The truth about Iran.

Iran is often viewed by the mainstream media as an evil dictatorship intent on developing nuclear missiles with the possibility of using them against Israel, this opinion is often viewed as fact and often ignores the clear hand that various countries including the United Kingdom have had in shaping the history of Iran.

In 1951 the Iranian Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara was assassinated whilst attending a memorial service. A parliamentary vote took place and Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. After he took power he nationalized the countries oil industry which was extremely popular with the Iranian people, however the United Kingdom had controlled Iranian oil since 1913 and working together with the United States actively embargoed Iranian oil  and the CIA on request of MI6 started Operation Ajax which achieved it's goal in 1953 when Mohammad was assassinated and replaced with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi taking over as Shah of Iran. During Mohamad's reign with support from the United States the country became more autocratic and while the countries infrastructure was rapidly modernized all forms of political opposition was crushed with assistance from the US trained SAVAK. 

Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh

After years of autocratic rule in Iran, political oppression and the view of the people that the country was a puppet of the United States and swerving away from it's Islamic values. In this time the Shah of Iran requested support from the United States however the CIA reported that a revolution was unlikely and the Shah would remain in power for at least 10 years.

The uprisings in Iran continued and continuing strikes paralysed the countries. The intelligence agency of Iran SAVAK attempted to quell the protests but the extremely high number of protesters in multiple cities and towns across the entire country meat that their was too many people to arrest and the security services were overwhelmed..The Shah attempted to quell the problems with the economy cut spending, these cutbacks led to a sharp rise in layoffs mostly among the young unskilled workers living in the city slums, these unemployed youth then joined the protests. The Shah of Iran tried one last ploy in attempt to keep power. Jafar Sharif-Emani was installed as the countries Prime Minister and reversed some of the Shah's policies. Casino's across the country were close, the imperial calendar was abolished and opposing political parties were legalized however the protests continued and by September the nation was rapidly losing control and major protests across the country were becoming a regular occurrence. The Shah introduced martial law and banned all public demonstrations however protests continued and on September the 8th security forces opened fire and dozens of civilians were killed.

Protests in Tehran

Various public blunders of the security services including the death of several high ranking Islamic officials and the Cinema Rex Fire which killed over 400 people and was blamed on the government as the centre was an important meeting point for protestors, this made the movement to other-throw that Shah viable in the minds in many Iranians boosting the support of the anti-government protests even more and leading to a general strike that resulted in the paralysis of the economy with vital industries being shut down and virtually sealing the Shah's fate. On December the 10th and 11th an estimated 6-9 million people took part in anti-shah demonstrations across the entire country and took part in marches, the Shah's position in the country had now deteriorated to the point when he no longer wanted to remain in power and only wanted to stay in Iran, however this was turned down by the opposition. In late December he agreed to leave the country temporarily but this was turned down by the opposition again. On January the 16th the Shah and the Empress left Iran and went into exile

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

The events of the Islamic revolution led to the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam Hussein was interested in elevating Iraq into a strong regional power and a successful invasion of Iran would enlarge Iraq's oil and natural gas reserves and provide a substantial boost to the Iraqi economy. At the same time Ruhollah Khomeni believed that Muslims, participially the Shias in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were oppressed and should follow the example of the Iranian people and rise up against their governments to join a united Islamic Republic. At the same time a severe officer purge effected the Iranian military and a shortage of spare parts for Iran's American-made equipment crippled Iran's once mighty military and it was transformed into force comprised of mostly of poorly armed militia.

Relations between the two countries rapidly declined until in March 1980, Iran downgraded it's diplomatic ties with Iraq to the temporary level, withdrew it's ambassador and demanded that Iraq do the same. The tensions between the two nations in April when Iraq blamed the Iranian government for carrying out the attempted assassination of the Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tarqiq Aziz. Three days later the bombing of a funeral procession being held to bury students who had died in the earlier attack was again blamed on Iran. On September the 22nd 1980, the Iraqi air force attacking Iran, assaulting ten airfields in Iran, although this air-raid failed to achieve the strategic objective of destroying the Iranian air force on the ground. The following day the Iraqi Army initiated a ground offensive of Iran along a massive front measuring over 300 miles, in three focused offensive fronts.

The Iranian Navy and Air Force began counter-offensive operations, targeting vital Iraqi oil infrastructure severely damaging the ability of Iraq to export oil.  The Iranian air force assaulted more diverse targets including dams, petrochemical facilities and even a nuclear reactor within Iraq. The Iraqi invasion soon encountered resistance to the invasion and their advance into Iran was stalled around March 1981. The Iraqi air force attempted to destroy the Iranian air force on the ground and destroy the infrastructure of the Iranian air force, however they destroyed to destroy a large number of aircraft. The Iraqi air-force only had Mig-23's, Tu-22's and Su-20's that were ineffective in a country as large as Iran. The Iranian air force countered these assaults using F-4's and attacked Iraqi targets, within a few days the Iranian air force had gained air supremacy over Iran allowing them to conduct ground attack missions with dedicated fighter-bomber aircraft and helicopters. The Iraqi Military was also surprised that the people of Iran rallied around their country and formed a stiff resistance against the Iraqi invaders. An estimated 200,000 volunteers arrived to the front lines and added to the Iranian defence of the country, providing a serious setback to the Iraqi military campaign.

Iranian Militia 

For about a year after the Iraqi offensive stalled there was little change of movement in the front, however in March 1982 Iran took the offensive and the Iraqi military was forced to retreat and by June of 1982 an Iranian counter-offensive had recovered the areas lost to Iraq in the earlier stages of the war, one of the most significant battle of the Iranian counter-offensive being the liberation of Khorramshahr which was seen as a turning point in the war as it was one of the earlier cities captured in the initial Iraqi offensive against Iran. Saddam then decided to totally withdraw his armed forces from Iran and decided that they should be deployed along the international border between Iraq and Iran most likely because Saddam believed that his army was too demoralized to fight another defensive battle inside Iran. 

Iranian F-14

On the 13th of July the Iranian military crossed the border into Iran in force, aiming towards the city of Basra, however the Iraqi army was more organized and had entrenched itself in formidable defences. Unlike the hastily improvised defences that the Iraqi army had quickly constructed and manned in Iran during the occupation of the conquered parts of Iran the border defences were well developed before the Iran-Iraq war and the Iraqi's used a highly advanced network of bunkers and artillery bases. In response to the deteriorating situation Saddam had also doubled the size of the Iraqi army from 500,000 to a total size of 1,000,000.

To counter the extremely well prepared Iraqi defences the Iranian military had been using combined-arms operations to a great effect while attacking Iraqi positions. Gigantic human wave attacks with support from artillery, aircraft and tanks, however the Iranian military began to suffer from a lack of ammunition and supplies and soon the massive human wave attacks were being launched without proper of any support from combined arms meant that the mass assaults by the Iranian military began to look like more like assaults undertaken during the first world war, even more so considering the Iraqi military began using chemical and biological weapons against Iranian positions, the combination of these factors decimated the ranks of the youth volunteers many of them children. After the failure of the Iranian summer offensive in 1982, Iran believed that only a major operation across the entire length of the front would bring the victory that they wanted. Iran however lacked the organization for the type of massive assault, although Iran was getting supplied from North Korea, Libya and China. Iraq had more supplies like the USSR and NATO nations, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain, Italy. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the United States. In February of 1984, Saddam ordered aerial and missile strikes to be permitted against eleven cities in Iran, the bombardment lasted until 22nd of the same month and in response Iran retaliated with similar strikes against urban centres in Iraq, from that occasion similar firing exchanges against urban centres continued through the course of the war. On the 15th of February, the Iranians launched a major attack against the cenre of the front, around 250,00 Iranians faced 250,000 Iraq's. The Iranian then carried out two other offensives aimed to capture the vital town of Kut al-Amara and to cut the key highway linking Baghdad and Basara, however the Iranian offensive stopped 15 miles short of the vital highway, however the next Iranian offensive operation met with greater success. The Iraqi defences under continuous strain since the start of the Iranian offensive nearly collapsed several times, however the Iraqi's managed to stabilize the front but not before the Iranians captured part of the Majnun. Despite a heavy Iraqi counter-attack combining the use of mustard gas and sarin nerve gas the Iranians held their ground. 

Iranian troops dug in.

A new factor of the war started when Iraq started attacking Iranian tankers and the Iranian oil terminal and Kharg island in 1984. Iran retaliated by attacking tankers carrying Iraqi oil from Kuwait and any tanker of the Persian gulf states support the nation in Iraq. Both Iran and Iraq started attacking oil tankers and merchant ships, including those neutral nations in an attempt to deprive the opponent of trade. Iraq declared that all ships going to or from Iranian ports in the North of Iran were subject to attack with Iraq. Iraq used F-1 Mirage and Mig-23 aircraft armed with Exocet anti-ship missiles to back up this thread. After repeated Iraqi attacks on Iran's main exporting facility on Khark Island, Iran attacked a Kuwaiti tank near Bahrain and a Saudi tank in Saudi waters. Attacks like this on ships on non-combat nations continued and increased after those incidents and was dubbed the 'tanker war'. During this time period the United States actively supported Iraq, causing several high profile incidents including the Iraqi air-force attack on a US naval vessel. Another major incident of this war was the illegal shoot down of Iran Air 665, this tragic event took place when a United States warship fired upon an Iran Air Airbus A300 when the tracking system of the ship had incorrectly labelled the aircraft as an F-14. In the following years both sides advanced very little and withstood massive casualties and both sides agreed to a peace on the 20th of August 1988. 

USS Stark after being hit with an Iraqi missile