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An analytical report by the “Brookings Institution” showed that the Iran-Iraq war that broke out 40 years ago provided painful lessons for the Tehran regime in training loyal representatives and militias in the region to protect it from the danger of isolation or end Your presence.
In 1980 a long and violent war broke out between the Iraqi army led by Saddam Hussein and the Iranian army a year after the “revolution” of Khomeini’s guide.
That war lasted 8 years and resulted in the death of around a million people and great material and economic losses for the two countries.
According to the report by Rang Alaeddin, Iran had suffered from international isolation after the Khomeini revolution, while the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein enjoyed the lack of the United States and the Arab Gulf states, prompting Tehran to start to form a network of representatives in the region.
Tehran mobilized Iraqi Shi’ite opposition groups, tried to provoke an uprising in the ranks of the Shi’ite majority and encouraged splits within the Iraqi army, but to no avail as the Baath regime was able to suppress any hostile movements.
The Brookings Institution report pointed to the Iraqi military, with its Shiite and Sunni components, who fought valiantly during the war with Iran, indicating that their loyalty was not a love for Saddam Hussein’s regime, but rather their desire not to transform their country. in a version of Iran dominated by a theocratic religious government. Or that your country is subject to Tehran.
Among the reasons for Iran’s failure to bring about radical change in Iraq at the time was the division of the Iraqi Shiite opposition and its lack of experience and discipline on the battlefields, according to the report.
In his book “The Shiite Movement in Iraq,” the late Iraqi sociologist Faleh Abdul-Jabbar said that opposition movements had failed because they had not sufficiently nationalized their cause. Shiite Islamist movements in Iraq were forced into exile to join the Iranian war effort, and thus these groups were isolated. On the Iraqi nationalist current that emerged during the Iran-Iraq war and was adopted by most of the Shiites who fought against Iran.
Despite tireless efforts Iran made with some Iraqi Shiite groups, including recruiting and mobilizing Iraqi military dissidents and prisoners of war to establish the Badr Corps militia, it failed to overthrow the Baath regime, after Saddam Hussein managed to appease to the Shiite community by allocating large budgets to places. The Holy Mosque and works to renovate it, and his quest to strengthen the Arab identity of the Shiites, claiming that he is a descendant of Imam Ali
The moral of the lessons
But Tehran, after a disastrous failure in the past, was able to absorb the lessons to succeed later, and after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, the formation of a network of proxies for him, to ensure that isolation International that almost threatened the existence of a regime during the eight-year war is not repeated.
According to the “Brookings” report, its vast network of armed powers is perhaps its most important defense and deterrence capacity, even nuclear. The Lebanese Hezbollah militias, since their creation in 1982, have been able to control the state in Lebanon and have become a fundamental card in the hand of Tehran and an indispensable tool in preparing and training other militias in the region.
In Iraq, the “Badr” militia is currently the largest paramilitary force in the country, controls the Ministry of the Interior and has extensive influence over Iraqi institutions.
It also dominates the Popular Mobilization Force, whose number exceeds 100,000 fighters, and has been able to expand its influence to Syria, where it helped support and maintain the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The report emphasizes that had it not been for the painful lessons of the Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iraqi Badr Corps would not have been as powerful and influential today.
The report concludes that the issue of “Iranian proxies” has become an important area whose developments and devastating consequences must be monitored, which is one of the main challenges in the Middle East region today.
