Operational Art: The Missing Link in the Iran-Iraq War

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This monograph analyzes the Iran-Iraq War from its inception in September of 1980 through the Iranian Faw Counteroffensive of February 1986. It uses the precepts of operational art to examine the performance of the belligerents in this prolonged and bloody conflict. The monograph first reviews the political and historical background leading up to the Iraqi invasion on 23 September 1980. Next it distills the war into its distinctive phases, exploring the relationship between political objectives and the military means employed to attain them, by phase. It concludes with an analysis of how well Iran and Iraq have applied the precepts of operational art in this ongoing conflict. This monograph concludes that the Iran-Iraqi war has not served the policies of the belligerents well. Their collective failure to implement the principles of operational art coupled with their failure to execute tactical operations in a combined arms fashion have made this war a minion of death. It ends by proffering a possible solution for an Iranian victory using the precepts of operational art and by commenting on Iraq’s present efforts to settle the conflict peacefully by drawing in the United States.