The Iran-Iraq War: The Greatest Land War of the Late Twentieth Century

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The Iran-Iraq War, fought from 1980 to 1988, was the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. It was one of the most bitterly contested wars and remains one of the most fateful conflicts in the Middle East, strongly influencing the fate of both belligerents to the present day. In September 1980, Iraq decided to invade Iran at a time when the latter was in a state of civil war, unrest, and chaos and was thus massively weakened, despite its immense military build-up of the 1970s. Iraq did so without much of a plan, and things rapidly went wrong. The invasion turned into a costly failure that nearly bankrupted the government in Baghdad, leaving it overdependent on extensive sponsorship by the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf. By 1982, Iran had not only recovered most of the terrain lost but was in possession of the strategic initiative. For the next five years, the Iranians launched ever more powerful attempts to invade Iraq and break the back of its armed forces. Ultimately, Iran failed, buying time for Iraq to recover and then deliver a series of devastating blows against both the Iranian economy and armed forces that, in 1988, destroyed Iran's ability to continue fighting. In the wake of the success of the four volumes about the IranIraq War published in the Middle East@War book series, we have decided to republish these as a single hardback volume, with added appendices detailing the equipment and structure of the two armies, and new figure artworks, and thus offer our readers the opportunity to read what is widely considered as the most authoritative, most comprehensive, most detailed, and best-illustrated military history of ground warfare in this conflict in one volume. Packed with information drawn primarily from Iranian and Iraqi sources, and heavily illustrated mostly in colour this volume provides an exclusive and uniquely precise insight into an affair certain to continue influencing the future of both of the countries involved for decades to come. 174 b/w photos, 8 colour figures, 244 colour photos, 77 colour profiles, 37 maps, 49 tables

Author Bio

E. R. Hooton is a successful retired defense journalist, including acting as a Jane's yearbook editor. He is the author of more than a dozen military history books ranging from the Balkans Wars 1912-1913, air operations over the Western Front 1916-1918, the breaking of the Hindenburg Line 1918, the Red Army 1937-1941, air operations 1939-1945 and the Communist Chinese victory of 1945-1951. Tom Cooper is an Austrian aerial warfare analyst and historian. Following a career in worldwide transportation business - during which he established a network of contacts in the Middle East and Africa - he moved into narrow-focus analysis and writing on small, little-known air forces and conflicts, about which he has collected extensive archives. This has resulted in specialization in such Middle Eastern air forces as of those of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, plus various African and Asian air forces. Except for authoring and co-authoring more than 30 books - including about a dozen of titles for Helion's @War series - and over 1000 articles, Cooper is a regular correspondent for multiple defense-related publications. Farzin Nadimi is a writer and researcher of the Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf defense and security affairs, with a focus on Iran-Iraq War military history, energy security and geopolitics, economic warfare, and oil and gas industries. He has a Master's degree in War Studies from King's College London and a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Manchester. He lives in Washington, DC.