How come Iraq failed to prevail over Iran during the Iraq-Iran war?

Factual Questions
1

It seems that Iraq had the advantage in almost every way. More infantry, more artillery, more tanks and a greater ability to acquire hardware. Iran had purged its military after the Islamic revolution. Its forces were split between the revolutionary religious military (Pasdaran) and the old military.

Iran did have an initial advantage when it came to the air force but that eroded as Iran could hardly get replacements, spare parts and training from the US anymore.

Zeal seemed to be on Iran’s side. However, since the latter half of the 19th century, zeal has more often than not yielded to artillery and automatic weapons. Iran had about twice the casualties of Iraq.

The terrain didn’t seem to be clearly in anyone’s advantage. Khuzestan was Iranian territory and Shiite but also arab-majority and closer to Iraq’s supply lines and bases.
So, how come Iraq was stopped and pushed back?

2

IIRC from the news, they used up their hi-tech stuff and descended to the level of technology that both sides could support long-term - about WWI level, trench warfare. Recall the last Arab-Israeli war proved that tanks had an enormous disadvantage in the field; one man with a shoulder to hold a weapon could take one out. Both sides lacked hi-tech airpower to dislodge the other side from its trenches, the classic reason why trench warfare fails today. I think they descended to keeping airpower in reserve for defense. They were avoiding any confrontation that could lose their valuable, irreplaceable aircraft -losing too many aircraft would give the other side an advantage. (Not much different than the lack of big boat naval confrontations in WWI).

3

You and md2000 are correct. All of the Arab and south Asian countries I’ve dealt with have a poor concept of maintenance and logistics. As Iraq advanced further, supplying the front became more difficult. Iran basically exchanged land (and lots of bodies) to stretch out the Iraqi army.

Maintenance and spare parts have always been a problem - worse with the high tech stuff. Hard to explain, but it’s just not in their psyche. Buy the stuff and put it in the desert and it will last forever seems to be the prevailing attitude. It might still look okay but all the rubber, seals, and electronics are dead. Spare parts were never ordered or bought, were lost/sold off, or simply no system was ever instuted to get the parts were they were needed. Mechanics were never trained or actually used their skill.

4

I could never discern a plan for victory by either side. What I remember is that Iraq had more artillery, Iran had more fodder, and both sides seemed more concerned with reducing their social welfare costs than winning.

5

Artillery power alone is not teribly useful in trench warfare. That’s why the armies dig in. Even in WWI, they would carpet-bomb the other side with (not too big) artillery shells - then after the bombardment, the soldiers would come out of thir holes to repel the attack. Tanks were supposed to change this, but anti-tank traps and shoulder missiles made this difficult too. Plus, some of the front was the swamplands and across the waterways dividing the countries. getting a beachead across a waterway udner fire is not easy.

The fanceir the weapon, the trickier to maintain; things fail even faster with actual use. It’s one thing to recruit mechanics from a nation of backyard auto fiddlers, where every kid too poor or challenged to go to college buys a car and fiddles with it; it’s another to take a nation where most people have never handled a screwdriver, and create enough maintenance people to keep the trucks and finicky tanks running in adverse conditions, let alone precision jet aircraft. A truly capable mechanic can probably make a comfortable living there maintaining the fleets of Mercedes limos, why would they join the army? Why would Saddam let them go?

There was an embargo on both sides, although there was an underground effort to supply our friend and ally Saddam with some material.

6

I would not agree with this as a stand-alone bit of strategic advice. Tanks remain a significant part of an all-arms force. They are vulnerable without support - but that has been true basically ever since there were tanks. Every once in a while military leaders attempt to use tanks alone to gain a rapid advance - against a prepared opponent, this is a losing strategy. It’s a losing strategy against hand-held rockets, just as it was a losing strategy when the Brits attempted to use it against Rommel’s 88s. OTOH, agaisnt an unprepared enemy, it can be very successful, creating a panic stampede to illusory safety - as the Brits found against the Italians in north africa, or the Israelis against the Egyptians in '67.

7

I recall an analysis about 67 vs. Yom Kippur. In 67 the tank was a great desert weapon. By the latter war, the guided shoulder launched missile was available. The author said that unfortunately, the Soviet version was wire-guided; at the beginning, the Israelis lost a lot of tanks. Then they learned to quickly fire at the source of the rocket - a shell could land there before the rocket arrived, and the guidance system would become hamburger. By the end of the war, there were tanks driving around with dozens of wires draped across them. Also, toward the end, the Egyptians were apparently setting up a battery of rockets from behind a dune, fire them all at once and run like hell, no guidance.

Modern equipment uses self-guidance, so “fire and forget” is a bit more dificult to defend against.

8

IIRC in the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi tanks mostly dug into fixed positions, so they were simply self-propelled artilley.

9

Which South Asian countries have you dealt with? India? Pakistan? Sri Lanka? Burma? Never heard of such problems there so I would be interested in hearing your experiences.

To the OP. There were several stages of the war and while we are at it, Iraqs war aims were not to conquer Iran and remember that Iraq is much smaller than Iran with a much reduced population and resources. The longer the war continues the more these advantages become apparent. As it is, they especially in 1987/1988 did manage to inflict quite serious reverses on Iran.

10

The same reason they folded against the coalition forces in 1991 in Desert Storm - they were very poorly led and motivated, something with a long history for the Iraqi army. Their performance in the 1941 rebellion against the British was disastrous. The British defeated the rebellion despite being outnumber over 10 to 1. From wiki:

The performance of the Iraqi 3rd armored division in the 1973 war with Israel was equally disastrous. It’s not available online, but Trevor Dupuy’s Elusive Victory: the Arab-Israeli Wars 1947-74 gives a good account of it. The division appeared on the flank of the Israeli advance on Damascus and could have unraveled Israeli plans. Instead the division simply inexplicably stopped in front of the Israelis in late afternoon and didn’t move forward again until the next morning. The Israelis at first thought they had been spotted by the Iraqis, but this wasn’t the case. An Israeli brigade dug in in front of them and the next morning the Iraqi division was severely mauled by the Israelis with minimal Israeli casualties when they advanced into the undetected Israeli positions. They were not well regarded by their own allies, Dupuy quotes an Egyptian general he interviewed while writing the book as saying something to the effect of they must have stopped for lunch and then decided it was too close to tea by the time they were done.

11

There is naturally a continual arms race between armour and weapons that penetrate armour. What usually happens is that some new weapon is introduced that appears to be a total game-changer - the tank itself is a good example of this, as are anti-tank missiles - but pretty soon some new twist of technology potentially counters the seemingly unstoppable weapon system, which then takes its place in an ever-more-complex all-arms mix. Tanks develop anti-missile systems like anti-missile-missile systems and reactive armour …

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Israeli-Tanks-Get-Anti-Missile-Missiles-9-4-2009.asp

The long and short of it is that I would not write tanks off as obsolete yet. They are vulnerable to certain weapons of course, but then, so is everything. In the complex modern game of rock-paper-sissors that is modern warfare, tanks remain a pretty good rock. If used wisely, of course. Commanders that use tanks for everything without all-arms support will, naturally, continue to be beaten.

12

I agree, don’t write off any weapons system. The point is, electronic countermeasures, active armour, etc. were a step up from basic WWI weaponry - and so the sides in the I^2 War probably did not have the tech to make these things reliably and in quantity. However, they could probably make guns and misslies capable of stopping tanks.

Plus there was the problem as mentioned above, of support. So a bunch of tanks overrun the Iran trenches. Then what? Unless they take out enough of the troops, they pop up after the tanks go by, shoot them from the rear, and attack any ground troops following on.

Where tanks are really useful too, is to do an end run around the trenches, cros in one location then harass the supply lines at the back. This requires a breach of the lines at one point. Again, if there are troops waiting with anti-tank weapons, it gets expensive.

That’s the other key. Not only do you need the hardware, you need the industry to churn out more so you can at very least replace what’s blown up; preferrably, build a large force to perform a break-through maneuver.

IIRC, the issue was that neither side had the industrial capacity and infrastructure to build anything better than WWI-level weaponry.

13

Wasn’t the initial Israeli counter attack in Sinai marred by having relatively little infantry to call upon?

14

Those are all fair points.

15

Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq. South Central Asia - Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and a couple of other 'stans.

Some experiences. Saudi Arabia - They were purchasing PATRIOT missile systems after DS 1 and sending a battery up to Riyadh for a parade for the King. It was around 24 vehicles (just the flashy stuff). They planned to leave Taif around 9am and take 3 days to get to Riyadh (it’s actually about a 8 hour drive). I told the Saudi manager he was nuts for three days. He said paraphrasing, “Oh no Steve, the vehicles will break down, we have contracted flatbed trailers and wreckers to accompany the convoy. This always happens.” :rolleyes: Actually, two good Saudi mechanics and I had spent 4 days a month visiting the storage site at the Taif and exercising and maintaining the vehicles. The convoy arrived in one day but that would have been an embarassment so they camped in the desert outside of Riyadh so they wouldn’t be too early. Parade went great, all the vehicles then convoyed back to Taif in one day along with some additional equipment excess to the Saudi army. The only breakdowns were the contracted flatbeds and wreckers.

Uzbekistan had some modern Mig-29s I believe. Twin engine fighters. There were only 3 working engines in the whole country. 1.5 planes. Our (US) mechanics canabalized some others and got 6 good engines. The pilots were estatic. Some had not flown in years.

Afghanistan and another neighboring country. Stinger missile buy-back program of leftovers from the Soviet occupation. Program ended when it was determined that none of the missiles would work due to non-existent maintenance/ignorance of basic storage principles. AK-47 rifles (nod to your username) being carried around totally unuseable. Broken parts, bent barrels, bullets lodged in the bores:eek: Weapons for which ammunition had never been procured and vice versa.

Another country with HAWK missiles. Past useful life and going back to the US for demilitarization. Missiles couldn’t pass electrical testing, support equipment broken and missing parts, no knowledge on were to get repair parts. Theeeennnnn we went to the warehouses and found all the needed test equipment, spare parts, manuals in native language still in the original shipping containers and crates - untouched for 25, yes twenty-five years. Brand new trainers, mechanics tool sets, rotted tires.

Disabled equipment due to canabalization though the needed parts were on the other side of the base. Commander said it was too difficult to obtain, too much paperwork that would have to go to the capital for approval (many months). And the supply boss said, “If I issue my spare parts, how will I get replacements?” Of course enough spare parts were originally purchased to last the life of the system. But he would have an empty warehouse??? This came up in multiple countries.

My head is pounding just remembering some of the conditions and answers.

16

Yes, the IDF had become tank-heavy by the 1973 war, and the forces for immediate counterattack were tank brigades. The ratio of tanks to other arms in IDF formations shifted more towards balance as a result of the '73 war. There were a lot of factors at play; there was also a degree of unwarranted contempt for Arab infantry as a result of the 1967 war. After all, charging Arab infantry with tanks had worked in 1967. Egyptian special forces armed with AT-3 Saggers had also been lifted by helicopter behind the front to set up ambushes. Additionally, the speed and success with which the Egyptians crossed the Suez was a surprise. As a water crossing obstacle it doesn’t get much harder than the Suez before turning into a naval operation. The 60 foot tall sand berm on the Israeli side was expected to be a much harder obstacle than it turned out to be; the Egyptians had come up with the solution of using high pressure water hoses to make cuts in the berm.

17

Didn’t the Iraqis resort to chemical warfare? (Mustard and nerve gases)? My guess is that Saddam Hussein was willing to trade conscript lives easily-but he wold never risk his elite Republican Guard-they functioned as a private army (Praetorian Guard)-they kept him in power.
As was mentioned, neither side had adequate repair/spare parts…so a $70 million tank could be junk…for want of a few spare parts.

18

Yeah, the last guy to make a large group of people quickly cross from Africa to the Sinai had major backup.

19

smithsb, you sound an interesting fellow. Any chance of an “ask the interesting fellow” thread?

20

All true.

There is no question that the initial Egyptian attack caught the Israelis with their pants down. Charging infantry with tanks works well against unprepared, poorly-led infantry - and leadership doesn’t get much worse that that of the Egyptians in '67 - but does not work against prepared and well-led infantry armed with appropriate anti-tank weapons (this is not new - the same was true in WW2). The Israelis suffered badly from “victory disease”. Also, the Israelis had not had time to call up their infantry reserves. In hindsight they would have been wiser to have pulled back and wait for their reserves to be up to full strength.

None of which discounts the skill and preparation of the Egyptians.

However, the Egyptian army proved unable to exploit its initial victory. Over the course of the battle, the weaknesses of the Egyptian army - never as bad as those who discounted them after '67 made out, but real nonetheless - became more significant.