The Evolution of Iranian Warfighting during the Iran-Iraq War: When Dismounted Light Infantry Made the Difference
Abstract
After the Islamic revolution in 1979, two different perspectives on warfighting influenced the tactics of Iranian ground forces. There was a traditional military perspective, based on Iran's military history, which relied on modern equipment and European and American officer training. Then there was the revolutionary perspective that often placed Shiite religious values of perseverance and martyrdom ahead of some military practices. These two perspectives contradicted each other at times, and the troops on the ground were the ones most harmed by this. However, it was the synthesis of elements of these two that would eventually become Iran's most effective means of fighting by the end of the war. By the 1970s, Iran had become one of the most dominant military powers in the region, and the fifth largest armed force in the world. The armed forces had established contingency plans and training and relied on the west for equipment and support. They trained for conventional war, but had little combat experience. The Shah wanted to become the dominant military power in the region, and, by some measures, he had achieved this. The vestiges of this military development in Iran, in the form of military technique and leaders that had not been purged, provided the ability to pursue the war with conventional military tactics. The clerics purged a large part of the conventional military structure after the 1979 revolution leaving the military broken and barely able to defend Iran from the initial Iraqi ground invasion in 1980. There were only two Iranian armored divisions with tanks in bad need of maintenance, and several infantry units in the main theater of Khuzestan at the time of the invasion, and it would be weeks before they could mobilize.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA473957
Entities
People
- Ben Wilson
Organizations
- United States Army Training and Doctrine Command