Iran-Iraq War/Persian Gulf Wars Commentary

Zachowon said:

@Bear Ribs @Aldarion
Look up the order of battle for Iran.
It literally has them using M60s, M48s, Chieftains, M113s....

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Bear Ribs said:

I'm aware, that's why I took exception to his "They were a light-infantry militia with no tanks, aircraft, artillery..." comment and am trying to get him to acknowledge the facts about just how much metal they had.

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Again, you guys are ignoring the difference between ORBAT and actual combat strength.

For example, if you take German Luftwaffe in 2010s (or even today) on its ORBAT, it had significant strength of Eurofighter Typhoons.

But in 2018., only four out of 128 Typhoons were combat-ready or even operational.

That is the situation Iranian military was. It had significant strength on paper, but much of its heavy hardware was not actually usable even at the beginning of the war. And because it was completely unable to replace the combat losses, or even provide enough spare parts, its inventory of heavy weapons (tanks, artillery, aircraft) was steadily depleted throughout the conflict. And as I pointed out, Iranian losses in the opening stages of conflict were massive. Not much equipment was left operational after the first couple of years.

Capisci?

And both sides in that war were not particularly competent - considering their tactics, they would have had trouble against the Imperial German Army. Iraqis used their tanks as mobile artillery pillboxes, not that different from British usage of Mark Is in World War I. Worse, in fact, because tanks advanced a good distance behind the infantry, and would frequently dig in, wait for artillery to saturate the general area in front of them, and then resume the snail-pace advance. This behavior might have been excusable against an enemy with massive supply of ATGMs, but against Iran? Yeah, no. Keep in mind, these were 1980s., and Iran did not have many ATGMs to begin with.

And even their artillery was incompetent, incapable of doing anything beyond area saturation. Pint fire, counterbattery fire, on-call fire, switching fire, even the 1918.-standard creeping barrage, were all well beyond their technical and C&C capabilities. This was equally true for Iraq and Iran.

EDIT: As to numbers:
Iraq had ~2600 MBTs in 1979., 2750 in 1980., and 7000 in 1988.
Iran had 1700 MBTs in 1979., <1000 in 1980.

But as I said, issue with Iran was that most of it was not actually combat-ready.

Many, and as the war dragged on this became clear majority, of Iranian tanks were inoperable due to lack of spare parts. It also had APCs, but no more than 950 were operational in 1985. Likewise, by 1981., less than one-third of its air force was operational, and by 1985., no more than one-fifth of its aircraft were in a flyable state.

Bear Ribs said:

No one's ignoring anything except you. You've been asked for numbers and proof over and over and you keep insisting that by asking we're somehow ignoring actual combat strength. Show your numbers for actual combat strength, tell us how many of those missiles Iran had, and verify that info. We just want you to present actual proof of your claim that they were a "Light-Infantry Militia."

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I am not ignoring that, because:
1) numbers you are focusing on are completely wrong numbers.
2) Proof is in the pudding. Or rather, proof is in what Iranians actually did. I mean, if you have tanks, you will use them. If you have air force, you will use it. Unless, of course, you can't. And if you can't, it means it is inoperative.

Again, look at how Iranians fought, what they did. Look at the comments by Iraqi commanders on how Iranians fought and what they did. I had provided the quotes, I had provided the documents. I can find more sources if you want, but not before you actually address what I had already provided. It doesn't matter how many tanks and aircraft Iran had in naftaline - what matters is what they used.

Your entire argument so far is "paper says Iranians had thousand tanks so Iraqis faced thousand Iranian tanks in the field". Except, no, they didn't.

And even then, my argument did not even rest on the amount of military hardware, but how that hardware was used - I used Iran merely as an example to show that Iraq didn't really know how to use weapons it had, and therefore wars against Iraq (or any other Arab country) are not really a good measure of military competence. And that is fairly obvious, in both the Iraqi-Iranian war and the Gulf War. Which is again why you should read the documents, because frankly, Iranians themselves were not very competent either - they were merely not so bad that Iraqi's massive hardware advantage could have been decisive despite all the other problems.

Aldarion said:

I am not ignoring that, because:
1) numbers you are focusing on are completely wrong numbers.
2) Proof is in the pudding. Or rather, proof is in what Iranians actually did. I mean, if you have tanks, you will use them. If you have air force, you will use it. Unless, of course, you can't. And if you can't, it means it is inoperative.

Again, look at how Iranians fought, what they did. Look at the comments by Iraqi commanders on how Iranians fought and what they did. I had provided the quotes, I had provided the documents. I can find more sources if you want, but not before you actually address what I had already provided. It doesn't matter how many tanks and aircraft Iran had in naftaline - what matters is what they used.

Your entire argument so far is "paper says Iranians had thousand tanks so Iraqis faced thousand Iranian tanks in the field". Except, no, they didn't.

And even then, my argument did not even rest on the amount of military hardware, but how that hardware was used - I used Iran merely as an example to show that Iraq didn't really know how to use weapons it had, and therefore wars against Iraq (or any other Arab country) are not really a good measure of military competence. And that is fairly obvious, in both the Iraqi-Iranian war and the Gulf War. Which is again why you should read the documents, because frankly, Iranians themselves were not very competent either - they were merely not so bad that Iraqi's massive hardware advantage could have been decisive despite all the other problems.

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What numbers did I focus on? I asked you for numbers to prove your assertion, I have presented none of my own. What paper am I arguing over? I asked you to present proof of your claim of light-infantry militia without tanks, aircraft, or artillery" and didn't present papers of my own as I haven't made any positive assertions here. It's telling that you can't present any real proof (at best some armchair general's vague claims that don't supply the numbers you keep getting asked for) and instead keep strawmanning everybody else as focusing on facts they never claimed when it's asked of you.

Bear Ribs said:

What numbers did I focus on? I asked you for numbers to prove your assertion, I have presented none of my own.

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Numbers of tanks you are constantly asking about? You are completely thinking about the numbers game, just the numbers game, and nothing else. You seem to think that if an army has a tank, then it automatically 1) can use it, 2) has used it, and 3) has used it well.

Which is wrong.

Bear Ribs said:

What paper am I arguing over? I asked you to present proof of your claim of light-infantry militia without tanks, aircraft, or artillery" and didn't present papers of my own as I haven't made any positive assertions here. It's telling that you can't present any real proof (at best some armchair general's vague claims that don't supply the numbers you keep getting asked for) and instead keep strawmanning everybody else as focusing on facts they never claimed when it's asked of you.

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I have presented you proof, which is the actual description of tactics, operations and behavior of both armies in the war. Yet you keep asking for irrelevant stuff because you either do not want to admit you even might be wrong, or you cannot understand what these descriptions actually say.

I mean, back to your numbers game:

Bear Ribs said:

How about you post a list of their actual equipment to back that up.

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List of equipment is literally one of the least relevant things you need to know when considering army's actual performance in a war.

Fact is that equipment does not matter if it is:

• sitting in a depot due to a lack of maintenance
• sitting in a depot due to a lack of fuel
• used improperly due to a lack of training
• used improperly due to a lack of resources

During most of the war, Iranian army acted like a World War I force at best, with focus on light infantry and infiltration tactics, with limited artilllery support and very little air support, especially late in the war when maintenance issues meant most of its weapons were not operational. Iraqi army also acted like a World War I force despite extensive access to heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery and aircraft, but it did make extensive usage of these weapons, mostly in a fire support role.

Either of these armies would have been easily beaten by 1995 Croatian army, or maybe even by World War I Austro-Hungarian army, despite their hardware.

Again:

Military professionalism was simply not in the vocabulary of Khomeini’s regime. The alternative to the professional military in Iran was a number of revolutionary militias. None of these militias had any serious military training, nor, as Hamdani would describe, did they possess leaders with even the slightest understanding of tactics.

The militias—in some cases no more than small groups swearing fealty to a local imam or ayatollah with political ambitions—often acted independently, obeying no instructions and initiating combat actions without orders to do so. Local Iranian commanders appeared to have had almost complete freedom of action, whatever the strategic or operational consequences might be. This may well explain the fact that some Iranian units began shelling Iraqi towns and military positions in a rampageous fashion before the Iraqi invasion began and before the initiation of large-scale military operations. Thus, one can hardly speak of coherent Iranian military operations, much less a strategic conception, throughout the first 4 years of the conflict.

While the militias were important in the dangerous game of politics swirling around Tehran, they had no military training and remained disjointed, answering to different clerics and factions among Khomeini’s supporters and exhibiting little interest in repairing their military deficiencies. Not surprisingly, their attitudes reflected those of their leaders, and they showed little or no willingness to learn from, much less cooperate in military operations with, the regular army. All of this derived from their belief that religious fervor was the key to victory on the battlefield. Thus, Iranian tactics remained unimaginative and militarily incompetent throughout the war. More often than not, human wave attacks were all the Iranian militias could launch. The result was a catastrophic casualty tally reminiscent of the fighting in World War I. Unlike in Baghdad, where Saddam attempted to control everything, the exact opposite military command model was in effect in Tehran. Various factional leaders, imams, and others launched attacks or raids in an effort to curry favor with the religious and political leaders, who were in turn jockeying for position around Khomeini. Early in the war, few if any of Iran’s attacks appeared to have coherence or clear objectives, nor did they fit into a larger strategic conception of the war. Most battles thus contributed to the growing casualties while achieving little of tactical, much less operational, value. This situation reflected the general lack of military understanding among the religious and political leaders in Tehran, who were supposedly running the show.

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Ironically, with the massive mobilization, the threat that Khomeini represented to the stability of the oil regions of the Middle East made it difficult for the Iranians to acquire the heavy weapons such as tanks or new aircraft that played a key part in the fighting on the ground. It also led to a situation where the Iraqis—with access to modern Soviet and Western weapons—were able to increase their technological capabilities slowly but steadily. According to Hamdani, the result of Iran’s lack of access to sophisticated modern weapons was that, as they depleted the stock of heavy weapons and spares acquired by the Shah, they had to field a light infantry force supported by diminishing amounts of armor and artillery. This was not necessarily a disadvantage in swampy areas like the Fao Peninsula or the mountains to the northeast of Baghdad, but it put the Iranians at a distinct disadvantage in areas of flat desert terrain and at the approaches to Basra, where much of the heavy fighting occurred.

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After the initial advance into Iran, many of the Iraqi generals deployed at the front failed to meet the challenge of complex operations. Moreover, in Hamdani’s opinion, their lack of experience led to inferiority complexes and made them unwilling to take advice from their subordinates. The result was a series of stunning defeats, beginning in 1981, that drove the Iraqis back to and then beyond the starting point of their invasion. These defeats forced Saddam to move gradually away from his emphasis on political reliability for his generals toward greater willingness to reward and promote those who displayed some level of military competence. Still, as Hamdani emphasized during our conversations, Saddam never let go of his deep suspicion of his generals and his belief that they represented the only potentially serious threat to his dictatorship.

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As their losses mounted at the lower tactical level, the Iranians became increasingly proficient at infiltration and small unit tactics. In this arena, they were clearly superior to their opponents. Thus, in mountainous terrain east of Baghdad, in the north, and in the swampy terrain characterizing the areas to the northeast and southeast of Basra, they enjoyed considerable advantage. But elsewhere, where the ground lay open and thus amenable to the use of armor, Iraq’s superior armored forces, backed by dug-in infantry and artillery, halted enemy attacks and inflicted disproportionate casualties on the attacking Iranians. As a result, the war took on the guise of World War I attrition, as the two sides’ military forces, equipped and trained in different patterns, inflicted heavy casualties on each other without being able to gain a decisive advantage. By 1984, however, the Iraqis began to use chemical weapons, which did provide them an important advantage, given the failure of the Iranians to prepare for such a threat. The use of these weapons would continue for the remainder of the war.15

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In the Fao campaign, for the first time since the war began, Iranians displayed a significant degree of military professionalism. They made every effort to play to their strengths while minimizing those of the Iraqis. They launched major forces against the swampy terrain that makes up most of the peninsula. For the attack, they trained a large force of infantry for an amphibious assault and prepared large numbers of small boats and landing craft. The infantry infiltration tactics they had developed on the central sector played to the geographic realities of the swamps on the peninsula. According to Hamdani, the North Koreans provided sophisticated combat engineering advice and support to Khomeini’s forces. Perhaps most significantly, the Iranians managed to achieve a modicum of cooperation between the remnants of the regular army and the various militias. This allowed them to plan the operation over the winter of 1985/1986 with considerable precision.

Iraqi overconfidence, together with the unwillingness of those in Baghdad to recognize what was happening, served to magnify the initial Iranian successes. The commanders on the spot showed a distinct bravado that they could halt any Iranian attack, while commanders at higher levels in the Basra area displayed a lack of imagination in analyzing what the Iranians were up to. Extensive radio deception by the Iranians played a role in convincing the Iraqis by reinforcing their prejudices and assumptions. When the Iraqi generals in the area finally realized that something major was occurring on the peninsula, senior military and political leaders in Baghdad further delayed in sending reinforcements, because they concluded that the Iranians were staging a deception operation and that their main attack would come against Basra. Not until Iraqi forces—approximately of division strength— had been crushed and had lost most of the Fao Peninsula did commanders in Basra and Baghdad awaken to the danger. By then it was too late.

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Once again, the Iraqi attack resembled a World War I offensive with its heavy emphasis on the use of artillery and gas against the Iranians. By catching Khomeini’s forces by surprise, the Iraqis were able to minimize their weakness in command and control (C2 )—a weakness on both sides throughout the war—while maximizing the C2 difficulties on the other side.18 Most of the Iranians fought doggedly, but the surprise the Iraqis had gained, as well as careful planning and preparation for the battle, allowed the Republican Guard to dominate the battlefield even considering the difficulties of the terrain. Firepower, gas, and superior planning eventually resulted in a devastating defeat for the Iranians. Shortly thereafter, Khomeini agreed to an armistice with Saddam’s Ba’athist regime, and the dismal Iran-Iraq War came to an end

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Militarily, there were no decisive victories. At the beginning, neither side proved capable of applying coherent tactics to the battlefield, or even operational concepts or strategic thinking. Initially, fanatical political and religious amateurs determined the disposition of forces and conduct of operations. During the war’s course, military effectiveness at the tactical level improved somewhat, especially on the Iraqi side. While military professionalism slowly crept back into the picture in Baghdad, it never entirely replaced Saddam’s amateurish decision-making; he alone made the significant military decisions. On the other side, military professionalism was rarely evident. Until the end of the war in July 1988, Saddam and Khomeini both equated some degree of military effectiveness with the casualty rates their forces suffered.

Nevertheless, the war’s duration, as well its casualties forced both Iraq and Iran to adapt and learn. How and what they learned suggests much about how difficult it is to learn in the midst of a war, for which neither side was intellectually prepared. Once again, the conflict underlined that cognitive factors, such as initiative and military professionalism, were of greater consequence on the battlefield than mere muscle and technology. Iran’s performance during the war also suggested the lengths to which human beings are willing to go on fighting for a cause in which they fanatically believe.

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Arab militaries began their descent in the seventeenth century from their historic and relative heights and continued through the final collapse of the moribund Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the twentieth. If the peoples of the modern Middle East managed to absorb only a smattering of the Western way of war, it was due largely to their contemporary experience with European military institutions, either as “the colonized” or being on the receiving end of Western military power. The result was that Arab military culture devolved into an echo of its former self, resting on a complex mix of myths and notions of bravery, tribal loyalty, raiding parties, and martyrdom that were, in many ways, indifferent to the effectiveness model inherent in the accoutrements and models of Western militaries. Such attributes have made Arabs extraordinarily brave warriors throughout the ages, but relatively poor soldiers in the context of wars since the nineteenth century.

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For Saddam, the question his regime’s legitimacy created not only a political problem, resulting in his ruthless purge of the Ba’ath Party in 1979, but a military one. Saddam knew well that the army was the one institution that could overthrow the Ba’ath regime, as it had done in 38 Research Notes 1963. In fact, since Iraq had emerged from the British mandate in the early 1930s, the legitimacy of its various governments had been anything but secure, while the army had displayed an enthusiastic willingness to overthrow the government of the day. Thus, as so many dictators have done throughout history, Saddam aimed to fully co-opt and, failing that, defang the only Iraqi institution with the independence and power to overthrow his regime.

From his perspective, the ideal senior commanders were those whom he could point in the general direction of the enemy, and who then, by their toughness and bravery, could destroy the external enemies of his regime. In terms of maintaining his control in Iraq, such an approach was certainly successful. Like Stalin, he had no qualms with bludgeoning his internal enemies via a minimum of effort and maximum of ruthlessness, while ensuring that the Army lacked the kinds of leaders who could launch a coup. Thus, in September 1980 on the eve of a war that would require a very different type of military, Saddam had every reason to believe that he and the Ba’ath party had created military institutions effective the way he wanted them to be (al-Marashi and Salama 2008). He would soon discover, however, that a military built on cultural myths and tribal relations would not work so well against an opponent with an even deeper faith in bravery and martyrdom and a population three times as great.

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Aldarion said:

Numbers of tanks you are constantly asking about? You are completely thinking about the numbers game, just the numbers game, and nothing else. You seem to think that if an army has a tank, then it automatically 1) can use it, 2) has used it, and 3) has used it well.

Which is wrong.



I have presented you proof, which is the actual description of tactics, operations and behavior of both armies in the war. Yet you keep asking for irrelevant stuff because you either do not want to admit you even might be wrong, or you cannot understand what these descriptions actually say.

I mean, back to your numbers game:


List of equipment is literally one of the least relevant things you need to know when considering army's actual performance in a war.

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But it's the single most important thing to determining if they're a "light-infantry militia" which is what I'm questioning and you're failing to prove at every turn.

Aldarion said:

Fact is that equipment does not matter if it is:

• sitting in a depot due to a lack of maintenance
• sitting in a depot due to a lack of fuel
• used improperly due to a lack of training
• used improperly due to a lack of resources

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Okay then, give us your proof. How many were sitting in a depot due to a lack of maintenance? How many were sitting in a depot due to a lack of fuel? The other two are largely impossible to quantify. "Improperly" is a vague weasel word that can be stretched to all sorts of stuff, and it's all too easy for Monday morning quarterbacks to try to justify the Fog of War or being caught by surprise as "Incompetence" when they have an ax to grind for whoever is paying them for their analysis. Analysts like the one you keep citing are all too prone to Victory Disease in which any tactic, no matter how incompetent, is heralded as brilliance because they want and failure is always proof of incompetence no matter the circumstances. Of course there's always that political ax to grind as well and plans of those they oppose are always incompetent while their own allies' plans are brilliant and hampered by their dastardly opponent's wrongthink. It's easy to spot this kind of sloppy analysis because they don't have any numbers to back it up, and instead insist on vague fluffy reasoning about morale, competence, zeal, and bravery, things that can't be quantified or measured and thus can't be easily refuted when they write their hack job.

Bear Ribs said:

But it's the single most important thing to determining if they're a "light-infantry militia" which is what I'm questioning and you're failing to prove at every turn.

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Weapons you don't use don't matter.

Bear Ribs said:

Okay then, give us your proof. How many were sitting in a depot due to a lack of maintenance? How many were sitting in a depot due to a lack of fuel? The other two are largely impossible to quantify. "Improperly" is a vague weasel word that can be stretched to all sorts of stuff, and it's all too easy for Monday morning quarterbacks to try to justify the Fog of War or being caught by surprise as "Incompetence" when they have an ax to grind for whoever is paying them for their analysis. Analysts like the one you keep citing are all too prone to Victory Disease in which any tactic, no matter how incompetent, is heralded as brilliance because they want and failure is always proof of incompetence no matter the circumstances. Of course there's always that political ax to grind as well and plans of those they oppose are always incompetent while their own allies' plans are brilliant and hampered by their dastardly opponent's wrongthink. It's easy to spot this kind of sloppy analysis because they don't have any numbers to back it up, and instead insist on vague fluffy reasoning about morale, competence, zeal, and bravery, things that can't be quantified or measured and thus can't be easily refuted when they write their hack job.

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I already did. Again, read descriptions I provided of how Iranian army acted. If Iranians really were the modern, mechanized army that you are insisting they were, why didn't they use those weapons they allegedly had? Iraqis did use their tanks, as incompetently as they did. Tactics Iranians were using already tell everything we need to know. And this is assuming numbers are even available to begin with. But of course, you keep insisting on asking useless things.

Also, those "vague fluffy" things are literally the most important things in war. But you keep focusing on useless stuff. Again, if the US and Iraq had switched weapons in the Desert Storm, outcome would have been the same. If they switched weapons in 2003., outcome would have been the same.

Anyway, I am quite certain I provided some of these before:

Iran began the war with numerical inferiority. It started the war with only 1,700 main battle tanks and 250 light tanks. It has never been able to correct this situation. As of 1984, this number had been reduced to around 1,000 to 1,150 tanks. Iran procured or captured about 1,000 T-54s and T-55s, 260 T-59s and some T-72s during 1984-1988, but it also took substantial losses. In early 1988, Iran had less than 750 operational Western tanks, even counting large numbers which were not in operational. These included a maximum of 300 Chieftain Mark-3/5, 250 M-60s, and 200 M-47/48s. Many had limited or no operability due to shortfalls in spare parts and a lack of trained maintenance personnel and major workshop capability.

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Iraq had roughly 2,750 tanks in late 1980. In early 1988, it had more than 4,500 Soviet T-54s, 55s, 62s, and 72s, some 1,500 Chinese T-59s and T-69-IIs, 60 Romanian M-77s, and some captured Iranian Chieftains. Iraq had about 2,500 other armored vehicles in late 1980. As of late 1985, Iraq had about 3,000 AFVs, including such advanced systems as the EE-9, EE-3, FUG-70, MOWAG version of Roland, ERC, BMP, BDRM-Z, and the VC-TH with HOT. It had about 5,100 such systems in early 1988, including roughly 1,000 new models of the Soviet BMP armored fighting vehicle.

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many Iranian tanks were unfit for battle

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Bear Ribs said:

*Points and laughs.*

Yeah, there's no point even trying to debate a level of self-clown this high.

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Yeah, you clearly have no clue about Arab armies, and Iraqi army in general.

So enjoy your self-delusion. But I suggest you read up on that particular topic when you get time. At the very least, it will be good for a quite few laughs at Arab expense - Saudis aren't much better than Iraqis were, btw. Other than you, Arab (specifically Iraqi) commanders were the only clowns here.