez, the
commander of Armee du Nord, the following April. Dumouriez shocked the
nation when he gave the Austrians the Low Countries in exchange for a cease
47Lynn, 78.
94
fire to use his troops to restore the monarchy. When his troops also refused to
follow him he too fled to Austria.48
These events caused a great reaction by the revolutionary government.
In addition to the previously mentioned education campaign, the National
Convention ordered a purge of the army. In 1792, only 21 royalist officers were
suspended, but by 1793, 275 officers were removed from command.49 On 15
September of that year, in the midst of Robespierres Terror, the government
ordered all nobles in the army dismissed. As this included virtually all officers
with combat leadership experience, it would have effectively gutted the officer
corps. The execution of this order was inconsistently applied: Some officers
were dismissed and even executed, while others were transferred or just
reinstated. Many nobles obtained the coveted certificate of civisme from
commissars, Representative on Mission, or local political clubs, testifying to their
republican loyalties and thus avoided the purge.50
The PLA used several purges to maintain political control. While the Long
March served as both a physical and political expunging agent, the Chinese
Communist Party had to perform two fairly large-scale military operations to
^Lynn, 79.
49Lynn, 80.
Elting, 38.
95
defeat factional dissidents, one in the Futien Mutiny of 1930 and another the next
year in the Huangpo Plot.51
Although the purge represents the most radical of the coercive means of
political control of individuals, the broader ability to alter size, structure and
direction of the entire military organization is a top priority for these regimes.
War-Fighting Structure
The struggle between the forces of revolution and those of an inherently
conservative military are most evident over the question of the structure and
organization of the force. Ideologists advocate a new revolutionary force to
match the political changes sweeping the nation. Regimes with an established,
professional military desire a more conventional approach, such as the Germans
did under Hitler. In this system, it is possible to meld the conservative army with
the new order troops, such as the Waffen SS. The search for the right structure
is critical in transforming the force while engaged in combat. How each regime
managed this was often the difference between victory and defeat.
New Order
New order militaries are characterized by a radical break with the past
seeking to create an armed wing of the revolution, devoted first and foremost to
51Adelman, 101.
96
the protection of the ideals of the regime. Often they are decidedly antiprofessional in their outlook of the established military hierarchy and
organization. The generals-whether they are Russian Czarists, nobles serving
the king of France, or descendents from the Prussian Junker class-are seen as
the archenemies of the new order. As the embodiment of the status quo, they
must be swept away, along with the old, corrupt political order. The way forward
for the new regime requires a new or different approach to organizing the
military.
Both the Bolsheviks and French revolutionaries shared the same feeling
that the old military could not be trusted and desired a more politically reliable
military. Both advocated a militia-type army that represented all classes of
people, although the Bolsheviks saw the proletariat as the core of any reliable
force. It is worth examining the background of both these systems to understand
the context of decisions made by the national leaders.
Upon taking power, one of the first acts of the revolutionary leaders in
France was to establish a National Guard as their own military force charged
with protecting the regime against the royalist army and to bring order to the
mobs of Paris. Each town formed its own units to counter the paranoia over real
or imagined threats following the breakdown of order. There was no
standardization of these units, and enlistment was for one year or less. Along
with the National Guard, the government appealed to all Frenchmen to join the
new volunteer battalions that were being raised. The volunteers were paid better
97
than the regulars were and had radically new regulations governing soldierofficer relations. Corporal punishment was abolished; soldiers did not have to
salute or show deference to officers, and they elected their own leaders. The net
result of this was an ad-hoc national military composed three disparate elements;
the old royalist, or line, army; a new volunteer force that was long on passion, but
short on experience; and the National Guard, limited in effectiveness, and
unreliable outside of its own territory.
As the wars with Austria and Britain became more intense, the
government was forced to address the state of the army and create a plan to
ensure its national forces were both competent and reliable. In 1792, faced with
the threat of invasion from Austria, France was in serious need of expanding its
force size. Offering enlistment bonuses and appealing to the nationalism and
revolutionary spirit of the population expanded the National Guard and volunteer
units. It was successful in raising 220,000 men consisting of all classes and as
such were called sans culottes, those without the stylish pants that characterized
the upper class.52 Continued efforts further raised the total army strength to
450,000 by 1792. This expansion was the first step in creating the first truly
national army.
By 1793, the army again faced a crisis as the brief enlistments of the
volunteer units expired and strength shrank to 200,000 while the political leaders
52Lynn, 52.
98
saw the need for a force of between 500,000 and 800,000 to win the war.
Reports from the Representatives on Mission indicated the need for mass
conscription, such as the report by Elie Lacost of the Armee du Nord: A war of
tactics will not suffice to drive off our enemies; it is necessary that all citizens
capable of bearing arms do so...[so] that the entire body of people rise in mass
to crush them.53 Lacost recognized that the mass or national aspects of the
revolution would have a carryover effect into war-making. What was previously a
limited war waged with limited means became a test of national wills requiring
the efforts of every citizen.
So was bom the new order concept of the levee en masse, the
mobilization of a nation to fight a war of annihilation and survive. The first
attempts at implementing this concept called for a compulsory quota of 17
percent of all men 18 to 40 years old to serve in the armed forces. Loopholes
allowed the rich to escape service by purchasing replacements and resulted in
raising only 150,000 while causing social disorder in western France that had to
be put down by the army.
The levee en masse was firmly institutionalized in August 1793 with a
national decree by the Committee for Public Safety stating:
From this moment until the enemy has been chased from the
territory of the Republic all French are in permanent requisition for
the service of the armies. Young men will go to battle, married
Elie Lacost, Armydu Nord Report to the National Convention 1793, quoted by Lynn,
55.
99
men will forge arms and transport supplies, women will make tents
and uniforms and serve in the hospital, children will pick rags; old
men will have themselves carried to public squares to inspire the
courage of the warriors, and to preach hatred of kings and the unity
of the Republic.54
Despite these initial problems the program was continued. New

regulations governing conscription were issued requiring all men ages 18 to 25
who were unmarried or widowers to report for service. No replacements were
allowed and army strength rapidly increased to 750,000.55 Concurrently, a new
decree overturned the practice of electing officers in the volunteer units.
Although the fiery passion of the pure volunteer units was somewhat diluted, it
was replaced by something more enduring, the rock-solid belief that all
Frenchmen were equals and would share in the sacrifice required to defend their
patrie. This was truly a revolutionary idea and its benefits would carry on into
Napoleon's time.
Political leaders of the National Convention had successfully expanded
the army numbers by the levee en masse, but faced a problem integrating the
new units into the regular army. Volunteers received better pay and conditions
than the regulars (hardly embodying the concept of equality), and added friction
to the disparate nature of the force structure. To solve this problem, the
government instituted what it called an amalgam," which combined different
Lynn, 56.
Lynn, 56.
100
units together. The resulting demi-brigade consisted of two volunteer battalions

(or levee en masse units) and one regular battalion. Integration also occurred
within the battalions, and pay and conditions were standardized for all. The
result was a force that represented the nation but had military experience as
well. As the integrated force went into battle, there was a growing sense of
camaraderie through shared sacrifice. France was molding a truly formidable
tool.
By 1794, France had 750,000 men underarms with only 18 percent
remaining from the ancien regime. Twenty percent were volunteers, and 63
percent were combat veterans. The average trooper was young, from the
country or a small town and supported the revolution. While the French system
did not purge wholesale the remnants of the old army from its ranks, it still
pursued most of its ideological goals in transforming the army. New institutions,
such as the National Guard and Volunteers, were sharp changes from the past
while the election of officers was radical even for a revolutionary army. Clearly
though, it was the levee en masse, the entire nation mobilized for war, that set
the French apart from all other systems of the day. This radical program
completely changed the course of warfare and certainly represented a new
order, both politically and militarily.
In the construction of the new armed force to serve the Bolshevik cause,
there were two schools of thought. The first school argued for an army
consisting solely of formalized Red Guards, whose members sprang up in the
101
factories of the major cities during the 1917 Revolution. Consisting of proletarian
industrial workers, the Red Guards were the most reliable Bolshevik armed
force, having proven themselves against counter-revolutionary forces in street
fighting. This purist school of thought advocated converting the Red Guards into
the vanguard of a peoples militia to replace the Czarist army.56
Mixed System
The pragmatists, the second school of thought, were primarily concerned
about the war-fighting requirements needed to keep the regime solvent in the
face of growing internal counter-revolutionary forces, foreign intervention and
general disintegration of the center of the regime. Trotsky led this movement,
which advocated grafting Bolshevik leadership onto the existing force structure,
while Bolshevik ideals were introduced from the bottom up. This hybrid force was
adopted out of necessity and was described as a socialist army to be made up
of the laboring classes, workers and peasants, with a firm proletarian core.57
This mixed system is represented historically by the Bolshevik Red Army in the
period immediately following the October 1917 Revolution until the consolidation
of power around 1922-23. This system was characterized by more extensive
use of the military organizations already in existence, augmenting them with
Von Hagen, 20-21.

57Von Hagen, 14.
102
trusted revolutionary units, and attempting to influence the rank and file on the
legitimacy of the political cause.
Given this, the job of physically defending the revolution would fall to a
hard core of workers and party members, several military units that had defected
from the Czarists, and the armed wing of the party-the Red Guards. While the
Red Guards proved their worth as a paramilitary force in street fighting against
counter-revolutionaries, they were completely ineffective in conventional battles.
After the overthrow of the Kerensky provisional government, the Bolsheviks
attempted a no war, no peace foreign policy to avoid further participation in the
war but without making any concessions to the Germans. The Germans
responded with a massive offensive against the Russians. In the attack on
Narva, Lenin committed units from the Red Guard to stem the German tide, but
they were quickly routed. The Bolsheviks reluctantly signed the Treaty of BrestLitovsk soon afterward and subsequently sought to bolster the Red Guards to
meet the wide range of internal and external threats to the revolutionary regime.
Institutionalization of this socialist militia began with a January 1918
Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited, which defined
citizenship in two classes-the labor producers and the landowners. According to
the declaration, only labor producers could bear arms.58 As the Bolsheviks
attempted to sort out who was eligible to die for their regime, a White army was
Von Hagen, 21.
103
advancing on Moscow. By summer, the situation was critical and Lenin was
forced to call for all loyal and able-bodied party members to shoulder a rifle.
Communist Party members were called up by the Central Committee, then
rushed to the front in time to halt the White advance.
Popular Forces
The Whites had been aided by a series of defections from the Red ranks,
instigated by former Czarist officers clearly not convinced of the righteousness of
the Bolshevik cause. Trotsky believed the only way through the crisis was to
forge a coalition with some officers of the old army, who if not communist were
certainly still nationalist. A fierce debate raged within the Communist Party
hierarchy as to what the nature of a revolutionary military should be. The popular
forces school of thought believed in the abolition of a standing army and the
creation of a communist militia. This force would be activated when needed and
be comprised solely of the highly regarded worker class.
Partisan
The realist school of thought believed that the revolution demanded a
different construct, one where the people as a whole were armed and prepared
to fight guerilla warfare against an invader. This partisan school was considered
radical by even the most hard-core Bolshevik because it called for arming the
peasants along with the proletariat. While this may have appealed to the many
104
still active leftists, such as the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who were
more inclined to seek support from the rural class in Russia, it nevertheless was
anathema to the Leninist principle of using a small hard-core group to enforce
the will of the party. Therefore, the partisan school was quickly discarded while
the militia school remained attractive, even if reality demanded accommodation
with the remaining professionals from the old army. Thus, the fielded force
remained a mixed system but did not quell the political debate over the future of
the Red Army.
Trotsky received a vote of confidence from the Eighth Party Congress in
late 1918, which confirmed his pursuit of the mixed system. To aid his effort,
conscription was introduced, but only the urban population was under the control
of the Bolsheviks, thus limiting the base that could be called to service. This
reinforced the need to recruit veterans with combat experience, and by the end
of 1918, more than 20,000 former officers and 128,000 former NCOs were
admitted into the Red Army.59 They were added to those former Czarists already
serving, raising the total number of those from the old regime to 165,000.
Contrast that with the 1,700 new officers produced by the fledgling Red Army
commanders course, and it is clear why Trotsky did not have time to entertain
fantasies of a pure communist-led force in the midst of war.60
59Von Hagen, 36.

Von Hagen, 40.
105
As the civil war progressed, the Bolsheviks introduced every form of

conscription and requisition available to them, often in the most brutal and
coercive manner possible. This created a dilemma because they started to look
more and more like the arbitrary and absolutist forces they overthrew. As
opposition to the regime grew, it increased the Bolshevik reliance on the military
professionals already serving. In the rank and file, desertions were having a
telling effect on the force, and more peasants were recruited to make up the
shortfall of proletarian soldiers.
At the Ninth Party Congress, held in 1920, the issue of the structure of the
armed forces was again raised, specifically the desirability to institute a truly
communist militia as the armed force of the Soviet Union. By this time, the Red
Army had defeated most of the White factions. Trotsky continued to advocate
what he called the professional cadre system of using veteran officers while the
Red Army continued to train its own officers. For this, he was labeled
Bonapartisf by many of the more strident delegates, and the Congress adopted
the suggestion to eventually convert the Red Army into this militia force. Trotsky
argued that the army was representative of both a method of state defense and
an example of the mobilization of the masses for political work. A compromise
called for the creation of standing bodies of workers normally doing labor but
available to the army for military duty. This arrangement satisfied neither the
need for a trained reserve nor did it assemble a standing body of politically
reliable soldiers.
At the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, the delegates decided to

continue the Red Army as a mixed force and delay the transition to the militia
type. The conversion of units to the militia type would only occur in politically
secure urban areas and only under the direction of the trusted forces. Control of
the commissars would continue to be vested in the Political Administration (PUR)
appointed by the Central Committee to ensure political control over the Army.
The army was relieved of labor duty and told to focus on war fighting. This was a
limited victory for those seeking to make the army more professional.
Operational Force Types

The operational employment of ideological forces has a component that
turns traditional military-political relations on its head. Noted Prussian military
theorist Karl von Clausewitz argued that the military must be subordinate to the
politics, saying that war was an extension of politics by other means. His
assumption is that the military tends toward the violent and is reined in by
rational political leaders who coolly direct the military to accomplish only that
which is necessary to achieve strategic results. When that political goal
becomes the implementation of world revolution or the elimination of entire races
of people, politics ceases to be the brake on the engine of war and instead
becomes the accelerator. While not changing the subordinate role of the
military, the political goals of the armed forces demand a higher level of vioience
to achieve these more far-reaching and radical goals.
107
In this scenario, the violence of the military is not feared but embraced to
meet the demand of a regime driven by passion. Sometimes a conservative
military will limit the scale of violence in a sort of role reversal. Hitler was
dismayed with his Wehrmacht generals who he assumed would be aching for a
fight after the disgrace of Versailles and the long years of Weimar weakness.
Instead, he had to cajole and persuade them to attack both Poland and the
Western powers. Hitler had no such problems with his political troops-the
Waffen SS, which was the armed SS of Nazi Germany. It dutifully executed both
battlefield missions and the grim task of implementing the Reichs racial policies.
In those cases, in which neither the military nor the political system acted as a
brake, the tactics employed would be especially violent and barbarous. These
unrestrained tactics reflect the application of ideology in its purest and most
dangerous form on the battlefield.
Unrestrained
The unrestrained employment of troops starts with the soldiers belief that
he is carrying out orders that will lead to the creation of a new order that
ultimately advances the development of his own people and perhaps humanity.
Soldiers in this system are the vanguard of a new, almost utopian, age. To
achieve these lofty goals requires not only battlefield victory but also the
annihilation of the foundation of the enemy regime and its society. The noble
ends would then justify the bloody means needed to achieve this. Established
108
rules of war might be suspended or ignored in this quest as representations of

an outdated and illegitimate system. The most heinous acts are justified not by
defense of the homeland, but in the name of building a better world.
A clear example of this would be the employment of German tactical
forces in the campaign against the Soviet Union. As the world came to learn,
Hitler always intended a war with Communist Russia, not merely for geopolitical
reasons, but to wipe out the source of communism and what he called the
Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy. This had great impact from the strategic to
tactical levels of war. Hitler purposely failed to take advantage of strong antiSoviet sentiment in the Ukraine and Russia itself by treating the people
humanely. Instead, immediately following the footsteps of the lead combat
formations came the death squads and security apparatus that established a
system of slave labor and extermination camps. Waffen SS units dutifully carried
out orders to execute military and political prisoners in accordance with
directives, such as the Commissar Order, which mandated the execution of
many Communist Party members. Not as well known was the limited
Wehrmacht involvement in carrying out these orders as well.
The net result of this level of brutality was a type of warfare that existed no
where else in World War II. The violence was the most extreme, with the normal
rules of war suspended. No quarter was asked or given and that increased the
cost in men and materiel.
109
Asymmetric
Another type of tactic was the asymmetric in which the old political and
military system is discredited and a new system is created to play to the
advantage of the revolutionaries. Asymmetric threats seek to defeat the enemy
by exploiting a glaring weakness, and their military tactics reflect this approach.
The status quo is swept away including tactics and professional military ethic.
Purely conventional approaches are questioned and new approaches embraced.
While many conventional forces have used the asymmetric approach

throughout history, not all have tied it directly to a revolutionary political program.
An example of this would be the adoption of guerilla warfare by the Chinese

PLA. Although the early PLA was inferior to the Nationalist forces in size and
strength, making the guerrilla option attractive, Mao saw his advantage in the
lack of political legitimacy in the Nationalist regime. Guerrilla operations avoided
the conventional strength of the Nationalists while simultaneously serving the
higher political goal for Mao and the communists-political recruitment of the
masses to the communist message. Said Mao of the emerging communist army:
The Chinese Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of
the revolution.. .It fights not merely for the sake of fighting but in order to conduct
110
propaganda among the masses, organize them, arm them and help them
establish revolutionary political power."61
Toward that end, Mao laid out three strategic phases of this form of
warfare. The first was the strategic defensive, in which building the means of
opposition was pursued. The second was strategic stalemate in which active
small-scale military operations were carried out to paralyze the enemy. The third
and final phase was strategic offensive in which smaller scale guerrilla
operations coalesced into a conventional force that decided the revolution.
Enhanced Conventional
A third form is the enhanced conventional. Although traditional,

professional tactics form the basis of this system, the twist is the introduction of
new techniques and procedures that improve the units overall capabilities. This
synthesis of old and new tactics capitalizes on the innovative nature of the
ideology by upgrading existing strategies and tactics.
The Waffen SS of Nazi Germany exemplified the combined traditional
conventional tactics with an aggressiveness, egalitarianism, physical fitness, and
training focus not found in the regular German Army. Organized and equipped
in a similar manner to the Wehrmacht, the Waffen SS units were also
61Welch, 13.
Ill
ideologically motivated, ruthless in battle and, frankly, tenacious and effective in
most operations. The result created a formidable tactical foe.
Waffen SS units, especially using those men who were recruited to the
early units, conducted more realistic training with live-fire exercises and suffered
extremely high casualty rates among its leaders in battle because of their
inclination to constantly be up front in the line of fire. These units were known for
emphasizing physical fitness, which made for better-prepared troops, and were
constantly used as assault and shock forces by the army units they were
attached to. Excelling in the offensive, Waffen SS troops appeared in all the
major campaigns except in Africa and made an impression wherever employed.
The dark side of the Waffen SS was shown with its propensity for many of its
field units to execute prisoners and with its complete willingness to carry out the
horrific aspects of Nazi race policies in the labor and extermination camps
throughout Europe.
Operational Impact62
Despite a desire by ideological regimes to remake militaries into forces
that mirror the political goals that they hold dear, there is a certain pragmatism
applied when the regime faces the prospect of extermination either internally or
62For illustrative purposes only, two historical examples are listed here.
112
externally. In the end, each regime acts in a manner that it thinks would produce
the most effective results.
Mobilization
Mobilization in fighting these new, unlimited wars-pitting an entire nation
against an adversary with the ability to mobilize the population to fight-was
critical. As described earlier, the French Revolution was successful with its levee
en masse, a system recognized as essential for national survival. Although this
mobilization was widely accepted by the French people, other regimes felt
compelled to use more coercive means to achieve the strength needed to field
armies. The draconian nature of the Bolshevik crusade led to much heavyhanded conscription, yet the Red Army could never mobilize more than 5 percent
of the population it controlled (distance, organization and transport were some of
the problems). Conversely, the Chinese PLA mobilized up to 25 percent of the
population, a remarkable feat given the state of the Chinese infrastructure at the
time.63
The impact can be seen in figures that measure revolutionary armies
strength against that of their foes. In the spring 1919 campaign against White
leader Alexander Kolchak, the Red Army mustered around 100,000 against
Kolchak's 136,000. Recruiting efforts raised this number to 140,000 for the Reds
63Elting, 57.
113
that summer against 153,000 for the Whites. By next summer, desertions had
decreased Trotskys troops to only 89,000 against 130,000 of the enemy in the
Polish campaign. By autumn, the Reds managed to restore their strength to
133,00 while the Whites under Wrangel had only 34,000 and were on their last
legs.64 The fluctuations in Red Army forces made continual campaigns
extraordinarily difficult. Sustained offensive operations were problematic
because of unreliable troop strength caused by desertions and an overbearing
central regime.
In the Chinese Civil War of 1948-49 the PLA gradually increased strength
from 200,000 to 900,000 against no more than 555,000 for the Nationalists at
their high point.65 Given the quality of the PLA troops, their combat experience,
and leadership, the ability to maintain such a huge force made defeat of their
cause quite daunting for their enemies.
There was another aspect of mobilization that had an impact on the
battlefield and that was party membership of the armed forces. Both China and
the Soviet Union had more than 5 million men in their armed forces at the end of
their respective civil wars. Because of greater success at education and
recruitment, the PLA had 1.2 million, or more than 20 percent, of its soldiers as
Âdelman, 51.
65Elting, 57.
114
party members while the Red Army had only 270,000, or 5 percent.66 While party
membership in and of itself is no guarantee of battlefield success, it does give an
indication of commitment to the revolutionary cause.
Unit Cohesion
Unit cohesion is a critical measure of a militarys ability to ensure hardship
and remain effective. Units beset by serious internal problems will have this
reflected in desertion rates, the simplest measure of the individuals devotion to a
cause. The Bolsheviks faced a huge problem in their first years of operation
when more than 917,000 men deserted in 1917, which reached 1.7 million in
1919, and 1.1 million in 1920. The overall desertion rate was 15 percent to 20
percent per year. Compounding this dismal statistic was that many of the
deserters took their weapons and joined either the Whites or roving bands of
brigands.67
An excellent example of cohesion was shown with the PLA from 1936, but
it was at considerable cost. From the Nanchung Uprising in 1927 through the
Long March of 1936, the PLA lost more than 90 percent of its strength but
maintained cohesion and coherence as a force (similar to what George
Adelman, 113.
67Adelman, 49-50.
115
Washington did at Valley Forge).68 This trial forged an iron bond with those
remaining who were dedicated to the communist cause and had considerable
experience in small-scale warfare. From 1937 through 1945, the PLA fought the
Japanese occupiers and became more experienced in guerilla warfare. By
1945, the PLA was more than 1 million strong and controlled an area
encompassing more than 100 million Chinese. It had no officer holdovers in its
ranks, ran its own military academy at Juchin, and had trained more than
100,000 officers and political workers. In the early days, all PLA officers were
paid the same as the men, were subject to the same code of discipline, and
shared all the hardships of the rank and file. This egalitarianism stood in stark
contrast to the corruption and privilege of the warlord armies and the
Nationalists.
In many of their battles between 1791 and 1794, the French were indeed
victorious, something the government attributed directly to revolutionary 6lan as
captured in this report from a Representative on Mission: But of what value are
the tactics even the courage of the most experienced veterans of the despot,
against the devotion, the abandon of the sons of the French Republic.69 While
the government concluded that it was the bayonet in the hands of the citizensolider that gained victories against royalist Austria, the truth is that the French
Adelman, 74-75.
69Lynn, 187.
116
nation had tapped into a strategic strength with the levee en masse. A mass
infantry force with a focus on offensive operations, mobility, motivation, and an
ability to travel light characterized the revolutionary army.70 In any case, it was
the revolution that was the engine of change that led to victory. Under
Napoleon, these strengths would remain embedded within the system, but the
other arms of the army would improve and the result would be a military
juggernaut that took fourteen years and virtually every European power to
eventually bring to heel.
Napoleon inherited an experienced and motivated force in 1799 and
rapidly transformed it into a force that had the best traits of a revolutionary army
and a professional military. Throughout his term as emperor, Napoleon could
mobilize the entire French nation through the levee en masse and requisition
authority. The talent of all classes was used in leadership positions, and the
French infantry could readily employ the offensive tactics of 6lan as needed. To
this, Napoleon added truly competent cavalry and artillery arms, advance
operational concepts, such as separate advanced routes resulting in the
converging of forces in time and space, and better tactical use of
reconnaissance and small units to harass the enemy. A recounting of what he
accomplished is not needed, but it is clear that the French Revolution provided
70Elting, 132.
117
the basis from which the military genius of Napoleon was used as a starting
point.
Special Troops
In addition to normative and coercive measures of control over the
military, many regimes seek the creation of an entirely new body of troops of
unquestioned political loyalty. These special troops may undergo a genesis from
small guard detachments up to large-scale battle formations that rival or surpass
the conventional forces. What they have in common is a mission to provide
physical security for the revolution internally. Their external mission becomes
merely an extension of their non-negotiable contract to defeat those who would
challenge the ideology from which they were formed.
Praetorian Guard
The first type of special troop is the praetorian guard, which is small and
has a limited mission to provide personal security to the ideological leaders. The
best example of this type is the SS from its earliest days in 1929 until the mid1930s. Personally loyal to Hitler, it was dwarfed by the party street bullies, the
SA, until 1938. The SS did, however, form a cadre of politically reliable soldiers
that eventually expanded to a huge organization that reached into every aspect
of the Third Reich.
118
Political Militia
The second type is quasi-military organizations, which are more like police
forces than military units, and called political militia. They may include
formations of street fighters and armed, politically motivated party members
needed to create and protect the party. They are often seen as the cadre of a
large militia force needed to supplant the regular army. Examples of this are the
Cholny of the early Bolsheviks and the Sturmabtielung, or SA (storm troops), of
the Nazi Party. The Cholny were critical to the survival of the Bolsheviks during
the Russian Civil War. They often rushed to where the fighting was heaviest to
turn the tide.
The SA was a critical counterweight to the communist militia in Germany
during the interwar years, yet proved to be more loyal to national socialism than
to Hitler and thus was purged and absorbed into the more reliable SS in 1938.
The SS moved from a praetorian guard to a political militia, eclipsing the SA
following the Night of Long Knives purge to about 1939 when it expanded to
regiment-size field units. By 1940, the SS transitioned to its next phase when it
fielded division-size units for the Western campaign against France and the Low
Countries.71 Often these groups provided the manpower for other organizations
to carry on both the internal and external ideological fight.
71George H. Stein, The Waffen SS (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 83.
119
Vanguard
The next level of special troops is the vanguard, which are large bodies of
combat troops fully armed and trained for battlefield missions. They represent
the political arm of the regime on the battlefield and exist as a separate
organization from the regular armed forces. They embody the values of the
ideology in uniform and see themselves not only as soldiers, but as crusaders for
a cause. They have their own chain of command and priorities but may be
integrated into regular units at higher levels, such as the Waffen SS divisions
were integrated into German Army Corps. These units can perform tactical and
operational missions either independently or in conjunction with regular forces.
The best example of this is the Waffen SS of Germany, grown from a
praetorian guard into a multi-division organization with its own schools, training
program, and procurement system. The Soviets eventually created their own
version of this vanguard force called NKVD units, which had a variety of internal
security missions as well as fielding tactical units. While vanguard units provided
the regime with its own ideological army, it did not always maintain unity of effort
in wartime because of the natural rivalry with the regular armed forces.
120
Reaction to Ideological War
Internal Unity
Given the violent and extreme nature of ideology during war, it is not
surprising that the reaction to such a war would be equally as violent. For those
facing an enemy motivated by ideology, this often means a life-and-death
struggle that causes internal unity. This unity may overcome traditional tensions
inherent in some groups that would otherwise be in conflict. An example of this
is when the Soviets faced the Nazi threat. When it became clear that the Nazis
would take drastic action against all Slavs in the Soviet Union, Stalin was able to
simultaneously overcome the hatred of communism (such as from the Ukrainians
and Balts) and leverage Russian nationalism to forge internal unity among the
Soviet peoples.
External Unity
The opposite effect of internal unity is external unity and may result in the
formation of alliances to stop the ideological regime. The Russian, Prussian,
Austrian, and British alliance against Napoleon was one such alliance as was the
Allied alliance against the Axis powers in World War II. The threat of success of
an alien ideology is enough to bring distrustful rivals together in common cause,
often to ensure their own survival. If the alliance cannot defeat the ideological
121
power, it must seek to contain it as was done in the Cold War with the Soviet
Union.
Expanding Violence
The level of violence will often expand in scale and scope in an ideological
conflict. One example of this expanding violence was in the war in the east
between the Germans and Soviets. They were two ideological powers
completely at odds with each other, resulting in a merciless battle that
distinguished itself in a war of horrific conditions. The atrocities committed on
both sides exceeded that in scope and scale beyond anything on either the
Western or Mediterranean front and were directly attributed to ideology in action
on the battlefield.
War Weariness
If a war is prolonged, ideology may not be able to overcome a sense of
war weariness. In fact, ideology may cause public disillusionment if it is seen as
the reason for interminable fighting. At this point, even if the war is won ideology
may lose its sense of legitimacy and suffer accordingly.
122
Effects on the Nations Military
Despite its holistic approach, an ideological military may alter during or
after a war. Much depends on the results of the war, with losing ideologies being
discredited. However, even victorious armies are transformed by war.
Ideological Realism
Concessions that favor professionalization are grudgingly accepted
based on experience and the need to wield a more effective armed force. The
Soviets suspension of the commissar system and the restoration of traditional
officer rank and authority, as well as commanders authority, was such a
concession. The mixed system used by Trotsky was also a concession to gain
more military professionalism. Another example of this was the relaxation of
racial and physical requirements originally initiated by the Waffen SS. The
continued expansion of the SS as an armed body meant the original standards
for recruitment of soldiers with pure Aryan ancestry had to be relaxed. By the
end of the war, SS manning requirements were such that the organization was
drafting troops from the base German population for its German units and was
recruiting foreign contingents that included Croatians, Russians and Bosnian
Moslems, hardly prominent members of Hitlers vaunted master race.
123
Continued Tension
The system continues to politicize the military with ideology but often finds
difficulty in effecting modernization and transformation efforts over time, even if
wartime demands dictate it. The desire to professionalize (make objective
control more a reality) the force eventually runs afoul of party directives and
focus. All major efforts within the conventional military must be juxtaposed and
justified, based on a straightjacketed worldview. The military faces more modem
threats with an outdated set of ideals, further divorcing the military from
professional solutions. An example of this is the Soviets' involvement in
Afghanistan in the 1980s. The Soviets were late in adapting to the enemy and
terrain and pursued a broad war of maneuver as if on the European plain. With
nowhere to maneuver heavy tank divisions against an elusive enemy, the
Soviets struggled for years before giving up the cause. The same could be said
of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, although tactically American forces fared much
better against the North Vietnamese Army than the Soviets did against the
Mujaheddin.
While all militaries battle politics to become what they feel are true
capability-based forces, ideological militaries face the additional burden of
overcoming systems that are not tolerant of outside philosophies and ideas. The
result is an insular military more apt to fight a war at the apogee of the
ideological system, regardless of the true capabilities of the armed forces.
124
Discredited Tradition
A defeated ideology will affect the military that supported it. The German
system after World War II is classic example of this. The SS and the German
General Staff, along with other Nazi state organs, were declared criminal
organizations by the victorious allies. Additionally, such influences as the
Prussian military mind-set, the Junker class on the officer system, and the
method of unquestioning discipline that characterized the German military, were
all discredited following the defeat of the Nazis. Although the Allies imposed
much of this as part of occupation, German society also played a part in
redefining the role of its military. German soldiers were encouraged to challenge
authority, and the Bundeswehr had to create new values and traditions reflecting
the political realities of the post-Hitler era. It was only recently such as in
Desert Storm and the Balkans-that the Germans have allowed out-of-country
operations by their armed forces.
Conclusion
Political dominance of military affairs may vary, but regardless of the
system employed, the political aspects have far-reaching implications of how that
military is organized, as well as how it leads and performs in battle. By its very
nature, an ideological regime will seek to have more control over the military, as
it does with all state institutions. This expansion of subjective control has the
potential for both positive and negative results on the battlefield. On the one
125
hand, it may capture the energy of a new political system as with the French
Revolution. On the other hand, it may lead to an expansion of violence and
horrific atrocities, such as when the Nazis unleashed ideology under the guise of
a conventional military invasion against the Soviet Union. Regardless of the
specific effects, the comprehensive nature of an ideology forces the scale,
scope, and intensity of violence upward. With politics no longer a restraint for
the international system, the force of violence is not only untethered, but actually
propelled forward. If the offensive is the ultimate force of decision in military
affairs, then ideology seeks to serve the same purpose politically.
In the following chapters the interaction of the science of war and the
demands of an ideology will be examined in their component parts. Critical
among these are three key factors. First was the prevailing sense of
professionalism within the Iranian armed forces before the revolution and
through the war. Second was the scope of ideological influence on the militarys
ability to fight and win. Third was the overall sense of unity at the strategic,
operational and tactical levels that tie battlefield performance to the larger, and
more intense, political goals. They will be examined in further detail to
understand the complex interrelationship between ideological politics and war.
Chapter 4
Professionalism and the Imperial Army
The military force of Iran's Islamic revolutionary government went to war
with Iraq in 1980. The force it employed was one it had inherited from the Shah
the previous year, which was essentially feudal in nature. While Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and his father, Shah Reza Pahlavi, built a large, wellequipped force, key elements of a truly professional force remained absent.
Instead, the imperial Iranian Armed Forces were characterized by nepotism,
class differences, lack of critical leadership, training deficiencies, and growing
isolation from the Iranian public. These shortcomings were a direct result of the
control methods used by the monarchs to create and build the military.
The lack of professionalism stemmed from pervasive subjective control of
the military, at the same time promoting the belief that a modernizing Iran was
pursuing objective control via Western means. This internal misperception was
founded on the belief that the Iranian military was apolitical. The Shah often
stated, ttW e in Iran have one invariable rule-the complete and unalterable
separation of the armed forces from politics.1 In other words, if a military was
organized and equipped like those in the West, then by nature it contained the
same sense of professionalism found in the objective system. In reality, the
1Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite o f Iran (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Press, 1971), 112.
126
127
Shah's subjective control ensured the military would have little or no political
aspirations beyond serving him personally. He facilitated this by binding Iranian
nationalism completely to the monarchy, making service to him service to the
nation.
This fallacy created a situation in the 1970s in which Iran's military was an
unquestioned regional power capable of intimidating its neighbors, although
internally it was considered a tool of a corrupt regime controlled by foreigners not
interested in what was best for Iran. Objective control is only possible in stable
regimes in which the role of the military is clearly understood by all. The Iranian
military lacked both legitimacy in the eyes of many Iranians and a truly
professional foundation in the armed forces. These factors would be key in the
war with Iraq and the preceding political upheaval of the revolution.
Military Background
Historically, the Iranian armed forces were dominated by outside powers.
The first regular army was formed in 1812 by a French general on loan from
Napoleon to the Qajar Dynasty. Its officers were Europeans, and most of its
effective combat forces were composed of Russians and other foreigners.2
During World War I, Iran was still nominally ruled by the tottering Qajar Dynasty,
but in reality power was decentralized to the various tribes and enforced by their
2Haleh Afshar, Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil (New York: State University of New York
Press, 1985), 176.
128
own private armies. An Iranian colonel in the Russian-supported Cossack

Brigade, Reza Khan, seized power in 1921 from the crumbling Qajars.3 His goal
was to forge a new Iranian national identity at the expense of the local tribes and
build a modem state based on secularism, modernization and Westernism.4 A
critical tool in accomplishing these goals was a new national army.
Crowned as Shah of the Peacock Throne, Reza Khan established his
national army by installing his trusted officers from the Cossack Brigade into key
positions. The army was first used as an instrument of coercion and suppression
to rein in the various tribes. This precedent established the military as a powerful
tool of the monarchy and created a privileged place for the army within the
Iranian state. It did not, however, permit the army to have an independent
political role. Instead, the Shah sought to maintain a traditional, almost feudal
relationship with the army, with the monarch retaining absolute power.
Toward that end, the Shah established three pillars for the army at its
inception. First, loyalty to the monarch had to be absolute. Second, the army
had to identify itself as much as possible with ancient Persia and the military
dominance it achieved. Third, the army was not to be involved in the political life
of Iran, except as directed by the Shah. The result of these pillars was an Iranian
military under strict subjective control based on tradition and a dependent
3Afshar, 177.
4Robin Wright, lin the Name of God (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 43-44.
129
relationship with the absolute ruler of Iran. The virtue of an independent military
to serve the principles of the nation was not embraced, but rather, the emphasis
was on personal service to the Shah as the embodiment of the glory of a new
Persia. While this policy provided a national versus tribal outlook for the new
army, over time the subjective control imposed on the army alienated it from the
citizens of Iran.
Methods of Control
The first Shah used all three methods of control: remunerative, normative,
and coercive. He lavished pay and special benefits on the armed forces senior
leaders, attempted to inculcate a Persian nationalism tied to the monarchy into
the rank and file, and relieved or arrested officers he felt threatened him.
Knowing he had to control the fledgling officer corps to shape the army in
his own image, the Shah used remunerative methods to ensure their loyalty,
such as rewarding senior officers with good pay and special benefits. Officers
had high social standing in Iran, and their future seemed secure in the growing
army.
Normative control was primarily exercised by infusing young soldiers with
the idea they were creating a new, modernized Iran through military service.
This process also promoted a growing nationalism, emphasizing the glory of
ancient Persia at the expense of local loyalties and tribalism.
130
The Shah reinforced his control over the officer corps through the use of
limited coercive measures. He constantly rotated senior officers from post to post
and position to position to ensure no one officer built up a base of popular
support that could threaten the Shah's position. The Shah also
compartmentalized information and pitted generals against one another to keep
potential adversaries off balance.
The favoritism the Shah showed to his old colleagues from the Cossack
Brigade impacted the officer corps. Those not selected for promotion to major or
higher became second-class officers in the system. A rift developed between
the older, senior officers and the younger, junior ones. Junior officers were
dismayed with the lack of professionalism in the force in general and with the
politics played in the promotion process. This contributed to the lack of
development of a merit-based, independent officer corps that was credible in
times of crisis and respected as a professional institution by the Iranian
populace.5
Meanwhile, the illusion of objective control continued. The Shah
continued to expand the size of the force and orient it along Western lines. In
1926, conscription was introduced in Iran. All 18-year-old males were subject to
call up for two years. Most of those drafted were young rural youths who had
little social mobility before conscription. In addition to enlarging his army,
5Sephr Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War (London: Routledge, 1988),
3.
131
conscription allowed the Shah to take young, impressionable men away firom the
local tribes, indoctrinate them with Iranian nationalism and weaken the power of
the tribal leaders. This fit his plan of building a modem nation through military
expansion.
Conscription increased the size of the army in 1926 to 23,000, organized
into five divisions. In 1929, the Iranian Air Force was formed, followed in 1932
by the Iranian Navy. By 1930, the army had grown to 80,000. Most missions in
the 1930s consisted of suppressing rebellious tribes and patrolling the border for
bandits. By 1941, the expansion put the army's strength at 185,000, organized
into 18 divisions with separate aviation units and marine troops.6 To financially
maintain such a force consumed a full one-third of the national budget, starting a
trend in which Persian nationalism was defined by military strength and the latest
hardware. The abilities of this vaunted force were soon to be tested in combat.
During World War II, the Shah's pro-German views were not well
accepted by the two traditional powers of the region-the Soviet Union and
Britain. Fearing Iran could be a link between Rommel's Afrika Korps in North
Africa and advancing German troops in the Soviet Caucasus, the British and
Soviets jointly invaded Iran in 1941 as a preemptive move. Despite a numerical
advantage in troops and a psychological advantage in fighting on its home soil,
6Afshar, 177.
132
the Iranian Army was easily defeated in three days by the Allies.7 Shah Reza
Khan Pahlavi was forced to abdicate his throne after this humiliating defeat. His
son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, became Shah of Iran.
In 1946, the Allies withdrew from Iran, and the new Shah was free to
pursue his dreams of a modem Iran. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavis grand
vision of Iran focused on the concept of the Tamaddon-e Bozarg, or "Great
Civilization. For the Shah to make this dream a reality, he would greatly exploit
the increasing oil wealth of his country.8 For the military, the years following the
Allied withdrawal were active ones. The army had to reconsolidate the borders
of Iran, which were in chaos following the war. Azerbaijan and Mahabad had
attempted to secede from Iran during World War II and were forced back into the
Iranian state. Concurrent with the reestablishment of the Iranian borders was the
rebuilding of the armed forces following the defeat at the hands of the Allies.
The advent of the Cold War was useful to the new Shah in this regard.
Strategically located on the border of the Soviet Union, the Shah's anti
communist monarchy fit nicely in the United States new policy of containment.
The Shah benefited by having access to new weapons and maintaining a close
security relationship with the United States. By the early 1950s, the United
States was the largest arms supplier to Iran. These arms were paid for with
7Zabih, 3.
8Amin Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah (London: Westview Press, 1986), 137-139.
133
money from the expanding oil reserves in Iran. Following in his fathers
footsteps, the Shah focused state expenses on building the military. A
disproportionate share of oil wealth went toward arms purchases at the expense
of social programs. The result was a growing alienation between the people and
the Shah, with the army viewed as an extension of the Shah and his foreign
advisers.9
The unequal distribution of wealth caused growing class differences that
did not escape the Shahs notice. While this was primarily an internal problem,
many Iranians blamed a history of foreign domination as the root cause for Irans
misfortunes. As the dominant colonial power in the 19thcentury, Britain was
heavily criticized for its military presence in the Gulf region and for its ties to large
oil companies reaping huge profits while Iranian development languished.
Growing unrest was fueled by radical parties, such as the Tudeh, which led
violent demonstrations against the Shah and foreign domination throughout the
early 1950s. The quasi-independent Majlis, or legislature, echoed popular
sentiments that Britain was the source of internal discord and emerging class
differences. The Shah attempted to defuse the crisis by ironically calling for a
more Islamic spirit in national politics saying, These antagonisms poison our
social attitudes and political life. The best way to alleviate them is to apply the
9Zabih, 10.
134
laws of Islam. If we live as true Muslims class conflict will give way to class
harmony and national unity.10
Under growing internal pressure, the Shah was compelled to allow
Mohammed Mossadegh to assume the post of prime minister in 1953.
Mossadegh was a populist who had broad support and whose family was well
regarded by the ruling oligarchy. He heightened his own standing by
encouraging frequent street demonstrations to overcome the political weakness
of the Majlis. Mossadegh nationalized British oil interests as expected but also
went further. In a direct attack on the Shah, he condemned the privileged status
bestowed upon the armed forces and he set about to change it. First he
abolished the Royal Guards, the most privileged of the army units. Next, he
forced many senior officers to retire, prompting the old guard of the officer corps
to start planning his removal.
Undeterred, Mossadegh continued his attempts to reduce the army's
influence. He transferred jurisdiction for tribal affairs from the Minister of
Defense to the Interior Ministry, reducing military involvement in internal issues.
As a result of these actions, the army attempted a coup against Mossadegh.
The coup failed, but a follow-up CIA-sponsored coup, supported by many senior
army officers, was successful. Many of the junior officers supported Mossadegh,
10Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: University Press,

1982), 267.
135
with some going as far as to secretly join the hated Tudeh Party.11 Because of
the Shah's anachronistic promotion system, these officers had little influence and
could not stop the coup against Mossadegh. The gradual split had finally
revealed an open seam in the officer corps between those senior officers in the
Shah's favor and those junior officers who had favored Mossadegh.
Unnerved because events had spun out of his control, the Shah
reasserted subjective control measures to ensure he would retain dominance
over both the internal political institutions and the army. Again, he used the full
spectrum of control measures-remunerative, normative, and coercive-to bolster
this pillar of his regime.
Remunerative Control
Remunerative control included continuing his fathers policy of providing
the senior military leaders with material rewards. He personally selected all
majors and above for promotion and only chose those whom he felt he could
trust politically. He paid them very well and added bonuses, such as housing
subsidies and the ability to purchase imported goods without paying customs
fees.12These privileges were not available to the junior military members or the
11Afshar, 179.
12Mamood Poursaniae, Conditions for Revolution: The Case of Iran 1978-79 (Ann
Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1982), 234.
136
public at large and contributed to a growing sense of alienation from an armed

force that seemingly served only the crown and not the nation.
Normative Control
Normative control consisted of indoctrinating young troops in the belief
they were building a greater Persia. All new military personnel had to swear
loyalty to three entities, Khoda (God), Shah, and mihan (country) and were
constantly reminded in their training of their loyalty to the Shah. Military
indoctrination focused on the need to recreate the past greatness of Iran, a
greatness inextricably linked in current mythology with the institution of the
monarchy.13
The army expanded its role beyond national security to include running
programs on literacy, health, and developmental programs. The administration
of justice fell largely to the military, which conducted tribunals for dissidents,
security threats, and even drug suspects.14 Senior military leaders were
appointed as security directors, cabinet ministers and leaders of government
institutions, including civil aviation, governorships and, mayoral positions. This
was a clear indication that the Shah felt the need to maintain control of key
aspects of the regime by placing those he trusted in leadership positions.
13Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (New York: Penguin Books, 1979),
110.
14Mahmood, 235.
137
Coercive Control
The Shah employed coercive measures as well. He established a new
secret police, SAVAK, to oversee the political scene. The SAVAK was organized
and run by current and retired military officers whom the Shah trusted. In
addition, the Shah established the Second Bureau, which was a military
intelligence unit that kept tabs on political activity within the armed forces. In
1959, the Shah added another policing agency called the Royal Inspection
Organization, which also reported on political activity as well as the activities of
the other security agencies. The net result was an overlapping series of police
organizations, each reporting on the other to the Shah creating a pervasive
security system that fostered subjective control.
To further his control, the Shah implemented additional coercive
measures by removing all intermediate levels of command and mandating that
he must personally approve military unit movements in writing.15 The Shah was
determined to control both individuals and units who might pose a threat to his
power. Although this was effective in cowing the senior leadership, it also
removed initiative from the officer corps, further reducing its level of
professionalism.
15Nader Entessar, Post-Revolutionary Iran, (London: Westview Press, 1988), 56.
138
Many of the reform-minded junior officers who had supported Mossadegh

or joined the Tudeh Party were rooted out by one of these organizations. The
Shah also purged officers considered unreliable. In a purge that followed the
Mossadegh coup, 27 officers were executed, 134 received life sentences in
prison, and still others were accused of corruption by the security forces as a
pretext for removal.16 Using promotions, transfers, money, privilege, and threats,
the Shah regained firm control of the officer corps and continued the policies
started by his father. He continued his plan to build a regional powerhouse,
defined by military strength and financed by oil at the expense of social
development.17
By the early 1970s, the Iranian Army was reaping the benefits of oil
wealth. The complete withdrawal of the British from the Persian Gulf in 1970-71
spurred the Shah to fill the power vacuum. In 1971, the Iranian Army stood at
221,000 strong with a billion-dollar budget-10 percent of the Iranian gross
national product. The army was equipped with new American M-60A1 tanks
while the Air Force had F-4 fighters, F-86 interceptors and F-5 fighter-bombers,
as well as advanced radar.
Well armed, the Shah adopted a more aggressive political attitude in the
region. Fearing a political alliance among Iraq, the Soviet Union, and India
16lbid.
17lbid.
139
would threaten Iran; the Shah sent military aid to India's enemy, Pakistan. He
also started arming Kurdish separatists in Iraq. Additionally, he had troops seize
the disputed islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs in the Persian
Gulf.18
Resourced but Not Professionalism

By 1972, the military budget rose to $1.3 billion and then to $1.5 billion the
following year. The Shah added more new equipment to his growing arsenal,
including AH1 attack helicopters, UH1 utility helicopters and 141 F5E fighters,
giving Iran a greater offensive capability. These acquisitions further enhanced
Iran's military position, which the Shah noted when he said, "At present, Iran has
a certain military potential...to the extent, so far, no one has managed to trifle
with us. I promise...that within the next four or five years Iran's Armed Forces will
be such that no one had better entertain any evil thoughts about Iran."19The
Shahs statement was correct concerning external enemies, but that Iran strove
to create such a force only exacerbated internal tensions. The more the Shah
spent on preparing to fight an improbable threat, the more he created the
conditions for a greater internal threat that ironically his force was not prepared
to counteract.
18Saikal, 155.
19lbid., 157.
140
By 1974, financed by huge petro-dollars, the military budget of Iran

climbed to 3.6 billion and rose every year after that until 1979. In 1978, the last
full year of the Shah's rule, military expenditures reached $9.9 billiona massive
29 percent of the budget. This was a huge expense for a country not at war and
badly in need of more development.
Virtually all arms purchases were from the West, especially the United
States, and were paid for either with cash or direct oil shipments. The United
States had the most influence in Iran, transacting billions of dollars a year in
weapons sales. In addition, the United States sent over large numbers of
advisers and technical experts whose overt appearance created the perception
of U.S. dominance. The American military presence in Iran grew to more than
10,000 advisers by the mid-1970s.20 A treaty agreement gave primary jurisdiction
over Americans who commit crimes in Iran to the Americans. This angered
average Iranians who saw it as another example of unwanted foreign dominance
and unequal treaties, and it would have severe repercussions later.
Despite huge fiscal expenditures, Iran's armed forces reaped little benefit
professionally. The only combat experience the Iranians had during this period
was a limited intervention in Oman from 1973 to 1976. A maximum of only 3,000
20Entessar, 59.
141
personnel were involved, and little use was made of the new weapons systems
in this limited counter insurgency.21
Weapon purchases were often not followed up with spare parts nor was
the necessary training given to prepare soldiers to use them. The arms
purchasing strategy was haphazard at best and reflected the cronyism and
favoritism of the Shah's inner circle. Retired officers were often appointed by the
Shah to oversee arms deals, and there were problems with corruption and
favoritism. Additionally, the Shah's military did not develop a coherent strategy
or doctrine to use the new weapons. Significantly, the services remained
separate entities with very little cooperation and with no concept of joint
operations.22The lessons of the foray into Oman did not teach the Iranian armed
forces about the nature of insurgency or how to combat it.
The result was a force equipped with advanced, foreign weapon systems
but lacking the training, workable doctrine, and internal infrastructure to
effectively use them. Many systems were not compatible, and there was no
overall direction to the type of force that was being constructed.23 That much of
the nations wealth was used in these purchases did not go unnoticed by the
average Iranian. The Shah, the military, and the United States were cast as
21Zabih, 10-15.
22Entessar, 56.
23Zabih, 10-15.
142
despoilers of Iran, lining their own pockets while development projects for the
lower classes lagged behind. Opposition to these conditions was often met with
suppression by the Shahs multiple security agencies, further alienating the
people from the state and military.
The Shah unwittingly set the conditions for revolution by allocating too
many resources to an inefficient, repressive military, while ignoring domestic
concerns. Moreover, the military itself retained many feudalistic practices that
prevented it from developing into a fully professional force respected by the
Iranian citizenry. The acquisition of massive hardware was a poor substitute for
a coherent strategic policy based on realistic political, economic, and military
needs and capabilities.
Despite the Shahs belief that his armed forces were apolitical, he
continued employing a variety of means to reinforce subjective control. The
reality of Iran in the late 1970s was a politically influenced military with an
expanding presence throughout the state apparatus, all controlled by the Shah at
the center. In an environment of favoritism, suspicion, and court intrigue, it was
impossible for a military force to develop into a truly apolitical instrument of
power. As such, the focus remained on weapons acquisition, force size, and
Western orientation rather than building a capabilities-based force. Worse yet,
the military did not reflect society, but remained separate from its citizens and
their thirst for change.
143
Adding to this challenge was the presence of huge numbers of American

military advisers who had the effect of reinforcing Iranian suspicions of foreign
dominance. Together, these factors caused the Iranian military to lose credibility
and legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian citizens. This lack of faith contributed to
the 1979 Revolution and had considerable impact on the army's performance in
the war against Iraq a year later.
Unsuited to Counter the Revolution

By the end of the 1970s, conditions in Iran were becoming unstable.
Heavy military spending continued at the expense of domestic economic
priorities. Despite a continual increase in oil revenue, the average Iranian did not
benefit at the local level. Inflation, overt corruption, and uneven wealth
distribution characterized the economy. Many sectors of Iranian society that
previously supported the Shah were becoming alienated, including the influential
merchant class, called the bazaris. The rural poor were most affected by the
heavy military spending, and many flocked to the cities in search of better jobs,
which were not available. A loose coalition of strident clerics, the disaffected
bazaris, and a youth population ready for change began to form.
The religious elite, which historically had the freedom to run schools and
grass-roots organizations, was targeted by the Shah's security services in an
144
effort to diminish the clergy's influence over the people.24 As a result, religious
opposition crystallized and became political. Additionally, the bazaris, who were
traditionally an integral part of Iran's ruling elite, were increasingly undermined
economically by the Shah's Westernization efforts. Supplanted by a new class
of businessmen tied to the Shahs inner circle, the bazaris resented their
reduction in status and shifted allegiance to the religious elites as a result.
With a student population in 1978 of nearly 10 million, the youth of Iran
represented a potential revolutionary force.25As part of the Shah's
Westernization campaign, many students were sent abroad for advanced
schooling. When they returned, they brought new political ideas that soon
spread among the younger population. Given the oil revenue of Iran, most
students had expectations of social and economic reform that went unfulfilled.
Many students could not find good jobs upon graduation and gravitated to radical
political movements. As a group, they became some of the most vocal
opponents of the Shah's rule.
The result of the disaffection of such key sectors of society was the loss of
legitimacy of the Shah's government. Iran was a nation undergoing dramatic
change and, as such, was more prone to revolution, especially given the high
level of societal alienation. Misdirected oil wealth, corruption, oppression, and
24John A. Berry, Jay C. Mumford and Roy E. Smith, The Fall of the Shah," in Military
Review, November 1979,36.
25lbid., 37.
145
Westernization threatened the traditional way of life for a majority of Iranians,

without offering the benefits of modernization. Only the ruling elites, wellconnected businesses, the security forces, and the senior military benefited from
the Shah's rule.
Throughout this period, the military remained the most solid pillar of
support for the Shah. Because of his own fear that the military could turn against
him, he intentionally compartmentalized the force by restricting its internal
communications capability. Each regional command was isolated from the
others, and the Shah refused to use senior command organizations to
coordinate military activities. Instead, he personally interacted with each
commander to ensure he was the only one in the regime who knew the overall
state of military affairs. In isolating his senior leaders and requiring them to
come to him for personal audiences instead of conducting even the most routine
staff meetings, the Shah rendered the force ineffective in operating collectively.26
Senior officers remained loyal to the Shah, but many junior officers privately
questioned the Shah's legitimacy, thus widening the rift between the two groups.
These were the officers not deemed suitable for promotion to the senior ranks or
those who were influenced by either domestic or foreign university education.27
When the revolution came, many openly sided with the rebels.
26Mark J. Roberts, McNair Paper #48, (Washington, Institute for National Strategic
Studies), 2.
27lbid.
146
Outwardly, the military remained a formidable force. It had a total strength

in 1978 of 413,00 with more than 285,000 in the army organized into three
armored divisions, three infantry divisions, and four separate infantry brigades.
The army was equipped with 1,870 main battle tanks, mostly modem American
M60A1 and British Chieftains. This compared with 2,500 plus tanks in NATO at
the same time. The air force, long the Shah's favorite service, had even more
modem equipment with 459 airframes, including 200 F-4s, 60 F-14s and 160 F>
5s. The navy had three modem destroyers and three frigates. The Iranian
military remained a Cold War force, bent on deterring any outside aggression
and intimidating local rivals. Although its focus was toward the Soviet threat, the
Iranian military was not organized, trained or prepared to handle large-scale
domestic disturbances.
Iran's long border with the Soviet Union made it a key member of the
Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and a close ally of the United States. The
Shah naturally believed Iran should occupy the dominant role in the Persian Gulf
region. In 1975, Iran and Iraq signed an agreement in Algiers that set the
boundary of the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway in Iran's favor. The Iraqis
reluctantly signed the Algiers Accord, perhaps because the size, equipment, and
strategic advantage of their Iranian rivals intimidated them. This accord would
have repercussions as a resentful Iraq later used it as part of its excuse to attack
Iran in 1980.
147
Despite its conventional power, Iran's military was ill suited to work
effectively in unconventional operations. The military did have two smaller scale
insurgent experiences but neither significantly influenced the armed forces. The
deployment of troops to Dhofar in Oman to suppress communist-supported
guerrillas from 1973 to 1976 never involved more than 3,000 troops at a time
and resulted in several hundred casualties.28 In 1976, Iranian helibome troops
were sent into Pakistan's Baluchi province to battle a separatist movement. After
a short while, and very little combat, they were withdrawn. The Shah could not
foresee how ineffective his huge, well-armed military would be during the crucial
days before the fall of the Peacock Throne.
Khomeini and the Old Military

One of the disaffected clerics in Iran who opposed the Shah was the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As a respected religious scholar from the holy city
of Qom, Khomeini held sway over many of the fundamentalist clerics dissatisfied
with the Shah's rule. In 1963, Khomeini spoke out against what he considered
the un-lslamic nature of the Shah's regime. In a speech during Ashura,
Khomeini stated, "[The Shah's regime] is fundamentally opposed to Islam itself
and the existence of a religious class."29 Exiled to Iraq and eventually France,
28lbid.
29Wright, 51.
148
Khomeini waged an unrelenting propaganda war for the hearts and minds of the
alienated and dispossessed in Iran.
He continued his opposition using the cassette tape as his main weapon.
Khomeini taped religious and political messages that were smuggled into Iran
and secretly distributed. They found waiting ears from the slums of Tehran to the
rural poor to the impressionable university students. These alienated groups
were open to a revolutionary message that offered meaningful change.
The Shah's state reacted poorly to Khomeini's attacks, unwilling to
counter his arguments and unwilling to crack down physically on the dissenter.
A critical point came in January 1978 when a quasi-state-sponsored newspaper
published a scathing article on Khomeini. The article criticized many Shiite
clerics and actually alluded to sexual impropriety by the ayatollah, which
infuriated many Iranians.30 In the resulting street protests, government security
forces in Qom killed many demonstrators.
Then began a vicious cycle of funerals, protests, deaths and more
funerals. In Shiism, there is a 40-day interval between the day of death and the
memorial funeral. Because the opposition used funerals to protest the regime's
policies, there was a constant delayed reaction to earlier deaths caused by
security forces. Forty days after the Qom incident, funerals in Tabriz led to
widespread rioting. The Shah's response was to use the military, resulting in
Ibid., 57-58.
further deaths and injuries. This created an atmosphere of constant tension as

one funeral followed another. , and the corruption and foreign domination of the
Shah and his coterie.31 In 1978, there were demonstrations in 55 cities leading to
dozens of deaths, the arrest of hundreds, and a continual cycle of violence.32
Khomeini and other opposition leaders continued to hammer home the themes
of fundamentalist Islam, the rights of the dispossessed
On 7 September 1978, the Shah declared martial law in an effort to regain
control of the situation. The next day, thousands of demonstrators took to the
streets of Tehran, many unaware of the martial law declaration. The army
opened fire on the demonstrators, killing hundreds. The army's actions, on what
came to be known as Bloody Friday, caused its reputation irreparable harm.
Despite incidents such as Bloody Friday, the Shah did not commit the military to
wholesale repression of the demonstrators, even though he had the support of
most senior commanders. One reason for the Shah's reluctance was the basic
structure of the military that he had fostered. He could not trust the military and
feared a coup if it became too independent. To prevent that, he ensured its
basic organization remained feudal, non-professional, and loyal to him
personally. In doing so, he prevented active cooperation among commanders in
dealing with widespread civil disobedience.
31Wright, 58-59.
32Michael Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard University Press, 1980), 196.
150
When the military squared off against the demonstrators, the results were
not always favorable for the regime. There were instances of soldiers refusing to
fire on their fellow Iranians, and some troops shot at those soldiers who did fire
on civilians.33 Desertions were on the rise within the force, and this added to the
sense of uncertainty. In addition to all this, the Iranian military was not capable
of handling situations that required less than deadly force. The Shah refused to
allow the military to be prepared for these contingencies because he feared the
military could be turned against him in a coup. Troops organized and equipped
for urban fighting would be a potential threat to his throne. The external
orientation of the military meant it was only prepared for a foreign enemy leaving
it "organized for the wrong war."34
Opposition leaders took full advantage of the split between the Shah's
military supporters and the rank and file of the armed forces to further bring
about a revolution in Iran. From France, the Ayatollah Khomeini stepped up his
attacks against the Shah, concentrating on the Shah-Imperial Army-United
States connection. In September of 1978, Khomeini called for the armed forces
to "throw off the yoke of slavery and humiliation" and denounce the army as
Mark Roberts, Khomeinis Incorporation of the Iranian Military (Washington: McNair

Paper #48,1996), 15.
Roberts, 15-16.
151
being "under American command...it is even led at the upper echelons by

American advisers and technicians.35
Although he wished to drive a wedge between the people and the military,
Khomeini was very careful not to paint the entire Iranian military as an inherently
evil organization. In that same September speech, he sought to divide the
military against itself by saying,"...but there have already been, among the
officers and soldiers, evident signs of trouble as the popular revolt mounts."36
Ultimately, Khomeini sought to decapitate the monarchist head of the military
and control the body once in power.
Khomeini attempted to divide the soldiers from the officers and the junior
officers from the senior officers. He realized there was a split based on rank and
social station in the Shah's force. He portrayed the upper echelons of the
military as stooges of the Shah, irredeemably corrupt, anti-lslamic, and the tools
of the Americans. In one speech Khomeini asked, "patriotic soldiers and non
commissioned officers of our homeland to leave the forces of a despotic,
bloodthirsty regime and place themselves on the side of the nation."37
Khomeini and his clerical supporters realized that the army was a key to
the success of the revolution. They needed to win the allegiance of as many
Roberts, 17.
Roberts, 10.
37Roberts, 15.
152
soldiers as they could to render the military an ineffective counter-revolutionary

tool. In the words of Khomeini, radical clerics continued to call on the army to
reject the Shah's leadership by:
disobeying the orders of the black generals of the Shah's self-centered
court and by joining the people. The soldiers, officers and Army, are the
children of the Iranian nation and cannot remain indifferent to the bloody
events in the realm and the call-the invitation-of the national and
religious leaders.38
Khomeini and his religious and secular allies continued to conspire to
bring down the Shah. Their enemies were the monarchists that supported the
Shah. Once the monarchists were removed, then the army could be maintained
as an institution needed to consolidate the gains of the revolution.
Using many centers of opposition organized around religion, the cleric
class fomented the youth of Iran against the regime. One of these major
influences was the Husayniyah Organization, which was devoted to the memory
of the martyred Third Imam. Its major task was to introduce Islamic ideology to
the young Iranians. The Husayniyah harnessed the energy of youth through a
subtle campaign with slogans such as, "Unveil the beautiful face of the beloved
martyr of Islam in order to transform the love-seekers into restless lovers."39
Mosques were used as platforms for spreading the word. Religious schools in
National Voice of Iran on Mutiny in Armed Forces, 15 December 1978.

39Dabashi, 19.
153
Tehran and especially Qom became hotbeds of revolutionary thought organized

around Islamic themes.
Through efforts like these, the clerics were able to harness the students
dissatisfaction to the larger fundamentalist movement advocating revolutionary
change. Additionally, the clerics forged a critical alliance with the bazari class.
Traditionally, sons of the bazaris were trained in clerical schools, so there was a
natural bridge between the two communities. This bridge was fully exploited by
the revolutionary clerics.
The Shah's response to the revolutionaries was inconsistent and
inadvertently boosted the morale of the revolutionaries. He vacillated between
cracking down on the opposition and seeking to accommodate them. At first, the
Shah turned to the military in early November 1978, ordering them to form a
military government. He appointed Gen. Gholam Azhari, the chief of staff of the
armed forces, as head of this new government. The heads of all three military
services became cabinet ministers, and other senior officers took over key
ministries, including Labor, Interior and Information.40 This attempt at the
militarization of government was the Shahs last attempt to find a military solution
to his political and social problem, but it did not work.
Unwilling to commit the military to enforce his rule, the Shah sought to
accommodate the opposition. He fired the head of SAVAK, the dreaded security
^Mahmood, 242.
154
force, and said he had "heard your revolutionary message." The Shah promised
to meet the demands of the opposition, with the exception of abdicating the
throne. This shift in policy, which occurred in November 1978, only emboldened
the rebels, who pressed harder for his removal from power.41
Despite the Shah's threat to use force, large crowds continued to
demonstrate against the regime in December 1978. Switching tactics again, the
Shah tried to mollify the opposition by appointing Shahpur Bakhtiar, an
outspoken critic and opposition party leader, to be the prime minister in January
1979. Bakhtiar knew he would be walking a fine line by accepting an
appointment from the Shah and only accepted the post on condition that the
Shah leave Iran. On 16 January 1979, the Shah and his family left Iran for what
they thought would be a temporary absence until the situation cooled. Bakhtiar
promised to end martial law, abolish SAVAK, and reform the political system in
Iran. Despite his efforts, he was branded by much of the opposition as a tool of
the Shah, and his government became ineffective. Likewise, Bakhtiar did not
command the loyalty of an army created and controlled by the Shah. The army
did not have the institutional allegiance to principles or to a form of government.
Once the Shah was gone, so too was the loyalty of many senior military leaders.
Bakhtiar was caught in the middle and had little support from either side,
especially those who had guns.
41Berry, et al., 38.
155
On 1 February 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France

to a tumultuous welcome in Iran. As a precursor of what would come, the army
was not entrusted with Khomeini's security at the airport. Instead, insurgent
revolutionary paramilitaries stood watch over the ayatollah's return. Khomeini
did not assume an official position within the government but used his
tremendous influence as a religious leader to direct change in the government.
He quickly took charge of the Revolutionary Council, a group of 16 to 19 of his
most trusted clerics in the country. The council had veto power over government
decisions. Later, this body became more formalized and wielded considerable
power.
Although he feared the army, Khomeini wanted to preserve it for later use
and did not advocate that it be disbanded. He encouraged his followers to avoid
antagonizing the army, urging the public to "preserve public order and win the
support of the armed forces."42 In a direct appeal to the army not to oppose the
revolution, Khomeini said: I invite them for their own good and the nation's good
to be with us. I hope they can be guided. The people are their brothers. We
want what is good for them; we want them to be free and independent [of the
Shah's influence]."43
42Roberts, 6.
43Roberts, 25.
156
The army was split, with some advocating the Shah's return, others saying
they would support the Constitution, and others siding with the more radical
revolutionaries. The airforce, in general, was sympathetic to change because
many of its officers and warrant officers were more educated and challenged the
old order. Although the air force was coddled by the Shah and provided the
latest technology in the halcyon days, this did not translate into political support.
On 9 February, airforce elements openly sided with Khomeini supporters and
clashed with troops of the elite Javidan (Immortal) units supporting the Shah.
This bloody clash ended with revolutionary supporters rushing to aid the air force
and with the eventual withdrawal of the Javidan.44 Officially, the army pledged
loyalty to the Constitution on 11 February, but that did not translate into direct
support to Bakhtiar.
Khomeini reached an informal agreement with the army chief of staff to
prevent the army from becoming embroiled in violent suppression of the
demonstrations.45This agreement was threatened when civilian technicians
within the air force, known as Homafaran, staged a pro-Khomeini rally at
Farahabad Air Base and were fired upon by members of the Imperial Guard.
Unable to control the army and with little public support, Bakhtiar was removed
from government.
Mahood, 272.
^Roberts, 26.
157
Mehdi Bazargan, who attempted to pursue a moderate political course,

replaced him. Bazargan emphasized the need to maintain ties to the West,
which put him immediately at odds with the clerics on the Revolutionary Council
who were virulently anti-Western. Bazargan's problems intensified when the
Revolutionary Council established grass-roots organizations to promote their
vision of the revolution. These Komitehs, or committees, were popular in poor
urban areas and generated great popular support. An adjunct to these groups
was the revolutionary tribunals set up to exact "justice" on the defeated regime.
These summary courts targeted the security services, former government
officials, and senior members of the army for trial and, in many cases,
executions.
Bazargan's troubles intensified when a student group loyal to Khomeini
took U.S. Embassy personnel hostage in Tehran. When Khomeini refused to
order the release of the hostages, the Bazargan government fell and paved the
way for the takeover by the clerics on the Revolutionary Council. Khomeini used
a combination of charismatic appeal, his standing as a religious leader, and legal
means to finally come to power. His Revolutionary Council selected a body of
religious experts who drafted a new constitution. In December 1979, the day
after Ashura, a referendum was held. In an atmosphere of revolution and
passion, more than 99 percent of the voters approved of the new Islamic
Constitution, reflecting widespread desire for a new form of government, but it
did not mean all Iranians favored the establishment of a theocracy.
158
Opposition parties, such as the Tudeh and Fedayen, boycotted the

elections to the Majlis, and the Islamic Republic Party (IRP) won the vast
majority of seats. The referendum established three basic branches of
government, plus a fourth that was called the Council of Guardians. This council
had twelve members, six appointed by the Majlis and six by Khomeini himself. It
had veto power over virtually all executive, legislative and judicial decisions. In
effect, it ensured ideological control over the entire apparatus of government by
the clerics.
The constitution established the Ayatollah Khomeini as the faqih, or
supreme jurisprudent, with an unlimited term of office and the power to dismiss
the president and appoint a commander in chief of the armed forces.46 This was
an unusual arrangement in Iranian history. Never before had a clerical leader
garnered such great temporal power. Iranian Shiism had traditionally avoided
direct participation in government, calling it demeaning to spiritual authority. This
arrangement was not only politically revolutionary, but a radical change within
Shiism itself.47
In the chaos and confusion of the Shah's departure and Khomeini's
return, many opposition forces tried to impose their will on the new Iranian
political system. The Mujahidin (Freedom Fighters) were a leftist group
^Wright, 74.
47Wright, 24.
159
composed mostly of students and middle-class intellectuals with a long history of

opposition to the Shah. They quickly moved to seize arms from many of the
disaffected soldiers and looted armories in Iran. More than 300,000 weapons
were taken by the militias, which included pro-Khomeini groups, the Mujahidin
and Fedayen during the revolutionary period.48
The opposition groups regarded the army as completely anti-revolutionary
and unsalvageable as an institution. What they wanted was a people's militia
that would represent all classes of Iranian society and would replace the Imperial
Army. Conversely, Khomeini wished to retain the army as an institution and
reform it. At a minimum, the army would have to undergo serious reform by
removing the monarchist elements to make it responsive to the new regime.
Despite the removal and execution of many senior leaders, there was always an
element within the IRP that advocated the militia-type force. No matter how
much the army was reformed, there would always be hard-liners in the new
revolutionary regime who did not trust the army to follow the orders of an Islamic
government. Nevertheless, Khomeini began to reform the army into a more
Islamic institution by removing the most obvious imperialist members of the
armed forces through coercive measures. So began the purges of 1979.
^Teheran Journal, 26 February 1979, p.1.
160
The First Purge

The Khomeini regime faced two competing desires upon coming to power.
First, as the victors in the revolutionary struggle, there was a strong desire to
seek revenge on the forces of the Shah with whom they had battled so long. To
do this, they sought to establish an Islamic presence in all institutions. The
institutions that most supported the Shah, such as the security forces and the
military, were natural targets for extensive reorganization. Second, as leader of
the nation, Khomeini knew that he needed the military as a coherent force to
safeguard the country and to prevent counter-revolution. Khomeini had
successfully appealed to many service members not to oppose the people in the
revolutionary struggle. Now he needed the collective army as an ally in the
reshaping of Iran as an Islamic republic.
What resulted were two distinct purges of the military. The first, from
February to September 1979, focused on removing the most overt supporters of
the Shah. The second, from October 1979 to September 1980, was more
ideological in nature and sought to transform the military into a more Islamic
institution and one that was a more responsive organization to the ruling IRP.
The first purge began with the execution of four generals on 15 February.
Although the new regime stated as a goal that "the purging of the armed
organizations affiliated with the former diabolical regime is among the top
priorities of the new government, it did not want to completely destroy the
161
military.49 Khomeini continued to stress obedience and discipline among the

armed forces and the civilian population as the new regime struggled to gain
control of the structures of power.
The Islamic regime tried to stem the tide of chaos and anarchy that had
swept the military. Troops were urged to report back to their units and follow the
orders of their officers. New, politically acceptable commanders were put in key
positions, and a new committee was formed to reorganize the general staff. Units
were left intact with the exception of the Shah's palace guard, the Imperial
Guard, and the Immortals, which were completely disbanded.
What the regime feared as much as a counter-revolution was the
factionalization of the army along political lines. The Mojahedin was effective
during the revolution in infiltrating the lower ranks of the army and organizing
Soldiers Councils as an alternative to the chain of command. The Fedayen had
also organized cells, mostly among the educated warrant officers in the air force.
The pro-communist Tudeh Party advocated the return of its officers who were in
jail. All were a threat to the military and could further threaten to destabilize the
already shaky organization. To avoid a complete breakdown, Khomeini tried to
reinforce tradition and discipline in the military structure at the expense of
revolutionary ideals.
49Gregory Rose, Post Revolutionary Purge of Irans Armed Forces: A Revisionist

Assessment, in Iranian Studies, vol. XVII, Spring-Summer 1984,154.
162
The situation was similar to that in Russia following the 1917 Revolution
when the Bolsheviks used the voenspets to maintain coherency of the army
while reform from above continued. So too in Iran, the political leadership had to
emphasize traditional organization and discipline to allow consolidation. By the
end of February, Khomeini responded to the demands from the left by saying:
The Army, police and gendarmerie are now in the service of Islam and the
nation. The nation should support them, and do nothing that might
discourage them or hurt their feelings....We respect you and regard you
as our brothers. I emphatically warn the Iranian nation that the
government must have a strong national army with a mighty morale, so
that the government will have the power to safeguard the
country....Attacks on security forces' barracks throughout the country must
be prevented. Today an attack on a barracks will be tantamount to
opposing the Islamic revolution.50
The initial purge focused on the monarchist leadership of the Imperial
Army, and revolutionary justice was swift and often terminal. In the first two
weeks of the purge, 248 people were executed, including 77 active military
personnel. Most of the rest were SAVAK agents or other police officials.51 Not all
of those targeted for revolutionary justice were executed. Many senior leaders
were forced into early retirement. In the first week of the purge, more than 50
officers were retired.52
50Teheran Radio, Domestic Service in Persian broadcast 28 February 1979, in Foreign

Broadcast Information System (FBIS), Middle East and North Africa (ME), 1 March
1979, R2.
51Rose, 160.
Rose, 32-34.
163
The regime became more concerned with the arbitrariness of an

increasingly fragmented justice system. Local Islamic revolutionary committees
held most trials in secret. Trials were quick, with the defendant not accorded the
normal rights under either Iranian or Islamic law. Many were charged with civil
crimes, such as murder and torture, but the most effective sweeping charges
were corruption on earth" and combating God, the apostle of God, and the
Imam of the era.53
On 16 March, in an effort to gain control of the process, Khomeini ordered
that only the Islamic Revolutionary Council could convene a revolutionary trial.
By May, another 27 people were executed with the total in October reaching
250.54 Hundreds more were imprisoned or forced to resign. The bulk of the
victims of the purge were members of Imperial Guard or units that had a violent
role in the suppression of the revolution. The purge was modified in July 1979
with the announcement of a general amnesty for military personnel. The
amnesty was an effort to bring some sense of normalcy to the armed forces,
which could not concentrate on reorganization and training because of the
constant threat of revolutionary justice hanging over them. The Islamic courts
continued to hear crimes against those who actually killed protesters, ordered
Roberts, 35.
^Nikola Scahgaldian, The Iranian Military Under the Islamic Republic (New York: Rand,
1987), 19.
164
executions or shootings, and those accused of torturing prisoners or

misappropriating public funds.55
The end of the first phase of the purge affected only the most senior
leaders of the military. Most of those purged had close ties to the Shah or were
in units most aggressive in counter-revolutionary activity. In fact, the primary
target of the purge was SAVAK and the other security agencies, which were so
deeply despised by the new regime. As far as the continuation of the army as an
institution within his new Islamic regime, Khomeini was pragmatic, but the
purging process did not stop there.
The Second Purge

Although Khomeini did not want the military destroyed, he did want it to be
radically different from the Shah's Imperial Army. The second purge, from
October 1979 to September 1980, was the regime's attempt to "Islamize" the
military so that it could be a reliable instrument within the revolutionary
government. The start of this second purge coincided with a political
consolidation within the IRP. By this time, the regime had consolidated enough
power to form a coherent, national political body to promote its ideological cause.
From this political base the regime created, or reorganized, other bureaucratic
bodies to support and enforce its goals.
Rose, 181.
165
For the military, this meant that the purges would no longer be conducted
by the Islamic Revolutionary Committees but by loyal revolutionary bodies within
the military. New Defense Minister Dr. Mostafa Chamran vigorously pursued this
ideological line in continuing to purge the military. Chamran had originally
supported the dissolution of the old army and its replacement with the fledgling
Revolutionary Guard, an embryonic military force charged with protecting the
revolution. Having been converted by Khomeini in his thinking that the Army was
needed to defend the country, Chamran still thought the Army to be corrupt and
in need of wholesale reorganization.56 He clearly stated the goals of the purge as
based "on the criteria of belief in Iran's independence and territorial integrity,
belief in the Islamic Revolution, its leader Khomeini and obedience to and
acceptance of the governments sovereignty."57 This quote suggests the need for
the army to defend the country in a conventional sense while demanding
revolutionary obedience to Khomeini within the velayat e faqih, "government of
the jurist" as the leader.
Chamrans aim was to change the very way soldiers identified
themselves with the regime. He saw soldiers in the old Imperial Army as
mindless automatons, blindly following orders of the Shah and his Western
Nader, 63.
^Zabib, 122.
166
backers.58 Chamran thought that soldiers should identify themselves as Moslems

first and thus introduce the human factor into the armed forces. The human
factor represented both the dynamic energy of spiritualism that could be
unleashed against an enemy when properly directed and the revolutionary
concept of a mass militia.
The main enemy of this conversion was the Western influence that had
infected the old army. Chamran clearly identified what he saw as the major
threat when he said, T h e most important issue which must be addressed...is the
question of a purge in the army. As far as we are concerned, the existing order
is an order created and tailored by the Satanic regime."59This aspect of the
purge was reinforced when a student group took hostages from the U.S.
Embassy in November 1979. A strain of anti-Western sentiment would remain in
the new ideology of the armed forces. Those officers thought to have a proWestern bias were forced out or arrested.
Chamran's chief instrument in achieving this goal through the second
purge was the newly established Political-Ideological Bureau (PID). This
organization was effective in identifying pro-Western officers and fought against
"anti-lslamic" behavior, such as gambling and drinking. By using organizations
within the army, the regime gradually institutionalized its ideology within the
Rose, 184.
Schalgaldian, 22.
167
military. Most trials were conducted as courts martial, and the results were not
publicized. It is estimated that the second purge resulted in the removal of 6,000
personnel from the rolls of the military by February 1980 and perhaps 10,000 by
the start of the Iran-lraq War in September 1980.60 This purge affected not only
officers but also NCOs. An estimated 4,000 field-grade officers were purged,
2,500 company-grade officers and 3,500 NCOs and warrant officers.61 It is clear
from these numbers that the goal of the second purge was to influence the rank
and file and transform the entire military into a more Islamic force.
Despite their best revolutionary efforts, the conservative elements of the
military did not go quietly. The April rescue attempt of the American hostages,
called Desert One, implicated certain members of the military, specifically, those
in the air force. A special commission was appointed to investigate the lingering
ties with the United States.62 In June 1980, there was a coup reported at the
PiranShahr garrison by both active and retired officers, which resulted in the
arrest of some 175 soldiers. In July, President Bani Sadr reported that the new
Revolutionary Guard had thwarted a military plot in Mehrabad to assassinate
Khomeini. This led to the arrest of 450 officers and 44 executions, most in the
air force.63
60Rose, 123.
61Rose, 123.
Rose, 186.
Rose, 186.
168
The impact of the two purges was both physical and psychological. The
officer corps of the Imperial Army was overmanned to begin with, by as much as
20 percent in the field-grade ranks. The reduction in numbers undermined its
readiness: The ideological focus was at the expense of professional
reorganization, reequipping and training. The army needed to focus its efforts on
becoming more professional, specifically developing effective command
structures to conduct combined arms operations. Units needed to train and
maintain their equipment, and discipline had to be reestablished. Opposition
groups had taken over many of the arsenals and armories of the military, while
the hostage crisis dried up the equipment pipeline from the United States and
the West. The revolution had been so effective in neutralizing the military as a
counter-revolutionary force that the new regime had considerable trouble in
reconstituting discipline and organization once it took power.
The regime did take steps, however, to ensure it had sweeping ideological
control over the armed forces. The new regime used several organizational
controls to ensure the regular army became Islamized. It also formed its own
force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a politically reliable
alternative to the army. The new Islamic regime was similar to the Shahs
regime in its use of overlapping security organizations to ensure its will was
carried out.
At the highest level, the Supreme Defense Council (SDC) exercised
political and religious control over all military units, whether regular army or
169
IRGC, in a manner consistent with historic use of commissars. The SDC had
representatives at all echelons of command, and their purpose was to ensure
that the political and ideological loyalty of senior field commanders was
unquestioned.64 Most of these representatives were clerics of high rank, and they
could veto field commanders decisions if they found them politically
objectionable.
The most far-reaching coercive control organization remained the PIO.
The PID answered to the joint staff of the SDC and in essence was a commissar
system that reached down to the lowest level of every unit in the armed forces.
Representatives could be clergy, IRP members, or clerics and they were present
down to platoon level. They were responsible for ideological and political
education of the soldiers, as well as propaganda and indoctrination of new
troops. They could not overrule commanders but could screen soldiers for
advancement to the NCO ranks and could inform on those they considered antiIslamic.65
Additionally, the joint staff had its own intelligence unit called the
Guidance Office (GO). GO functioned as sort of an Islamic inspector general
office, inspecting units to discover unreliable officers and NCOs. Taken together,
these organizations provided comprehensive ideological control over both the
^Schalgaldian, 30.
^Schalgaldian, 31.
170
army and IRGC, although the IRGC was largely self-motivating. The result was
similar to what happened under the Shah. Commanders were under intense
scrutiny for political reliability and their tactical decisions, although militarily
sound, could be overruled for political reasons.
Conclusion
The result of the revolution was an ideology that stressed the human
component over all else. This became the Islamic answer to the varied Western
political ideologies. The Western models were rejected as foreign to the Iranian
people, and Shiites in particular. This Islamic ideology fit conveniently into Iran's
post-revolutionary application to military affairs. Stressing human factors would
mitigate Iran's isolation from its previous military sponsor while providing a home
grown solution to the question of what would succeed the Imperial Army.
Although Khomeini recognized the need for a professional standing
military, he wanted the essential character of that organization radically changed.
The first purge was aimed at only the most overt of the Shah's supporters using
an external legal force. The second purge was conducted using internal military
organizations. The results of this purge were a more Islamized military, one that
was more politically acceptable to the new revolutionary regime. These purges
came at a cost to the professionalism and readiness of the military, but it was a
cost the regime was willing to accept.
171
The chaos and confusion of the revolution, the various political factions
within the military, and the reorganization of the armed forces along more
revolutionary lines, all came at the expense of discipline, training and combat
readiness. Junior officers, who had long chaffed under the control of the Shah's
politically appointed generals, quickly advanced up the ranks. However, the lack
of institutional professionalism undermined their ability to forge a more
competent force. As the Iranian military felt its way along the thin path between
ideological reorganization and maintenance of a credible force, its neighbor Iraq
saw an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
Chapter 5
The Rise of the Revolutionary Military

Wars approach their absolute from when revolutionary novelty prevents the implicit
communication, which favors moderation.
Carl Von Clausewitz, On War
The 1980 Iraqi invasion challenged the very survival of the fledgling
revolutionary government in Iran, eventually strengthening the hard-line ideologists
within the regime and profoundly affecting the Iranian war effort. The result was an
expansion of Iranian war aims and a determination to achieve them through the
application of a new way o f warfare-one that was completely different from the Western
method of war.
The first half of the war can be broken down into three phases, each with its own
distinct ideological influences.1The first phase, from September to November 1980, was
the Iraqi offensive phase and was characterized on the Iranian side by ad hoc tactics, a
zealous, if uncoordinated, defense, and disunity of command between the army and
Revolutionary Guard. The second phase, from November 1980 through August 1981,
was the stalemate period, with Iranian army deployment to the Khuzistan battle zone,
continued uncoordinated military actions, and limited offensive operations. The third
phase, from September 1981 to the spring 1982, was the Iranian recovery, characterized
William F. Hickman, Ravaged and Reborn; The Iranian Army (Washington: Brookings
Institute, 1982), 2-3.
172
173
by the liberation of Iranian territory, occasional improved military coordination, the rise
of ideology resulting in expanding war goals, and ineffective offensive operations into
Iraq.
Lacking meaningful strategic allies and wracked by disunity, uncertainty, purges,
and poor training, the Iranians were in no shape to resist a determined Iraqi assault. That
any credible defense was offered in the early days of the war is attributable, in the words
of a Brookings Institution study, to the intangible components of Islamic fervor and
Iranian nationalism.2 Outgunned and initially outmanned, the Iranian forces nevertheless
managed to halt the Iraqi invaders and eventually expel them from Iran.
When the Iraqis were successful in their initial assaults, the regulars were blamed
for not being motivated enough to repel them. This was proof to many who advocated an
Islamic-style militia force that the army inherited from the Shah could not be trusted with
the defense of the nation. Openly rejecting a more conventional and professional
approach to fighting the war, many Iranian leaders embraced an ideological approach.
Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Rajai commented, Ideology should dominate the basic
issues and expertise must be harnessed and controlled by ideology.3 Although the
army remained the key national defense force, the role of the newly formed Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) started to expand rapidly.4
2Hickman, 20.
3FBIS, 21 November 1981, i.
4The IRGC refers to the formal command structure which included the Pasdaran, or
Guards units, and its reserve formation, the Basij.
174
This expansion had severe repercussions for both the regular military and the
overall war effort. It came at the expense of a regular army badly in need of an overhaul,
and further undermined the discipline and training needed to turn back the Iraqis. While
the purges of 1979-80 had stripped away the monarchists and political enemies of the
regime, they also caused chaos and ill discipline. Soldiers no longer trained and in some
cases did not follow the orders o f their officers.
The revolution called into question everything the military stood for, so much so
that President Bani Sadr claimed the mullahs were actually more afraid o f an Iranian
military victory than they were of an Iraqi victory.5 This claim was based on the hard
liners belief that the army was merely waiting to take power back from Khomeini and
the clerics.6Khomeini recognized this trend and sought to reverse it by stressing
discipline and ordering troops back to the barracks, but both the solders and society had
lost faith in the old system. An army in such disarray could hardly emphasize the
fundamentals of sound training and tactics under such conditions.
In the vacuum created by discrediting the regular forces, the IRGC soon filled the
void. Political reliability was more prized than military competence by the
revolutionaries. The revolutionaries believed that just as the revolution was needed to
sweep away the remnants o f a corrupt political order, so too could traditional battlefield
5Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, My Turn to Speak (Washington: Brassey's, 1991), 108.
6Hard-liners were those espousing the revolutionary ideology known as the line of the
Iman, in essence, the positions of Khomeini. They included Rafsanjani (speaker of the
Majlis), Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khameni (president), Ayatollah Musevi Ardabili (chief
justice of the Revolutionary Courts), Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti, and others.
175
organization and tactics be replaced with a new revolutionary construct. Instead of the
principles of war, the new force would profess the Koran, the spirit of will, and
spontaneity as its tenets.7 Instead of traditional battalions and brigades, the new Islamic
Army would be without traditional structure, reflecting the populist ideal espoused by
the revolutionaries. Instead of integrating combined arms maneuvers or even fighting a
sustained war of attrition in which Iranian superior numbers would persevere, the new
force attempted to revolutionize tactics that reflected their ideological strength, namely,
an unshakable faith in their endeavor, the belief that God was on their side, and a
willingness to be a shadat, or martyr, for the holy cause.8
The dispute between those who saw the need to meet the Iraqi threat with a
conventional force, organization and tactics and those who advocated a new, radical,
revolutionary style force created a disunity of command that haunted the Iranian war
effort. In time, there were attempts at a synthesis of these two competing ideals, but by
then the Iranian nation was exhausted and a political solution was necessary to save the
revolution. The actions that led to this synthesis must be looked at in detail.
7Stephen C. Pelletiere and Douglas Johnson, Lessons Learned: The Iran-lraq War
(Carlisle Barracks, Penn.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1991),
2.
8Combined arms maneuvers refer to the ability to coordinate the activities of several
key components simultaneously, such as tanks, infantry, and artillery.
176
First Phase: The War Starts

In September 1980, Saddam Hussein reasoned that a limited attack on
Iran would achieve several goals simultaneously. First, it would rectify the
inequities of the 1975 Algiers Accord over the Shatt al Arab border a treaty the
Iraqis considered imposed and unfair. Second, it would contain the Iranian
Revolution from spreading across the border into majority Shiite areas in Iraq.
Third, it would establish Iraq as the dominant Arab and Persian Gulf power,
positioned as the key rejectionist state against Israel. The internal discord and
poor state of the Iranian military made such a limited attack seem a prudent risk
to Saddam who assumed the dominant Arab population in Khuzistan would rise
in solidarity with the advancing Iraqis. Additionally, many Iraqis were unsettled
and resentful of continual Iranian agitation amongst its Shiite population. Since
the success of the Iranian Revolution the preceding year, there were many
instances of organized propaganda aimed at fomenting unrest among the Iraqi
Shiites. Not surprisingly, Saddam enjoyed sizable popular support in Iraq,
especially in the Sunni community, in responding to this perceived Persian/Shiite
threat.
Saddams assumption that limited war only was required was based on
the chaos in Iran following the revolution. A civil war atmosphere existed
between the ruling clerics and the main opposition party, the fedayen-e-khalq,
and created conditions Saddam thought he could exploit. An active pro-Soviet
Tudeh Party and a violent opposition group, the Mujaheddin e Khalq, contributed
177
to a volatile political landscape. Added to this was the continued unrest of some
minority ethnic groups, most notably the KuFds. The general weakness of the
Iranian military provided the opportunity for Saddam to force a military solution in
redressing the balance of power and to achieve his goals.
On 22 September 1980, the Iraqis launched an invasion into Iran with
seven divisions as part of a limited war to seize the oil-rich province of Khuzistan.
The Iraqi military's objectives were the four main cities of KhorramShahr, Dezful,
Abadan, and Ahvaz. Control of these cities would ensure Iraqi dominance of the
northern Persian Gulf and deny the Iranians a major forward staging area from
which to counterattack. Although the main effort was across the Shatt al Arab
into Khuzistan, Iraq also launched supporting efforts toward Mehran in the
central sector and Qasr-e-Shirin in the north.
The advancing Iraqis quickly occupied Mehran and Qasr-e-Shirin. In the
Khuzistan sector, the mechanized and armored troops of Iraq moved forward
and took up positions around the key urban areas. This area was ideally suited
for mobile warfare. Nevertheless, Iraqi caution held the initial advance down to
only 10 kilometers a day, even though the Iranians had little to oppose the
invaders. By 26 September, the Iraqis had advanced 35 kilometers and laid
siege to Abadan and KhorramShahr.
Initially, the only opposition to the Iraqi invasion was the Iranian border
guards and one weak armored division around Ahvaz. Total personnel strength
of the Iranian army was about 150,000, down from 285,000 during the last year
178
of the Shahs rule. A hasty call by the government for volunteers from the Shahs
army yielded only 200 veterans recently departed from the old army.9
Complicating the defense was the disposition of the main Iranian units.
The bulk of the Iranian army was deployed near the Soviet border in Kurdistan to
battle the separatists there. In addition to the morale and discipline problems,
the regular Iranian Army had serious maintenance and readiness difficulties.
Units were weak to the point that divisions could fill only one-third of their
assigned positions, and the operational readiness rates of the mechanized and
armored equipment was as low as 50 percent in some units.10 Only half the
fighter aircraft were serviceable, in large part because of the severing of the
American connection and the unavailability of spare parts.
Despite initial Iraqi success early in the war, the Iranians proved to be
stubborn fighters and soon slowed the Iraqi advances. The Khuzistan Arabs did
not rise up to support the Iraqis but remained loyal to Iran. Saddam Hussein
worried about high casualties, not because of concern for his troops, but
because his forces were made up of nearly 50 percent Shiite Iraqis, and he did
not want to undermine his political position at home if troop losses were too high.
As a result, he did not push his troops to seize key urban areas in the early
stages of the war when the Iranians were most vulnerable because this would
9Efraim Karsh, Iran-lraq War: A Military Analysis, (London: Adelphi Papers, Spring
1987), 14.
10FBIS, 10 October 1980, i.
179
have required the commitment of many infantry units in house-to-house fighting.
Iraq did not seek to extend the conflict deep into Iran, although such a course of
action could have overtaxed the Iranians, forcing them to battle and perhaps fall
early in the war. As a result, the heaviest fighting was in and around the larger
urban areas the Iraqis had quickly enveloped but could not capture.
Once inside the cities, the defensible urban terrain negated the Iraqi
advantages of armor and fire support. In KhorramShahr, for example, both
regular troops and the Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran), who dug in and
withstood intense fire, defended the city. The Pasdaran troops, comprising the
bulk of the defenders and fighting with only light arms and homemade bombs,
inflicted heavy casualties upon the Iraqis. Although estimates vary, it is believed
that the Iraqis counted between 1,500 and 3,500 casualties in this battle and the
Iranians even more.11
Regular troops in KhorramShahr were comprised mostly of an elite ranger
unit formed during the days of the Shah. In some reports, the rangers fought
well, although in others there were charges that the Pasdaran had to force the
army to fight by positioning its troops behind the regulars and threatening to
shoot them.12What is clear is that it was the fanaticism of the Iranian defenders,
both nationalist and religious, that made the defense effective. The fighting was
11Pelletiere, 9.
,2Susan Merdinger, The Race for Martyrdom (Monterey, Calif: Naval Post Graduate
School, 1982)
180
so intense that the Iranian high command renamed the city KhuninShahr, or City
of Blood, after the fighting that took place on 16 October.13 Despite the heroic
efforts of the Iranian units, the Iraqis captured KhorramShahr on 25 October
1980.
Second Phase: Stalemate

For the Iraqis the battle for KhorramShahr signaled the end of the largescale offensive portion of the limited war they had embarked upon the month
before. While allowing local attacks, Saddam prohibited wide-ranging, infantryintensive attacks, especially in urban areas. For the Iraqi military leadership, this
meant they could not capture the besieged cities of Dezful or Abadan, key terrain
in their original war objectives. Saddam offered a five-day cease-fire to begin on
1 October to consolidate his gains, an offer the Iranians flatly rejected.
Sensing the general Iraqi offensive had culminated, and buoyed by the
resistance shown by their forces, the Iranians talked of an immediate
counteroffensive to drive the Iraqis out of Iran. President Abolhasan Bani Sadr
claimed that if the Iranian offensive went as planned, then Iranian forces would
cross the border and topple Saddam Hussein.14 The key words were as
planned, by which Bani Sadr meant that the regular army was prepared to
13Broadcast by the SDC Propaganda Department of Tehran Radio, in FBIS, 21 October

1980, ii
14lbid.
181
conduct a conventional counterattack but would take time. For his remaining
tenure as president, Bani Sadr would continue to champion the rebuilding of the
regular forces as the means to secure victory. Meanwhile, the Iranians were
unable to marshal the men and resources for an immediate counter-offensive.
Immediately following the KhorramShahr battle, acrimony arose between
the advocates of the army and advocates of the IRGC. The Ayatollah Huessein
Ali Montazeri, a leading cleric, spoke on the problem of interservice coordination
with an eye toward blaming the regulars. He said:
The responsible authorities and commanders cannot make firm decisions. Or
is it that-God forbid- this is deliberate? All these issues need to be
investigated. The army commander should, in accordance with the Imams
command, act with greater decisiveness and should break the encirclement
of Khunninshar and Abadan and with lightening assault should rid the people
of Khuzistan and Kurdistan of the evil of the infidel Baath agents. But if they
are weak and incapable, then they should say so candidly so that the Imam
himself would directly make decisions.15
Khomeini formed a Strategic Defense Council (SDC) on 12 October to
coordinate the Iranian war effort but also to "become active in explaining the
truth about Irans policy and establish more contacts with the world, according to
Majlis Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani.16The seven-member council was nominally
headed by President Bani Sadr but was in effect dominated by revolutionary
15FBIS, 21 October 1980, 94.

16SDC Session, 25 October, 1980, reported on Tehran Radio, FBIS, 27 October 1980,
iii
182
clerics who distrusted him.17The SDC allowed for better overall direction in
mobilizing the Iranian war effort but failed to heal the division between the army
advocates and IRGC advocates.
The SDC tried to influence military affairs directly with the use of
permanent representatives to the various fronts in the winter of 1980. These
representatives, reminiscent of the revolutionary commissars of the Soviet Army,
were appointed by Islamic Revolutionary Party (IRP) hard-liners on the SDC and
were opposed by Bani Sadr.18 The representatives were the SDC answer to the
endemic problem of command disunity in the Iranian Armed Forces.
The secretary of the SDC, Hojat ol-Eslam Khamenei, admitted that there
were separate command structures but that Iran had appointed one commander
to direct the activities of the army, guards corps, gendarmerie and volunteer
forces (Basij) in that theater and that Iran was increasingly moving toward a
centralized command structure to direct the overall conduct of the war.19 Bani
Sadr also conceded that cooperation between the army and the Revolutionary
Guard is not an easy task and would be one that continually dogged the Iranian
17William Stauffenmaier, Military and Political Strategy in the Gulf War," Parameters,
(June 28): 28.
18Hickman, 24-25.
19Kahamen's interview with Tehran Radio, FBIS, 31 October 1980, ii.
183
war effort.20 The SDC became the political battleground between those two
military forces.
The clerics pointed to the Pasdaran performance at KhorramShahr as
evidence of the need for a revolutionary army. Bani Sadr explained the armys
absence in the first month of the war as a premeditated decision to give the army
time to recover from the latest purges.21 This clear blow at the clerical elites did
not sit well with the leading ayatollahs who said that this explanation was proof
that only the Pasdaran could be counted on to fight for Iran and Islam. The
conflict within the SDC between Bani Sadr and the clerics would only end with
Bani Sadrs dismissal from office. But it would not end the debate between the
army and the Pasdaran. Khomeini tried to steer a path between the two
factions, demanding at once that our people drive the Iraqis out of KhuninShahr
(KhorramShahr) and take the offensive while admonishing the hard-liners that
people who have no military knowledge should not interfere in military matters,
just as we do not expect some colonel to come to us and lecture us on the
Islamic canon.22
Regardless, the initial Iranian reaction to the Iraqi invasion reflected the
disunity of effort that would plague the Iranians throughout the war. Army and
20Press Conference, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 4 December 1980, ii.

21Eric Rouleau article, 11 Oct. 1980, LeMonde, FBIS 15 October 1980, 50.
Khomeini speech to Moslem clergy, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 6 November 1980, iii.
184
Pasdaran efforts were not coordinated, and all units were clearly untrained.
Virtually all Iranians agreed that the war would be a national, if not religious,
effort with all resources mobilized to expel the invader. Khomeini said at a
Friday prayer sermon, This war is not going to end soon.23 Iran would count on
two crucial factors to wage this war: a large population from which to draw
soldiers and a revolutionary spirit in which to fire them.
For the next three months, the regular and Pasdaran forces managed to
stabilize the front lines. Iraq still controlled KhorramShahr and most of the Shatt
al Arab waterway and besieged the key port city of Abadan from two sides. But
Iraq was clearly incapable of conquering all of Khuzistan once its initial assault
failed, and it began to look for a way to end the war with the status quo intact.
Saddam now intended to hold on to the captured Iranian territory and press for a
political solution.
During this period, the Iranian press carried many accounts of the
Revolutionary Guard in action that claimed to have inflicted large casualties on
the Iraqis while still retaining a portion of KhuninShahr, despite continual
bombardment.24 President Bani Sadr, now firmly convinced that the army would
be the element of the armed forces that would achieve victory, continually toured
the battlefield to assess the situation and shore up morale. He gave his frank
23Merdinger, 92.
24Tehran Radio Report, FBIS, 7 November 1980, i and November 10,1980, ii
185
assessment of the Iranian war effort in an interview in December 1980 in which

he stated that the army was coming to understand the problems inherent in
wars which must be solved to achieve victory. He also said the military
recognized the need for order and discipline but that there were others at the
front who for other purposes and their own objectives want to use the war for
future opportunistic activities and are incapable of discipline. He even went so
far as to attribute the loss of KhorramShahr to such lack of discipline.25
This barely disguised attack on the clerics and the Revolutionary Guard
put Bani Sadr on a collision course with the ideologues in the regime who
roundly criticized his handling of the war. In a bid to respond to his critics, Bani
Sadr formed a committee to investigate the fall of KhorramShahr, accusing
certain clerics of interfering in military matters.26
At the recommendation of senior army commanders, President Bani Sadr
counseled that the armed forces were not yet ready to launch a counteroffensive
and was openly critical of the purges conducted between the revolution and
Iraqs invasion. While praising the ongoing reorganization of the armed forces,
Bani Sadr claimed Irans revolutionary leaders had made a serious mistake in
emasculating the armed forces.27 Specifically, he cited neglected training and a
25Bani Sadr interview with PARS, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 1 December 1980, iii
26KUNA Report, FBIS, 14 November 1980, i.
27Bani Sadr interview with Budapest Television, FBIS, 13 November 1980, i.
186
weakened command structure as two critical areas the regime was deficient in
prosecuting the war. As a result, delaying tactics were needed to gain time to
rebuild and retrain the force.28
Bani Sadrs criticism even included Khomeini, whom he castigated at the
onset of the war because of the draconian internal security measures taken to
ensure the survival of the revolutionary regime. In early September 1980, Bani
Sadr stated, Khomeini wants to use it (the war) to set up repression and prevent
the people from concentrating their attention on the course of the revolution, and
also as a means to dupe the people, because war enables the solution of
domestic problems to be postponed indefinitely.29
While he also praised the ayatollahs leadership, Bani Sadr became
increasingly isolated in the revolutionary hierarchy. His constant appearance at
the front lines with the army aroused suspicion within the hard-line SDC and the
upper reaches of the IRP. Reflecting concerns that Bani Sadr was isolating the
army from political influence as a prelude to a coup, the Ayatollah Montazari
warned of the danger of separation arising between the army and the Moslem
Iranian nation, the revolutionary institutions and the militant clergy.30 Not
surprisingly, Bani Sadrs plea to postpone the counteroffensive was overruled,
28Bani Sadr interview with Budapest Television, FBIS, 17 November 1980, ii.
Zahrai, 237.
30Financial Times, London, 10 January 1981.
187
and he was forced to plan and execute an attack to eject the Iraqis earlier than
he wanted.
On 17 November, the Iranians admitted the Iraqis had penetrated the city
of Susangerd and had driven the Revolutionary Guard back. The Iraqis
launched this limited attack to force the Iranians to negotiate a political
settlement. The Iranian media acknowledged the Iraqi attack was a combined
arms operation using armored forces, artillery and air support to attack the
town.31 Lack of a successful Iranian defense was blamed on lack of artillery
support from the Iranian forces (meaning the army).32 In response to this assault
and the encirclement of Abadan, the Iranians launched a counterattack the next
day and claimed to have liberated Susangerd. While not a full-blown
counteroffensive, it was a significant local effort with substantial resources
assigned. In this attack, Iran committed elements of several armored divisions
totaling about 300 tanks, mostly British Chieftains and American M-60s, in an
attempt to outflank the Iraqis in the vicinity of Susangerd. The Pasdaran also
committed infantry forces in this attack. The goal was to break the Iraqi
defenses in the town, then drive toward Ahvaz and then Abadan.
Iranian operations security was very poor, and the Iraqis, who correctly
expected the direction of the attack, observed the obvious troop concentrations.
31Tehran Radio Report, 16 November, 1980, FBIS, 17 November 1980, ii.

Tehran Radio Report, FBIS, 17 November, 1980.
188
Iran claimed the attack was fully shared with army and guards units both
attacking with air support.33 In reality, the actions of the Iranian regulars and
Pasdaran forces were completely uncoordinated. Iraq maintained air superiority
and hit the advancing Iranians upon their approach to Susangerd, especially with
helicopter attacks. The Iraqi defenses in the center of the line gave way,
encouraging the Iranians into thinking they were on the verge of a breakthrough.
As the Iranian tanks continued to advance unsupported by aircraft or artillery,
they were struck on both flanks by Iraqi armor, artillery and air support. As a
result, the Iranians suffered heavy losses, with about 100 tanks destroyed and
150 captured. Iraqi losses were estimated at about 50 T-62 tanks.34
Clearly, something had gone wrong with the attack, but the Iranians
refused to acknowledge it. Iran claimed to have achieved victory, saying it had
destroyed two Iraqi brigades, taking 2,000 prisoners in the process.35 Neutral
observers discounted these claims as fantasy. The Iranian regime tried to
compensate for the battlefield setback by claiming its real objective was to
weaken the Iraqis, not recapture the key cities. Internally, the political fallout
further exacerbated the army-Pasdaran split.
Tehran Radio Report, 19 November 1980, i.

Karsh, 22.
New York Times, 8 January 1981,8.
189
In the closing stages of the Susangerd battle, many of the surviving

Iranian armored forces had retreated hastily, leaving the Pasdaran infantry fully
exposed and unsupported against the Iraqi counterattack. Many in the Pasdaran
thought that this was done deliberately. At the funeral for 100 Pasdars, the
mullah giving the memorial stated, When the order for retreat is issued why are
our beloved not told and as a result encircled and massacred? I warn those
responsible, there must be an investigation of this for maybe there are
treacherous hands at work."36
Although there was no evidence that the army purposely sought the
destruction of the Pasdaran, the loss at Susangerd was placed squarely on the
shoulders of Bani Sadr and the army. The clerics on the SDC used the loss to
shift resources away from the army and toward the IRGC. As a revolutionary
organ, the IRGC was more reflective of the long-held beliefs of the clerics that
the military should be organized on a popular and Islamic basis.
As winter set in, military activity decreased on both sides, with the
exception of the Abadan area where the Iranians launched a series of local
attacks so disjointed and ineffective the Iraqis labeled them desperate attacks
that cannot be logically or rationally explained.37
Merdinger, 100.
37ATH THAWRA, cited by Iraqi News Agency, FBIS, 10 December
190
In January 1981, with the Iraqi offensive in check, revolutionary elements
within the government demanded that the armed forces launch a
counteroffensive to expel all Iraqis from Iran. Again, the Ayatollah Montazeri
took the lead, railing against inertia and demanding the Iranian Armed Forces
to take the offensive in the war with Iraq.38 He also hinted that the SDC had
purposely misinformed Khomeini about the current situation and urged local
clergy to speak the truth to the ayatollah.39 Montazari also spoke on behalf of the
hard-liners by saying, "[Servicemen were complaining] that their leaders would
not allow them to advance against the Iraqis.40 The Khuzistan governor
generals office issued a statement supporting Montazari and citing the
combative clergy for their aggressive role in prosecuting the w ar41
Khomeini expressed similar thoughts in a speech in which he warned
Revolutionary Guard leaders and officers of the armys Political Ideology Bureau
against internal enemies who are plotting constantly to make you rot from within
and without and against those who undermine the people's faith in you.42 At
the same time, Khomeini again renewed his call for cooperation among the
services, calling for unity in the face of serious internal threats. He also
^Telegram to Ahvaz religious leaders, carried by PARS, FBIS, 2 January 1981, ii.
39lbid.
40Merdinger, 98.
41Cable from Khuzistan Governor General Office, carried by PARS, FBIS, 5 January
42FBIS, Ibid.
191
appealed to the officers of the Shahs regime, stressing that they were part of the
nation but warning that if they separated themselves again the people would turn
their backs on them.43
Bani Sadr tried to paint an optimistic picture of the local Iranian attacks on
Susangerd, calling them a successful counter-offensive fulfilling part of his
military strategy to weaken the Iraqi forces to the point that subsequent
operations can be carried out more easily.44 He claimed that Iranian forces
destroyed one Iraqi division and two brigades in the recent fighting and that the
army was continuing to improve. He did caution that the war would take time
and could not be won in a couple of days.45 Montazari continued his agitation of
the armed forces by calling for a meeting with Revolutionary Guard Corps
members, lower ranking officers, and NCOs to discuss the conduct of the war.
This was a thinly disguised attempt to further discredit the senior army leadership
and their champion, Bani Sadr.
Bani Sadrs frankness extended to his assessment of Irans ability to
generate critical spare parts for its Western-based equipment. Given relations
with the United States over the hostage crisis, Bani Sadr correctly surmised that
"we (Iran) would not be given equipment ordered from the United States.46
43Bani Sadr Khuzistan battlefront tour, reported by PARS, FBIS, 12 January 1981, i.
PARS report, FBIS, 19 January 1981, ii.
'Ibid.
'Speech by Bani-Sadr in Jiroft, Iran, Teheran Radio, FBIS, 2 February 1981, i.
192
Iranian Chief of Staff Brig. Gen. Valiollah Fallahi backed up the president, saying
that the nation had arms reserves enough for only one year and that as a result
were forced to fight a positional war to wear down the Iraqis with superior
numbers.
Recognizing that Iran needed to mobilize its large population to win,
Khomeini authorized the creation of the Sepah-e Basij, or Army of the
Oppressed, as the populist arm of the IRGC. The Basij was also known as the
mobilization army and was established as a militia force, initially consisting
mostly of teenagers from religious families, recruited from predominantly rural
areas with members serving three-month tours as infantrymen. Over 3 million
males and 1 million female auxiliaries were recruited during the war. Training
was very simple and emphasized ideological loyalty to the Imam Khomeini, not
military professionalism.47 The introduction of the Basij marked a turning point in
the rise of the forces of ideology over those of military professionalism.
The mobilization of the Basij accomplished two things for the Iranians.
First, it brought to bear the population advantage the Iranians had over the
Iraqis. If Iran were to win an extended war with Iraq it would have to use its
larger population to its advantage. Second, the Basij was the regimes answer to
those who thought the concept of a professional army was alien to the goals of
the Islamic Revolution and instead advocated an Islamic militia as an alternative.
47Nader, 67.
193
The subordination of the Basij to the Pasdaran ensured these troops would be
used in new and revolutionary ways. In the Basij, the Pasdaran would have a
huge military manpower reserve with which to conduct offensive operations.
These operations would be conducted according to the ideological dictates of the
IRGC, not the traditional methods of the regular army.
As the spring of 1981 approached, Iraq continued to pursue a course of
consolidating its earlier gains through a brokered political solution. At the March
Islamic Conference, Saddam Hussein stated that Iraq was prepared to accept an
immediate cease-fire followed by mediation presided over by the conference
members.48 At this point, Iran seemed willing to consider peace based on the
original Algiers Accord, provided Iraq immediately withdrew from Iranian soil.
Concurrently, Iran prepared for further military action to make liberation a
reality. Iran amended its conscription laws, extended service to two years,
recalled some former students back to active duty, and introduced a system of
military rewards and punishments more consistent with a professional military.
On the political front, all factions of the government professed loyalty to Khomeini
in response to his call for unity against internal enemies. The problem of internal
disunity was a real one in the early part of the war for the Iranians, with several
armed factions waging terrorist and insurgency campaigns against the
government. These factions occupied the Revolutionary Guard and contributed
Address to the nation by Prime Minister Ali Rajai, 9 March, 1981, Radio Tehran, FBIS,
10 March 1981, i.
194
to its eventual rise as an armed force of equal or greater status to the regular
army.
On 21 May 1981, Iran launched what it called a spring offensive. Codenamed Operation Allaho Akbar, it was really an attempt to win a public relations
victory and was a small-scale operation. Combined army and Pasdaran units
attacked and captured the heights overlooking Susangerd, destroying an Iraqi
battalion and then halting operations.49 Iranian communiques claimed that an
Iraqi brigade was destroyed with more than 1,300 prisoners taken while Bani
Sadr congratulated Gen. Fallahi for the greatest victory to date.50 The
significance of the operation was not that ground was seized but that the
regulars and Pasdaran actually conducted a coordinated attack. Unfortunately
for the Iranians, lessons of this battle were not institutionalized. There would be
other examples of this type of cooperation on the battlefield but never for a
sustained period. Thus, a blueprint existed for successful joint operations
between the regulars and the Pasdaran, but mistrust and wide tactical
differences always prevented its institutionalization. Although the two forces
forged a tenuous relationship that could be effective, there was little trust or
fraternity between the groups. In fact, the army was barely concealing their
49Merdinger, 104.
Tehran Radio, FBIS, 22 May 1981, ii.
195
disdain for the upstart guards whom they sometimes referred to as SSIam, an
obvious reference to the Nazi bodyguard units sworn to support Hitler.51
The challenges of cooperation among the branches of the armed sen/ices
were mirrored at the highest levels of the government, with the dispute between
Bani Sadr and the hard-line clerics intensifying. Irans Supreme Court President
Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti convened a three-man investigating committee to
look into the leadership dispute and immediately cast Bani Sadr as the problem,
saying his actions were weakening the Islamic Republic, the constitution, the
government and parliament." He charged Bani Sadr with violating the
constitution.52
The rest of the spring and summer of 1981 saw little large-scale fighting
as Iran shifted troops from the quiet Soviet border, Baluchistan, and Kurdistan to
the Khuzistan and Susangerd fronts in preparation for an autumn offensive. The
Iraqis were content to hold the ground already captured.
In June, Bani Sadr finally lost the power struggle with the hard-liners. His
criticism of the direction of the revolution had even included complaints of
Khomeinis interpretation of Islam. Bani Sadr envisioned a more democratic
application of Islam that rejected not only superpower interference, but also the
tyranny associated with many revolutionary movements. Bani Sadrs chief
5'Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, 24 October 1981,5. FBIS. South Asia, 29 October

1981,15-17.
Behesti interview with Agencie Francis Press, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 28 May 1981, ii.
196
criticism of Khomeini was that Islam was now embodied only by the guide
(Khomeini), who alone decided what was Islamic and what was not, despite his
frequent 180 degree turns."53 Beheshtis three-man committee found him guilty of
violating Khomeinis orders and the constitution. It submitted its findings to a
public prosecutor. Bani Sadr responded by blaming his critics for delaying
victory in the war.
Khomeini stripped Bani Sadr of his title as commander in chief of the army
on 10 June. The remainder of the SDC and joint staff quickly vowed allegiance
to Khomeini, solidifying the triumph of the ideologists over the pragmatists at the
senior-command level. On 21 June, the Majlis voted Bani Sadr politically
incompetent and ordered his arrest. He was removed as president, quickly fled
the country, and was replaced by hard-liners led by Speaker Ali Akbar Hasemi
Rafsanjani and Supreme Court Justice Mohammed Beheshti.54
Militarily, the stage was set fcr the continued advancement of the
Pasdaran at the expense of the army. It also brought about a more Islamized
Iranian military within the army as well as the IRGC. Bani Sadrs secularism had
withered with his departure and was replaced by a more formalized introduction
of Islam to the force. The clergy made gains in influencing the rank and file
through normative means, including education, training, and propaganda. New
53Bani Sadr, 137

^Robin Wright, In the Name of God (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 97.
197
leaders were emerging in the growing force, including many former NCOs and
junior leaders in the Shahs army. Many of these young men were fired up by
the ideals of creating a new Islamic state. The IRGC and the clergy were also
successful in creating a new class of officer to lead the Pasdaran and Basij into
battle.55 For a young, idealistic Iranian looking to distinguish himself in the
defense of his nation and religion, the Pasdaran offered a powerful means to this
end. The Pasdaran deliberately sought to populate its ranks with those from the
lower classes to ensure maximum loyalty.
Military education was also directly affected by the rise of the radical
revolutionaries. All armed institutions of the state, including the army, police, and
IRGC, established new instruction centers devoted to the dissemination of
Islamic and revolutionary messages. Basic training of the armed forces included
ideological-political indoctrination while individual units also received training in
the field.56 Speaking on this effort, Khomeini reiterated the need for security
forces to "acquire knowledge of politics and ideology, and become familiar with
Islam.57 He further expressed more trust in the army as a result of these efforts,
55Hickman, 30-31.
David Mensashri, Iran: A Decade of Revolution, (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990),
228
Îbid
198
saying, You can now count on the army as a huge ideologically motivated
organization.58
Third Phase: Iranian Recovery

On 18 September 1981, Iran launched another offensive in the Susangerd
area, inflicting losses on Iraqi armored forces in fierce fighting. Iraqi
counterattack forces failed to restore the original lines. The Iranians followed this
attack with another attack in the south on 27 September by hurling a large
Pasdaran force at the Iraqis besieging Abadan. This was a battle in which the
sides were oppositely charged: The demoralized Iraqis sat glumly in their
defensive works while the zealous Pasdaran repeatedly attacked them in great
waves. Iranian troops were determined to evict the Iraqis from their homeland,
and the ferocity of the Pasdaran attack was multiplied by the religious zeal
instilled in the soldiers. The Pasdaran succeeded in breaking the siege, killing
more than 1,000 Iraqis and capturing another 2,000. This first major Iranian
victory was much heralded in Iran, and Majlis speaker Rafsanjani could not help
direct a barb at the army, saying, This victory could have come sooner, but Bani
Sadr hindered it, for he was relying on pernicious elements in the army.59 The
Pasdarans star was rising while the army remained in disfavor, with Gen. Fallahi
Ibid
Tehran Radio, FBIS, 21 September 1981, i.
199
admitting the service was still undergoing reorganization to eradicate social

inequalities among the ranks.60 In another blow to the war effort, Fallahi, a
moderate who was achieving some success in rebuilding the force, was killed in
a plane crash on 30 September.
The success of the Pasdaran at Abadan encouraged the Iranians to
believe that massed assaults would be an effective tactic if applied on an even
larger scale. They reasoned that morale, essentially the human factor of war,
was the preeminent principle of war. The French of World War I also believed
the spirit of the offensive and the individual soldier created by the concept of elan
would always be victorious. This attitude resulted in a series of costly frontal
attacks that nearly bled the French white on the Western Front. The Iranians
held a similar view and as a result decided to employ units of the Basij for the
first time on a large scale. Short on training and weapons, these young men
were high on spirit and loyalty, to the point of fanaticism.
As part of a larger offensive called Tariq al-Qods, or Path to Jerusalem,
an attack was launched against the city of Bostan near the border on the
Susangerd front on 29 November 1981. The Pasdaran was given responsibility
to plan and execute this attack. The plan primarily called for the use of the
revolutionary tactics that relied on religious fervor to win but included the use of
army forces. In this Pasdaran-directed operation, the Basij was to attack in
^Tehran Radio, FBIS, 21 September 1981, ii.
200
daylight across a series of minefields to clear a path for the Pasdaran to follow.
Wearing red and yellow headbands and keys around their necks to gain access
to heaven after being martyred, thousands of Basij walked through the mines,
causing hundreds of casualties.61 Those that cleared the minefields breached
wire obstacles by hand, often throwing themselves on top of the wire to allow
their comrades to cross over. While reports conflicted on the overall gains
achieved, the assault was fierce with heavy losses on both sides.
The Pasdaran followed the Basij as the main effort attacking in waves of
dismounted infantry. The army, meanwhile, conducted a helibome insertion,
dropping an infantry battalion three miles behind the town in the Iraqi rear. This
maneuver caused great confusion among the Iraqi defenders.62 The combination
of frontal attacks and an enemy to their rear unhinged the Iraqi defense and led
to panic, allowing a decisive tactical victory for the Iranians.
The Bostan attack should have served as an example of the synergy
possible between conventional and revolutionary tactics, but the lesson was lost
in the larger political game that did not allow for compromise, even when it
promised victory. Meanwhile, the overwhelming emotion and fanaticism of the
Pasdaran and the Basij had a darker side. Many of the more than 1,000 Iraqi
61Wright, 102.
62Sephr Zabih, Iran Since the Revolution (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1982) 216
201
prisoners taken were forced at gunpoint to walk through the same minefields
where so many Basij had died in clearing the way for the Pasdaran.63
The Iranians continued to use these human wave assaults, many
conducted at night, meeting with some success. Pasdaran units also started
employing infiltration tactics to penetrate Iraqi defenses during darkness to
enable the follow-up Basij assaults to succeed. These tactics consisted of
organizing smaller groups of heavily armed men who would use stealth to breach
the Iraqi defenses to allow for a follow-up assault of massed infantry.
The Iraqis were unnerved by the sight and sound of so many dedicated
troops rushing toward them, oblivious to casualties. This short campaign ended
with the onset of winter. The Iranians viewed the Bostan victory as a triumph of
new Pasdaran tactics rather than the well-coordinated use of regular and
Pasdaran forces. The Pasdaran use of the elan tactics, which emphasized the
spirit of the attack and celebrated the triumph of the individual over the
technological, was hailed as the key to the victory.
Khomeini congratulated both the army and Pasdaran but quickly
reassigned the Armys 21st Infantry Division commander involved in the
operation to a remote post to remove him from a position of influence. The
Pasdaran also defeated an Iraqi counterattack launched on 2 December,
Zabih, 216
202
destroying a force of Iraqi armor in the process.64 Both sides rested for the
remainder of the winter of 1981, with the Iranians continuing to recruit large
numbers of troops in preparation for a spring offensive to expel the Iraqis from
Iran while blunting several Iraqi counterattacks around Bostan.65
in February 1982, the Iranians began an offensive known as Fath alMobeen, or Operation Undeniable Victory, employing 40,000 Pasdaran, 30,000
Basij and 30,000 army troops in a general offensive aimed at liberating all of
Khuzistan. The Iranians placed the IRGC in the lead of this operation, the largest
of its kind to date for the Iranians, leaving the army in a subordinate role.
The Pasdaran again stressed surprise, shock infantry and persistence as
the themes of the offensive. From 18 to 20 February, the IRGC launched a
furious assault, capitalizing on the general demoralization of the Iraqis, and
quickly gained the upper hand. The second phase of the operation began on 22
March 1982 and was characterized by sustained Iranian attacks. Most assaults
were conducted at night or just before daybreak with Basij or Pasdaran
skirmishers clearing a path for the main body of assault infantry.66 Many of these
assaults caught the Iraqis by surprise and many positions were captured intact.
For the first time, Egyptian and Jordanian volunteers, fighting alongside the
Joint Staff communique, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 2 December 1981, ii.

Military communique, Tehran Radio, 7 Feb., 1982, FBIS, 9 February 1982, ii.
Merdinger, 106.
203
Iraqis, were captured.67 The spring rains and muddy conditions negated the
armor advantage of the Iraqis, but the biggest factors in the battles outcome
were the general demoralization of the Iraqi forces and the fervor of the Iranians.
After seven days of sustained fighting, the Iranians nearly decimated the
Iraqi 4th Army, as three of its divisions were badly mauled. The Iraqis suffered
5,000 losses with more than 15,000 captured, plus 700 armored vehicles were
destroyed or captured.68 Iranian casualties were estimated at about 3,000. Iraqi
counterattacks were defeated with heavy losses on both sides.69 Subsequent
operations continued with the Iranians steadily advancing and recovering Iranian
territory.
By the end of March 1982, more than 1,800 square miles of Khuzistan
had been liberated. Both the army and Pasdaran enjoyed success on the
battlefield, but the level of cooperation was low, with each force essentially
conducting its own independent operation. Although some lip service was paid
to official army-Pasdaran cooperation, beneath the surface there were deep
tensions. In a Armed Forces Day address, Khomeini spoke of the continuing
67Military Communique, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 24 March 1982, ii.

Zabih, 220-221.
69lran and Iraqi sources invariably disagreed on the outcome of most battles with the
Iraqis admitting the existence of Iranian attacks but always accompanying them with
exaggerated statistics of Iranian losses. Iranian reporting was less detailed, but often
more accurate in general, especially reports from Bani Sadr and Gen. Fallahi early in
the war. Over time, both sides became more adept at using the media for their own
purposes.
204
discord: "Victory may only be achieved with unity. This unity must be
safeguarded at all times. If there are elements sowing discord among the
military personnel, the commanders must be notified at once.70
Meanwhile the Iranian offensive continued. In April 1982, the Iranians
were on the outskirts of KhorramShahr and moved their artillery forward within
range of Basra in Iraq. The Iraqis responded by withdrawing troops from around
Ahvaz and Susangerd to protect their flanks. The latest Iranian offensive,
identified as the Jerusalem Operation, recovered an additional 497 square miles
of Iran as the Iranians successfully crossed the Karun River and broke the Iraqi
defensive line by occupying the highway between Ahvaz and KhorramShahr.71
By 7 May, the Iranians advanced to the international border, reclaiming 8,500
square miles of territory and capturing 10,000 prisoners. The Iraqis continued to
claim they had control of the region and were inflicting heavy casualties on the
Iranians, but it was clear they were steadily losing ground. By 24 May, the
Iranians completely encircled KhorramShahr, and the Iraqis claimed to be falling
back voluntarily with the goal now of inflicting losses rather than holding terrain.72
The climax of the Iranian offensive was the recapture of KhorramShahr on
25 May by the IRGC. Surrounding the city, more than 65,000 Iranian troops
70New York Times, 19 April 1982, 2.

71Guards Corps Communique, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 3 May 1982, i.
72lraqi News Agency, FBIS, 10 May, ii. And 24 May 1982, i.
205
defeated two Iraqi divisions and forced another to withdraw. With his army
collapsing, Saddam Hussein asked for peace talks with the Iranians. When his
offer was immediately rejected, he ordered a general retreat of his forces back to
the original border in hopes that the war could end, although Iraq did retain some
territory in Iran. Flush with victory, the Iranians had other ideas.
Expansion of Iranian War Aims

The victory at KhorramShahr and the liberation of Khuzistan brought
about several dramatic events in Iran that indicated the forces of revolutionary
ideology were ascending. On 28 May 1982, the Majlis debated the expansion of
war aims for the first time, considering whether Iranian troops should enter into
Iraq. Khomeini indicated that not only would Saddam Hussein have to go, but
that the entire Baath Party would have no fate but downfall and death.73 The
SDC formally expanded Irans war goals, which were to invade Iraq with the aim
of removing Saddam Hussein and the Baathists from power. The SDC also
sought to force the Iraqis to admit war guilt, collect war reparations in the amount
of $150 billion, and mandate the repatriation of Iranian Shiites forced into exile
by Iraq.74 These expanded war aims came to be known as the four
Rs"removing Saddam, reparations, Iraqi regret over starting the war, and
73Khomeini message on Guards Corps anniversary, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 28 May 1982,
i.
74Mark A. Heller, The War Strategy of Iran," Middle East Review, Summer 1987,18.
206
repatriation. They would become the mainstays of Iranian policy on continuation

of the war, virtually to the conclusion of fighting in 1988.
This dramatic shift in goals was a reflection of just how much power the hard
liners in the government and the SDC had gained. Saddam could not accept
these terms because they would have effectively terminated both the Baath
Party and himself. Iraq would have to fight a defensive war for the foreseeable
future to fend off the ideologically driven Iranians approaching its border.
Immediately following these developments, the Iraqis broadened the war by
attacking Iranian oil installations at Kharg Island and seeking assurances of
support from fellow Arab states.
Evolution of Iranian War Aims

What started out as a purely defensive war, for both nation and Islam,
became instead a crusade for Iran to punish the aggressor and establish an
Islamic regime in Iraq. The evolution of this stance can be seen in the differing
views of the Iranian leadership. While President and Commander in Chief Bani
Sadr continually emphasized the defensive nature of the war, some of the more
radical clerics talked of a wider war from the beginning. As early as October
1980, Prime Minister Raja'i talked of punishing the aggressor and of Irans
207
determination to see this through, if necessary, by a war of attrition, a peoples

war.75
Bani Sadr declared that Iraq was the aggressor and had to immediately
withdraw from Iran but that the Iranians were not opposed to a political
settlement and were willing to talk with Iraq once it withdrew.76 Rajai rejected this
notion and reiterated Irans commitment to fighting the war until it reached a
victorious conclusion. Khomeini skillfully talked of both a defensive war and a
punitive one, but his ideological beliefs often shined through the rhetoric. Early
in the conflict, he talked of the wars relevance to the martyrdom pillar contained
in Shiite ideology, saying of negotiations with Iraq:
Are we expected to abandon Islam and sit at a negotiating table? We who
lost so many youths on Tehrans streets and in other cities shall not
compromise, even if all powers lend a supporting hand to his filthy person
(Saddam Hussein). Our nation will pursue its goal till it reaches it. Our
youth and our people, men, and women are after their aims and targets
and will not compromise with any power or any superpower.77
At a minimum, the Iranians were looking for a return to the status quo,
with a complete Iraqi withdrawal, the reestablishment of the Algiers Accord
provisions, and Iraqi acceptance of responsibility for starting the war. In March
1981, a peace initiative sponsored by the Islamic Conference made some
headway in forging a cease-fire when Iranian Chief of Staff Fallahi stated that
75Speech to UN Security Council, Tehran Radio, RBIS, 20 October 1980, i.

76FBIS, 13 November 1980, i.
^FBIS, 29 October 1980, i.
208
Khomeini accepted the 1975 Algiers agreement between Iran and Iraq as the
basis of peace, but he added that questions remained concerning the order of
implementation of the cease-fire.78 Bani Sadr listed the conditions for a cease-fire
as: first, investigate the source of aggression; second, find a solution based on
the Algiers Accord; third, establish a simultaneous cease-fire and Iraqi
withdrawal.79 The level of detail indicates that this was not Bani Sadrs position
alone but must have involved at least tacit approval from Khomeini.
Nonetheless, Khomeini kept up the rhetorical attack on Saddam, calling for his
overthrow in April 1981.
Suffering battlefield setbacks in the spring of 1982, Iraq announced its
willingness to withdraw from Iranian territory in stages. Several Iranian leaders
continued to emphasize that Iran had no territorial ambitions in Iraq but also
continued to refer to the need to overthrow and try Saddam as a war criminal.80
By June 1982, the Iraqis offered a more detailed withdrawal plan and offered a
series of options for mediating the dispute, including binding arbitration by the
Islamic Conference, the Nonaligned Movement or the UN Security Council.
Iran's response was that the offer was lo o late. Sensing the collapse of its
forces and the potential for the Iranians to continue the fight into their own
Înterview with PARS, FBIS, 3 March 1981, i.

Înterview with Tehran Radio, 29 March 1981. FBIS, 30 March 1981, i.
Rafsanjani speech at Tehran University, 28 May 1982, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 1 June
1982, i.
209
country, Iraq began a unilateral withdrawal of some forces on 21 June, saying all
troops would be out of Iran within 10 days. Khomeini responded the next day
with the statement that once Iraq was defeated, Iraq will be annexed to Iran for
the purpose of liberating the Iraqis from Saddams anti-lslamic regime.
Khomeini himself made the connection between the expanding
revolutionary goals and the military when he said, "We shall export our revolution
to the whole world. Until the cry, There is no God but God resounds over the
whole world, there will be struggle."61 Khomeini and the clerics justified the
expansion of the war by saying that the evil of the Baathist regime had to be
purified. Quoting from the Koran, Khomeini said, "Fight them until the evil is
uprooted and the enemy becomes a pure believer in God."82
He also stated that the Iranians would seek reparations, give the Iraqis no
respite, and ...continue the war and will make [the Iraqis] pay.83 Iran continued
to make statements, on the one hand, disavowing any designs on Iraqi territory,
and on the other, insisting that Iraq be punished, Irans rights be restored, and
Saddam be overthrown.
The dichotomy of Iranian war aims was reflected in the rift between two
major factions within the IRP over ideology. One faction was the Maktabi, which
81Wright, 108.
82Zabih, 151.
83Khomeini speech to clergymen, 21 June 1982, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 22 June 1982,
ii.
210
means Followers of the Holy Book, and were known as hard-liners. This group
and adhered to the Khomeini line and was led by Prime Minister Mir-Hosain
Musavi (appointed on 28 October 1981) and senior leaders of the IRGC and
Revolutionary Courts. The second faction was the Hujjatiyyah, or the
pragmatists, who followed a strictly conservative interpretation of Shiism.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati and many members of the Majlis
headed this group. The central point of disagreement between the two factions
was the religious issue concerning leadership of the Shiite community while
awaiting the return of the Hidden Imam.84 The Maktabis believed in the velayat e
faqih that Khomeini used as a source of authority and further believed that a
single successor should be chosen either by consensus or the Council of
Experts. The Hujjatiyyah believed that leadership of the religious community
should be a shared responsibility carried out by a "righteous collegium of senior
religious leaders.85 Inherent in this orthodox view was a rejection of the velayat
as antithetical to the traditions of Shiism. It considered it heresy to call Khomeini
the Imam because this was reserved solely for the Hidden Imam.
The Maktabis believed in the complete integration of religion and politics
whereas the Hujjatiyyah believed in less direct clerical involvement in day-to-day
affairs. Regarding the war, the Maktabis were strident proponents of exporting
Menashri, 222.
Menashri, 222-223.
211
the Islamic revolution abroad and establishing Shiite regimes wherever possible.
The Hujjatiyyah talked more generally of the rule of Allah but not the violent
application of revolution.86
Although Khomeini uttered statements that seemed to support both
camps, he clearly favored those who considered him and the velayat as supreme
in the Iranian Revolution. Commenting early in the war, Khomeini said, You are
fighting to protect Islam and he (Saddam Hussein) is fighting to destroy
Islam...there is absolutely no question of peace or compromise, and we shall
never have any discussions with them because they are corrupt and perpetrators
of corruption.87 While some of Khomeinis statements can be attributed to
rhetoric, it is hard to dismiss the expansion of Iranian war aims as mere optimism
created by battlefield success. Khomeinis line was consistent and because of
the velayat and the loyalty of his key adherents, the new war aims seemed more
reflective of the values of revolutionary Shiism than opportunism.
Having regained Iranian territory, many in the region implored Iran to
follow a path of compromise, accepting the original boundaries and forgetting
that the country was invaded. In response Khomeini said:
Those who criticize us say: Why do you not compromise with these
corrupt powers? It is because they see things through human eyes and
analyze these things with a natural viewpoint. They do not know the
views of God and how the prophets dealt with oppressors or else they
Menashri, 223.
87Wright, 49.
212
know but pretend to be blind and deaf. To compromise with oppressors is
to oppress. That is contrary to the view of all the prophets.88
This statement contains several key revelations. First is the confidence
bordering on arrogance, held by many of the leading Shiite thinkers such as
Khomeini. There was no doubt in their minds that years of religious training had
given them insight into the nature of truth far beyond that of the secularists and
certainly beyond the comprehension of those, such as Saddam Hussein, who
rejected Islam. Second, having insight into these truths made decisions simple,
straightforward, and clear. The thinking was that there could be no compromise
with this type of evil, so the war must continue until the evil is eradicated. The
Islamic ideal of justice, the Shiite calling for suffering for a just cause, the Iranian
experience of oppression, and the clerics duty to lead the dispossessed are all
present in this and other statements indicating the true nature of why the
decision to continue the war was taken.
These aims reflected the uncompromising stance of the Maktabis who
saw the war not only as a means to topple the Baathist regime, but to trigger a
wider Islamic revolution in the region. The Hujjatiyyah believed in the four uRsn
but did not insist on the overthrow of the Baathists and would consider a political
solution once Iraq was forcibly ejected and made to pay reparations.89
Ibid.
89Menashri, 223.
213
Into Iraq
As a result of the expanded war aims, the Iranians planned a new
offensive code-named Ramadan, which for the first time aimed for the capture of
Iraqi territory, specifically, Iraq's second largest city, Basra. Home to many Iraqi
Shiites, Basra was close to the border and difficult to reinforce because of the
lack of strategic depth. The marshes, however, provided a natural defensive
barrier. The loss of Basra would be a huge blow to the Baathist regime,
especially if the Iranians established an Islamic government there.
On 13 July 1982, the Iranian assault was launched across the Iran-lraq
border. Again the IRGC forces led the assault, with the Basij volunteers of the
7th Division spearheading the attack. Attacking at dusk, the Basij followed the
pattern of earlier operations, charging in massed formations to create a breach in
the Iraqi obstacle belts. Following them was the Pasdaran, then the regular
army, with the total number of Iranian troops at about 90.000.90
The initial assaults appeared to be successful, with the Iraqi 9th Division
pulling back under heavy pressure. The 9th then halted, dug in, and held its new
position. The Iraqis counterattacked the exposed flanks of the Iranian salient
with their mobile forces and artillery. In the brutal heat of the summer, the
Iranians continued to attack but advanced only about 10 miles into Iraq.
Suffering heavy casualties in the searing heat and continually attacked on their
Merdinger, 108.
214
flanks, the Iranians finally broke off the attack. Iraq's casualties were also heavy
with the 9th Division suffering more than a 30 percent loss.91
Just as the Iraqis had badly miscalculated the Iranian response at the
war's start, Iranians now underestimated their enemy. Fighting for their own
territory for the first time, the Iraqis showed resolve in the defense. Iraqi
counterthrusts into the exposed flanks of the original Iranian advance inflicted
heavy casualties on the IRGC units.92 The Iranian assumption that the Shiites of
southern Iraq would revolt proved as false as the Iraqi assumption that the
Persian Arabs would rise in 1980.
Militarily, the Iraqis had learned important lessons from Abadan,
Susangerd, and Bostan. They started to integrate engineer effort, indirect fire,
and mobile reserves into their defensive plans. Since they had the firepower
advantage, this strategy would prove effective against Iranian revolutionary
tactics. The Iraqis recognized they were in a fight for survival and took the
necessary steps to meet the threat. They doubled the size of the army from
200,000 in 1980 to around 475,000 by 1983 and reorganized the leadership,
firing many of the Baath-sponsored political appointees and replacing them with
more qualified military professionals. They also erected a series of fortifications
and resupply roads around key cities along the path of the Iranian invasion. The
9lPelletiere, 12.
Iraqi Armed Forces communique, Iraqi News Agency, FBIS 19 July 1982, i.
215
Iraqis were now deployed in three corps from north to south. In the north, the 4th
Corps was composed of two divisions. Guarding Baghdad in the center was the
2nd Corps with three divisions, while the 3rd Corps consisting of eight divisions
defended the south in the contested Basra sector. An additional corps, made up
of reservists, constituted the strategic reserve.
The Iranians continued their summer offensive through August 1982,
directing their attacks at Basra. From the start of the Ramadan offensive in midJuly to early August the Iranians launched no fewer than five major assaults
using more than 100,000 men organized into four regular army divisions and six
IRGC units.93 The Pasdaran tactics were the same, but the Iraqis response was
not. Using their fortifications to maximum effectand, for the first time, poison
gas-the Iraqis repulsed each attack with heavy losses on both sides. Having
withstood the initial shock of the massed wave assaults, the Iraqis were now
punishing the Iranian assault troops whose attacks were becoming too
predictable.
The Iranian Army, meanwhile, was still relegated to a supporting effort.
The failure of the attacks into Iraq intensified the debate over war aims in general
and tactics specifically. The army was never in favor of a general attack into
Iraq, and it was skeptical of the Pasdaran elan tactics, which the army leaders
considered nothing more than unsophisticated, frontal assaults. The ruling
93Karsh, 27.
216
clerics saw this as evidence that the army still could not be fully trusted as a
revolutionary, Islamic institution within Iran. As a result, the IRGC and its
revolutionary tactics remained in favor, despite questionable battlefield
performance.
Instead of innovation, initiative, and combined arms operations, IRGCdirected attacks became as predictable as a sunrise in the east. The Iraqis were
becoming familiar with the elan tactics and took measures to stop them, such as
concentrating firepower in likely assembly areas to disrupt the attack. Many of
the zealous, dedicated volunteers recruited in the early part of the war were
wasted on attacks doomed to failure.
In revolutionary military terms, the success of the spring and summer
offensives validated the IRGC forces and their tactics. The leaders of the
Pasdaran and Basij thought their victories over the Iraqis proved that their
method of warfare represented a military breakthrough of historic proportions.
Commenting on the independent nature of the Pasdaran one IRGC general
stated, "The party of God does not accept advisers. We are going to write our
own military manuals from now on with absolutely new tactics that Americans,
British and French can study at their staff colleges."94
This attitude represents at once the dominance of revolutionary ideology
in military affairs, the belief that these innovations represent a breakthrough in
^Wright, 104.
217
military tactics, and a rejection of Western dominated military thought that was
prevalent in the Shahs Imperial Army.
Within Iran, the hard-line clerics sought to establish a stranglehold over
domestic politics and institute the ideals of the revolution that the start of the war
had postponed. During the spring offensive, Iran cracked down on the
continuing opposition at home. The government announced that it had
discovered and foiled a plot by former Foreign Minister Sadeq Qotzbadeh to
overthrow the government. Senior leaders within the army were implicated, as
was a leading grand ayatollah. Another purge of the army resulted in 70 officers
being executed by September 1982. The clerical regime used the coup threat to
wipe out the remnants of the Mojahedin and other armed opposition factions.
By the end of 1982, the ruling clerics were in a strong enough position to
consolidate a theocracy in Iran. Schools, government workers, trade
associations, and other institutions became Islamized with local Komitehs
ensuring that the sharia, or religious law, was vigorously enforced. Feeling the
war was near an end, President Ali Khamenei advised Khomeini that general
mobilization would not be necessary, saying that actions to date were sufficient.95
The Majlis also passed a law that spring that granted exemptions to young
Iranians from the draft if they enlisted in the Pasdaran. In addition to the prestige
of belonging to the Pasdaran, the volunteers also received material advantage.
Tehran Radio, FBIS, 9 November 1982, i.
218
Pay in the Pasdaran was higher than in the army, and a soldier's family received
extra ration coupons.96
The ground war settled into a deadly routine for the rest of 1982 and the
early part of 1983. IRGC-directed attacks led by Basij and Pasdaran forces
attempted to batter their way through dug-in Iraqi defenses. Two autumn attacks,
this time directed at Baghdad, failed to make any appreciable headway and
resulted in high Iranian casualties. The army played a supporting role in these
attacks, watching helplessly as the cream of Iranian youth was wasted in
questionable assaults. The lack of armor and fire support was a critical omission
in the Pasdaran battle plans. Lack of spare parts and replacement systems
played a large role, but the army retained enough tanks and artillery pieces to
make a difference had they been integrated into the Pasdaran attacks.
The Iranians were performing similar to the Great Powers in World War I.
They were committing huge quantities of troops in costly frontal assaults without
result. The Iranian use of infiltration tactics remained a sound option but was
overused. Like the Hutier97 tactics of the Germans in World War I, these shock
infantry tactics caused great initial disruption among the enemy by using highly
^Zabih, 223.
97Hutier tactics were those devised by a German officer in the later half of World War
I. In an effort to break the trench stalemate, the Germans organized and equipped
special squads to infiltrate enemy lines at night, and converge on an objective at
daybreak. Extremely effective initially, the attacks failed to break through operationally
because of poor communications and lack of exploitation capability.
219
trained, dismounted infantry to create a small penetration in an established

defense. The Hutier tactics failed in that war because of the inability of the
Germans to follow up the initial assaults with exploitation forces and so it was for
the Iranians as well. Whereas the Germans were limited by technology (no
radios, tanks, mechanized infantry), the Iranians had the means at their disposal
to follow up the initial assault. The victory at Bostan should have pointed the
way for the Iranians. Human wave assaults, when used in conjunction with
combined arms attacks, could succeed. By relying exclusively on the former, the
Iranians became slaves to a form of warfare based too much on ideological
concerns and not enough on battlefield realities or even learned experiences.
The huge losses of 1982 did not change the Pasdaran way of thinking as the
year ended.
As 1983 opened, Majlis Speaker Rafsanjani expressed the hope of a
nation that the latest Iranian offensive would be decisive.98 Unfortunately for the
Iranians, it would be the first of many forlorn hopes of a final offensive the
Iranian leaders would promise but not deliver.
Meanwhile, having abandoned expectations to capture and retain
Khuzistan, the Iraqis gradually shifted from an emphasis on maneuver-requiring
the synchronization of many battlefield elements-to an emphasis on firepower,
executed from increasingly static and well-defended positions. Regarding this,
Majlis session, 7 February 1983, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 7 February 1983, i.
220
Saddam Hussein stated, If the Iranians again choose the road of expansion and
aggression they will find Iraqi forces waiting for them."99 Conversely, the Iranians
had to seek a maneuver solution if they wished to carry the war across and
beyond the border. In this, they were hamstrung by lack of access to advanced
weapons, by shortages of spare parts, and by lack of training. Added to this was
the growing rift between the army and IRGC, which was mirrored at the highest
level of government. Failure to properly execute any form of basic maneuver
would be a continual shortcoming for the Iranians as the war progressed.
Iraq continued to broaden the scope of the conflict by striking at Iranian
ships and oil fields, a pattern that would continue on and off until the end of the
war. Iran scaled back its attacks in mid-1983 but retained the initiative. Several
smaller scale attacks took place, this time with the army having more influence in
the planning and execution of them. In a change of strategy, the army sought to
take advantage of Iran's superior numbers and stretch the Iraqis along the entire
730-mile front by conducting limited attacks in different locations. The army
hoped to force the Iraqis to continually commit their smaller reserves to a number
of threatened areas and wear them down strategically.
In late July 1983, the Iranian Army attacked in the northern sector of Iran,
advancing some 10 miles in the mountainous region before the Iraqis halted
them. By August, the Iranians were again attacking in the center sector near the
"Saddem Huessein comments, Iraqi News Agency, 8 February 1983, FBIS, 8

February, ii.
221
town of Mehran with heavy casualties on both sides. Although these attacks
pressured the Iraqis on a variety of fronts, they were insufficient in causing a
general collapse of the Iraqi defenses. The result was a war of attrition.
In the south, Iranian attacks aimed at cutting the Basra road to Baghdad
failed, mainly because of a reliance on frontal assaults and the strength of the
Iraqi defense. In the center and north, the Iranians achieved some moderate
success. In the center, the last remaining major city still occupied by the Iraqis,
Mehran, was finally liberated by the army in mid-August after fierce fighting.
Taking advantage of Kurdish resistance to Iraq, the army also had some success
in the north, capturing key terrain in the mountains without suffering the
horrendous losses that characterized IRGC operations.
Like the Pasdaran, the army had its share of problems as well. It was not
conducting combined arms operations well, and its logistics system was brittle
and prone to breakdown. The Iranian logistics system was so poor that it could
not sustain any offensive operation more than a few weeks. The widespread
lack of spare parts and new equipment also hurt the armys efforts. Internally,
the army attempted to develop itself professionally, to survive in a political
system that favored its rivals in the IRGC, and to overcome the legacy of the
Shah's Imperial Army. Restoration of the basic elements of discipline and sound
organization was recognized as useful by even the hard-line clerics. The
Ayatollah Montazari, while acknowledging the need for the views of the lower
ranks to be heard, stressed that "orders be carried out conscientiously and
222
conforming to military discipline.100 In essence, the army knew what it needed to
do to become an effective force but needed time, resources, and training to
achieve it. With a war raging, these were commodities not available to them.
A larger problem with the army strategy as far as the ruling elites were
concerned was that it did not envision a large-scale final battle. Such a battle
had great historic appeal to the ruling clerics who continually cited Karbala, a
cataclysmic battle in Shiite folklore, as the model they wished to emulate.101 The
army strategy was to wear down the Iraqis over time and probably to force a
political solution. This did not meet the ideological goal of crushing the evil
Baathist regime through a final battle where good would triumph over evil. The
army had its chance to show what conventional tactics could do and enjoyed
some modest success in the north where joint forces under its command
captured several strategic heights in the mountains in the autumn of 1983.102 For
the clerics, however, this method of waging war was unacceptable. It would take
too long and reflected stale military thought, not the revolutionary approach they
thought would gain a decisive, glorious victory.
100Meeting between Ground Cdr Ali Seyyed Shirazi & Ayatollah Montazeri, 14 August
1983, IRNA, FBIS, 16 August 1983, ii.
101In the tradition of martyrdom in Shia Islam, the righteous wage a number of battles
against their oppressors, usually culminating in one large final battle. Karbala was one
such place and is regarded as a holy site in Shiism.
102lranian military communique, Tehran Radio, FBIS, 20 October 1983.i.
223
As the war entered 1984, Iran prepared for a long struggle to achieve
these ideological aims. Prime Minister Musavi echoed the regimes policy by
saying there was no possibility of a quick end to the war except with downfall of
Saddam Hussein.103 Reinforcing this, President Khameinei stated that Irans
most important condition for ending the war was punishment of the aggressor
and that there could be no compromise on this issue.104As 1984 came to a
close, Speaker Rafsanjani reiterated Irans intent to seek a military solution
based on reparations, repatriation, removing Saddam and the Baathists, and for
Iraq to express regret.
The year also found the IRGC in a difficult position. It disapproved of the
army's war of proportional attrition yet knew that any more frontal assaults on
Basra would probably not succeed. The IRGC retained political support with the
hard-liners, such as when Speaker Rafsanjani claimed the IRGC had "reached a
suitable point to embark on operations against the Iraqis similar to those
launched to defend Dezful and Abadan in the early phase of the war (only) with
much better results.105 The Pasdaran put its forces on full alert and mobilized
IRGC reserves in early February 1984 to await the start of the new offensive.
What it opted for was a return to the infiltration tactics that were partially
103PM news conference, Tehran Radio, 3 September 1984, FBIS, 4 September 1984.
104President Khameinei remarks, IRNA, FBIS, 27 September 1984.
105Tehran Radio, FBIS, 18 January 1984, i.
224
successful at the beginning of the war, this time using them as a deception. The
Pasdaran planned to take Basra by infiltrating the marshes to the north of the
city using hundreds of small boats to gain positional advantage over the Iraqis.
This attack would then be followed by a massive assault by Pasdaran and Basij
forces to cut the Basra-to-Baghdad highway.
Code-named Kheiber, the first attacks were launched on 22 February
1984 through the marshes. Again, the Pasdaran enjoyed initial success but
soon suffered heavily as the Iraqi mobile reserve brought heavy firepower to
bear on the attackers. Again, there was no follow up to the marsh attack.
Instead the Iranians sent more than 500,000 men to attack along a broad front
from Mehran to Basra. From 24 February to 19 March, the Iranians hurled
themselves at the Iraqis. At a tremendous cost in men, the Iranians advanced to
within 15 miles of the strategic highway and captured the oilfields in Majnoon,
south of Basra. They also evicted the Iraqis from the last remnants of Iranian
territory. Iran was completely liberated, but the war showed no signs of ending,
and the cost was horrendous. Iranian casualties from the Kheiber offensive
included more than 26,000 dead, mostly from the Pasdaran and Basij.106 That
figure represents half the total of U.S. killed in action from the entire Vietnam
War.
106Zabih, 2.
225
These developments did not seem to change the minds of the political
leadership on the conduct of the war. Following the Kheiber offensive, Khomeini
continued to emphasize the ideological nature of the struggle. He stated, "Few
historical examples exist of a military which is fighting not only for national goals
but also divine objectives.107 Despite the dogmatic nature of the political goal,
there was change underway within the military forces. Having failed to win on
the battlefield by purely revolutionary means, the IRGC forces moved toward
organizing, equipping and training their forces along more conventional lines.
The goal of the complete defeat of Iraq remained unchanged at the strategic
level, and the implications of the political control of the military to achieve this
goal would be profound as the war ground on.
Subjective and Objective Power

There were clearly competing interests at work in the area of civil-military
relations in the early part of the war. Bani Sadr attempted to institute objective
control by building a more professional military, primarily through the army, which
proved to be a very challenging task:
I began by taking a look at the relationship between the head of state and
the army. The head of state must renounce all despotic power over the
army; this is the only way to prevent the military from becoming the
backbone of a new dictatorship. The head of state can have direct
relations with the army only in case of exceptional events, such as
107Anthony Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, The lessons o f Modem War, Vol. 11
(San Francisco: Westview, 1990), 147.
226
external aggression or a serious internal threat. All power must come

from the people and only from the people. The head of state must never
receive even a shred of legitimacy from the army. On the other hand, the
army must never perform any duties other than military duties. As the
defender of national freedoms, the army can ask the people to participate
in the war effort, but without dominating them. Internal security and the
protection of civil liberties are the province of the people. The armys job
is to focus on external affairs. We therefore eliminated everything in the
organization of the army that gave it control over civilian society. An army
reorganized in this manner would have a chance to become popular at
home and respected abroad.108
The clerics, who had doubts about the armys loyalty, sought to create a
new, revolutionary force that would be automatically controlled through
subjective means. For his part, Khomeini appeared to steer a neutral course,
always careful not to reject the army. However, both his words and actions
belied his true feelings: that no institution in revolutionary Iran could be truly
independent and that objective control was not desired in a truly Islamic state.
Two quotes, both predating the war indicate this point. On the separation
of religion and politics, a prerequisite for objective control, Khomeini said: "It is
often proclaimed that religion must be separated from politics....Such
proclamations can only come from atheists, they are dictated and spread by
imperialists. Was politics separate from religion in the time of the Prophet?109
On the issue of control of the military he had this to say: T h e clergy must
108Bani Sadr, My Turn, 111-112.

109Jean Marie Xaviere, Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini (New York Bantam Books,
1980), 8.
227
undertake no functions other than religious ones which serve monotheism,

virtue, the teaching of the divine laws, and the uplifting of public morals. The
army must also be under control of the clergy in order to be efficacious and
useful.110
Political Leadership
In terms of leadership, the Iranian military fell under the charismatic leader
type. Amid the running feud between Bani Sadr as the champion of the regular
forces and the clerics who supported the IRGC, the Ayatollah Khomeini
remained the undisputed arbiter of the nation. His authority stemmed not only
from his position as guide of the nation and the Iranian Revolution, but as the
most prominent Shiite leader in Iran. Khomeinis stewardship of the military in
the early years of the war often seemed contradictory. He would talk of clerical
control one day and then would admonish the mullahs for trying to interfere with
the war on another. Without specifically stating it, what he seemed to want was
for the broad political and strategic control of the armed forces to remain firmly in
Islamic hands while allowing operational and tactical business to remain the
province of the professionals. He warily embraced the armed forces during and
after the revolution, and in the early part of the war he saw the necessity of
allowing the military to conduct itself in a conventional manner. In his role as the
110Xaviere, 11.
228
senior jurisprudent, he reserved the right to guide the military, as he did every
other institution, according to the precepts of Shiism.
It was Khomeinis view on war and his ability to issue decrees (velayats)
that set him apart as a radical outside the mainstream of Shiism. Many other
clerics disagreed with Khomeini on this issue and argued that Shiism had never
allowed a leading religious figure to assume so much power. Given the aura that
surrounded him, Khomeini acted as the final decision-maker in Iran, and the
decision to extend the war into Iraq was ultimately his. It was a decision based
on his view of justice and just war in the Shiite tradition. In this regard, his
charismatic appeal had profound influence on the war at the strategic level, even
as he argued and persuaded others not to interfere with the armed forces at the
operational and tactical levels.111
Types of Control
The Iranians used a combination of constitutional constraints and party
authority to control the military overall. Following the revolution, a new
constitution was passed that placed command of the army in the hands of the
president. Of course, all organs ultimately answered to the Revolutionary
111ln conventional military theory, war exists on three levels: the strategic, operational,
and tactical levels. The operational level is concerned with the planning and execution
of campaigns focused on achieving the strategic result (organizing the battles). The
tactical level is the means in achieving victory in individual battles.
229
Council headed by Khomeini. The constitution was also the source of legitimacy
Bani Sadr used to try to professionalize the army but with limited success.
More direct and effective control came via party control through the
Islamic Republic Party, which was dominated by the hard-line clerics. IRP
control started at the grass-roots level with the Komitehs and extended through
the command structure of the IRGC and into the SDC. As the clerics and hard
line revolutionaries became more and more disenchanted with the disappointing
results of the war, more power devolved to the IRP and its organs. More
detailed party control came via influence over recruitment and training the
reserves as well as combat units in the IRGC, in which the IRP had placed its
own people in key positions.
The direction of the war, almost as a subcomponent of the direction of the
revolution, was the subject of a heated dispute between the two main factions of
the IRP: the Maktabis and the Hujjatiyyah. The rise of the Maktabis following the
fall of Bani Sadr had resulted in the triumph of ideology within the revolution. At
the strategic level, this meant insisting on the harshest terms for peace with Iraq,
the four Rs. While the Hujjatiyyah advocated the return of all Iranian soil,
reparations, and international blame for the war to be placed solely on Iraq, They
did not demand the overthrow of the Baathists and Saddam, although it would
have preferred it.
Conversely, the Maktabis demanded the overthrow and occupation of
Iraq, and its conversion to a Shiite Islamic republic, as a prelude to wider
230
expansion of the Shiite Revolution. This hard-line stand, while rallying Iranian
public support for a while, gave Saddam a rallying point that stiffened Iraqs
defenses against the continual Iranian offensives. Of even greater importance
was the impact on the geopolitical alignment, with all the Arab states-except
perhaps Syria and Libya-and even the West supporting Iraq. The rich Gulf
states provided money and arms while both superpowers provided support-the
Soviets arms and the United States intelligence support. The U.S. reflagging of
Kuwaiti tankers was aimed squarely at Iranian control of the Persian Gulf and
would bring the two nations into several direct confrontations, all of which were
dominated by the Americans.
Operationally, the rise of the Maktabis meant that offensive action would
be demanded of the Iranian armed forces. The haphazard attacks, dominated
by the fledgling IRGC, were doomed to failure without complete integration into
larger army efforts. The open disdain for technology and complex tacticsregarded as Western and therefore undesirable-left Iran with tactical victories
but with no operational or strategic advantage. The solution of massed
manpower and revolutionary spirit could not overcome the lack of combined
arms integration and a reliable supply system.
Attacks by young Basij volunteers seemed no match to well-sited gun
positions, poison gas and a determined Iraqi defense. However, the Pasdaran
and their Basij counterparts were successful in several major attacks, at least in
the initial stages. The problem was in exploiting the advantage both tactically
231
and operationally. Without adequate logistics, streamlined and well-understood
command structures, and conventional forces to expand and exploit the initial
surge, the Iranians could not consolidate victory. The result was horrendous
casualties, not only from the initial infantry attack, but from the Iraqi
counterattacks that caught Iranian troops exhausted and unsupported. The
disunity between the army and IRGC, a direct result of ideological influence, was
the single greatest hindrance to decisive Iranian victory.
Lack of decision in the war led to some reconsideration of strategy by the
Iranians. As 1983 approached, the Iranian leadership seemed ready to stabilize
internal politics to consolidate the revolution and finally come to grips with
winning the war decisively. The Council of Experts was formed in December
1982 to ensure continuity in the event of Khomeinis death. Election to the 83
member Council was based on an absolute majority, with the IRP dominating
the elections through the election of both the Maktabi or the Hujjatiyyah wings.
The council devised a method of succession in 1983 that helped reduce
the speculation among factions as to how it would work.112 It was an attempt to
move past the charisma of one leader and institutionalize religious leadership
after Khomeini. This consensus included recognition of the Ayatollah Montazari
as the unnamed successor, even though Khomeini never actually selected him,
112Menashri, 262.
232
nor anyone else, preferring to have the council reach consensus on what person
or persons would assume leadership.
Nevertheless, the formation of the Council sharpened the debate between
the two factions. Khomeini again counseled reconciliation, stating that the
revolution was not threatened from external sources, but he was "still worried
that internal rifts-especially among clerics-could endanger it.113 He specifically
referred to those who caused commotion to force the return of the Hidden Imam,
something the Hujjatiyyah believed would happen only when events were at their
worst. The Hujjatiyyahs response to Khomeinis comments caused a torrent of
Maktabi criticism. The letter accused the Hujjatiyyah o f not supporting the
revolution against the Shah, failing to support the velayat e faqih, and
undermining order by advocating a philosophy requiring bad times as a
prerequisite to the return of the Hidden Imam.114
Specific Methods of Control

While the IRP factions jockeyed for control of the political apparatus, they
ensured that specific methods of ideological control were pursued. This
ideological control used both normative and coercive measures. The normative
measures included education and propaganda focused on ensuring the loyalty of
113Menashri, 269.
114Menashri, 270.
233
the armed forces to the regime. Clerical distrust of the army continued, even
when the army performed well in combat. The internal violence, bombings, and
street demonstrations fomented by the Mujaheddin e Khalq and others only
heightened the clerics concern for internal control. The SDC used the media to
proclaim the war as both a national and religious duty. By and large, these
efforts were successful, with the army becoming more Islamized overtime.
Military schools and training programs took the lead in educating all Iranian
troops of the values of Islam and the tenets of revolutionary Shiism. New
leaders were trained to have an ideological outlook on the war, as opposed to a
westernized one. Grass roots support for the revolution existed and the both the
newer troops and leaders tended to be sympathetic to the revolution.
Other normative measures were the enticements used to encourage
enlistment in the Pasdaran and Basij. The regime offered money and extra pay
for the Pasdar enlistees, a form of remunerative compensation. Extra ration
coupons and other material incentives for the families of Pasdars were also used
to attract recruits and build morale.
Coercive measures included the commissar system begun by the SDC in
1981 to ensure there were no counterrevolutionary efforts emerging from the
army. Occasionally, officers would be relieved of command as small purges
continued to hit the army, although not anywhere near the scale of the pre-war
years. The most effective coercive measure was the relief of Bani Sadr as both
president and commander in chief. With his purge, the armys greatest advocate
234
and his efforts at professionalization were swept away. This paved the way for
the rise of the IRGC, the human wave tactics and the supremacy of ideology
over pragmatism for several years.
War-Fighting Structure
The rise of the IRGC as an equal or even greater element of national
security than the army was not enough to ensure battlefield victory. Iran pursued
a mixed war-fighting structure that included both conventional forces (army and
air force) and new order forces in the form of the IRGC. Despite the loss of
spare parts and replacement systems, the army continued to practice
conventional warfare using fire and maneuver to penetrate and defeat the Iraqi
defenses. It had the capability to amass limited formations of tanks, armored
vehicles and even helibome units for the offensives but rarely in a coordinated
manner.
Conversely, the IRGC continued to spend the greatest natural Iranian
advantage, its superior manpower pool, in attacks that achieved some tactical
success but could not capitalize on it. The dismounted Basij, fired by emotion,
represented the essence of new order force structure, but once their initial
assault had concluded they could not exploit it. Worse yet, because they
disdained technological necessities-such as adequate fire support, crew-served
weapons and adequate training-the Basij attacks were often doomed to failure
235
before they began. Regardless of the individual outcomes, the Basij suffered
huge casualty rates. What they lacked in arms they tried to make up for in spirit.
The unrestrained tactics employed by the Basij captured the intense
revolutionary and religious spirit that existed within the hearts of its soldiers,
some merely teenagers. Gen. Shamekhani, an IRGC senior leader, reflected this
attitude best when commenting on the difference between the army and IRGC
tactics, Unlike Bani Sadr who cried tank versus tank we say bodies versus
tanks."115 Other slogans such as No tactics, no technology reflected the nature
of the IRGC approach.
Although there were cases of convergence between the two tactical
approaches in the form of enhanced conventional tactics, such as at Bostan,
they were short-lived and not emulated. Had the army and IRGC cooperated on
a wider scale with the Basij leading vicious assaults that were exploited by the
limited mechanized forces of the army, the Iraqis may have completely
collapsed. However, continuing disunity from the SDC on down hampered such
ventures, even when local commanders sought to employ both.
Reaction to Ideological War

The impact of an ideological war was twofold. It meant that once Iran
ejected Iraq from its territory the war would expand to achieve its ideological
115Bani Sadr, 180.
236
goals. Whether Khomeini always intended to enter Iraq or became enamored

with the idea of a Shiite belt across the Middle East following the successful
recapture of KhunninShahr in 1982, the result was the same-expanded
violence. Export of revolutionary Islam became part of the program in 1983 and
caused Iraq to react by bombing cities and oil facilities. Geopolitically, the Arab
states and the West rallied to Iraq's side, fearful of the spread of radical Shiism
across the region. The expansion of violence also created conditions for national
solidarity in Iraq, strengthening Saddam Hussein's hand. Iraqi defenses
stiffened on their own soil and each day brought more money and arms from the
world. Iran remained relatively isolated, fighting alone, and determined not only
to win, but to win with ideological decisiveness. The result was, again, more
casualties and the continuation of the war.
Ideological war did assist Iran in mobilizing its society for war. By 1983,
the full mobilization of Iranian society was beginning. The dominance of ideology
sponsored by the IRP focused the peoples attention through a series of
revolutionary anniversaries that mobilized popular support. The revolution was
more firmly institutionalized through better organization. Institutions such as the
IRGC, the Komitehs, The Foundation of the Dispossessed, The Foundation of
Martyrs, and others grew to fruition. This ensured the continual flow of
manpower to the front, most of it willingly, and the fervor of the Basij formations
remained strong into 1984.
237
Effect on the Nations Military

The effects on the nations military were profound and consisted primarily
of continued tension between the army and IRGC. Army efforts were continually
minimized while the IRGC was extolled as both an Iranian and Islamic force.
The victories of 1981-82 were ascribed first to Islam, then to the IRGC, and only
then to an Islamized army. The cult of martyrdom, key to Shiite theology,
became a focal point of the Iranian propaganda effort. Radicals such as the
Maktabis considered the war a blessing for several reasons. First, it increased
Iranian self-confidence and independence from U.S. imperialism, universally
regarded as the source of Irans misfortunes. By rejecting the technology
associated with American influence, the Iranians confirmed the value of the
revolution and sought to blaze a new path to military victory along Islamic lines.
If they won the war without U.S. support and the crutch of technology, then the
victory would be an ideological one. Second, the clerics needed to consolidate
the revolution. The mobilization and training of 2.5 million Basij allowed the
development of the IRGC as an armed alternative to the army and gave the
clerics the physical power to impose revolutionary values at home and prevent
an external threat from rolling back the revolution. Third, the war removed the
focus from the painful and contentious social and economic difficulties and the
curtailment of personal freedoms in the country.116
116Menashri, 230.
238
With tighter clerical control at home and the continued mobilization for
war, the clerics promised decisive victory in 1984. It was a promise they would
continue to make and continue to break as the war ticked off four more years.
Chapter 6
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Special Troops
No organization in Iran represented the struggle between military
professionalism and the pursuit of ideology better than the Revolutionary Guard.
Officially established in May 1979, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC) progressed from an armed militia to the predominant service within the
Iranian armed forces with both a battlefield mission and responsibility for
safeguarding the revolution itself.
The use of specialized troops is not new in the history of warfare. Many
regimes have felt the need to use armed units that were not only militarily
proficient, but also politically reliable. Revolutionary regimes in particular have
needed these units because their political goals are often at odds with the
conservative nature of the military establishments in their states. The Bolsheviks
offer an example following the October Revolution. Facing the hostile remains of
an inherently conservative Czarist Army, the Bolsheviks countered by organizing
new military units called cholny, or guards units. These units were politically
reliable and provided a bulwark for the fledgling regime.
One of the most comprehensive applications of specialized troops was the
German use of the Guard Detachment (Schutzstaffel), or SS, in World War II.
The SS were formed initially as a bodyguard unit for Adolph Hitler. They pledged
personal loyalty to him and his cause. During the time of the chaotic Weimar
239
240
Republic, Hitler's political party-the National Socialist German Workers Party

(NSDAP)-was one of many right-wing groups that advocated a return to German
greatness through both national and socialist means. The socialist theme of
many of these groups was that the German upper classes were responsible for
Germany's defeat in World War I. Part of the nationalist and racial message
blamed communists and Jews for the loss in the war and the depression that
followed in the 1920s. The NSDAP wished to remake German society, elevating
the worker to a higher position, but in a nationalist setting. This was the socalled Brown Revolution, and the paramilitary force that fought for it was named
after the Sturmabtielung, or SA, known as the Brownshirts. As the NSDAP
gained strength, Hitler realized that he could not completely control the street
fighters of the SA, who had waged vicious urban battles with their communist
rivals. Hitler needed a force that was more disciplined, focused, and answerable
only to him. The answer was the SS. The SS combined the ideological
foundation of the right-wing movement with a personal devotion to Hitler himself.
In the SS, Hitler found his most dependable ideological pillar, surpassing that of
the SA and one capable of enforcing his edicts.
Once the SA had outlived its usefulness, Hitler had it eliminated in a
bloody purge called The Night of the Long Knives. The SS was the tool used
first to decapitate the leadership of the SA and then replace it as the paramount
armed wing of the NSDAP. Growing in size and complexity, the SS became the
RSHA (Reichsicherhauptamt), or Reich Main Security Department. The RSHA
241
included the secret police (Gestapo), the Waffen SS that fought on the
battlefield, the Reich foreign Security Department (SD), and a whole host of
other agencies dealing in everything from logistics, to training, to weapons
development and procurement.
As World War II progressed, the Waffen SS fielded combat units of up to
corps size. Initially, membership was voluntary in this elite organization with
enlistees required to trace their genealogical lineage back to the 18th century as
proof of their racial purity. Volunteers had to be at least 5-feet, 10-inches tall,
and have no criminal record. Training was rigorous, physical and included a
heavy emphasis on Nazi ideology. SS units were well trained and equipped for
combat, and fought with a fanatical zeal both in the attack and defense. They
believed in the racial warfare theories of the Nazi Party and often committed
gross atrocities in an effort to realize the new order called for in Nazi ideology.
As an organization, the RSHA considered all missions assigned to the SS
as equally important to the Reich. Therefore, a concentration camp guard's
duties in Auschwitz earned as much weight to the RSHA as a combat soldier in
the Waffen SS. There was no distinction in rank, pay or benefits between the
two jobs. For the RSHA, fighting a conventional war and brutally exterminating
entire races of people were critical missions as dictated by Hitler.
The Iranian use of the IRGC has many basic similarities as well as some
key differences with the German example. First, the IRGC and the RSHA both
had internal security missions as well as combat responsibilities. The IRGC first
242
saw action against Kurdish insurgents and was used extensively against the
Mojahedin-e-Khalq faction during the vicious street fighting after the 1979
Revolution.
Second, both organizations grew in size and scope and eventually
included weapons procurement, research and development, and their own
logistics and economic programs. The SS had its own economics organization
that used the captured resources of occupied nations, slave labor and capital
investment to raise money for the organization. The IRGC became involved in
economic activities to raise funds, although without the atrocities associated with
the RSHA. By the end of the Iran-lraq War, the IRGC had its own army-which
rivaled the regular army-its own navy, and its own procurement and economic
organs.
Third, both the IRGC and RSHA fielded specialized combat troops in war.
Manning in both the Pasdaran and Waffen SS was initially based on recruiting
volunteers who were motivated ideologically to serve in those forces. The
continuation of war forced both forces to adopt conscription to fill their ranks. For
the SS, the year 1943 meant the end of recruiting volunteers while the Pasdaran
resorted to conscription in 1987. Both the Pasdaran and the Waffen SS were
manned with the best equipment the nation could offer, and both forces fought
with a tenacity unmatched by their regular army counterparts. This fanaticism
was a direct result of the ideological nature of the military organizations.
243
Fourth, both organizations stressed loyalty to their leaders. The Waffen

SS took an oath of loyalty to Hitler and emphasized its connection to him
personally, which was evident in its motto: My honor is loyalty. This attitude
was evident in a tenet called the fuhrerprinzip, or leader principle. For the SS,
the fuhrerwas the ultimate source of legitimate power and his charismatic
leadership could never be questioned. The IRGC equivalent was the velayat e
faqih, or rule of the jurist, which stressed Khomeinis role in interpreting all
secular and religious laws. The IRGC leadership, along with the Maktabi wing of
the IRP, represented the hard-liners within the regime who supported Khomeini's
continued call for ideological war against Iraq and the expansionist aims dictated
by Khomeini once Iraqi forces were ejected from Iran in 1982.
There are some key differences, however. The IRGC never believed nor
engaged in genocide as did the SS. The revolutionary regime in Iran never had
as its goal the destruction of the Iraqi people. Khomeini continued to stress that
Iran's enemy was Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, not the Iraqi nation.
He wished to convert them and bring them back to what he considered the true
state of Islam, not eliminate them as a people. While the IRGC can legitimately
be accused of war crimes (just as the Iraqis could), there was no systematic
attempt to brutalize the enemy through the use of Pasdaran or Basij combat
units.
Another key difference was the velayat e faqih. Because Shiism was the
ideology adopted by the Iranian revolutionaries, it had a contemporary nature
244
among the population. The strong current of loyalty between the IRGC troops
and Khomeini had a cultural and religious root based on fundamentalist tradition
as well as charismatic appeal. The leading Shiite clerics of Iran have always had
a special role in Iranian society, based on their demonstrated piety and religious
learning. A secular Iranian politician could not command as strong a sense of
loyalty culturally, as Hitler did, because there is no way he could gain the
religious-ideological legitimacy needed to win over the population.
Hitler, on the other hand, constructed the fuhrerprinzip based on myth and
folklore from the Middle Ages coupled with the power of a modem state. He
envisioned himself as the natural leader of the Teutonic peoples, who by virtue
of their race were destined to dominate the nations of Europe. He was the volks
tribune, or people's spokesman, who would lead modem Germany to racial
greatness based on the myths of medieval Germany.
Despite their differences, the Pasdaran and Waffen SS both shared a
devotion to ideology that often superseded military professionalism. The Waffen
SS meticulously enforced the so-called Commissar Law whereby Hitler ordered
every political officer in the Soviet Army to be executed on site. Liberally
interpreted, the order resulted in the deaths of thousands of Soviet government
officials. The result was a hardening of the will of every local, regional and
national government institution in the Soviet Union. SS battlefield atrocities
committed on the Western front at Malmedy and Oradour were considered
routine by the SS but had a tremendous effect on Allied troops, whose
245
determination was stiffened when they learned of these crimes. This application
of expansion of violence from ideology often backfired against the Germans, and
Soviet units routinely shot any SS man captured in retaliation for the wide
abuses employed by the SS. At the Nuremburg trials, the entire RSHA
organization, to include the Waffen SS, was declared a criminal enterprise. No
distinction was made between those who participated in the Final Solution and
those who fought in uniform. The reputation of all was forever stained.
The Pasdaran problem was not one of atrocities, but of the continued use
of tactics that proved ineffective and a waste of manpower. The human wave
assaults proved effective in limited instances but became a standard ideological
tactic used by the IRGC (specifically the Basij militia). Over time, they lost their
effectiveness on the battlefield yet were retained as proof of devotion to
martyrdom. In both cases, the adherence to ideological principles came at the
expense of professional military duties. For the Waffen SS, it was the callous
disregard of the code of conduct in warfare, one that would sully its reputation as
a tenacious battlefield opponent.
Both organizations attempted to incorporate aspects of professionalism,
with the SS being the more professional from the standpoint of battlefield
proficiency. As the war progressed, SS units were often used as the fire
brigades of the army, rushed to the sector most threatened with a breakthrough.1
1Bruce Quarrie, Hitler's Teutonic Knights (London: Wellingborough, 1986), 27.
246
The Pasdaran, on the other hand, struggled with the issue of professionalism,
only grudgingly accepting it over time. It was not until 1985 that the Pasdaran
adopted infiltration tactics as an assault method, and the human wave assault
remained a component of Basij attacks until the end. Eventually, the Pasdaran
incorporated limited armor, engineer, and artillery capabilities into their force but
did not use them effectively in combat.
Despite these attempts, both specialized units remained rivals of the
regular forces within their nations. The Wehrmacht originally viewed the SS as
upstarts with no legitimacy on the battlefield. Over time, field commanders
gained a grudging respect for the capabilities of SS units under their command
and relied on them heavily to support the effort. The Iranian Army never really
reconciled itself with the IRGC as an organization. The revolutionary leaders of
Iran consistently gave the lead in key offensive operations to the IRGC, even
while recognizing the need to synchronize the efforts of the two armed services.
In both the German and Iranian cases, there were broad disagreements between
the regulars and special troops on manning, equipment, and tactics issues.
The key difference in the two systems was the command structure. The
German Army retained tactical control over the SS at the corps or army level.
There were SS divisions and corps, but at some higher level, the Wehrmacht
exercised tactical and operational control; thus, the Germans maintained unity of
effort. Waffen SS units were often given critical roles, as in the Ardennes
offensive of 1944 (Battle of the Bulge) where the SS spearheaded the attack.
247
However, the SS was never given operational control of a campaign and always
had to work within the Wehrmacht structure.
In contrast, the IRGC and its components remained independent of army
control in Iran. Despite some notable examples of tactical cooperation between
the army and the IRGC, the two forces never fully cooperated or coordinated
efforts on the battlefield.2 The duality of command had a significant negative
effect on the Iranian war effort, specifically hampering its one strategic
advantage, namely, population. In a war that lasted as long as this one, the
Iranians should have been victorious in a war of attrition with the less populous
Iraqis. The lack of a professional military tradition as was found in Germany
contributed greatly to this failure. Most of this had to do with the lack of
professional standing of the traditional army which, while well-equipped under
the monarchs, did not achieve standing in Iranian society or internationally as a
professional force. Once the revolution occurred the Army was discredited
further due to its ties to the Shah and was never as powerful an institution as the
Wehrmacht was.
Evolution of the IRGC

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began in 1977 as the Mojahedin
of the Islamic Revolution (MIR), a coalition of seven militia groups, numbering
2Sharam Chubin, Iran and the W ar from Stalemate to Cease-fire, in the Iran-lraq War,
ed. Efraim Karsh (New York: St. Martins Press, 1989), 243.
248
around 4,000, and trained by the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLO) outside Iran.
Its goal was the overthrow of the Shah, and it emphasized loyalty to the
Ayatollah Khomeini as a basic tenet. Following the revolution, the new Islamic
constitution implemented revolutionary changes in the Iranian military
establishment.
Two articles of the new constitution paved the way for the radical overhaul
of the military and enshrined the establishment of the IRGC. Article 144 of the
constitution called for the armed forces of Iran to be Islamic by eradicating the
Imperial Army but retaining discipline and the normal chain of command. This
article allowed for the Islamization of the regular army by removing monarchist
and other disruptive elements in purges and by implementing new ideological
controls throughout the ranks to ensure loyalty to the new regime. Article 150
specifically created the IRGC and called upon it to "defend the revolution and
safeguard its achievements." This article established the IRGC as a new,
ideologically reliable force that would embody the ideal of the Islamic soldier.
Article 150 also assigned the IRGC military duties, "determined by law in
conjunction with the duties of other military forces of the nation and with regard
to the principle of brotherly cooperation and coordination among all military
forces."3
3Entessar Nader, Post Revolutionary Iran (London: Westview Press, 1988), 65-66.
249
Thus, the IRGC had a clear ideological mandate plus an important, but
vague, military component. The regular army still retained the primary role of
defending the nation, and the constitution optimistically called for cooperation
between the regulars and the IRGC. The Guard's ideological role was clearer
and the threat to the revolution very real in the early days after Khomeini came to
power. More important, the source of legitimacy for the IRGC was both
charismatic-because of its relationship to Khomeini-and legalistic, as outlined in
the new Iranian Constitution.
The specific role assigned to the IRGC following the revolution was to
enforce Islamic law in the urban areas along with the Komitehs, confront counter
revolutionary forces in armed action, protect government buildings, gather
intelligence, recruit, conduct propaganda operations, and assist other Islamic
revolutionary movements worldwide.4 Clearly, the IRGC emphasis in the early
days was on political, ideological, and security missions.
To allow the Guard to accomplish these missions, it was set up
independent of regular army control. The establishment of an independent
IRGC satisfied several demanding political issues. First, it established a
mechanism to create a people's militia, which was a common theme among
revolutionary forces in the regime. Within the IRGC, the Basij eventually came
closest to representing this militia force. Second, the IRGC provided an armed
4Schalgaldian, 74-75.
250
force that was ideologically loyal to the ruling clerics in general and the Ayatollah
Khomeini in particular. It was used to suppress demonstrations, enforce the
religious laws of the regime, and monitor opponents of the Islamic republic.
Third, the IRGC was the institution most capable of exporting the Iranian
Revolution to other Muslim states. In the early 1980s, the Guard sent cadres to
Lebanon to establish a presence among the Shiites there. In short, the IRGC
represented the armed, ideological pillar of revolutionary Iran, one that could be
counted on to perform political and paramilitary actions at the direction of
Khomeini and the ruling clerics.
The size and influence of the IRGC grew quickly following the revolution.
In December 1979, the IRGC strength stood at 10,000. By June 1980, it had
grown to more than 25,000 and then doubled to 50,000 after the war with Iraq
began in September. By 1985, the IRGC stood at 250,000 and the following
year grew to more than 350,000 active members, surpassing the active duty
strength of the army.5
For the first nine years of its existence, the IRGC accepted only
volunteers into its ranks. The average Pasdar, or guard, was between 18 and 26
years old, unmarried, poor, and from the Persian majority. Many were
unemployed and looking for solutions to Iran's pressing social and political
5lbid., 68-69.
251
issues.6 Many were attracted to the Islamic messages and wished to prove their
mettle by joining a military organization that was at once revolutionary and
Islamic. To ensure political loyalty, the IRGC did not accept (with few
exceptions) officers who had served in the Shah's army, rejecting the cadrebased system used by previous revolutionary governments and one that would
have infused some experience and professionalism into the ranks. Most officers
were chosen for their political loyalty to the IRP or their role in the revolution.
This selection process assured loyalty, but also meant that the IRGC lacked the
professional base needed to run a military organization.
Formed as a bulwark against an expected American invasion following the
seizure of the hostages in 1979, the Basij was incorporated into the IRGC in
1980 and at its height in 1985 had a strength of 600,000. The average Basij
soldier was between 20 and 30 years old, came from a rural poor background
and was uneducated. They were recruited by their local Komitehs and served
for limited terms, usually three months. The December to March time frame was
the most popular for service, so men could return home in time for the planting
season. As a result, many of the IRGC-led offensives were tied to this
mobilization schedule.
Training in both the Pasdaran and Basij units was as much ideological as
it was military. Basij weapons training was limited to small arms and grenades,
6lbid., 83-84.
252
with many Basij going into battle unarmed. Much of their training was geared
toward motivating its volunteer soldiers to perform acts of heroism rather than
perform as a professional military unit. Pasdaran basic training was longer,
usually about three months, and was heavy on the teachings of Khomeini and
other clerics at the expense of military studies.7
In 1982, the IRGC set up its own high schools to educate students. The
curriculum included military and ideological courses. Graduates would leave the
school and join Basij units from their hometowns or would be selected to attend
more advanced Pasdaran training and then assignment to a Pasdaran unit.8 In
this way, the IRGC exerted more complete control over the youth of Iran and
could focus its ideological message on the most impressionable of Iran's future
soldiers. This education process continued at the college level.
The IRGC also set up advanced schools of engineering, military studies
and ideology. In 1987, the IRGC set up its own military academy, called the
Imam Hussein University, in which both military and religious subjects were
taught, giving the organization the ability to generate its own leaders.9 At all
levels, the IRGC stressed the ideological nature of the struggle with Iraq and
7lbid., 31.
8Kenneth Katzman, Warriors of Islam: Irans Revolutionary Guard (San Francisco:
Westview Press, 1993), 91-93.
9Nader, 66.
253
other enemies of the regime and produced graduates who were loyal to
Khomeini and believers in the revolutionary cause.
The regime maintained control over the IRGC in two ways. First, the
IRGC worked at the political level through the IRGC Ministry, which coordinated
activities between the IRGC and the government. This ministry maintained
political surveillance of the IRGC and also coordinated logistics support at the
national level. The second way the regime kept control over the IRGC was
through the IRGC Central Committee, which was the main administrative body of
the organization. The Central Committee was organized into 11 regional
commands, which gave the IRGC national coverage. Ideological control was
maintained because Khomeini appointed clerical representatives on the Central
Committee. These representatives had the power to veto decisions, even
tactical ones, of the Central Committee. Religious ideology was reinforced by
clerics who were attached at all levels from the regional subcommands down to
the unit level in the Pasdaran units. They had their own chain of command and
could alter military plans according to ideological needs.10 This system was
similar to the one the commissars employed by the Red Army to maintain
Communist Party control over the Soviet military.
Within military hierarchy, the IRGC answered to the SDC and consulted
with the other services through the joint staff. However, the IRGC was
10James Dingeman and Richard Jupa, Iranian Elite: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (Cambria Calif.: 3W INC, 1991), 75.
254
considered the senior service, and the IRGC's ideological outlook made
cooperation at the senior level difficult. An example was the army's desire to
wage a war of attrition at the strategic level by conducting operational maneuver
warfare to force the Iraqis to spread their forces thin, then overwhelm them at
their weakest point. The IRGC insisted on frontal assaults on well-defended
Basra, so an Islamic republic could be set up there following occupation.
The army-IRGC rivalry was evident at the policy-making level as well. In
1985, the other services were forbidden to accept recruits until all Pasdaran units
were fully manned. That same year, Khomeini authorized the IRGC to form its
own navy and airforce contingents.
Operational Focus
The focus of the IRGC was the human element. This is a reflection of the
regime's ideology which stresses the spirit of the individual over technology.
Ideologically, the individual represented the Islamic way to victory, in contrast to
the enemies of Islam who were viewed as using technology as a crutch borne of
a lack of faith. When combined with the concept of martyrdom, this allowed each
individual soldier to believe that he could make a difference in the struggle, even
by dying. Soldiers willing to give their lives for a just cause represented the
essence of Shiism applied to the battlefield. At the tactical level this translated
into the use of elan tactics, such as infiltration and human wave assaults. IRGC
commander Moshen Rezai admitted as much when he said in 1986, "We do not
255
need advanced planes and tanks for victory. Employment of infantry forces with
light weapons, four times the number of Iraqi troops, will be enough for Iran to
overcome the enemy."11
These tactics were not necessarily the incorrect application of force, given
the organization and background of the IRGC. The existence of martyrdom and
jihad in Shiite culture offered an opportunity for the IRGC to exploit the zeal of its
young soldiers and still achieve battlefield success. The problem was the
insistence of the IRGC on using these tactics almost exclusively and at the
expense of other methods. In battles where regular forces such as armor and
helibome infantry were employed, the Pasdaran and Basij attacks could bring
good results. The combination of infiltrating Iraqi positions, then following it up
with some form of maneuver and a Basij mass assault would probably have
achieved sustained battlefield success. Instead, the IRGC continued to use elan
tactics in isolation. This doomed the IRGC war effort to heavy losses with limited
or negative results on the battlefield. The continued use of these tactics
represented a victory of ideology over professionalism, regardless of what
happened on the battlefield.
Overtime, the IRGC units evolved both professionally and
organizationally. By the 1985 Operation Badr offensive, Pasdaran units were
well equipped with small arms, anti-tank weapons (RPG 7), and chemical
11Ibid., 6.
256
defensive equipment. They used helicopter gunships, artillery and engineer

assets to position themselves in the difficult marsh area.12They had a growing
desire to acquire heavy weapons, which the army continually tried to deny them.
Given the growth of the IRGC and the inherent lack of cooperation with the army,
this meant that disunity would plague the effort.
The leaders of the IRGC recognized that at some point they were
sacrificing professionalism for their ideological beliefs. This was generally
accepted as the necessary price to pay to preserve the purity of their struggle.
Majlis Speaker Rafsanjani acknowledged that the Guards formalized training
system was "less a vehicle for determining military proficiency than for
perpetuating the Guard's revolutionary militancy and its institutional
independence from the more experienced regular armed forces."13 This
reinforced the primacy of ideology over professionalism and confirmed the
continuing suspicions of the regular armed forces.
Conclusion
The evolution of the Guard from an armed political group to a dominant
military organization, superseding the army, took place over several years. By
1986, the Guard came to look and act more like the professional military that it
had considered its rival for so long. It developed its own military academies and
120 Ballance, 162.

13Katzman, 91-93.
257
training centers to educate its own officers in the art, science, and ideology of
war. The Guard also evolved from a pure light infantry force in the early part of
the war to a more professional force, at least at the tactical level, and one that
possessed its own naval and air force contingents. At the end of the war, the
Guards forces were larger than the regular army, and had their own independent
recruiting, logistics, weapons development and training systems.
Despite this move toward professionalism, the IRGC retained its basic
ideological orientation. The expansion into the combined arms arena did not
translate into a change in operational focus. The IRGC never organized and
executed a successful campaign beyond the initial assault. Although Pasdaran
tactics were modified over time, the focus on the big battle remained the
centerpiece of IRGC military thinking. More important, it remained a separate
institution and a rival to the regular army. The IRGC continued to count on the
ideological fervor of its recruits to win on the battlefield.
Later in the war, when recruiting became more difficult, the IRGC had to
resort to conscription, thereby losing its ideological momentum. Conscripts could
in no way replace the eager volunteers in the early part of the war in carrying out
IRGC elan tactics.
Throughout the war, the IRGC remained a key component of the Islamic
regime. Its influence was felt everywhere within Iran. It established and
maintained close ideological ties to the regime through a variety of command
and clerical channels. The failure of IRGC operational focus reflected a larger
258
failure of Iran to win at the strategic level using ideology. Its revolution was
unwanted by other Moslem states in the region that helped isolate Iran
internationally. Just as Iran's expression of radical Shiism failed to win on the
strategic level, so did the militant fervor and elan tactics expressed by the IRGC
fail to win on the operational and tactical levels. Without the incorporation of
professionalism, ideological methods alone were insufficient to achieve victory.
General war weariness in Iran was growing by 1985 and was evident in
the general population by 1987. Eventually, the clerics had to recognize that no
matter what tactics they employed, they could not conquer Iraq and preserve
their own revolution. In 1988, the war finally ended with a political solution that
set the border at the same point as when the war began. Saddam Hussein
remained in power, and Iran's Islamic Revolution remained confined within its
own borders. The Iranian Revolution survived, as did the Revolutionary Guard,
which now had to reevaluate its role as both political and professional force.
Chapter 7
The Decline of Revolutionary Military
No one starts a war...without first being clear in his mind what he intends to
achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.
Clausewitz, On War
Irans insistence on continuing the war for ideological purposes through
ideological means resulted in the nations overall poor performance at all three
levels of wan tactical, operational, and strategic. At the tactical level, Pasdaran
units reached their zenith as a veteran revolutionary force in 1986, with the
attack on the Faw Peninsula. Units participating in this battle possessed
advanced light-infantry skills that enabled them to conduct successful infiltration
missions in the attack and maintain a strong defense in the face of Iraqi
counterattacks. Although these tactics provided an asymmetric advantage over
the road-bound and defensive-minded Iraqis, the IRGC still had not figured out
how to exploit success or link it to larger campaign objectives and so suffered
heavy casualties accordingly. After the massive losses in the 1987 Karbala
offensives, the IRGC lost much of its zeal because many of its battle-hardened
veterans perished. The replacements were not motivated to the same degree
and did not have the combat experience needed to compensate for the lack of
zeal. In the Iraqi offensives in 1988, Pasdaran units broke and ran for the first
time in the war, clearly indicating this was no longer the ideological bulwark of
259
260
the regime. In this same offensive, huge numbers of Iranian prisoners were
taken by the Iraqis.
Operationally, the Iranians continued to seek the great battle of
annihilation that never came. The focus shifted from front to front, but the armys
suggestion of a war of attrition never took hold. Instead, the hard-liners insisted
that one more final battle would defeat the Iraqis. The wisdom of this approach
aside, the Iranians failed to marshal ail capabilities to achieve this, relying
continually on the IRGC to deliver the final blow. Relations between the IRGC
and army reflected a continued tension, with little cooperation beyond the initial
assault of the various offensives they launched.
The ruling clerics still did not fully trust the army and counted on the
IRGC to achieve its military goals. They maintained that the revolutionary tactics
used by the IRGC, linked to the faith of the people, would ensure victory.
Despite some tactical success in 1985 and 1986 in the IRGC-led offensives, this
was not translated into any overall campaign success because of the lack of
operational planning and execution.
However, it was at the strategic level that Irans ideology really cost it on
the battlefield. Irans continual pursuit of decisive victory based on ideological
reasoning steadily worsened an already-precarious geo-strategic position. In
fact, much of the world came to see Iran as the aggressor for insisting on fighting
a war that should have ended in stalemate years ago.
261
Iraq worked steadily and successfully to gamer Arab support against the
Iranians, using both anti-Persian nationalism and fear of the spread of
fundamentalism to create a unity that extended to many of the key states,
including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Egypt. Iran continued its drumbeat
criticism not only of Iraq and the conservative Sunni states, but also of the
superpowers, calling both the Americans and Soviets criminals and
aggressors.1The steady anti-Iranian tilt of U.S. foreign policy contributed to the
American decision in 1987 to reflag Kuwaiti tankers with the American flag. The
Iranians were left with the choice of not attacking neutral ships supporting Iraq or
attacking those ships and drawing U.S. combat forces into the fight. Said
Rafsanjani of the prospect of American involvement, If you do such a thing,
which of course you dare not to, you will know the real meaning of terror.2 Irans
military actions matched its words as naval units of the IRGC continued to lay
mines and even tried to attack U.S. ships. The result was a predictable series of
losses for the Iranians.
Realistically, direct U.S. involvement in the war could only hurt Iranian
prospects of decisive victory, but Iran could not separate its ideological ends
from its means. Even if it cost a larger strategic victory, Iran would not abandon
revolutionary methods in achieving them. Pursuing this course of action was
1Remarks by Khomeini at parade marking 6thanniversary of the Islamic Republic (read

by announcer), Tehran Radio, FBIS, 12 February 1985, i.
2FBIS, 28 April 1985, ii.
262
ideologically consistent for Iran but proved costly at the strategic level as it
constrained Irans freedom of action internationally.
The Iranians attempted to engage third parties to build political and
military support abroad but with little success. The realities of geography and
history severely curtailed such efforts. The historic design of the Iranian Army,
whether it liked it or not, was Western-based, and even the IRGC relied on
American-made weapons to equip its units. Rafsanjani visited China in July
1985 to work out an arms deal. Although the Iranians acquired and used some
Chinese arms, Rafsanjani admitted that Chinese weapons would not do Iran
much good as Iranian weapons have always been based on Western designs."3
Geographically, the Iranians were dependent upon access through the
Persian Gulf for much of their international commerce. Iraq was partially
successful in physically reducing Iranian imports and exports by its missile
attacks. More important, as Iran attempted to influence action in the Gulf, it drew
the United States and other powers into the region, not to safeguard cargo
bound to or from Iran, but to ensure Iranian military action did not become
effective in international waters.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis found no problem replenishing their stock of Sovietmade weapons, financed by the Gulf states. They even expanded their arsenal
by signing lucrative arms deals with France for advanced fighters and missiles,
3Beijing press conference following state visit, 29 June 1985, Teheran Radio FBIS, 1
July 1985, i.
263
allowing them to continue the tanker war that threatened the Iranian economy.4
Collectively, these developments continued to work against the Iranians and
further dimmed the hope of achieving the expanded war goals. Simply put,
Irans ideological goals alienated too many powers with interests in the region,
and the more the Iranians insisted on final victory, the more support the world
gave to Iraq to prevent it.
By 1985, the nation showed signs of growing tired of the war. By 1987,
there would be open and continuous protests against the government and the
war. The economy was in shambles, with inflation hitting 20 percent and with
decreasing revenue from oil production.5 The revelation of the arms-for-hostages
deal with the United States left many Iranians puzzled and disillusioned over the
regimes dealings with a country continuously derided as the Great Satan.
By 1987, the regime was having trouble finding enough volunteers to fill
the ranks, and desertions and draft dodging became a major problem with even
the IRGC resorting to conscription for the first time. In June 1987, Khomeini
dissolved the Islamic Revolutionary Party in an effort to silence growing criticism
from the Hujjatiyyah, the pragmatist wing of the war effort. Despite all this, the
Iranian leadership seemed determine to end the war on the only terms it would
4Agencie Francais Press, FBIS, 26 September 1985, i.

sHiro, Dilip, The Longest Wan The Iran-lraq Military Conflict (London: Routledge, 1991),
190.
264
accept-the total military defeat of Iraq and the downfall of Saddams Baathist
regime.
IRGC Offensives
The year 1985 would begin with a continuation of Iraqi strategic attacks
against the Iranian oil production industry in the form of missile and air strikes,
with the Iranians having only a limited capacity to respond in kind. These Iraqi
attacks would continue throughout the war, focusing mainly on the Kharg Island
oil transfer point. The Iranians remained committed to the idea of total victory
exemplified by IRGC Minister Rafiq-Dusts statement stressing that a military
solution has become the only way to end the war.6 More ominous were
warnings that Iran would close the Straight of Hormuz to all shipping as a means
to prevent Iraqi oil from being sold abroad. This prospect of the war expanding
into international waters was taken as a threat to the national security of the
United States because it interrupted the flow of oil from the region and could
potentially destabilize the region even further.
Operationally, the IRGC and the hard-liners were convinced that massive
offensive action remained the only path to decisive victory. This should have led
to a reassessment of what this would require militarily. Given the precarious
state of the Iranian logistics system, a strategy of attrition across a broad front
6Teheran Radio Arabic Service, FBIS, 2 January 1985, i.
265
seemed a logical choice but was rejected because it did not reflect the big battle
view of the Maktabis and the IRGC.
It appears that little thought was given to pursuing the direct approach
aimed at Baghdad. The hard-liners rejected the idea of a direct strike at the
heart of Iraq-Baghdad. A mere 60 miles separated the Iraqi capital from the
central sector town of Qasr-e-Shirin on the Iranian side. Having spread the Iraqi
forces across the entire border, the Iranians could have launched an attack
aimed directly at the heart of Saddams regime. Such an attack would have
pressured other Iraqi forces to respond and unsettled the entire defensive
posture of Iraq. Instead the decision was made to seize Iraqs second-largest
city, Basra, isolated in the southern part of the country.
Tactically, the army-IRGC split continued at the command level, but there
was more cooperation in the execution of some operations. The army advocated
the complete commitment of regular and Pasdaran forces together in a
maneuver war with the purpose of encircling isolated Iraqi units and defeating
them. This would mean coordinated attacks in areas away from the heaviest
Iraqi defense, such as Basra. The IRGC continued to insist on direct assaults
that would isolate Basra but was willing to pursue tactical methods in addition to
the human wave assaults to achieve its objective.
As usual the SDC leadership sided with the IRGC and the tactics of
unrestrained attack, and plans were laid for another deliberate assault by IRGC
266
forces. Before the Iranians could organize a spring offensive, however, the
Iraqis launched an attack of their own.
On 28 January 1985, Iraq attacked to demonstrate to Iran that it
possessed the capability to take the initiative and could carry the war back to
Iran. A limited Iraqi attack against the Majnoon Islands, south of Basra, resulted
in the capture of a small territory in the marsh area, but the Iraqis made no effort
to advance beyond the initial gains. In this attack, Iraqi armored units were
successful where the terrain allowed, but their infantry was not capable of
dislodging the Iranians from most of their strongholds. Follow-up attacks in the
central sector were aimed at capturing the town of Qasr-e-Shirin but also
achieved very little.
On 11 March, the Iranians began Operation Badr, sending more than
100,000 men to attack the marshy Hawr al-Hawizah region north of Basra in an
attempt to cut it off from Baghdad. The operation was planned in three phases:
first, to assault from the marsh and seize dry land on the western side; second,
to move to the Basra highway; and third, to expand the bridgehead using the
highway to cut off Baghdad from Basra.7 The plan was for IRGC forces,
organized into six infantry divisions and eleven infantry brigades, to cross the
marshy area in the vicinity of the old border and cut the Tigris highway between
7Edgar OBallance, The Gulf War (London: Brasseys Defense Publishers, 1988), 160.
267
Basra and Baghdad.8 The army contributed six infantry brigades to the
operation, but played only a supporting role.
Army leaders objected to this replay of the Kheiber offensive, claiming that
human wave assaults over the same routes were a recipe for disaster. The army
continued to press for a more comprehensive war of attrition, in which it would
press the Iraqis with limited attacks along the entire border to wear them down.
This was rejected by the mullahs as too time consuming and not reflective of the
aggressive spirit of Islam.
As with the revolutionary movements in France and Russia, the spirit of
the offense was the only one embraced by the hard-liners in Tehran. Although it
is natural to consider only the offensive form of warfare decisive, the mullahs
further believed that victory lay in one decisive battle. Just as the Shiite religion
developed after several large-scale historic battles, such as Karbala, so too
would a final victory be found in the next massive Iranian offensive, the hard
liners believed. Therefore, militarily sound arguments about long-term attrition
never took hold in the political-ideological leadership because it was contrary to
the revolution and to the militant brand of Shiism embraced by the Maktabis.
The Badr offensive was launched by veteran Pasdaran forces, which led
the assault and achieved some success in capturing 500 square miles of territory
and even temporarily cutting off the Baghdad highway. The tactics used were
8Dingeman and Jupa, 75.
268
more conventional than earlier Pasdaran assaults, reflecting a more professional

approach. Pasdaran infantry sought and exploited weak points in the enemy
lines, instead of relying on continuous frontal assaults. However, the attack was
made almost exclusively by infantry and did not have the needed firepower or
mobility to take advantage of the initial success. Given the time Iran had to
prepare for this assault, the inability to exploit initial success meant the Iranians
were incapable of executing the sustained operations needed to achieve the
decisive blow they sought politically.
More critically, the Iranians seemed capable of conducting only one
operation at a time. For this offensive to succeed, one of two things needed to
occur: either the regular army forces had to immediately exploit the gap created
by the IRGC or another sustained offensive in a different location needed to
exploit the operational effects of the Iraqis massing their mobile reserves against
the initial thrust. Again, the combination of lack of unity and a precarious
strategic logistics situation prevented this from happening. Iraq could always
amass firepower against the single but challenging Iranian threat, in large part
due to warnings from American satellites.
Tactically, the Iraqis had learned some lessons over the years of fighting,
which they now applied in the battle. Mobile armored formations quickly reacted
to the breakthrough and counterattacked. Using combined arms and chemical
weapons, the Iraqis threw the Iranians back, with both sides suffering heavy
casualties. Iraqi losses were around 11,000 while the Iranians suffered some
269
15,000 casualties.9 Even though the Iraqis were successful in stalemating the
Iranians, the Badr offensive caused severe alarm in Baghdad because almost
the entire strategic reserve of the nation had to be committed to contain the
attackers. The Iranians inflicted nearly the same level of casualties as they
received and still gained ground in their initial assault. If such attacks continued,
the Iraqis would find themselves under intolerable pressure.
Saddam Hussein's answer was to try to widen the war with missile attacks
on Iranian cities and to launch air strikes against the oil terminal at Kharg Island
to cripple the only source of Iranian hard currency. Iran tried to respond in kind
but had limited deep-strike assets to employ. Instead, the Iranians regrouped
and prepared to launch a major ground offensive in 1986 by calling up all 18and 19-year-old males for emergency service in May 1985.
The summer of 1985 was the first time that dissatisfaction with the war
became more widespread. In April, Khomeini made a speech decrying media
reports of a growing peace movement as seditious.'10 On 17 May, there was a
traffic jam protest against the continuation of the war in a middle-class
neighborhood in Tehran that led to violence between the protestors and local
Pasdaran units.11 There were also increasing reports of young men avoiding the
9Karsh, 31.
10Khomeini Army Day speech, Teheran Radio, FBIS, 19 April 1985, i.
110 Ballance, 168.
270
draft. In September, more than 500 people were arrested for forging exemption
papers in return for bribes.12 In the fall elections, President Khameini won a
second term, and the Majlis confirmed the cabinet of Prime Minister Musavi,
meaning the status quo remained in effect politically.
Irans official outlook on the war also was unchanged: it sought total
victory. The specifics of the demands now included the elimination of the Iraqi
regime, $350 billion in reparations and the return of 200,000 refugees from
Iraq.13 For its part, Iraq continued to press fora political solution based on the
pre-war borders, a guarantee of peace, and non-interference in each others
affairs. Iraq skillfully highlighted the difference in strategic goals to portray the
Iranians as irrational and war-like. The Iranians were unsuccessful in causing
world opinion to focus on Iraqs original aggression, and Iraqs position became
stronger internationally as a result.
As they prepared for the new offensive, Khomeini again addressed the
problem of persistent military disunity, which continued to hamstring the Iranian
war effort. He reiterated the need for army and Revolutionary Guard unity,
warning that a divided nation could allow Irans enemies to stage a coup detat
to finish the job.14 The call for unity was not just for the military, but for the
12Press conference, Supreme Judiciary Council, FBIS, 13 September 1985, ii.

13Statement by Iranian Foreign Ministry, quoted in FBIS, 28 March 1985, i.
14Khomeini remarks, Teheran Radio, FBIS, 25 April, i.
271
clergy, who were still divided into hard-line (Maktabi) and pragmatist (Hujjatiyyah)
factions.
By 1986, the Pasdaran forces of the IRGC had gained considerable
combat experience and had learned painful battlefield lessons that improved the
quality of its force. Virtually all of these lessons were at the tactical level and
were confined to a single branch-infantry. Pasdaran units were expert in the
use of small arms, mortars, machine guns and overland and riverine infiltration
tactics. Unfortunately, they still had not learned the lessons of operational
maneuver critical to winning campaigns tied to the larger strategic objective. In
other words, the Pasdaran had become expert in the elan tactics at the small
unit level (battalion and below) but still lacked the ability to execute combined
arms attacks at the operational level. They had not learned the lessons of
World War I and continued to send troops over the top into automatic weapons
fire and targeted artillery zones despite repeated failures.
High-Water Mark
Despite its shortcomings, the IRGC was put in charge of the 1986
offensive, code-named Wal Fajr (Dawn) VIII. The goal of this operation was to
penetrate Iraq using a supporting attack of Basra as a diversion while sending
the main effort even further south toward the Faw Peninsula. For once, Iran
planned to attack operationally at two locations. The town of Faw had once
been a main oil terminal for Iraq but now sat abandoned, guarded only by some
272
reserve troops. Its value to Iran was that, if captured, it provided a direct route
north to Basra and would psychologically isolate the Iraqis from the Persian Gulf.
The Iranians attacked on 10 February with six Pasdaran infantry divisions,

five separate brigades, and Basij support, while the army provided four infantry
regiments to support the deception operation at Basra. Having deceived the
Iraqis into believing Basra was the target of the main effort, the Iranians hurled
more than 100,000 Pasdaran and 50,000 Basij at Faw. Using the skills learned
in the marshes the years before and rehearsed in the lake regions of northern
Iran, the Pasdaran surprised the Iraqi defenders. Under cover of bad weather
and darkness, and preceded by special operation frogmen, the Pasdaran
crossed the Shatt al Arab waterway on 10 February and captured the main town
of Faw. The winter weather favored the infantry-heavy IRGC forces, which
quickly dug in. Heavy rains bogged down the Iraqi Republican Guard mobile
units sent to dislodge the now entrenched Iranians. For once, the Pasdaran
artillery was effective and quickly turned back the first Iraqi relief force.15
On 13 February, the Iranians tried to exploit their success by attacking
west toward the only remaining Iraqi port, Umm Qasr. This attack failed because
the Pasdaran did not have the mobility to exploit the success at Faw. A
15Pelletiere, 18.
273
preplanned deliberate assault was one thing; to exploit that success took mobile
formations and a competent logistics system, something the IRGC still lacked.
Although boxed in on the Faw peninsula, the Iranians had caused near
panic in Baghdad and the rest of the Gulf states. If the Iranians could take Umm
Qasr, they would be on the border with Kuwait and the balance of power in the
region would be in jeopardy. To prevent this from happening, Saddam ordered
Faw to be retaken-and quickly. Iraqi armored forces tried to retake the area but
were repulsed for three weeks. The extreme wetness of the region prevented
the Iraqis from effectively taking advantage of their superior armor and firepower.
The IRGC infantry was extremely tenacious on the defensive, using dug-in
infantry positions every 300 yards studded with anti-tank weapons to stop the
Iraqi tanks. Iran attempted to push out from its foothold in Operation Karbala I
but could not muster the needed firepower to blast past the Iraqis. Still in
possession of 360 square miles of Iraqi territory, Iran was content to maintain a
foothold in Iraq, in what was now a battle of wills. Iran was confident it could
deal a decisive blow to the Iraqis. The Iranians, however, did not see the
incongruity of their position. The attack succeeded only because of the stealth
operational deception and quickness of the assault. It depended upon rapid
seizure and transition to the defense, a form of warfare they excelled at but did
not embrace as revolutionary and decisive. It was almost as if they believed they
could conduct one great offensive each year using the last years gains as a
jumping-off point. Of course, the Iraqis would have a voice in this issue.
274
Iraq responded by launching an attack that captured the town of Mehran

in the central sector. Saddam offered to exchange Mehran for the Faw
Peninsula, but the Iranians rejected his offer. The Iraqis could not adequately
defend the Mehran region from counterattack without committing units from the
strategic reserve and were thus vulnerable in the town itself. The Iranians
launched a counteroffensive on 10 June, code-named Karbala II, and retook
Mehran from the Iraqis using units from the Pasdaran. Predictably, the Iraqis
answered by trying to widen the war again. They reignited the oil tanker war and
missile attacks on the cities throughout the rest of the summer.
The result of the spring 1986 campaign was an intense period of
mobilization for both sides. The Iraqis were compelled to end the deferment of
students from conscription to man the war-fighting units needed at the front.
This was skillfully accomplished by encouraging students to join the prestigious
Republican Guard units as an alternative to conscription into a regular unit.
The Iranians sensed that Iraq had reached the limit of its manpower
reserves and lacked the will to continue fighting, and that one more decisive blow
would bring complete victory in a war that, so far, had claimed almost 120,000
Iraqis and almost 250,000 Iranians in six years.16
It was Iran's strategic offensive that had culminated. The combination of
international support for Iraq, inferior firepower and logistics, internal disunity and
16Hiro, 175.
275
inability to sustain the operational offensive rendered the Iranians incapable of

achieving their strategic goals. Internally, Iran experienced difficulty in raising
the manpower needed to continue the war at the previous pace and had to resort
to more coercive means to fill the ranks of the IRGC. Clerics leaned more
heavily on the local population to get the needed Pasdaran quotas.
Requirements for the Basij were raised from 5 percent or 10 percent of the total
available to 20 percent, in effect, doubling the requirement.17 Supplying the Basij
was also the responsibility of local towns that sponsored the unit, so in addition
to providing more men from the local economy, they also had to provide the
supplies for them. This became an increasing source of dissatisfaction locally.
On 2 November, the government decreed that even girls age 14 would receive
some military training within the Basij.18
One Final Push

The clerics announced that the war would be decisively won by 21 March
1987, the Iranian New Year. The limited success of multiple attacks used in the
previous year was abandoned in favor of one final offensive advocated by
Rafsanjani, Rezaii, and the other hard-liners. In April, the senior military
commanders of Iran gathered in Tehran to hear Rafsanjani describe efforts to
17Hiro, 191.
180 Ballance, 187.
276
gain the final victory. This entailed raising 500 new battalions along the lines of
the Basij, organized into the Mohammed Mobilization Corps. This required the
mobilization of an additional 500,000 soldiers.19 To achieve this, the conscription
laws were substantially tightened and schools were closed. IRGC commander
Mushin Rezai announced the call up in this way: "So far in the imposed war, only
two percent of the country's popular forces and twelve percent of its economic
forces have been utilized....We are on the threshold of a full-scale people's war,
and this is the only path."20
In preparation for the final offensive, the Iranians launched a winter
offensive in 1986 to seize the jumping-off points for the 1987 attacks. On 24
December, the Iranians began the Karbala IV offensive with the goal of crossing
the Shatt al Arab north of Faw, cutting the road behind the main Iraqi defense,
and eventually reaching Basra. The plan was masterminded by Rafsanjani
himself and was opposed by many leading military men.21 The attack was to
begin with the seizure of the island of Umm Rassas in the Shatt (10 miles south
of Basra), then use it as a jumping-off point for subsequent attacks.22 Again the
IRGC spearheaded this attack with nearly 200,000 Pasdaran and Basij troops.
One division was to seize Umm Rassas, while three others crossed the river
19Pelletiere, 20-21.
Hiro, 171.
210 Ballance, 190.
Pelletiere, 21.
277
nearby and attacked the Iraqi defenses. Unlike the Faw attack, this time the
Iraqis were prepared. Intelligence provided by the United States had forewarned
of a large troop build-up in the area, and the Iranian assaults were becoming
predictable. The Iraqis blasted the attacking Iranians with coordinated direct and
indirect fire from well-prepared positions. After two days of heavy fighting, the
Iranians withdrew, suffering 8,000 casualties compared with 3,000 for Iraq.23
The Iranians rationalized the failure of Karbala IV as merely a diversionary
attack but because there was no other attack during that time, this was clearly
untrue. Instead, the Iranians regrouped and launched another offensive about a
week later, still believing that one final battle would settle the war.
Karbala V: A Turning Point

Even the most ardent hard-liners realized that at some point they would
have to match the fervor of their own troops with material solutions at least
proximate to the Iraqi capabilities. Long years of war with no regularized system
of equipment or spare parts resupply prevented total victory, whether the victory
was through strategic attrition as the army advocated, or through the final, big
battle sought by the IRGC. The reality was that attrition could not work without
sufficient stocks to place continual and heavy pressure on the Iraqis.
Conversely, the human wave assaults would never succeed without heavy fire
23Hiro, 180.
278
support and mobile forces to exploit the initial breach whether the army or IRGC
led them.
Remedies to these problems took the form of cannibalization of existing
systems, use of captured Iraqi stocks and refurbishing them with Soviet
technicians, and the build-up of home industries to create parts.24 All of these
efforts came up short. Battlefield success required gaining access to critical
parts that only one nation could provide-the United States. A secret deal was
brokered to bring critical long range anti-tank and anti-aircraft parts to Iran in
exchange for the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by proKhomeini, Shiite terrorists. The deal was approved at the highest level, ironically
signaling that to achieve a pure ideological battlefield victory required a
compromise with the ultimate ideological enemy, the Great Satan, America.
For the Iranians, the fruits of that deal were seen in Karbala V. Hawk anti
aircraft missiles quickly shot down Iraqi MIG fighters and forced others to fly low
to avoid radar, where they were extremely vulnerable to ground fire. Heavy
aircraft losses subsequently caused the Iraqis to operate aircraft at even higher,
less efficient altitudes. Lack of air support prevented the Iraqis from easily
targeting Iranian troop formations and gave the Iranians more mobility.
On the ground, recently acquired American tube launched optically guided
(TOW) missiles, with a range of 1.8 miles, devastated the Iraqi armor.
240 Ballance, 199.
279
Previously, the Iranians employed only hand-held anti-tank weapons that

required a range of 220 to 330 yards, or closer, to be effective. With the TOW
missiles in full operation, the Soviet made T-55 and T-62 tanks could not get
within effective main gun range to hit Iranian positions. Possessing these two
defensive weapons alone altered the battle calculus and gave the Iranians parity
with which to engage the Iraqi prepared positions and pave the way to initial
success.
In the Karbala V assault itself, the Iranians hurled 11 divisions of IRGC
troops across the Shatt al Arab toward Basra in an attempt of isolate that city.
They quickly crossed the Shatt and occupied the town of Shalamche, but were
held up by a series of water barriers constructed by the Iraqis between the river
and Basra. Using these barriers as obstacles, the Iraqis poured deadly fire into
the attacking Iranians, who were still fighting without army armor and artillery
support. Despite the early gains by some well-trained Pasdaran units, the
Iranian attacks soon ran out of momentum.
The Iraqis counterattacked but soon were slowed by the Pasdaran
infantry, still adept at defending in broken terrain. Ironically, it may have been
critical weapons and repair parts for anti-aircraft and anti-tank systems received
from the Americans in the embarrassing Iran-gate scandal that kept the usual
Iraqi counterattack at bay. After a week of fighting, the Iranians captured only 26
square miles of Iraqi territory between the Shatt al Arab and the water barriers.
The main Iraqi defensive lines remained intact.
280
Unwilling to give up the initiative, the Iranians immediately transitioned to

the next Karbala offensive. Karbala VI was launched on 13 January 1987 in the
central sector around Qasr-e-Shirin to relieve pressure on the Basra front. The
regular forces organized this attack, which succeeded in capturing about 100
square miles of Iraqi territory. That this attack was not more closely coordinated
with the main effort at Basra is a clear indication that the dual command structure
of the Iranian war effort was not working. Had the army been used to reinforce
IRGC success or as a diversion before Karbala IV to draw off Iraqi reserves, the
outcome may have been different. As it was, Karbala V and VI did not support
each other at the critical point during the advance of the Pasdaran troops and
only served to relieve some pressure on the IRGC around Basra after the assault
had lost momentum.
Iran continued the assaults in the south, still under the Karbala V code
name, but the window of opportunity no longer existed. Iraq strengthened this
critical sector and amassed enough fire support to prevent the Iranians from
breaking through. The progress of the Iranians assault was slow, sometimes
only one kilometer per day. They pushed within seven miles of Basra, however,
before they were stopped.25
Again, the army played no role in Karbala V and was not even present in
this sector of the battlefield. The Iranians continued to divide the war fronts,
2Slranian military communique, FBIS, 20 January 1987.
281
giving the most critical sectors around Basra to the IRGC, while the army was
assigned secondary areas in the north. Valuable armor and artillery support was
thus not available to the IRGC at this critical moment. On 26 February, the
Iranians called off the Karbala V offensive. Pasdaran losses were about 20,000
in the offensive, with many units taking up to 25 percent losses, while the Basij
had 50,000 casualties.26 Iraqi casualties were about 25,000 total. In addition to
losing large numbers of troops, the Iranians lost much of the quality Pasdaran
troops it had taken years to build up. The loss of the most zealous and battlehardened junior officers and NCOs severely hurt the IRGC. These selfgenerated leaders, possessing both revolutionary zeal and professional
experience, could not be replaced easily, especially by a nation struggling to
provide needed personnel replacements. The Khomeini regime was starting to
feel the strain of waging modem war over an extended period of time.
Just a week before the end of Karbala V, Khomeini prepared the Iranian
people for the battlefield defeat by saying: "The waging of war needed to be
seen as a divine cause rather than a single final offensive.27 He lauded the effort
of the Iranian soldiers, describing them as martyrs sitting on high in heaven
where they see how their drops of blood have joined to create a massive flood
and storm which is shaking the foundations of the palaces of oppression and
Wright, 156.
27Hiro, 183.
282
tyranny.28 Significantly, Khomeini did not claim the Karbala V offensive as a

military victory, but instead labeled it epic and one that aroused the
amazement and astonishment of the world.29 The final offensive remained as
elusive as ever to the people, and to some hard-liners, still as alluring.
Khomeinis soaring rhetoric did not match the changing mood of the
Iranian citizenry. The people started to see the war as a hopeless quagmire in
which their leaders promised victory after each battle but still had to conduct one
more final" offensive. The cemeteries around the nation were filled with the
graves of young men martyred for a cause that seemed no closer to victory than
when the war started. Significantly, in April 1987, Tehran had its first major anti
war demonstration, reflecting the growing war weariness now enveloping the
nation.
By this time in the war, even the hard-core elements in the IRP were
divided over which path the regime should take in prosecuting the war. Most key
leaders favored continuation of the war. The question was how far should Iran
proceed in pursuing its revolutionary goals. Some, such as Majlis Speaker
Rafsanjani, thought the toppling of Saddam Hussein was sufficient to end the
war, in effect, not requiring the establishment of an Iranian-style Islamic republic.
Others, including Khomeini, continued to favor the export of revolution into Iraq
Khomeini Revolution Day 5 February 1987, Teheran Radio, FBIS, 6 February 1987,
i.
FBIS, 6 February 1987, i.
283
and other Islamic countries. Significantly, both groups favored continued armed
action beyond the borders of Iran for ideological reasons. The Hujjatiyyah was
just a bit more pragmatic in the ultimate goals it sought.
This meant that the Iranians would continue to pursue the defeat of Iraq
through the current Karbala offensives. Like the armies of World War I seeking
that one final breakthrough, the Iranians launched another Karbala offensive.30
Karbala VII was launched in early March 1987 in the northern Kurdistan region
under army control. Both regular and IRGC troops combined to capture the
strategic heights in bitter mountain fighting. Using infiltration tactics, Pasdaran
units overwhelmed the Iraqis and captured the area around Hajj Umran. Again,
Iraqi counterattacks failed to dislodge the Iranians from their positions.
Unfortunately for the Iranians, this tactical success was not tied to a larger
strategic purpose, other than to continue to attack.
The Basra sector remained quiet until April when Karbala VIII was
launched, achieving virtually nothing. The Iranians were not conducting tactical
attacks as part of a campaign plan that would cause Iraq to have to commit all of
its reserves and therefore weaken them everywhere. Until Iran could cause the
Iraqis to expend its reserve forces, it could not capitalize on its population
^ h e Iranian Karbala offensives are eerily similar to the Isonzo offensives undertaken
by the Italians against the Austrians in World War I. In brutally mountainous terrain, the
Italians launched 12 Isonzo offensives, none of which broke through decisively and only
resulted in huge losses and an Austrian-German counteroffensive that was much more
threatening.
284
advantage, which it realized was its only physical advantage over Iraq. These
sequential, piecemeal attacks could not put enough pressure on Iraq's limited
reserves to make them crack. The Iraqis thus used superior mobility to rush
troops to the threatened sector to defeat the current crisis.
Again, the continued failure to coordinate large-scale offensive action was
a direct result of the dismal state of logistics in the Iranian armed forces.
Internationally isolated, the Iranians were having a hard time finding spare parts
for their weapons. They had cannibalized every piece of equipment in their
inventory and used captured stocks whenever they could. They scoured the
international arms market for whatever was available. The result was a varied
inventory, with no regular system of resupply. IRGC units often developed their
own logistics systems, and overall the army and IRGC had two completely
separate systems.31 Given Iran's strategic isolation, the dual command system
exacerbated the logistics problems to the point that Iran could not effectively
coordinate the limited armor, artillery, and air assets toward a single end.
Despite these adverse conditions, the Iranians continued to conduct
offensive operations in spring 1987. Turning their attention north, the Iranians
coordinated with Kurdish rebels to capture several towns in northern Iraq. The
Karbala IX offensive began on 10 April, and units of the regular army captured
31Pelletiere, 23.
285
the strategic heights around Suleimaniya.32 The Iraqis responded by using

chemical weapons on the towns in the region believed to be occupied by Kurdish
rebels, including the attack on the town of Halabja, which killed hundreds of
civilians.
The Iranians tried to follow up this limited success by starting their Karbala
X offensive on 26 April and, subsequently, Operation Nasr (Victory) designed to
capture a large section of northern Iraq and the hydroelectric dams that supplied
Baghdad with much of its power. While the Iranians gained some territory in
Iraq, they were again incapable of following up even modest success with a
sustained effort.33 Again, the Iraqis responded by widening the war, this time by
striking the American warship USS Stark in the Persian Gulf. The Iraqis claimed
it was an accident, but it did rivet U.S. attention on the Persian Gulf. The
Iranians then mined the Persian Gulf and attacked some Kuwaiti tankers in
retaliation for Kuwait's support for Iraq. The United States responded by
reflagging the Kuwaiti tankers and escorting them through the Persian Gulf.
The dominant IRGC now boasted of its own navy, which sent patrol boats
to attack U.S. naval ships and mine the strait. The result was the sinking of
several Iranian vessels and the brief occupation of several off-shore oil
Hiro, 185.
Iranian military communique, FBIS, 29 April 1987, i.
286
platforms. It became clear to the Iranians that action against the United States
on the open seas was an invitation to disaster.
The Tide Turns

By the summer of 1987, Iran faced an Iraq rearmed with new Soviet
equipment. Iraq had the political support of most Arab states and was receiving
heavy financial help from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which helped pay for
the new weapons. The U.S. Navy was deployed in force in the Gulf with an eye
toward Iran. Iran's oil manufacturing sector was in shambles, and it had little
hard currency to spend on weapons. It was isolated internationally, with no key
allies to provide support. The Iraqis were receiving intelligence support from the
West, arms from Russia and Western Europe, and political support from the
Arab states (except from Syria and Libya). The Iraqi population supported
Saddam Hussein in the defensive war while the Iranian regime faced growing
internal unrest as casualties continued to mount. Moreover, there seemed to be
no end in sight to the conflict with Iraq.
The seemingly endless Karbala campaigns had been costly in men and
equipment. Iranian losses were estimated at 70,000 compared with 10,000 for
the Iraqis.34 Iraq had an advantage in armor of four to one, in aircraft ten to one,
"Pelletiere, 23.
287
and in artillery three to one over Iran.35 The IRGC had to resort to conscription for
the first time, and the zeal of its new recruits was clearly not as great as that of
the early volunteers. Even the IRGC commander Rezai began to have doubts
about the revolutionary outlook he once championed. Said Rezai:
They had armor and we did not. If our circumstances in the war are not
taken into account when comparisons are made with classical warfare, it
will be a major error on the part of analysts. We were unarmed
infantrymen against the enemy's cavalry. There are few instances in the
history of Islam of such a war.36
Rezai seemed to be acknowledging the importance of modem weapons,
on one hand, while trying to justify the continued need for conducting the war
along Islamic terms, on the other. Rezai now seemed to be trying to justify the
way Iran was being forced to wage war instead of the way it chose to wage war.
This represented a change in ideological outlook, one that moved away from the
revolutionary approach to war.
Iran seemed to be confused about which direction it should proceed with
the war. An editorial in the Tehran Times stated two options: "Either mobilize the
full resources of the nation to launch a long, multi-pronged offensive to end the
conflict with victory, or continue the present war of attrition."37 While that debate
went on, the minimalists in the Iranian regime were successful in reducing Iran's
Chubin, 18.
Îbid.
37Hiro, 189.
288
war aims to the removal of Saddam Hussein but not the Baath Party.38 The
factional dispute in the IRP reached the point where Khomeini called for
mediation. When this did not work, Khomeini declared the IRP disbanded as of
2 June 1987.39 Now the Majlis was the only institution not under the executive
control of Khomeini.
Iran continued to talk of another round of Karbala offensives in the later
part of 1987 and early 1988 but did not have the strength to execute them. At a
major strategy conference, the Iranian leadership concluded that the Karbala
campaigns had been so costly that no 1988 offensive was possible and that it
would take the armed forces five years to retrain before they could attack
again.40 Instead, Iran became preoccupied with the U.S. Navy in the Gulf.
Revolutionary Iran regarded the United States as an enemy, and many
radicals within the IRGC were eager to confront the Americans in combat. The
presence of American ships in the Gulf appeared to the Iranians as an American
attempt to help Iraq. IRGC naval units continued to spar with the American ships
and suffered as a result. Offshore oil platforms as well as mine-laying ships and
patrol boats were sunk in a series of actions and counteractions, none of which
MChubin, 20.
39Guardian, London, 3 June 1987.
^Pelletiere, 23.
289
was to Iran's advantage. While the Iranians focused on events in the Gulf, the
Iraqis were preparing to take the offensive in an effort to regain their lost territory.
After conducting extensive rehearsals in the early spring of 1988, the
Iraqis launched a multiple division attack to retake the Faw peninsula. On 16
April, the Iraqis struck the Iranian defensive positions with armor, artillery, air
attacks, chemical weapons, and helibome assaults. The combined arms assault
caught the Iranians offguard, and they quickly retreated over the Shatt al Arab
back into Iran. Two days later, American warplanes damaged another oil
platform in retaliation for a mining incident. When the Iranians moved naval units
out off Bandar Abbas, the American Navy responded by sinking one frigate and
severely damaging another. Over half of Iran's Navy was now out of action.
Cumulative losses and the continuing war caused Iranian civilian morale to
plummet. Calls for further mobilization to fight the twin threats of advancing
Iraqis and imperialist Americans were not well received by the people because
calls for more volunteers went unheeded.41
Iran was now in crisis. Despite its lack of equipment and spare parts, it
had maintained the initiative in the war since 1982. Now it was Iraq that dictated
the pace of the war. What Iran had counted on during the early days of the war
was the power of zeal in committing troops to offensive actions that, although not
always militarily successful, kept the pressure on Iraq. Iran no longer held the
41Hiro, 205.
290
initiative, and its ability to rally its own citizens to provide the necessary spirit to
fight had become questionable. Ominously, the Iraqis started taking large
numbers of prisoners and draft dodging was becoming more popular, with many
young Iranians avoiding conscription by fleeing to Turkey.
Bitter Poison of Compromise

From mid-June 1988, the Iranian regime became more heavy-handed in
dealing with its internal problems. The disbanding of the IRP silenced some of
the moderates in the government, but Khomeini went further, declaring. T h e
God-given absolute mandate to govern was the most important of the divine
commandments and has priority over all other derivative commandments-even
prayer, fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca.42 This is a remarkable statement in that
it meant the rule of Islamic law as governed by the Koran was superseded by the
regime's own interpretation. What was previously an authoritarian regime whose
legitimacy was based both on traditional law of the Koran and the charismatic
appeal of Khomeini became more of a dictatorship guided by Khomeini's
interpretation of religious and civil law. The government became more
repressive and coercive, summarily arresting and punishing those in violation of
the rationing rules and those accused of hoarding food or conducting anti-lslamic
business practices. The driving force of the revolution, a sense of purist Islamic
42lbid.
291
identification coupled with a historic mission to fight against oppression was

turned against itself. The government became more like that under the Shah,
and it used the war to maintain an oppressive situation.
The Majlis elections in April settled nothing, with tempers rising on both
the moderate and radical sides over what course of action to take in the war. On
25 May, the Iraqis staged another offensive, using non-persistent nerve agent
and heavy artillery to blast the Iranians out of Shalamche. The Iraqis took a
page out of the Pasdaran playbook and preceded the attack with commando
units that infiltrated the Iranian positions. Unlike the Iranians, the Iraqis followed
the infiltration with armor and air attacks, which overwhelmed the Iranians in just
eight hours.43 The brutal heat discouraged many Iranians from donning their
protective masks, and casualties to the chemical attacks were higher than
before.
Responding to the recent loss, Khomeini reiterated the ideological aspects
of the struggle. He stated, "The combatants must continue their fight by
depending on their faith in God and their weapons. The outcome of the war will
be decided on the battlefields, not through negotiations.44 In early June,
Khomeini finally ordered the creation of a field command that included both army
and IRGC forces under Rafsanjani as new commander in chief. Earlier in the
43Pelletiere, 34.
Hiro, 207.
292
war, Rafsanjani had rejected the idea of a unified command saying, "The Army is
a long-established and classical organization, whereas the Revolutionary Guard
Corps is revolutionary and self-motivated.45 Now feeling the pressure of the Iraqi
attacks, the Iranians knew they could no longer afford two separate military
forces, but it was too late to unify their forces and have a meaningful effect on
the war.
In late June 1988, the Iraqis launched another lightning assault, this time
on the Majnoon Islands east of Basra, to eject the Iranians from the area. Again
the Iraqis used a combination of maneuver, firepower and chemical weapons to
overwhelm the Iranians. A brigade of paratroopers was dropped into Iran to
isolate the defenders, while massed artillery smashed into the defenders. In only
four hours, the Iranian defenses were broken and large numbers of prisoners
were taken. In July, the Iraqis retook much of the mountainous region in the
north. Iran called these defeats temporary setbacks and vowed to fight on. But
behind this facade, senior Iranian leaders were convinced that the war needed to
end.
A meeting on 14 July of top political, religious and military leaders led to a
recommendation that Iran accept the UN resolution calling for a cease-fire and
the return to the pre-war borders. This recommendation was passed on to the
Majlis and the Assembly of Experts. Both bodies endorsed it and forwarded it
Îbid.
293
through Rafsanjani to Khomeini for approval. Saying that accepting this

proposal was worse than swallowing poison, Khomeini reluctantly agreed.
Iranians were stunned because no ranking leader within the government had
seriously advocated accepting peace. Khomeini explained the decision two days
later in an address to the nation saying, "I consider it to be in the interest of the
revolution and the system at this juncture.46
Now it was Iraq's turn to expand its war aims. Iraq demanded guaranteed
access through the Shatt al Arab before a cease-fire went into place. Actually,
Saddam intended to press home his military advantage and used this delay as a
pretext. Iraqi forces continued to attack in late July, advancing 40 miles into Iran
in the Khuzistan area. This set off another wave of patriotism in Iran, and
another group of volunteers went to the front: this time to save Iran. In two days
of bloody fighting, the Iranians actually threw back the Iraqis. Iraq finally
accepted the cease-fire proposal in August 1988. After eight long years of war
and 700,000 casualties for both sides, the war was over.
Conclusion
The years 1985 to 1988 were ones when Irans ideological grasp was
longer than its military reach. The strategic goal of eliminating the Baathist
regime and perhaps extending a fundamentalist Shiite revolution into Iraq was
Îbid.
294
not matched by the means needed to achieve it. There were critical failures at
all three levels of war which could not be compensated by the zealous battlefield
performance of its Pasdaran and Basij infantry.
Strategically, the Iranians became more and more isolated in the
international arena. Operationally, the military effort was hamstrung by disunity
and an incoherent campaign plan that failed to capitalize on the nations physical
and revolutionary advantages. Tactically, while there was a definite
improvement in the professional capabilities of the armed forces, it was not
sufficient to overcome the huge firepower advantage the Iraqis held.
In short, Iran failed to sufficiently professionalize its war effort to achieve
the decisive battlefield victory its ideology demanded. The government failed to
adequately provision the armed forces with heavy weapons and sustainment;
instead it gloried in its isolation from the West and attempted to use the human
spirit of its soldier-martyrs as a substitute for tanks, artillery, air support and a
sound plan to achieve victory. Despite Khomeinis constant sermonizing on the
need for military and national unity, separate army and IRGC commands
remained in effect until almost the very end of the war. Khomeini repeatedly
asserted that the army was the primary force of national defense yet allowed the
expansion and even predominance of the IRGC. All major offensive actions in
the later part of the war were IRGC efforts, and all promised complete victory.
This is incongruous with the idea of the army as the primary instrument of
military power.
295
It was at the operational level that Irans overemphasis on ideology can

best be observed and the dominance of subjective rather than objective control
of the military became most dear. The concept of the big battle allowed the
hard-liners to match ideological means with ends, sending thousands of
passionate Iranians to their deaths in needless frontal assaults. The lack of
professional growth of the military institutions, starting with SDC decisions to give
all meaningful operational missions to the IRGC, reflected this subjective view.
Tactically, the concept of human wave assaults is foreign to Western
political and military thinking; however, they could have achieved the desired
result if they were used differently. There were many occasions, such as the
Kheiber and Karbala V offensives, in which the Iranians broke the initial Iraqi
defenses, either through stealth and surprise or just sheer numbers of
infantrymen, only to fail to achieve a larger breakthrough to rout the Iraqis. Irans
operational failure was misusing this weapon in achieving the larger goal and
maximizing all assets to achieve it. In none of these major offenses was the
army used in a significant way to capitalize on initial gains. The best that can be
said is that the army was a useful diversion in drawing off Iraqi reserves.
The Iranian case is not historically unique because many revolutionary
regimes have found themselves at war at home or abroad. In the more
successful cases, the military forces have had a unity of effort and a sense of
professionalism at all levels of war, using ideology as a backdrop for motivation
or a complement to traditional strategy and tactics.
296
Unlike Napoleon, the Iranians did not strike the proper balance between
professionalism and ideology. Napoleon capitalized on the passion and loyalty
of the individual citizen-soldier by dispersing columns on the march, never
having to worry about the mass desertions plaguing his rival aristocratic armies.
As a result, he could both minimize his central logistics requirements by having
the columns live off the land and converge his forces on an enemy at the time
and place of his choosing. In all his campaigns, the passion of the French
revolutionary soldier served as a complement to the professional goal.
In both the Iranian and French cases, the formation of a body of
revolutionary soldiers with expansionist goals caused their external foes to band
together at the strategic level. Napoleon could not overcome the combined
forces of Russia, Britain, Prussia and Austria just as Iran could not overcome
Iraq, the conservative Gulf states, most of the Arab states and limited support
from both the Soviet Union and the United States. But unlike Napoleon, the
Iranians faced only one foe on the battlefield and outnumbered it throughout the
war but could not overcome it.
Chapter 8
Conclusion
Ideological systems are the most demanding of all in the political

spectrum. The sense of righteousness that encompasses the cause extends
beyond the political realm. Ideological systems normally demand not only
decisive victory but dictate the manner in which it must occur.
For the military component of an ideological regime engaged in war, the
element of passion is also critical. Units fired by ideological fervor have a
psychological edge over their opponents and this factor may enable them to
march farther, fight longer and endure more hardships than others less fanatical.
However, emotion is not the determining factor in wars, especially protracted

wars. How well the military performs in achieving the strategic goal is more
critical.
Truly professional militaries are not only well motivated, but employ sound
doctrine, are equipped with modem weapons and are led by competent leaders
who understand the value of training and the tenets of military science. Most
important is the ability to link actions on the battlefield with a clear,
understandable, and reachable goal at the strategic level. Although it is possible
for cold professionalism and fiery passion to exist within the same force,
297
298
ideological regimes are often distrustful of traditional militaries and the values
they bring.
Irans revolutionary government faced a daunting but old challenge when
forced to go to war with Iraq in September 1980. That challenge was nothing
less than the preservation of the revolution through military action. Although
their ideological predecessors in revolutionary France and in 1917 Russia faced
similar circumstances, there were some basic differences in their reactions. Key
among these was understanding all aspects of their own ideology; and parlaying
ideological strengths into battlefield success while limiting the impact of
ideological limitations. Another factor was fostering a unity of effort at all levels
of conflict from the tactical level at the front to fostering alliances internationally in
order to secure an advantageous strategic position. For Iran, ideology
demanded not only an uncompromising set of ends, but a similarly radical ways
and means to achieve them. The factors may serve to highlight key aspects of
the framework developed in Chapter 3.
Scope of Ideas
One important difference was the scope of the revolution. Although the
revolution in Iran was comprehensive in nature, it did not represent the break in
tradition that the French Revolution did. The French Revolution completely
radicalized politics in Europe by redefining the relationship between the
individual and the state. In effect, it marked the passage point between the
299
autocratic system, which proscribed mass participation in government, and the

harnessing of the population to the state. That it was done in a manner that
engendered voluntary cooperation was particularly important, because it enabled
the French nation to nearly conquer Europe. Beyond the power of the bayonet,
the French revolutionary soldier exported an idea that eventually took root in
many parts of Europe-that of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In other words, the
success of the revolution was ultimately measured in long-term political
consequences, not short-term battlefield conquests.
The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution. Revolutionary Marxism
drew adherents not only within Russia, but elsewhere in the industrialized world
and eventually beyond that. The strength of the ideology lay in its universality,
attracting adherents from across the world. While the Bolsheviks received little
in the way of material support from outside sources, the force of that universal
idea did serve their cause well. The eventual demise of that ideology had more
to do with its bankruptcy politically and economically than any loss sustained on
the battlefield.
On the other hand, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 did not fire the
imagination of the masses outside their own borders to any significant degree.
While Iran was successful in attracting adherents in Lebanon and elsewhere,
there was no corresponding groundswell of support such as the French
Revolution brought. In fact, the opposite occurred, as one Arab nation after
another expressed growing concern about the spread of revolutionary Shiism
300
across the border. Much of this had to do with the historical animosity between
the Iranian Persians and the neighboring Arab states. Twelver Shiism as an
ideology could not overcome historic differences as the Sunni-Shiite split is as
much an historic feud as it is religious. While major European states aligned to
stop Napoleons conquest, the influence of the French Revolution continued to
be felt in the region well beyond France. Not so in the Iranian case, where there
has been little long-term impact of the Iranian Revolution in the fabric of most
society throughout the Middle East, especially those with a sizable Sunni
population. With the exception of the Taliban in Afghanistan, no corresponding
theocracies have emerged, and fundamentalist groups continue to struggle to
gain legitimacy, often resorting to violent insurgency as the only method of
achieving their goals
Strategic Leadership
For a nation waging an ideological war, it was ironic that the Iranian
Revolution failed to produce a military leader who understood the interaction
between politics and war. The level of understanding of grand strategy, that
murky art of fitting together the large pieces to understand the overall situation, is
a critical component of any nation at war, whether ideological or not. It requires
a synergy between the supreme political leaders and the senior military officers
for the nation to succeed. Examples of successes would be President Roosevelt
and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower in World War II or Ho Chi Minh and his political
301
successors and Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh and later, Gen. Nguyen Giap of North
Vietnam. In both cases, a military strategy was formed to meet the unique
political and strategic challenges faced by each side. Eisenhower, despite very
limited command experience, was an effective Allied commander, credited first
and foremost with maintaining a unified Allied effort to defeat the Germans. Giap
was the brilliant field strategist, who took the political teachings of Mao and Ho
Chi Minh and applied them to a military organization. The successful merger of
ideology and battlefield strategy enabled the North Vietnamese to wage a
successful guerrilla campaign and later, a conventional invasion. In these cases,
ideology was not the decisive factor but the rather the ability to translate broad
political goals into a strategic framework that could be operationalized on the
battlefield.
in the French case, Napoleon was a professional officer who assumed the
mantle of political power and used the energy of the revolution to fuel his armies.
Napoleon knew enough about politics to gain power in France but did not
appreciate the impact of the French war machine on Europe. His aim of
conquest was not based on an accurate assessment of what was politically
possible, but on a belief of the invincibility of his cause and the spiraling nature of
global war. As one victory begot another, the conflict grew and drew more
powers into the fray. Consequently, he was forced to face a continually evolving
coalition united in their opposition to him and France but little else.
302
In contrast to Napoleon, the Bolsheviks had a complementary team of

Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky to lead their effort. While Lenin provided the
direction of the revolution, Trotsky secured it on the battlefield. Like Eisenhower,
Trotskys strength was not in command experience (he had no combat
experience), but in his ability to organize and focus the military effort. Trotskys
contribution was the ability to make political judgments, and combine zeal and
determination to rally and to control the masses needed to fill the ranks of the
fledgling Red Army in a struggle that virtually saved the Bolshevik Revolution.1
The Iranians had neither a Napoleon, Eisenhower nor Trotsky to

complement the ideological leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The closest
was President Bani Sadr who had a sound grasp of the geopolitical situation and
recognized the need to unify all aspects of the Iranian war effort to be victorious.
Once he was driven from power no other leader emerged with the ability to
realize the war goals of Iran. The division between the hard-liners and the
moderates grew worse, and no military commander had both the vision and the
power to be successful. The result was continued fracturing of the war effort and
an inability to understand that the major Arab powers and the United States were
determined to confine the Iranian Revolution to Iran.
Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky, The Eternal Revolutionaiy, trans. and ed. Harold Shukman
(New York, The Free Press, 1996), 126.
303
Both major factions accepted the expansion of Irans goals with the only
disagreement being whether just Saddam should be forced out or the entire
Baathist structure. Although this preserved a loose sense of political unity, it put
Iran in a tremendous geopolitical disadvantage with no important allies, no
source of replenishment, and increasing international opposition to its cause. In
short, its ideological purpose provided a general azimuth for prosecuting the war
but no leader below Khomeini could guide the Iranians to its realization.
Strategic, Operational and Tactical Unity

Conventional war exists on three levels. The first and highest level is the
strategic, in which all elements of national power are employed to achieve a
broad objective. The second level is the operational, in which a series of battles
are orchestrated as part of an overall campaign tied to the strategic level. The
third level is the tactical, which is the ability to win battles or engagements.2
Mastering the art and science of war requires the synchronization of all three
levels. The comprehensive nature of an ideological regime does not guarantee
this unity of effort. Of the three revolutionary cases, only the Bolshevik regime
had this unity of effort at all three levels. The revolutionary French, despite all of
their battlefield mastery at the tactical and operational levels, never tied it to an
achievable and coherent strategic purpose. As for the Iranians, there were
2United States Army Field Manual 100-1, The Army (Washington, June 1994), 31.
304
weaknesses at all three levels, with only the tactical level showing any possibility
of success.
In the early years of the French Revolution (1789-92) the revolutionary
fervor of equality, fraternity, and liberty caused a huge influx of volunteers into
the army. This period of initial zeal gave France an advantage over its
neighbors, which relied on conscripted peasants and mercenaries to fill their
ranks. From 1792 through the Napoleonic Wars, France reaped the benefits of
sustaining zeal of patriotism and duty.3 While not as fervent as the initial period,
this period was characterized by the whole of French society accepting
revolutionary values. French citizens, well versed in their duties to the patrie,
had institutionalized the values of the revolution and accepted mass
conscription, the nationalization of property, and an almost constant war footing
for the sake of forming the foundation of a new France.
Only Napoleons professional revolutionary army was able to realize
operational and tactical success. Its new organizational structure, revamped
leadership, and changed operational and tactical employment were so different
from the past that they could not be anything but a reflection of new thinking.
While the revolutionary government was successful in defending France, the
impact of this new order was not fully felt until Napoleon. By the time he was
crowned emperor, the ideals and programs of the revolution were part of the
3Lynn, 177-78.
305
social and military fabric of the country. Napoleons leadership perfectly

complemented a veteran national force already confident as a military force and
manned by and large by those who held revolutionary values.
By 1799, the army was more professional than revolutionary. Years of
campaigning against the Austrians and British forged a battle-hardened force
that was able to meet and defeat any foe. Promotions from within a largely
conscripted force provided the best raw material, while new tactics and
organizations evolved during the revolutionary days, providing an operational
and tactical edge. It was an army that traveled light, could approach an
operational target from several directions, amass only when needed, deploy men
in dispersed formations without fear of widespread desertions, and call upon the
full resources of a well-developed, dynamic nation that believed in its political
system.
By 1806, the Grande Armee had only one in 30 from the pre-revolutionary
army while over one-third of the force had six years or more combat experience.
Although most were conscripts from the levee en masse system, many were still
volunteers from the 1792-1794 campaigns.4 Commenting on their performance in
battle, Clausewitz was awed: "You have to have seen the steadfastness of the
forces trained and led by Bonaparte...seen them under fierce and unrelenting
fire to get some sense of what can be accomplished by troops steeled by long
4Elting, 123.
306
experience in danger, in whom a proud record of victories has instilled the noble
prince of placing the highest demands on themselves. As an idea alone it is
unbelievable.5
Frances revolutionary army was not at its conquering height just after the
French Revolution, but years later when it was fully professionalized under
Napoleon. Using the revolution as a foundation, Napoleon built a military force
that was effective at all three levels of war. In battle, his well-trained forces
executed precise and rapid maneuvers and combined arms, infantry, cavalry,
and artillery to achieve the desired result. At the operational level, Napoleons
outstanding lieutenants-Marshals Ney, Davout and Bemadotte-were masters at
weaving battles together to form successful campaigns. Melding together the
professionalism of the modem battlefield with an undying belief in a cause led
Napoleon across the breadth of Europe.
Despite the grandeur and prowess of the French armies under Napoleon,
he ultimately failed. The reason lies at the strategic level where the goal was
conquest for the sake of conquest. What was the overall French plan for Europe
when Napoleon embarked on the course of war? Abandoning the series of
limited wars for limited gains that preceded the revolution, Napoleon did not
anticipate the tenacious and prolonged resistance to his conquests across
5Cari von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton:
Princeton Press, 1976), 170.
307
Europe. As a result, the French won nearly all the battles, most of the
campaigns, but not the war. In the end, it is the strategic level that matters most.
The opposite was nearly true of the Bolshevik war effort, in which there
was little innovation at the tactical or operational level, yet the result was a
strategic victory for the revolutionary regime. The victory of the Red Army was
one realized by maintaining a force in being, by continuing to mobilize support,
and by retaining the central sectors around Moscow and Petrograd. Facing a
host of foreign and domestic enemies, the revolutionary regime dreamed of
socialist revolution worldwide, but worked on securing power in Russia first.
Rarely employing new tactics or operational art, the Red Army was nevertheless
successful at the strategic level because all efforts focused on that goal: the
retention of power.
The Bolsheviks had continuous trouble in defeating various counter
revolutionary forces, partisan bands and foreign interventionists. Reliable troops
were their scarcest asset, and final victory took place only after years of political
work that included both normative and heavy coercive measures. For example,
in September and October 1919, the ex-Czarist General Yudenich led a small
White Army of between 15,000 and 25,000 troops against Petrograd. The Red
Army had 250,000 soldiers in the area, 10 times the Whites number, but could
not contain Yudenich. The victory was in doubt until the Bolsheviks mobilized
4,500 hard-core communists who tilted the balance in their favor and saved
308
Petrograd. This proved that while numbers were important, the number of
dedicated troops was decisive.
Another serious challenge developed later in 1919, when the White leader
Deniken, despite being outnumbered over two to one, overran the Crimea.
Deniken was able to capture the important cities of Kherson, Odessa, Kiev and
Tsaritsyn (Stalingrad). While superior in numbers, the Red Army disintegrated
before Denikens Cossacks, resulting in thousands of prisoners and Red Army
deserters. Again, the Bolsheviks had to mobilize their most trusted members,
this time 10,000 Komsomol (young communists), 30,000 party members, and
36,000 trade unionists from the soviets, along with the Bolsheviks most trusted
unit- Latvian Rifles-to turn the tide.6 In this case, virtually every reliable element
of the revolution was required for battlefield service to win.
The Bolsheviks had a strong message, a balance between ideology and
military professionalism, and were more devoted to their cause than their
adversaries. They used a variety of means-such as education, propaganda,
conscription, and expropriation-to mobilize consistent popular support.
Ultimately, it was the commissars, political workers, and these few reliable units
that kept the core of the Red Army together and made it victorious over the
disparate, conservative and reactionary white forces.7
6Adelman, 58-9.
V on Hagen, 113.
309
By contrast, the Iranians pursued their campaign against the Iraqis with
neither the realistic strategic goal of the Bolsheviks nor the military prowess of a
Napoleon in executing campaigns at the operational level. Strategically, the
Iranians became more and more isolated in the international arena as they
expanded their original war aims and the conflict continued. Operationally,
disunity and an incoherent campaign plan that failed to capitalize on the nations
physical and revolutionary advantages hamstrung the military effort. New tactical
approaches (Pasdaran tactics) were employed and some improvement in the
professional capabilities of the armed forces was made, but these were not
sufficient to overcome the huge firepower advantage the Iraqis held at the
tactical level or the larger operational and strategic shortcomings.
In short, Iran failed to sufficiently professionalize its war effort to achieve
the decisive battlefield victory that its ideology demanded. The government
failed to adequately provision the armed forces with heavy weapons and
sustainment, and instead it gloried in its isolation from the West and attempted to
use the human spirit of its soldier-martyrs as a substitute for tanks, artillery, air
support, and sound planning to achieve victory. Despite Khomeini's constant
sermonizing on the need for military and national unity, separate army and IRGC
commands remained in effect almost until the end of the war. Khomeini
repeatedly asserted that the army was the primary force of national defense yet
allowed the expansion and even predominance of the IRGC. All major offensive
actions in the later part of the war were IRGC-led efforts, and all promised
310
complete victory. That was incongruous with the idea of the army as the primary
instrument of military power.
It was at the operational level that Irans overemphasis on ideology could
most clearly be observed, and the dominance of subjective rather than objective
control of the military became evident. The concept of the big battle remained
attractive to the hard-liners in matching ideological means with ends but only
resulted in thousands of passionate Iranians dying in needless frontal assaults.
The lack of sustained professional growth of the military institutions-including
SDC decisions to give all meaningful operational missions to the IRGCreflected
this subjective view.
Tactically, the concept of human wave assaults is foreign to Western
political and military thinking; however, they could have achieved the desired
result if they were used differently. There were many occasions, such as the
Kheiber and Karbala V offensives, in which the Iranians broke the initial Iraqi
defenses-either by stealth and surprise or by sheer number of infantrymen-only
to fail to achieve a larger breakthrough. Irans repeated use of this tactic as the
sole means of decision instead of part of a more coherent plan contributed
greatly to its failure at the operational level. In none of these major offensives
were significant army units used to capitalize on initial gains. The best that can
be said is that the army was a useful diversion in drawing off Iraqi reserves.
The fanatical resolve of the Pasdaran and Basij combined with the arms
knowledge of the army could have broken the backs of the Iraqi defenses on
311
more than one occasion. This lack of unity of effort not only prevented the
Iranians from realizing victory but ensured the war would be prolonged and
eventually sap much of the revolutionary energy from the Iranian nation.
Continued failure at the operational level coupled with a stubborn refusal
to scale back strategic goals (the complete subjugation of Iraq) led to battlefield
failure and, therefore, strategic failure.
The essence of ideology is certainty of thought and deed and an
uncompromising pursuit of righteousness. In ideological systems, compromise
does not represent normal politics but capitulation to forces diametrically
opposed to the movement. Khomeinis brand of Shiism was uniquely formulated
to reject Westernism, to embrace sacrifice, and to demand "justice for the
dispossessed in total victory. Achieving Khomeinis ideological goal demanded a
response beyond limited war or a return to the status quo. Once the Iraqis were
ejected from Iranian soil, a much broader and decisive war was required to
achieve the ideological goal of displacing the Iraqi regime. There could be no
compromise in the pursuit of this greater justice, and there was little compromise
in the means of achieving it.
For the Iranians, this lack of ideological compromise and the disregard for
the established science of war and art of strategy and tactics caused battlefield
failures to mount over time and eventually forced them to have to accept a much
broader compromise-that of peace without total victory. This difficult decision
312
was made to preserve the revolution itself. Its cost in lives and misspent
revolutionary energy is still being calculated today.
313
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Afshar, Haleh. Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil. Hong Kong: State University of New
York Press, 1985.
Bill, James A. "Morale versus Technology, The Power of Iran in the Persian Gulf
War. The Iran-lraq War. Edited by Farhang Rajaee. Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1993.45-57.
Chubin, Shahram. "Iran and the War: from Stalemate to Cease-fire." The Iran
Iraq War. Edited by Efraim Karsh. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
15-24.
Clausewitz, On War, Edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Macmillan,
London, 1976.
Cooper, Matthew. The German Army. New York: Stein and Day, 1978.
Cordesman, Anthony and Abraham Wagner. Lessons of Modem War, Volume II.
San Francisco: Westview, 1990.
Cordesman, Anthony. The Iran-lraq War and Western Security: 1984-87.
London: Janes Publishing, 1987.
Elting, John R. Swords Around a Throne. New York: The Free Press, 1988.
Entessar, Nader. Post Revolutionary Iran. London: Westview Press, 1988.
Finer, S.E. The Man on Horseback. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Middle East, microfiche.
Gardner, Michael. A History of the Soviet Army. London: Praeger Publishing,
1966.
Gawrych, George W. "Jihad in the 20th Century." Military Review Sept.-Oct.
1995: 33-39.
Gibb, H. A. R. Mohammedanism. London: Oxford University Press, 1949.
Griess, Thomas E. The Great War. New York: Westpoint, 1977.
314
Harkavy, Robert and Stephanie Neuman. Lessons o f Recent Wars in the Third
World. Lexington Mass: Lexington Press, 1985.
Heller, Mark A. T h e War Strategy of Iran. Middle East Review Summer
1987:17-24.
Hire, Dilip. The Longest Wan The Iran-lraq Military Conflict. London: Routledge,
1991.
Howell, Roger J. Cromwell. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972.
Huntington, Samuel. The Soldier and the State. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1957.
Karsh, Efraim. The Iran-lraq War. A Military Analysis. Adelphi Papers, ISS,
Spring 1987.
Katzman, Kenneth. Warriors of Islam: Irans Revolutionary Guard. San
Francisco: Westview, 1993.
Khadduri, Majid. The Gulf Wan The Origins and Implications of the Iraq-lran
Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Janowitz, Morris. Professional Soldien A Social and Political Portrait. London:
Free Press of Glencoe Collier, 1960.
McLachlan, Keith. "Analysis of the Risks of War." The Iran-lraq War. Edited by
Farhang Rajaee, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993. Volume
1,87-95.
McNaugher, Thomas L. T h e Iran-lraq War: Slouching Toward Catastrophe?
Middle East Review Summer 1987: 5-16.
Merdinger, Susan. A Race for Martyrdom: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps. Monterey, Calif: Naval Post-Graduate School, 1982.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Ideals and Realities of Islam. Boston: Beacon Press,
1972.
ONeill, Bard E. Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modem Revolutionary Warfare.
Washington, Brasseys, 1990.
315
ONeill, Robert J. The German Army and the Nazi Party, 1933-39. New York,
James H. Heineman, 1966.
Payne, Robert. The Life and Death of Trotsky. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.
Quarrie, Bruce. Hitler's Teutonic Knights. London: Wellingborough, 1986.
Rose, Gregory. "The Post-Revolutionary Purge of Iran's Armed Forces: A
Revisionist Assessment." Iranian Studies vol. XVII nos. 2-3 SpringSummer 1984:153-194.
Reissmer, Johannes. "The Iranian Revolution and the Iran-lraq War. The Gulf
War. 23-34.
Roberts, Mark J. Khomeini's Incorporation of the Iranian Military. McNair Paper
# 48,1996.
Rubin, Barry. "Iran's Revolution and Persian Gulf Instability, The Iran-lraq Wan
New Weapons, Old Conflicts. Edited by Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen
Ayubi. London: Praeger, 1990. 345-367.
Schalgaldian, Nikola. The Iranian Military Under the Islamic Republic. New York:
Rand. 1987.
United States Army Field Manual 100-1 The Army," Washington, June 1994.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary. New York: The Free
Press, 1996.
Von Hagen, Mark. Soldiers of the Proletarian Dictatorship. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1990.
Welch, Claude E. Jr. Civilian Control of the Military. New York: State University
Press, 1976.
Wright, Robin. In the Name of God. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Zabih, Sepehr. Iran Since the Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1982.
________
The Iranian Military in Revolution and War. 1988.

Impact of Ideology On The Iranian Military in The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Impact of Ideology On The Iranian Military in The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

INFORMATION TO USERS

copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Higher quality 6 x 9 black and white

photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing

ProQuest Information and Learning

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

UMI Number 3047137

ProQuest Information and Learning Company

The Impact of Ideology on the Iranian Military in the Iran-lraa W ar 1980-88

The depth of interaction between a political system and its military is

powers because of ideological reasons thus further reducing their chance of

This dissertation by Joseph T. Gerard fulfills the dissertation requirement

Wallace M. Thies, Ph.D., Director

James P. OLeary, PhflD., Reader

Chapter 2 - The Nature of Ideology and Iran

Chapter 3- Historical Framework

Chapter 4- Professionalism and the Imperial Army

Chapter 5- The Rise of the Revolutionary Military

Chapter 6- The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Chapter 7- The Decline of the Revolutionary Military

1Michael Howard, War in European History (London: Macmillan, 1976), 75.

When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, France embarked on a series of

French Revolution as a means to enhance the established military, the Bolsheviks

government provision and pay them regularly. He instituted a new system of

An important contemporary of De Tracy was the German philosopher Georg

Minogue acknowledges that ideology helps explain the political world

Koran. In addition, Islamic practice is influenced by the traditions and interpretations

23John Kelsay, Islam and W ar A Study in Comparative Ethics (Louisville Kentucky,

The translation of this collective memory into a workable political ideology

The Ayatollah Mutahari captured the essence of al Ahmads work by

Khomeini and Revolutionary Shiism

Zonis, etal., 50-51.

40Zonis, etal., 51.

42Zonis et al, 55.

To Shiites, the fight against injustice, however desperate, is the most

^FBIS, 24 May 1983.

War and Shiism

^Zonis and Brumbers, 59.

20 NeiHs book is entitled, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modem Revolutionary

civil-military relations. A useful starting point for this discussion is Samuel

distinct class of specialists in the management of violence. While objective

thought of nor effective in a traditional role. Examples of this type would be

War not Inevitable

Purpose of War is Punitive & Self Evident

Purpose of War is Political & Explicit

Types as They Relate to Professionalism

In the modem world this is crucial as conservative, well-established

The Soviet use of the hyper-rational model applied to military thought is

traditional culture, nationalism, imperialism and glorification of struggle. Taken

Professionalism in the Old Regime

therefore critical to an effective military. There are several methods used to

government restructured the leadership of the armed forces seeking to

The starting point of the PLAs success in fusing professionalism with

Leveraging Existing Leaders

While the new government received thousands of requests from former

Patterns of Civilian Control over the Military

independence of the military, rendering it politically neutral, but more effective in

him as a result. This is often physically manifested by an oath to the leader as in

development of a more professional military, focused on honing its skills rather

odds with the ideological values of egalitarianism, ideological dominance,

Party control and the professional military

Esprit de corps is affected as the new regime seeks to infuse a new

Specific Methods of Control