What Caused the Iran-Iraq War?

In September 1980, border clashes between Iran and Iraq escalated into war. Tensions had been simmering between the two countries for decades. Disputes over control of the Shatt al-Arab river, and thus access to the Persian Gulf for Iraq, had long been a source of contention.

Political upheaval in both countries created the conditions for war. Years of back and forth negotiations between the governments of the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the military controlled government of Iraq had done little to calm tensions. The rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the 1979 Iranian Revolution led to a more hostile relations especially since foreign influence in the region had decreased. 

Saddam Hussein had hoped that the upheavals of the Iranian revolution had weakened his neighbour and that a war with limited objectives would be over quickly. Despite early Iraqi success, the Iran–Iraq War devolved into one of the longest and most destructive conflicts of the late 20th century.

Thanks to:

Professor Annie Tracy Samuel, associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the author of The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards, for appearing on this episode.

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