Ironically, the fall of the Shah left Iran open to Iraqi attacks, and from Feb. 1979 (Bahman, 1357) to September 1980 (Shahrivar, 1359), there were over 200 recorded Iraqi attacks. The first attack on Baneh (Kordestan) resulted in 15 deaths and nine prisoners.

On September 22, 1980 ( 31 Shahrivar 1359 ), Iraqi fighter aircraft attacked ten air bases in Iran. They aimed to destroy the Iranian air force on the ground. They succeeded in destroying runways and fuel and ammunition depots, but much of Iran’s aircraft inventory was left intact. Simultaneously, six Iraqi army divisions entered Iran on three fronts in an initially successful surprise attack.

On the Northern front, an Iraqi mountain infantry division captured Qasr-e Shirin, a border town in Kermanshah Province. It occupied territory 30 kilometers eastward to the base of the Zagros Mountains.

On the Central front, Iraqi forces captured Mehran on the western plain of the Zagros Mountains in Ilam province and pushed eastward to the mountain base.

The main thrust of the attack, however, was in the south. Iraqi armored units easily crossed the Shatt al-Arab waterway and entered the Iranian province of Khuzestan. While some divisions headed toward Khorramshahr and Abadan, others moved toward Ahwaz, the provincial capital and site of an important air base.

Supported by heavy artillery fire, the troops made a rapid and lightening advance – almost 60 kilometers in the first days.

In the battle for Dezful in Khuzestan, the Islamic regime was forced to halt the execution of hundreds of Iranian pilots accused of participating in a failed coup d’etat attempt in July 1980 and suspected of being loyal to the late Shah. It was these pilots who, despite the serious deterioration of the air force, were able to curtail the Iraqi advance with their heroic and skilled flying. However, it must be remembered that the Iraqi aggression took place at a time when the Islamic regime had purged the Imperial Armed Forces of many of its top command officers, specialists, and the most educated personnel. More than 2550 executions took place between 1979 and September 1980, with more than 1050 of them coming from the armed forces.

By not maintaining the high-tech radar system, the revolutionary authorities allowed the Iraqis to penetrate Iranian air space and place Iran’s population under the threat of enemy bombardment. As the war continued, the revolutionary government had to admit its need for the professional services of many of the purged officers to lead the armed forces in defending the country.

History will record that during the 1970s, imperial Iran developed one of the most impressive military forces in the Middle East, but the catastrophic events of the Islamic regime in 1979 weakened the armed forces and allowed the impossible to happen.

The war that H.I.M. Mohammed Reza Shah had averted in 1975 when Iran and Iraq signed a non-aggression pact was torn by Saddam Hussein in 1980 and ushered in a battle that was to cost over a million Iranian lives and 500,000 wounded casualties and billions of dollars of damages.

But let us not forget that it was the criminal incompetence of the mullahs and their systematic destruction of Iran’s armed forces that allowed the war to go on for eight long years.