The Soviet Union and the Iran-Iraq War

Abstract

The Iran-Iraq War began within nine months of the USSR’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan — a move which was widely interpreted in the West as a dangerous extension of Soviet power on the periphery of the Persian Gulf and which prompted a vigorous Western response symbolized by the Carter Doctrine and the creation of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF, later reconfigured as CENTCOM).1 Eight years later, as the Gulf War winds down, Soviet forces are being withdrawn from Afghanistan under the terms of the April 1988 Geneva accords. The latter development, which raises interesting questions about how the Soviet leadership now defines security along its southern border, reflects the profound changes in Soviet policies which began following the death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982 and which have accelerated with the ascension to power of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1985.2 In his February 1986 address to the Twenty-Seventh CPSU Party Congress, Gorbachev baldly stated that Soviet foreign policy must be made to serve the ends of the state’s ambitious programme of domestic reforms (viz. perestroika). The Soviet leadership has called for a more quiescent period in international relations during which the Soviet Union can attempt to rejuvenate its declining socio-economic base. Without the successful implementation of these far-reaching domestic measures, Gorbachev warns that the USSR cannot expect to be a competitive twenty-first-century power.KeywordsIslamic RepublicDiplomatic RelationSoviet LeadershipSoviet PolicyIranian RevolutionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.