A defiant Iran draws on the lessons of an earlier war

Mint

06-07-2025

Israel's 12-day campaign of airstrikes on Iran killed a number of top military leaders, wiped out its air defenses and pummeled symbols of its rulers' power. It wasn't the first time Tehran's theocratic leaders had been pushed to the brink.
Across the country, schools and streets are named for soldiers and pilots killed in the brutal war fought four decades ago between Iran and Iraq. Then, as now, the conflict pitted the regime against a superior, U.S.-backed adversary. As now, Iran perceived itself as alone and cornered.
Yet the regime refused to cave and outlasted Saddam Hussein's Iraq and withstood U.S. pressure. It ultimately grew into a far more potent regional power after the Iraqi leader ended up in America's sights.
That experience shaped generations of Iranian leaders and laid the groundwork for strategies that culminated in the most recent war. It also offers guidance as strategists try to game Iran's next moves and its adversaries push to complete the job of winding up its nuclear program.
'That war really looms large in terms of the entire way in which they see themselves under siege, permanently under threat," said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University and author of 'Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History." 'The mindset of the country now is that it dodged a bullet and that it still has to contend with a long term danger."
While battered, Iran has remained defiant, most recently by ending cooperation with international nuclear inspectors, a move that closes the world's window on of its program.
After the U.S. bombed Iran's core nuclear facilities, the regime vowed to keep its nuclear program going. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the new chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, said Iran 'won't back down." Israel had killed his predecessor days earlier.
The pronouncements reflect wartime bravado. Israel's campaign, in which it quickly established dominance in Iran's skies and simultaneously hit many nuclear scientists and military leaders, demonstrated its overwhelming military superiority and the extensive penetration of the regime by its spies. Iran launched a major crackdown once the shooting stopped to reassert its domestic control.
But Iran's leaders also have a genuine confidence in their ability to hold out against foreign threats. 'They know that they can survive a total war that lasts a long time," said Afshon Ostovar, an Iran military expert and associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. 'They know they can tolerate a lot more than maybe the Israelis can tolerate."
As the cease-fire was about to take effect, Iran launched a salvo of missiles that killed several Israelis. Israeli planes were on the way to retaliate when President Trump demanded that they turn around.
'[Iran's leaders] know if the war ends with Iran in a position of weakness, then they're going to be bullied at the negotiating table," said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. 'This is one key factor in their calculations, informed by their experience in the Iran-Iraq war."
The Iran-Iraq war began a year after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Saddam sent his troops into Iran seeking to exploit its political disorder and seize territory, including oil-rich areas. Over the ensuing nearly eight-year conflict, Iranians and Iraqis fought one of the deadliest global conflicts of the 20th century, with hundreds of thousands killed on both sides. Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran, and his troops targeted Iran's oil infrastructure but never seized any major oil fields.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the country's president for the duration of the war. In 1982, Iran's darkest moment came after it launched a failed operation to seize the southern Iraqi city of Basra. It resulted in tens of thousands of Iranian casualties and exposed the country's military weakness.
The war prompted Iran to reimagine its defensive strategy in ways that steered it toward a fight with Israel.
When Iraq invaded, Iran's rulers tried to compete in the air by freeing jailed U.S.-trained fighter pilots who had fought for the ousted Shah. But they soon ran out of spare parts for their U.S.-made F-14 jet fighters. America, now their enemy, refused to resupply them, and some jets were grounded, gifting Iraq a military advantage.
After the war—which Iran claimed as a victory but ended largely inconclusively—Tehran vowed never again to rely on foreign powers to supply weapons for its defense systems. It began to build its own ballistic missiles and drones, ramped up its nuclear program and nurtured a regional network of allied militias to protect its borders and deter its enemies.
'The Islamic Revolution gave the ideology, but the national security establishment, the national security mindset, came out of the Iran-Iraq war," Nasr, of Johns Hopkins, said.
The embrace of missiles and other asymmetric weaponry was designed to head off the sort of war of attrition Iran faced against Iraq, which quickly sapped Iran's military resources and manpower, analysts said.
'Iran became very sensitive to losses after the Iran-Iraq war," said Ostovar from the Naval Postgraduate School. 'Politically, it was a huge deal. So they built up this deterrence matrix."
But that strategy also brought them into conflict with Israel. Iran's regional allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah frequently confronted Israel, and Israel viewed Iran's nuclear ambitions as an existential threat.
Iran's perceived triumph in holding back Iraq also made its leadership complacent, said Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
While Iran built a missile arsenal, it failed to acquire sufficient air defenses to protect its citizens. As Israeli missiles rained on Tehran, there were no air sirens to warn residents or shelters for them to seek cover in.
'They've come away with an overinflated view of what the achievement in the Iran-Iraq war means for the future," Ansari said. 'They haven't really understood what the impact of a proper air war would be."
Moreover, the regime's other key vehicle of deterrence, its allied regional militias, have been degraded by Israeli attacks and remained on the sidelines, leaving it more vulnerable.
'Iran is left with no deterrence and with a military that was not designed to really fight a conventional war," Ostovar said. 'The only thing that Iran really has left to fight with is its missiles and drones."
In 1988, after sustained chemical attacks, a renewed Iraqi offensive and the U.S. accidentally shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians, Iran signed a cease-fire agreement, forgoing war reparations or even an Iraqi admission of guilt.
A tombstone in Tehran for a man killed during the Iran-Iraq war.A funeral in Tehran earlier this month for those killed by Israeli strikes.
Iran, despite its global isolation during the war, ended the conflict with Iraq without ceding any territory. Iran's leaders declared their successful resistance a victory.
They have done the same today, declaring victory over Israel and the U.S. and vowing to continue enriching uranium and rebuild their nuclear program.
'This strategic loneliness of Iran affects them today," said Arash Azizi, an Iranian historian and author. 'It's not a far cry to see why some people would advocate for nuclear weapons and why Iran would need to have its own defense industry."
Write to Sudarsan Raghavan at [e-mail] and Sune Engel Rasmussen at [e-mail]