Iran-Iraq War Research Articles

Healthcare Utilization and Expenditures among Iranian Chemical Warfare Survivors Exposed to Sulfur Mustard.

This study aims to explore the healthcare utilization (HCU) and expenditures from complementary health insurance among Iranian people who survived sulfur mustard (SM) exposure during the Iran-Iraq war. This study was conducted between March 21, 2018 and March 21, 2019 using secondary data. Data on the HCU and expenditure of war survivors after their exposure to SM were obtained from the Iran Veterans and Martyr Affair Foundation (VMAF) database and the national complementary insurance organization that covers their medical expenses. Multiple linear and zero-inflated poison regression (ZIP) models were used to estimate the costs and HCU. Analyses were performed in R software version 3.6.3. Among 58880 survivors who were included in study, 36383 (61.7%) used at least one service during a year. The total frequency of HCU was 15.6 services per person per year. The annual mean medical cost of each survivor was US$807.6 (±2901.2). The highest number of utilizations was related to medicine and physician visits. The highest median cost was related to rehabilitation (US$151.7), medical equipment (US$84.5), medicine (US$83.3) and inpatient services (US$ 48.8). With increasing age, disability, weight, severity of injury in lung or eye injuries, the rate of health service utilization rose significantly. Over 30 years after the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian people who were exposed to SM and survived still suffer from injuries and pose a significant drain on healthcare resources.

Islamic revolutionary ideology and its narratives: the continued relevance of the Islamic Republic’s ideology

Is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolutionary ideology still relevant more than 40 years after the revolution? Is it still relevant in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy? While the Islamic Republic’s ideology undoubtedly developed alongside its institutions over the course of 40 years, this article argues that its revolutionary ideology continues to remain relevant and in fact important. Centring on the Islamic Republic’s ideological discourse, it further argues that it contains several recurring narratives which have remained salient throughout the Islamic Republic’s existence: narratives about the revolution; resistance, anti-imperialism and independence; nationalism; the Iran–Iraq war; and narratives in reference to Islam. Those narratives are part of the Islamic Republic’s ideological foundation and continue to play an important role in contemporary Iranian domestic and foreign policy. The article contributes a comprehensive study of how and why this is the case by enquiring into the strategic discursive employment of these narratives by analysing a major case of international interest: the nuclear issue.

Chemical Weapons in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) 6. Accumulated Experience in the Treatment of Lesions with Poisonous Nerve Agents

The Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) was the first modern war in which chemical weapons were used. The purpose of this work is to summarize the experience of treating victims, affected by nerve agents. The publications of Iranian authors in different scientific journals were used for the preparation of the article. The first use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi army occurred in August 1983 in Kurdistan (sulfur mustard). Nerve agent (tabun) was first used on February 29, 1984 in the battles for the Majnun Islands. In total, 140 tons of tabun and about 600 tons of sarin / cyclosarin were used against Iranian troops during the war. Around 5.5 thousand servicemen died directly from the nerve agents. For one dead from tabun, there were at least 7 poisoned people who needed qualified toxicological assistance; lethal outcomes among servicemen affected by the herd amounted to at least 15%. Military personnel without protective equipment, who received large doses of nerve agents, lost consciousness within 30 seconds and died in positions within a few minutes. The most sensitive to such agents were women, children and the elderly, who accidentally fell under a chemical attack. The use of nerve agents by the enemy was accompanied by panic in the troops and the arrival of a huge number of military personnel in critical condition at medical stations. Sweating, fasciculations and miosis were the first clinical signs by which those affected by such toxic agents were recognized. The effectiveness of antidote therapy (atropine + oxime + diazepam) depended on the time of medical care. The most effective was the use of atropine by titration (fractional intravenous drip) to achieve ease of breathing, absence of bronchospasm, disappearance of secretions from the respiratory tract and heart rate >80 beats/min. The oximes turned out to be not effective in the treatment of those poisoned by tabun. The most effective was degassing by physical removal of toxic chemical. Degassing of the affected had to be carried out by washing with sea or river water, using solutions of chlorine-containing household chemicals, and sprinkling with dry earth

Iraq's Economic Situation Between 1988-1991 in Southern Kurdistan

The economic situation in Iraq between 1988 and 1991 affected the March 1991 uprising in southern Kurdistan، including research that included several important aspects، discussing the economic impact of both the First and Second Gulf Wars، which has caused a major disaster for Iraq's economic infrastructure and the disintegration of Iraq's financial، administrative، military and service institutions، Including the economic crisis، the spread of hunger، poverty، disease، corruption، bribery
 and many bad subjects that the Iraqi state has suffered from major disasters، all of which have led to the importance of the uprising، this study consists of three parts. In the first part، the impact of the Iraq-Iran war on Iraq's economy is discussed، and in the second part، the war on the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and its consequences is explained. The third part is the effect of decision 661 that the security council imposed on Iraq as an economic blockade that completely destroyed the economic and social life of The people of Iraq and Kurdistan.

Shi'a principles and Iran's strategic culture towards ballistic missile deployment

Abstract Iran's January 2020 missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq following the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani correspond to a stark change of Iran's approach. Iran has namely abstained from using its ballistic missile program (BMP), which was only used twice after the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War: in 2017 and 2018, in both instances in retaliation against ISIS attacks. The article explores the change in Iran's employment of its BMP from a strategic culture perspective while paying special attention to the principles of Shi'a Islam, which form a particular discursive habitat in which Iran's strategic actions are framed and rationalized. Iran's approach to the BMP is thus inseparable from qisas (retaliation), while obeying the overarching principle of maslahat; but also characterized by the varying importance of the the principles zarare aghall, ezterar and nafye sabil. We conclude that a perspective focusing on religious principles can contribute to our understanding of strategic cultural change, in what concerns its possible orientation, range and limits.

The Iran nuclear deal: A Bionian commentary

The threat of a nuclear war became more evident when President Trump walked away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the Iran nuclear deal. The agreement, reached between Iran and the P5+1 (The United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany) in 2015, was the most important nonproliferation agreement in decades. In this paper, the author provides a detailed history of the relationship between Iran and the United States starting with the Central Intelligence Agency's covert Operation Ajax in 1953 that led to the overthrow of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. The impact of the United States' role in the Iran–Iraq war as well as President Bush's declaration of Iran as a part of the “Axis of Evil” will be discussed in the context of the present situation. The challenges facing the Biden administration in negotiating with Iran will be explored, given the past and current chasm between Iran and the United States. The author draws on Wilfred Bion's model of the mind and offers a perspective on the unconscious group dynamics present in the current geopolitical climate around the threat of the impasse, or possible collapse of the negotiations, in reviving the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States. The paradoxes and dilemmas faced by both parties will be examined through the vertex of Bion's concept of the container/contained, and the significance of the “function of linking” as the foundation of psychic existence.

Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran–Iraq War. Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2021). Pp. 477. $90.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780815637103

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Corporatism without party: the state, war, and industrial labor in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Did the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran empower or weaken workers? Scholars have mainly studied how regime consolidation between 1979 and 1983 weakened labor organizations. By contrast, I argue that the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88) empowered workers by compelling state actors to incorporate segments of the industrial workforce vertically into the state. Corporatism – the hierarchical integration of the state and organized groups representative of industrial labor – expanded workers’ associational bargaining power in post-revolutionary Iran. Triangulating between official and non-state archival sources, I propose three mechanisms leading to corporatist development in war-time Iran. First, inter-party and factional competition pushed state elites to accept revolutionary work councils as legitimate institutions. Second, war and international isolation forced managers, bureaucrats, and the military to support work councils in order to increase productivity and recruit worker-soldiers. Third, by asserting control over an expanding bureaucracy in charge of war mobilization, labor leaders were able to create a more autonomous organization, called the Workers’ House. In the MENA, corporatism is usually associated with authoritarian consolidation. By contrast, corporatist development in Iran led to industrial workers’ political inclusion. Corporatism in the Islamic Republic arguably improved labor rights, increased workers’ influence in policy-making, and helped broaden and institutionalize competition between political elites.

Unemployment In Iraq: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment

Unemployment is one of the primary problems that most contemporary economic systems suffer from in the world, which works to bring about negative consequences on the welfare and security of society. Therefore, governments are working hard to reduce their unemployment rates, mitigate its effects, and develop economic strategies that are happy in providing job opportunities. Unemployment means stopping a part of the labor force in the economy despite the availability of the ability and willingness to work. Unemployment usually results from an imbalance in the labor market due to demand and supply considerations. Unemployment wastes the workforces of a large part of society and may lead to social violence and political unrest outbreaks when it reaches high levels. In Iraq, unemployment has deep roots that go back to the 1980s. The government began to face the problem of providing adequate job opportunities for the nearly one million people who served in the Iran-Iraq war. Unemployment has had dire consequences for the economy, society, and the Iraqi state. These effects include the spread of poverty, deprivation, and the deterioration of development rates with all its indicators.

ТВОРЧІСТЬ МЕГРНУШ МАЗАРЕЇ В КОНТЕКСТІ СУЧАСНОЇ ПЕРСЬКОЇ ЕМІГРАЦІЙНОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРИ

This overview paper presents the work of Mehrnoosh Mazarei (born 1951), a representative of modern Persian emigration literature of the late XX – early XXI centuries, living in the USA. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the insufficient number of Ukrainian-language studies devoted to the prose of individual personalities among Iranian writers, in particular, the works of Mehrnoosh Mazarei. In the context of the development of modern prose in Iran in the late XX – early XXI centuries it was found that, against the backdrop of the changes brought about by the Islamic Revolution (1979) and the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), interest in the status and problems of women increased. Persian women's prose occupies a special place in Iranian literature both in Iran and abroad, since a large number of Iranian writers emigrate to the West and continue to work outside of Iran, including Mehrnoosh Mazarei. It was found that the characters in her works are mostly emigrants who live their lives trying to accept the culture of a new country, but also at the same time to keep memories of the past in order to console themselves with this. The lyrical hero of the stories of Mehrnoosh Mazarei is a woman who adapts to a new life and often recollects her past life. In her works, the writer, despite her feminist ideas, tries to convey to the readers as objectively as possible what the life of emigrant women was like and to tell their stories. Due to achievement of the goal of the study, which was to analyze the trends of Persian women's emigration prose on the basis of the works by Mehrnoosh Mazarei, it has become possible to determine the main features of the main characters of the author, being that they cannot forget that they have no place in their own society, and thus they are trying to adapt to the new rules of the countries where they are. The dominant theme of Mehrnoosh Mazarei's stories is the relationship between a man and a woman, the description of which undergoes serious metamorphosis from gender gap to gender equality, from condemning men to enabling their harmonious coexistence with women, from explaining patriarchy culture as a part human nature to recognizing that it is caused by social relations. The topic of a rebel woman is of no less importance for Mehrnoosh Mazarei. In particular, in the novel "Mina's Revolution", the heroine Mina becomes the embodiment of recalcitrant women, not only of Iran, but of all women with a similar fate: her experience and the difficulties she goes through make her a global rebel, a modern archetype of revolutionary women forced to leave their country in search of a better life and socio-political freedom.

"Keep It under Wraps": The Arms Deals of the Austrian State Industry and the Noricum Scandal

The so-called Noricum scandal deeply unsettled the political system of the Austrian Second Republic between 1985 and 1993. So far, this case has not been the subject of historical research with the exception of journalistic or political science accounts. The affair was caused by illegal arms deals with Iran and Iraq, at a time when these countries were fighting against one another in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). The arms shipments were conducted by the Noricum Maschinenbau und Handel Gesellschaft m.b.H, a subsidiary firm of the Vereinigte Österreichische Eisen- und Stahlwerke-Alpine Montan AG (VOEST-Alpine AG), the heavyweight of Austrian nationalized industries. The sales encompassed 353 long-range howitzers (GHN-45), ammunition, and supplies. The deals constituted a clear violation of Austrian arms export laws, which forbade the sale of arms to belligerent states. After the affair gradually became public, political and criminal responsibility was clarified during several trials. This contribution explores the subject in regard to the overall context of postindustrial change in the 1970s and 1980s. The Noricum affair is interpreted as a continuation of problematic Austrian arms exports to Latin America and the Middle East. Furthermore, the circumstances of Austrian neutrality and the arms exports laws are highlighted, as well as the political-judicial consequences.

The Association Between the rs1805329 of Rad23B Polymorphism and Severity of Lung Complications of Patients Exposed to Sulfur Mustard in Long Term

Background: During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi regime frequently used sulfur mustard gas as a weapon in various residential areas, including Sardasht, causing multiple and severe long-term destructive effects on all living organisms, including humans. The pulmonary system is among the most essential organs with varying severity involved in sulfur mustard chemotoxicity in the long term. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of Rad23B (rs1805329) polymorphism on the severity of lung complications in patients exposed to SM gas 30 years ago. Materials and Methods: The study explored 106 severe and 105 mild PBMC patients exposed to SM gas. Furthermore, 47 PBMC samples were added to the study as a non-exposed group (control). Genotyping of rs1805329 was performed using Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Results: The results revealed no significant differences in genotype frequencies between the mild, severe, and the unexposed group. Moreover, no statistically significant difference was observed in genotypic frequency in all co-dominant, dominant, recessive, and over-dominant models. Conclusion: The obtained data indicated that the rs1805329 of Rad23B was not associated with the severity of the lung complications of patients exposed to sulfur mustard 30 years ago.

ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ ВІДНОСИН ІСЛАМСЬКОЇ РЕСПУБЛІКИ ІРАН ТА РЕСПУБЛІКИ ІРАКУ САДДАМІВСЬКУ ТА ПОСТСАДДАМІВСЬКУ ЕПОХИ

The evolution of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Iraq from the end of the Iran-Iraq War (1988) to the Iraqi political crisis (2021-2022) is considered. The key stages of Iraq's political transformation and the impact of such changes on the state of Iran-Iraq relations are examined. The position of the Republic of Iraq in the Iran's regional policy is determined. The character of Iran-Iraq relations at the current stage is established, the challenges and prospects for its further development are formulated.

Navigating and resisting the compulsory military service in Iran: embodied experiences of non-heterosexual Iranian men

Abstract In the homosocial space of the all male military service, (hetero)masculinity and gender normativity are promoted and bravery and warrior mentality are highly valued. On this basis, policing gender and sexuality is a relevant issue, aiming to reward heteronormativity and hyper masculinity and marginalize non heterosexuality and gender nonconforming performances. In the Iranian context, since the Iran Iraq war (1980–1988), military service has produced a feature of militarized (hetero)masculinities through the cult of martyrdom. It enforces soldiers to stand up against the enemy, be willing to seek martyrdom and sacrifice themselves in order to protect the Islamic Iranian homeland. It is a symbol of entering adulthood and during that time young men are expected to embody the official ideology which revolves around heteronormativity and strict gender norms. In this context, the focus of this paper is the embodied experiences of those young conscripts who do not embody the (hetero)masculine ideal, because they are either non heterosexual or do not fit into the strict regime of gender. Drawing on ethnographic data, and policy documents, this paper shows how the idea of the (hetero)masculine ideal has been translated into practice through the dispositif of the sarbazi and how some young Iranian non heterosexual men try to resist conscription while others try to find ways to carve out a liminal heterotopic space during their military service.

Development of Syria-Iran Bilateral Relations in the 20-21st Centuries

The article analyzes the evolution of Iranian-Syrian relations and describes their features. Iran and Syria are historically, politically and geographically related states, diplomatic relations between which were established in 1946. However, after the Islamic Revolution, in 1979 and the leadership of A. Khomeini, relations between the countries strengthened and began to develop rapidly. Because Syria was the first Arab country to diplomatically recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran and actively support Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. It is worth to say that these two countries combine many factors, especially such as common interests and position on current regional issues and the presence of shared enemies. Оfficial Damascus and official Tehran consider themselves as part of the Middle East's "axis of resistance" of the defense alliance, thus responding to joint threats from Israel and the United States. The position and role of Iran in the civil war in Syria are highlighted. In fact, since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, Iran has provided political, economic and military support to Assad, and has since become a major player in the Syrian conflict. In the current context, Iranian leaders have described Syrian President Al-Assad as his main ally and are working hard to keep him in power. According to a study published by the Office of the US Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura, financial, military and economic assistance to Iran in Syria is estimated at about $ 6 billion USA per year. It is also investigated that Syria fully shares and supports the foreign policy of official Tehran and the active development of nuclear and missile programs. Syria strongly condemns the decision of former US President D. Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA and is in full solidarity with the leadership, government and people of Iran.

Understanding “Sectarianism”: Sunni-Shiʿa Relations in the Modern Arab World

Understanding “Sectarianism”: Sunni-Shiʿa Relations in the Modern Arab World

Listening with the Dead Other

AbstractThis article examines how ethics are formed for an Iranian paraplegic, a veteran of the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, through a mode of listening that is committed to receiving the dead other. I draw on relational ethics to express how an ethical subject is shaped through the other, even in the other's absence. The dead other places a demand on the self, creating the foundation of a response and responsibility for the deceased. Thus, a unique relationship is developed that is beyond time, a responsiveness through which the living can attend to the dead. This demand by the dead other creates a responsibility for the living that goes beyond the finite temporality of a lifespan. Listening becomes a way of existing face‐to‐face with a nonresponsive other and, at the same time, of seeking to be responsible toward the dead other.

COVID Roundtable

COVID Roundtable

From Religious Eulogy to War Anthem

Abstract This article looks to two songs, “Layla Said” and “Mammad, You Weren't There to See,” to examine the politics of representation, race, religion, and nationalism in late twentieth-century Iran. “Layla Said,” a religious eulogy sung by Jahanbakhsh Kurdizadeh, would serve as inspiration for the most popular song of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) in terms of melody, rhythm, and lyrics. Kurdizadeh, a visibly Black Iranian, is not popularly remembered as the source of the eulogy, an omission that compounds many of the politics of Black representation in Iran. Through an investigation of film, aural recordings, photographs, and more, this article follows the many mutations of the eulogy-turned-anthem to identify the various ways ethnography and documentary works frame blackness in Iran. Kurdizadeh's life and marginalized legacy highlights the tacit erasure of blackness on the national stage in Iran.

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Baʿthist State. Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968–2003

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Baʿthist State. Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968–2003