Iran–Iraq War

Iran calls it جنگ تحمیلی (The Imposed War)
Iran calls it دفاع مقدس (The Sacred Defence)
Iraq calls it قادسية صدام (Saddam's Qadisiyyah)

Sides

Iran

against

Iraq

What happened

After the 1979 revolution in Iran, Iraq's president Saddam Hussein and Iran's new leader Ayatollah Khomeini each called for the other's overthrow, and the two states disputed the Shatt al-Arab border. On 22 September 1980 Iraqi forces crossed into Iran. They took Khorramshahr but stalled before Abadan. Iran's army and Revolutionary Guards broke the siege of Abadan in 1981 and took Khorramshahr back in May 1982. Iran refused Saddam's offer to withdraw and carried the war into Iraq; years of attrition followed. Iraq used chemical weapons from the mid-1980s, and both sides fired missiles at each other's cities and attacked oil tankers in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states lent Iraq tens of billions of dollars, the Soviet Union and France sold it arms, and the United States gave it credits and intelligence. China sold arms to both sides and North Korea to Iran; Syria and Libya backed Iran. The United States also sold Iran missiles in secret (the Iran–Contra affair), and in 1987–88 US warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms. Iran accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 in July 1988, and a ceasefire took effect on 20 August with neither side having won its aims.

Outcome: A UN-brokered ceasefire under Resolution 598 took effect on 20 August 1988 with neither side victorious; in 1990 Iraq withdrew from the last Iranian land it held and accepted the pre-war border.

Key events

Leaders

Ruhollah Khomeini · Supreme Leader of Iran · Iran
Ali Khamenei · President of Iran from 1981 · Iran
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani · Speaker of parliament; acting commander-in-chief in 1988 · Iran
Saddam Hussein · President of Iraq · Iraq
Ali Hassan al-Majid · Commander in northern Iraq, 1987–1989 · Iraq

Deaths

Death tolls are estimates and often contested. Each is a range from its sources; a figure one party gives is marked as theirs.

Total deaths · All sides

367,000 – 1,000,000
Soldiers and civilians on both sides. Published estimates run from about 367,000 (a conservative Western count cited by the historian Dilip Hiro) to about a million, a figure used in many reference works; the median of the estimates compiled by Necrometrics is about 700,000. Iran's and Iraq's own figures are lower than most independent ones. The tolls are contested.
Sources