Transcription
This is the Middle East, the place where most of us live. The Middle East, throughout history, has seen hundreds of battles and wars. But the war we will talk about today was the bloodiest and most brutal war in the history of this place. The year is 1979. The place is Iran. A huge popular revolution overthrows the Shah and establishes an Islamic Republic led by this man and a group of clerics. A few weeks after the revolution's success, Iran begins broadcasting radio waves to its neighboring Arab countries, calling on people to revolt and overthrow their rulers. The echo of the Iranian revolution reaches everywhere in the region. But here in Iraq, the country on Iran's border, there was a new leader who feared the revolution reaching his country. This leader is Saddam Hussein. Saddam, starting in September 1980, decides to confront Iran and enter into a war against it. But it seems Saddam did not calculate this war accurately, as the war will last for eight years. Eight years, and the two armies fight each other in the mountains, deserts, and trenches. Eight years in which the most horrific battles took place: indiscriminate shelling, civilian planes and ships bombed, and chemical attacks. Eight years were enough to kill more than a million Iranians and Iraqis. The price of eight years was enough to destroy Iraq and Iran to this day. That's why I am Hamza Abdel Razzaq, and today we will talk about one of the best wars in history, and undoubtedly the most horrific and brutal war in the history of the Middle East. A war whose effects still exist today, and the Middle East is still suffering because of it. Today we will learn how the Iran-Iraq war began, how it happened, and how it ended, and we will learn about the role of America and Israel in it. So, let's not prolong the introductions. Let's say Bismillah and let's begin. Okay, before we start, I want to tell you two very quick things. First, Happy New Year on the occasion of the blessed month of Ramadan. I hope this month is full of goodness, blessings, and acts of worship for you and your families. Second, I have decided to make a very special video for you on the occasion of Ramadan. A dangerous, killer, bloody video about the Mexican cartel wars and the most famous organization there. This video I'm talking about will be released, God willing, next week on our Patreon channel. Patreon is a platform like YouTube, and it has content and content creators. But the main difference between it and YouTube is that Patreon works through monthly subscriptions, and these subscriptions are usually very symbolic to access this exclusive content and to support your favorite content creator. Our Patreon channel already has two videos: one about the story of the rise of ISIS and another about the story of its fall. And as I told you a little while ago, God willing, within a week, you will be able to watch a third video on Patreon. Okay, Hamza, I want to watch these exclusive videos on Patreon. How can I subscribe? Pay attention to me, my friend. The whole thing takes less than two minutes. All you have to do is go to the link in the video description, create an account on Patreon, then join the channel, and you will see three subscription options: $10, $5, or $3. Choose the one you like. Then you will get a page to fill in your payment information. You can pay by card or PayPal, and after that, the channel will open for you, and you will be able to watch all our videos on Patreon without ads, without blurring, without restrictions, without anything. Many of you told me that Patreon is blocked in your country, especially in Syria and Iraq. Honestly, I don't know the exact solution, but it might work for you if you try a VPN. That's all. Thank you in advance. I'll be waiting for you next week on Patreon. But now, let's get into our story. Okay, to understand the story well, we need to go back in time a little, specifically to 1979. Iran at that time was witnessing a huge revolution, a revolution in the true sense of the word. Millions of Iranians took to the streets to get rid of decades the country lived under the rule of this person, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah. The Shah, roughly meaning the king. And this man, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, specifically called himself the Shahanshah, I think it's a word like that, but it means the king of kings. This man was arrogant and thought highly of himself. He saw himself as the emperor of Persia. The Shah at that time had been in power for more than 35 years. 35 years of oppression, tyranny, and suppression of opponents and clerics. On top of all that, the Shah was extremely subservient to the West, specifically to the United States of America, Britain, and Israel. Therefore, at the end of the seventies, everything turned against the Shah. Labor unrest paralyzed the country's economy, and popular protests increased day by day. Pictures began to be torn and burned in the streets until finally, on January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran and headed to Egypt. Two weeks after this scene, a plane landed from France carrying the most powerful religious leader in Iran and one of the leaders of the revolution. This person is Ruhollah Khomeini, who will establish an Islamic Republic in Iran and will rule the country from the beginning with an iron fist. He will carry out purges of all symbols of the previous regime and will begin to antagonize many countries around the world, led by America, Israel, Britain, the Soviet Union, and even its neighboring Arab countries, especially Iraq and the Gulf states. And because the enemies of the Islamic Revolution in Iran were many, whether inside Iran itself or outside Iran, Khomeini established a military force called the Revolutionary Guard. This force, as its name suggests, was established to guard the revolution and protect the new regime. Not only that, but it was established to spread the revolution to all countries neighboring Iran, especially countries where there are Shia Muslims. Okay, things started to heat up. A few months after the establishment of the new republic, the Iranian radio began calling on the Arab peoples to revolt, overthrow their rulers, and establish republics allied with Iran. The revolutionary Iranian radio, speaking in Arabic, entered forcefully into countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Iraq. These countries we mentioned are considered among the Arab countries with the highest percentage of Shia Muslims. But if you notice, the leaders of these countries are not Shia Muslims. Rather, the leaders of these countries, or most of them, were Sunni Muslims. Therefore, the Iranian calls are considered a direct threat to them and their thrones. Consequently, they consider the new Iranian regime a hostile regime to them. And from here, the drums of war begin to beat. We say to Khomeini, Khomeini might get angry, he might get angry at the word charlatan. The charlatan is a square. Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq at the time, had only been in the presidency for a few months, but he had been the de facto leader of Iraq since the early seventies. Saddam saw the Shiite Iranian revolution that happened on his borders as a danger to him, his regime, and the Arab countries and their regimes. And by the way, Saddam was not the only one who held this opinion. There were Arab leaders who saw the Iranian revolution as a threat to them. But Saddam, specifically, was the most worried about the new Iranian regime due to the large percentage of Shia Muslims in Iraq and its geographical proximity to Iran. He shares a border of more than 1400 km with Iran, a border extending from the Zagros Mountains in the north to the Shatt al-Arab in the south. Therefore, the back-and-forth began early, and the verbal exchange between Saddam and Khomeini began. Khomeini, being a religious man, described Saddam as an infidel and an agent of the West. Saddam, being a nationalist, began to describe Khomeini as a charlatan and the devil. This regime is a charlatan, evil, suspicious, and un-Islamic. Both sides, frankly, did not hold back from insults and accusations, and everything was recorded, on camera, and in public. But if we want to speak frankly and accurately, the tension between Iraq and Iran was not solely due to Saddam Hussein's fear of the Iranian revolution reaching his land. There was an old border dispute between them in this specific region known as the Shatt al-Arab. The Shatt al-Arab, which for many years was under Iraqi control until 1975, when Saddam Hussein signed an agreement with the Shah of Iran to divide the Shatt al-Arab with Iran in exchange for Iran stopping its support for the Kurds in northern Iraq. Saddam Hussein saw the Iraqi concession of part of the Shatt al-Arab as a somewhat humiliating concession. And in light of this conflict, which grew day by day and came to the surface, America was watching from afar what was happening and wished for the war to ignite between them as soon as possible. From the American perspective, Saddam Hussein was an indirect enemy. His relationship with America was not the best, and he was originally considered part of the Eastern Bloc, affiliated with the Soviet Union at the time. On the other hand, we have Iran. Iran, which is considered a direct enemy of America. This country was their most prominent ally in the Middle East, and it was the one that provided them with oil, provided them with intelligence information about the Arabs, and supported Israel against the Arabs. Iran, for them, was everything in the Middle East. But overnight, Iran changed. It turned 180 degrees and became America's greatest enemy in the region. It literally became a country whose slogan was "Death to America, Death to Israel," and it began holding American hostages. Therefore, America saw that this war was inevitable, that it had to ignite as soon as possible. So, it cunningly encouraged some Arab countries to support Saddam with money and weapons. At this moment, when Saddam realized he was greatly supported by Arab and Western countries, he decided to start the war on September 22, 1989. Saddam Hussein mobilized more than 10,000 Iraqi soldiers to cross the border and invade Iran. Thousands of soldiers actually penetrated the border from the south, near the city of Basra, simultaneously with air strikes by the Iraqi Air Force on sensitive locations throughout Iran. This attack was a quick, lightning, and successful attack. Therefore, from the first hours of the battle, Saddam Hussein believed that victory in this war would be easy and quick, and he would be able to control the entire Shatt al-Arab and would be able to control the Ahvaz region and the Ahvaz region, also known as Arabistan, which are the Arab regions in Iran. Saddam believed that he could control and occupy these areas, and not only that, Saddam believed that he could overthrow the entire new regime. Frankly, Saddam Hussein at this moment was not calculating things well, because if we look at the new regime in Iran, we will find that this regime had many opponents within the country. But this opposition began to disappear somewhat, as there was now an external enemy threatening the country and attacking their land. What Saddam Hussein wanted happened the opposite. Saddam Hussein, who wanted to create more opponents for Khomeini's regime, suddenly found that most Iranians were rallying around the new regime. However, we cannot deny that the Iranian army was a weak army, as Khomeini imprisoned the senior army officers who were loyal to the Shah. Therefore, Khomeini came up with a brilliant idea and said, "I will release these generals whom I imprisoned and put in jail. I will release them to lead the battle against Saddam Hussein. If they win, they have won, and I have pardoned them. If they don't win and die in the war, then I have gotten rid of them." Frankly, it was a plan of utmost cunning. And here, suddenly, all factors began to favor Khomeini's regime, which did not delay in responding to Iraq. It sent its modern warplanes at the time to strike Iraq's oil facilities. And focus, focus on what I said a little while ago: modern Iranian planes. These planes we are talking about were very modern at that time. Planes that America gave to the Shah's regime in the late seventies, like the F-14 planes, which only America and Iran possessed at the time. We also have the F-4 Phantom and F-5 Tiger planes. These planes I'm talking about, my friend, Iran is still using them to this day, after about 50 years. Iran is still using them today, so imagine 50 years ago, what were these planes? They were intimidating planes, terrifying planes. Okay, in any case, at this time, the ground advance was Iraqi, and the air superiority was Iranian. Therefore, Saddam decided to open a new front in the north, and fierce battles took place here due to the proximity of the attack to vital areas for Iran and Iraq. At these moments, while explosions were shaking Tehran and Baghdad, there was a party watching the war with great passion and interest. This party was undoubtedly Israel. Israel, for whom this war was a gift from heaven. What more could it want than for the two largest countries in the Middle East and the most hostile to Israel to be fighting each other? Therefore, Israel was very interested in this war continuing for as long as possible, and not only that, but being as damaging as possible to both sides. Therefore, Israel looked at the map from afar and saw that Saddam was supported by Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Jordan, and even by the Soviet Union, which was sending modern tanks and planes to Iraq. While Iran, on the other hand, until this moment, had not been truly supported by any country. Therefore, Israel decided to support Iran to stop the Iraqi advance and prevent its victory, and at the same time, to strengthen Iran to strike sensitive targets in Iraq. And look at the irony that will happen here. Iran was fighting with American planes, but these planes needed spare parts. Iran could not ask America for spare parts for these planes because relations between the two countries were severed. Therefore, Israel went to Iran and secretly supplied it with spare parts for their American planes. Not only that, but Israel also supplied Iran with intelligence information, aerial photos, and coordinates of important Iraqi army locations. And again, not only that, but Israel dared and gave Iran a plan to target the Iraqi nuclear reactor. But Iran failed to target the Iraqi nuclear reactor multiple times. Therefore, Israel decided to destroy the reactor itself with a famous air strike known as Operation Opera, which indeed ended the Iraqi nuclear project. To this day. Okay, we have now reached the middle of 1982. The United Nations decided to intervene to establish a ceasefire agreement. Saddam Hussein accepted, but Khomeini refused. The war had now expanded significantly, and Iran, the party that was weaker at the beginning of the war, had now become the stronger party after the release of dozens of generals from prison and after receiving support from Israel and another very surprising country. This country was China. China, in the early eighties, was not the China we know today. It was still a much weaker country than it is now. However, it intervened in the war and became one of the largest suppliers of weapons to Iran. And here too, there was an irony: China is considered a socialist country, but in this war, it sided against Iraq, which was considered a socialist country at the time. Therefore, the war continued, and the United Nations' attempts to stop this bloody war, which caused more than 100,000 deaths from both sides in just one year, failed. At this moment, the war entered a very dangerous turning point. Saddam Hussein, who felt at this moment that things were getting out of his control, requested support from the United States of America. And America did not hesitate at all. On the contrary, it wanted any opportunity to enter the war and weaken Iran. Therefore, America came to the region and established a CIA headquarters in Iraq to support Saddam Hussein with intelligence and provide him with information and photos showing the movements of Iranian forces. And here, we should know that what America was doing with Iraq, Israel was doing the same thing literally with Iran. And I think we all know that America and Israel have the same interests. Therefore, we conclude that neither America wanted the interest of Iraq nor Israel wanted the interest of Iran. Rather, both sides entered and supported the parties to the war so that the two countries would destroy each other as much as possible. And unfortunately, this is what was happening. The plan went exactly as planned. In the same year, 1982, Iraq received great support from another large country. This country was the Soviet Union. The Soviets supported Saddam with tanks and heavy artillery, and they also supported him with the latest versions of MiG and Sukhoi planes. And of course, the Soviet Union's support for Saddam had a big reason. Simultaneously with the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviets were involved in a war in Afghanistan against what is known as the Mujahideen. Therefore, they saw that Saddam's victory in this war and the defeat of the Islamic regime in Iran would affect the Islamic groups in Afghanistan, which is adjacent to Iran. And here, one of the strangest things of the last century happened: seeing the Soviet Union and America supporting the same side. The Soviets and Americans actually supported Saddam in this war, but Saddam failed to turn the tide of the battle in his favor again. Rather, Iranian forces, in the peak of the summer heat of 1982, and in the peak of the blessed month of Ramadan, began to advance into Iraqi territory for the first time since the beginning of the war. What happened was a catastrophe, a catastrophe in every sense of the word. The Iranian advance into Iraq was not random. The Iranians tried to control the Iraqi city of Basra, the city that is considered Iraq's gateway to the Arabian Gulf, and therefore considered Iraq's oil gateway to the entire world. No, no, by God, if he sat on the slide, he would see the head. These are the mountains. At this moment, Saddam realized that if the Iranians controlled Basra, it would be the end for him. Therefore, he fought desperately to defend Basra and sent tens of thousands of soldiers there, dug trenches, created earth berms, and planted mines on the city's borders to prevent the Iranians from controlling Basra. Here, some of the most violent trench battles that reminded the world of World War I battles took place. Artillery shelling everywhere, fighting did not stop for days, and warplanes were bombing indiscriminately. A human massacre occurred on the borders of Basra, and thousands of bodies spread everywhere. But in the end, Iran failed to control Basra and lost tens of thousands of its soldiers. Therefore, the victory in the battles of Basra was in favor of Saddam, but honestly, this victory was a victory on paper, as the city was actually destroyed, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, military and civilian, were killed. These battles in the south led the two sides into a stalemate that lasted for months. But the spark that will reignite the war will start from here, from northern Iraq, the place where millions of Kurds live, who aspire to establish their independent state and get rid of the rule of the Ba'ath Party, with which they had been in conflict for many, many years. Therefore, the Kurds revolted in 1983, and their armed men expelled Iraqi forces from some Kurdish cities and villages and allied with Iran. Saddam was now in a real predicament. In the south, he had Iran, and in the north, he had the Kurds. And these areas controlled by the Kurdish forces were very important to Saddam's regime, as they were very rich in oil and natural resources and areas that Iraq's economy depended on significantly. Therefore, Saddam and his regime went mad, and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid came out and ordered the army to bomb the Kurdish areas with chemical weapons. Internationally prohibited chemical weapons were used and bombed indiscriminately, killing thousands of civilians. After the use of chemical weapons in the war, things calmed down a bit because everyone was in a state of shock. But in 1984, the war reignited with greater intensity and violence than before. In 1984, hundreds of oil tankers were bombed, and hundreds of civilian sailors were killed here in the Persian Gulf, or as it is known in Iran, the Persian Gulf. At this time, Iranian forces attacked Iraqi territory again, and like the previous time, Iran focused its attack on the very important city of Basra for Iraq. And this time, Iran actually managed to control parts of the city. Saddam, at this moment, feared the fall of the entire city into Iranian hands. Therefore, he launched violent air attacks on various parts of Iran, including the capital, Tehran, and other important cities like Isfahan and Tabriz. These attacks killed more than 16,000 people and displaced tens of thousands more. Things did not stop there. Saddam Hussein's attacks on cities began a new phase of the conflict, a phase known as the War of the Cities, as the Iranian air force would also retaliate and bomb several Iraqi cities, led by the capital, Baghdad. In the War of the Cities, tens of thousands of civilians from both sides were killed, and their homes, cities, villages, and schools were destroyed. And I am speaking seriously here, schools were bombed, targeting young children who had nothing to do with this brutal war. We have now reached the end of 1985. The war has been raging for about five years, and so far, there is no victor in the war. On the contrary, both sides have been destroyed, exhausted, and burdened by debt. But on the ground, there was a slight superiority for the Iranian forces. Therefore, America decided to do what it does everywhere on Earth. America only bets on the winning horse. Therefore, the Americans reduced their support for Saddam and began to support Iran, sending missiles and weapons to them secretly. Yes, what you are hearing now is correct. America is now supporting the Iranian regime with weapons, while supporting Saddam with intelligence information and satellite images. And now we reach the beginning of the end. March 1988. A major development occurred in the war. Iran allied with the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq and controlled the Iraqi city of Halabja. The Kurds, with this move, hoped it would be the beginning of achieving their dream of obtaining a Kurdistan state after decades of waiting. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein's regime went even more insane this time and decided to retaliate. But this retaliation was unprecedented. It was a brutal retaliation. Saddam Hussein's regime dropped chemical bombs on Halabja, bombs that covered the entire city, and neither the fighters, nor the civilians, nor even those fortified in shelters and mountains could escape them. The poisonous gas would reach everyone and kill at least more than 5,000 Kurds. The attack on Halabja would be part of a massive campaign launched by Saddam Hussein's regime on the Kurdish areas. The campaign was called the Anfal campaign, in which more than 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, and about 100,000 Kurds were killed and disappeared, according to Human Rights Watch. And of course, due to the horror of what happened, the Iraqi regime falsely accused Iran of bombing the Kurds for years. But the investigations and trials that took place later proved the involvement of Saddam Hussein's regime in this crime, which was officially classified as a genocide against the Kurdish people. The investigations also proved that the architect of this genocide was Saddam's cousin, Lieutenant General Ali Hassan al-Majid, who was nicknamed "Chemical Ali." The use of chemical weapons in this conflict was one of the most terrifying things that happened. Therefore, the Iranians were now afraid of using these weapons against them. And for this reason, thousands of them would leave the cities and hide in the mountains. Consequently, life in Iran would be disrupted, and the economy would collapse, especially since the country was living in about nine years of isolation and economic blockade from the West, or actually from the whole world. On top of that, the health of the Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, was deteriorating day by day. Therefore, this man feared dying while his country was still engaged in war. Consequently, he finally agreed to a ceasefire. But before the ceasefire officially came into effect, the US Navy shot down an Iranian civilian plane carrying 290 passengers, including 66 children. All passengers on the Iranian plane were killed, and their remains were scattered over the Persian Gulf. The United States said it shot down the Iranian civilian plane by mistake, believing it was an Iranian warplane of the F-14 model. The US President at the time apologized to the families of the Iranian victims, and America paid compensation amounting to $100 million to the victims' families. However, on the other hand, the captain of the ship that fired the missile and shot down the Iranian civilian plane was received in America with a hero's welcome and was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1990 for his distinguished service. The honoring of the captain of the ship that shot down the downed Iranian plane made the Iranian government believe that the incident was deliberate and intentional to force Iran to agree to a ceasefire, defeated and compelled. Honoring the captain of the ship that shot down the downed Iranian plane made the Iranian government believe that the incident was deliberate and intentional to force Iran to agree to a ceasefire, defeated and compelled. In any case, a month after this tragic incident, the Iran-Iraq war officially ended. This war officially lasted for seven years and 11 months, i.e., approximately eight years. Eight years in which the two countries witnessed all kinds of killing, destruction, displacement, and bombing. Eight years in which at least a million people from both sides were killed, and the result was nothing, literally nothing. The borders did not change from what they were before the war, and both the Islamic regime in Iran and the Ba'ath Party regime in Iraq remained. These two regimes, each of which entered the war to overthrow the other, but after the end of the war, both regimes became threatened with collapse. Saddam's regime lost its legitimacy in the north, where the Iraqi Kurds are located, after he bombed and gassed them, and also lost its legitimacy among a large segment of Shiite Iraqis. To make matters worse, he invaded his neighbor Kuwait just two years after the war with Iran. As we said, Saddam Hussein lost his legitimacy among the Kurds, lost his legitimacy among a large segment of Sunni Muslims, and after invading Kuwait, he lost his legitimacy among a large segment of Sunni Arabs. Therefore, in 1991, Saddam found himself having lost everything, and Iraq entered a harsh economic blockade that lasted for about 13 years until finally, in March 2003, America occupied Iraq and completely overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime. On the other hand, in Iran, the war brought no victory. On the contrary, the war left the country in a state of social and economic devastation. It left the country in all kinds of destruction. A few months after the war, the Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini died, and Ali Khamenei succeeded him. The leader who is still present today. And unlike Iraq, Iran, after the war, reduced its revolutionary rhetoric and became a somewhat pragmatic country, a country that seeks its interests. Therefore, it supported many armed groups in various parts of the Middle East to be its allies in future wars, as throughout the eight years of war against Iraq, Iran had no true ally. However, even though the Iranian regime worked differently from Saddam Hussein's regime, it seems that their fate is the same. Today, more than 20 years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, America is mobilizing thousands of soldiers, dozens of warplanes, and a large number of ships and naval vessels to completely overthrow the Iranian regime, just as it happened with Saddam. Okay, thank you for watching this video. I hope you liked it and benefited from it. This video is very deep. And frankly, I am making this video in conjunction with the tension that is happening between Iran and America. At the moment I am filming this video, America is threatening Iran and threatening to overthrow the Iranian regime. Frankly, I don't know what will happen when this video is released. Will they have reached an agreement, or is there still tension, or will the Iranian regime have fallen? Frankly, I have no idea. All possibilities are open. The Middle East is currently tense and experiencing its worst period in a long time. In this video, we clearly saw how stubbornness and lack of wisdom can destroy entire countries, let alone if these countries are great nations with enormous human potential, great military capabilities, and a rich history like Iran and Iraq. The result will inevitably be tragic, as we have seen in this video. But in the end, I want to thank you again for watching this video. If you liked the video and benefited from it, don't forget to like it, share this video with your friends and family, and don't forget to subscribe to the channel. I think we are not far from reaching 2 million subscribers. And as I told you at the beginning of the video, if you want to see the great video that will be released next week, which will talk about one of the most dangerous organizations in Mexico, subscribe to our Patreon channel. The link will be in the video description. And of course, in the end, I would like to remind you to follow me on Instagram. There, we post short and beautiful geopolitical and historical content. That's all. I was Hamza Abdel Razzaq. I'll see you in the next video. Peace be upon you.