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Iranian Backed Militias
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Book Synopsis Iranian Backed Militias by : Nonproliferat Subcommittee on Terrorism
Download or read book Iranian Backed Militias written by Nonproliferat Subcommittee on Terrorism and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-17 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East continues to pose some of the biggest challenges to United States national security. Where there is a threat to our interests in the region we can be sure that Iran and its proxy forces and militias are somewhere in the neighborhood. From Yemen to Afghanistan, Iranian arms can be found in the hands of some of the most dangerous actors. This is part of a calculated strategy by the mullahs in Tehran to assert control over the entire region by expelling the United States. The Iranians believe they are entitled to dominance over anybody else in the region. They provide weapons and support to sectarian individuals who commit atrocities and undermine legitimate government institutions. In Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, and the Palestinian territories, Iran backs violent actors who either rule through brutality or aspire to seize power by eliminating political opposition. Hezbollah in Lebanon is the most prominent one. Now Iran has multiple "Hezbollahs" it can call on to kill and coerce throughout the region. Funded by sanctions relief granted to Iran under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and enabled by America's retreat over the past 8 years, Iranian-backed groups are seizing territory, cajoling governments, and hindering our effort to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Book Synopsis Orsam Rapor Sayı:304 / Iran-Backed Militia in Syria: Profiles and Functions by : Ömer Behram Özdemir
Download or read book Orsam Rapor Sayı:304 / Iran-Backed Militia in Syria: Profiles and Functions written by Ömer Behram Özdemir and published by Orsam. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the onset of the crisis in Syria, Iran has sent many armed groups into the country, in addition to its own army units, with the aim of directly influencing the Assad regime’s military forces, which weakened after the popular uprising. Having played an active role in the process of reshaping the Shabiha organization, whose history dates back to the 1980s, under the name of the National Defense Forces (NDF), Iran could not achieve what it had desired from forming the NDF in terms of influencing the regime's defense policy. Iran’s experience in Iraq has resulted in the Hashd al-Shaabi organization, consisting of Iranian-backed militias, becoming a legal law enforcement agency after a long process and providing Iran with direct influence over the Iraqi forces. Although the social structures of Syria and Iraq and their relations with regional actors are different, Damascus is at least as important as Baghdad in Iran's strategy to increase its influence in the region and reach the Mediterranean through Lebanon. For this reason, Tehran has chosen to increase its influence in Syria through different armed groups in addition to the NDF. The army unit under the command of Bashar Assad's brother, Maher Assad, the 4th Armored Division, is in close cooperation with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah and stands as the most important extension of Tehran within the regime army. The 4th Armored Division, together with other Iranian-backed militias, strengthens the Iranian presence in the region with its policies targeting the former opposition elements under the auspices of Russia in southern Syria. The Assad regime plays a leading role in drug trafficking, which is the illegal source of finance, by undertaking tasks in the production and logistics of drugs, particularly Captagon. Although the 4th Armored Division has autonomy within the regime army and is in close contact with Iran, it remains outside the scope of this study as it is an integral element of the Baath regime and a Baathist force. This study will deal with the Local Defense Forces (LDF), which are similar to the NDF elements in terms of their emergence and construction processes, and the Iranian-backed sectarian militias classified as "Shiite militias" in the literature and the functions of these forces in Iran's regional politics. The LDF groups enabled Tehran to achieve its goal of having an official extension within the defense forces of the Assad regime, which was not possible through the NDF. The NDF remained distant from Iran’s goals for reasons such as the lack of an official assignment and Russia's increasing influence on some NDF elements. Alternatively, the LDF, which was established in 2013 and was organized in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, and Raqqa in the first stage, was accepted as an official element of the regime army with a decision taken by the Assad regime in 2017. It stands as a second example for Iran after the Hashd al-Shaabi. The LDF quickly grew to tens of thousands of people, relying entirely on Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah for everything, including weapons and ammunition support, military training, and salary payments, and became one of the most effective regime forces on the battlefield. When the Afghan, Pakistani, Iraqi, Lebanese and local Shiite militia elements, whose numbers exceeded 40 thousand in the peak periods, are added to the LDF elements with a total of 50 thousand personnel, one could clearly see the extent of Iran’s power to shift the balance in the battlefield. Nevertheless Iran does not enjoy a total influence over all of these militia forces. The Jerusalem Brigade stands as an example that is in close contact with both Iran and Russia and adopts a position closer to one of these two actors according to the conjuncture. In addition to that there are also some groups that cooperate with the regime intelligence, the Ba’ath Brigades and the Republican Guards, apart from their close contact with Iran. Iran has influenced the course of the civil war in favor of the regime by forming the NDF and LDF, and driving the Lebanese Hezbollah at first and then the foreign Shiite militias to the battlefield. Nevertheless, Iran’s intervention in the civil war resulted in the improbability of placing the regime army at the center of security policies and served as the driving force behind the “militia craze” that engulfed the regime bloc. Although Russia wanted to be the dominant force in Syria and opted for transforming the regime army into an active actor through the 5th Corps under its control, it became a militia sponsor actor when it could not overcome the “militia craze”. In fact, the intelligence elements of the Assad regime preferred to have a share in the militia craze instead of centralizing the regime army and making it a single great power, in order to exist in the battlefield despite the rising influence of Tehran and Moscow. To that end the regime honored the warlords, who have militia forces on their behalf, by placing them in the parliament in show elections, thereby revealing the importance of militias in Syria today. Having supported the Shabiha group’s violent crackdown on the demonstrations in the first phase of the uprising, Tehran was looking for an opportunity to get organized in Syria through militias. However, Tehran launched this process after the regime army suffered great losses, including desertions, in the first year and a half of the war and failed to show the capacity to reverse the losses on the ground. Iran entered the battlefield through the local LDF and NDF militias and simultaneously activated the foreign militias that it brought. When the Lebanese Hezbollah entered the war alongside the failed regime army in Qusayr and turned the tide in favor of the regime, the balance started to shift in favor of the regime in Homs in the short term and in Damascus in the medium term. Having started sending Shiite militias to Syria after a holy war discourse focusing on the Tomb of Sayyidah Zainab, Tehran deployed many militias to many fronts in a short time. Having deployed militias in heavy numbers to the Shiite villages of Nubl and Zahra in addition to Qusayr, Iran benefited from these forces in the siege of the city during the years-long war in Aleppo, while harassing and threatening the Turkish and Syrian National Army (SNA) troops in northern Aleppo. In the south of Aleppo, the Afghan Fatimid Brigade, with its thousands of militias, played a great role on behalf of Iran during the siege of the city. The Lebanese Hezbollah took an active role, especially in the eastern Ghouta region of the capital Damascus. It is widely known that the Iranian-backed Shiite militias played an important role in the chemical attack and inhuman siege practices in Ghouta in 2013 as much as the regime army. From this point of view, the Iranian-backed militias in Damascus and Aleppo, the two bloodiest fronts of the war, both played a role in changing the fate of the war and went down in history as the perpetrators of many war crimes that are the subject to the international law. The Iranian-backed militias came to the fore at a time when the regime army lost its functional structure and the regime was weakening after continuous territorial losses. These militias, which enabled the survival of the regime first and then bestowed upon it an advantageous position with the intervention of Russia, are the only tools Iran uses to "build influence" and "balance other actors" on the eastern Mediterranean route by 2022. The militia forces, which are used as a counterbalance to Turkey in the north, the USA in the south and the east, and Russia in the areas under the control of the regime, also enable Tehran to prepare an ideological ground for itself in the region. In addition to all these, both the survival of the regime and the reduction of the operational costs of the militias in the country, which was economically devastated, led to the use of illegal financing methods. This means that Iranian-backed militias have vital roles in the Syria-based drug network that affects the entire region.
Book Synopsis The Iran Primer by : Robin B. Wright
Download or read book The Iran Primer written by Robin B. Wright and published by US Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive but concise overview of Iran's politics, economy, military, foreign policy, and nuclear program. The volume chronicles U.S.-Iran relations under six American presidents and probes five options for dealing with Iran. Organized thematically, this book provides top-level briefings by 50 top experts on Iran (both Iranian and Western authors) and is a practical and accessible "go-to" resource for practitioners, policymakers, academics, and students, as well as a fascinating wealth of information for anyone interested in understanding Iran's pivotal role in world politics.
Download or read book False Dawn written by Steven A. Cook and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In False Dawn, noted Middle East regional expert Steven Cook offers a sweeping narrative account of the past five years, moving from Turkey to Tunisia to Yemen to Iraq to Egypt and beyond, ultimately presenting a powerful theoretical analysis of why the Arab Spring failed.
Download or read book The 19th Hijacker written by James Reston and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows what happened on September 11, 2001. But do we really know what was behind this act of war? What was the lure? What was it about the Hamburg cell that appealed to him? What lured this educated son of a successful Lebanese family to the jihadist message of destruction and annihiliation that would result in the death of 3170 Americans? These questions torment Sami Haddad as he pondered his choice, in August of 2001, whether or not to join the 9-ll hijackers. Through a series of tape recordings which Sami had made in the months before the operation, he tells his beautiful and feisty Turkish-German lover, Karima Ilgun, of his first meeting with Muhammad Atta in Hamburg, of his training in Afghanistan under the watchful eye of Al Qaeda's military chief, of his meeting with Osama bin Ladin where he swears his oath of allegiance, and of his final months of preparation in Florida where he comes to loath Muhammad Atta but cannot find the courage to flee. A sense of doubt and skepticism suffuses his musings to her, but also of weakness. After the attack on 9/11, Kommissar Recht, a rumpled German government investigator), is tasked to ferret out Karima's role, if any, as an Al Qaeda operative. He comes to suspect that she is withholding valuable evidence, but under German privacy law he is barred from employing strong-arm tactics that would force her to talk. Surviving members of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg also suspect Karima is hiding Sami's tapes. To them Sami's recollections are sacred artifacts of what they deemed to be their successful mission, but they fear his presentation of the attack might be something less than heroic. Karima is caught between these two forces, either of which could have terrible consequences for her. How she resolves this dilemma is the climax of the novel.
Book Synopsis Iranian Strategy in Iraq: Politics and "Other Means". by : Joseph Felter
Download or read book Iranian Strategy in Iraq: Politics and "Other Means". written by Joseph Felter and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Only Cry For The Living by : Hollie S. McKay
Download or read book Only Cry For The Living written by Hollie S. McKay and published by Di Angelo Publications. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only once in a lifetime does a war so brutal erupt. A war that becomes an official genocide, causes millions to run from their homes, compels the slaughtering of thousands in the most horrific of ways, and inspires terrorist attacks to transpire across the world. That is the chilling legacy of the ISIS onslaught, and Only Cry for the Living takes a profoundly personal, unprecedented dive into one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world. Journalist Hollie S. McKay offers a raw, on-the-ground journey chronicling the rise of ISIS in Iraq—exposing the group’s vast impact and how and why it sought to wage terror on civilians in a desperate attempt to create an antiquated “caliphate.”
Book Synopsis Guardians of the Revolution by : Ray Takeyh
Download or read book Guardians of the Revolution written by Ray Takeyh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills. The unending war of words suggests an intractable divide between Iran and the West, one that may very well lead to a shooting war in the near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative history of Iran's relations with the world since the revolution, behind the famous personalities and extremist slogans is a nation that is far more pragmatic--and complex--than many in the West have been led to believe. Takeyh explodes many of our simplistic myths of Iran as an intransigently Islamist foe of the West. Tracing the course of Iranian policy since the 1979 revolution, Takeyh identifies four distinct periods: the revolutionary era of the 1980s, the tempered gradualism following the death of Khomeini and the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, the "reformist" period from 1997-2005 under President Khatami, and the shift toward confrontation and radicalism since the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Takeyh shows that three powerful forces--Islamism, pragmatism, and great power pretensions--have competed in each of these periods, and that Iran's often paradoxical policies are in reality a series of compromises between the hardliners and the moderates, often with wild oscillations between pragmatism and ideological dogmatism. The U.S.'s task, Takeyh argues, is to find strategies that address Iran's objectionable behavior without demonizing this key player in an increasingly vital and volatile region. With its clear-sighted grasp of both nuance and historical sweep, Guardians of the Revolution will stand as the standard work on this controversial--and central--actor in world politics for years to come.
Book Synopsis Accidental Allies by : Michael Knights
Download or read book Accidental Allies written by Michael Knights and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S.-led effort to fight the Islamic State in northeastern Syria since 2014 has been as controversial and poorly understood as it has been significant. Advocates of fighting “by, with and through” the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) view the campaign as a near-ideal case study of a cost-effective U.S. military intervention that should be duplicated in the future. Critics of the campaign say that the U.S. allied itself with a terrorist group and endangered its ties with Turkey, a long-stranding NATO partner; losing sight of strategic priorities in order to win tactical victories at low cost. This book combines general research with 50 interviews gathered in Syria with Kurdish, Arab and Christian SDF officers, and 50 interviews with U.S. and French officials and military officers with on-the-ground involvement in the war. It provides an unprecedented window into how the war was really prosecuted, in the eyes of the participants at all levels, uniquely looking not only at how U.S. soldiers view their partner forces, but how the local partners view them in return. This is a unique and essential insight into US strategy in Syria and beyond.
Book Synopsis The Shadow Commander by : Arash Azizi
Download or read book The Shadow Commander written by Arash Azizi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘An excellent contribution to our knowledge of Iran and Soleimani.’ Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave When the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, he was one of the most powerful men in Iran. Known as ‘the shadow commander’, he enacted the wishes of the country’s Supreme Leader across the Middle East, establishing the Islamic Republic as a major force in the region. But all this was a long way from where he began – on the margins of a nation whose ruler was seen as a friend of the West. Through Soleimani, Arash Azizi examines how Iran came to be where it is today. Providing a rare insight into a country whose actions are often discussed but seldom understood, he reveals the global ambitions underlying Iran’s proxy wars, geopolitics and nuclear programme.
Download or read book Road Warriors written by Daniel Byman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Author :Mitchell Belfer Publisher :King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS) ISBN 13 :6038268006 Total Pages :32 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (382 download)
Book Synopsis Iran’s Clandestine War on the Kingdom of Bahrain by : Mitchell Belfer
Download or read book Iran’s Clandestine War on the Kingdom of Bahrain written by Mitchell Belfer and published by King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS). This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1979 Iranian revolution continues to reverberate throughout the Middle East. While many of the more pronounced Iranian proxies, such as Lebanese Hezbollah and the Houthi militia in Yemen, are the focus of a wide assortment of terror-state explorations, it is important to look at some of the other organizations that Tehran utilizes in pursuit of its regional and international interests. Bahrain, has long been of a strategic interest to the Islamic Republic as it regards it as its Fourteenth Province and a stepping stone to a more direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp prioritizes operations against Bahrain, for Manama has faced a host of radicalized terrorist groups commanded by the IRGC over the years which conducted terrorist attacks and coup attempts. While Bahraini security operations were able to contain most Iranian terrorist groups, the 2011 upheaval in much of the Arab world provided clandestine groups with new opportunities to polarize Bahrain and inspire political violence. This study focuses on several of the main Iran-backed groups to have emerged in Bahrain since 2011. Identifying the so-called: Saraya al Ashtar, along with its political umbrella Al Wafa movement, and the Military Wing of Hezbollah Bahrain, as the main groups, this study seeks to provide an understanding of those organizations since they pose the most pronounced challenge to Bahrain (at present) and to stability in the wider Arab Gulf. Additionally, the study presents and analyses the groups noted above (with reference to their context). It then assesses areas of impact of the groups and concludes with summarizing Bahrain’s measures on how to curtail these groups and their Iranian backers.
Download or read book Sectarianization written by Nader Hashemi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, 'sectarianism' has become a catch-all explanation for the region's troubles. The turmoil is attributed to 'ancient sectarian differences', putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power. This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of 'sectarianism' as a magic-bullet explanation for the region's ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies -- including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait -- this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces -- from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iran rivalry -- that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region's politics can be de-sectarianised. Featuring leading scholars -- and including historians, anthropologists, political scientists and international relations theorists -- this book will redefine the terms of debate on one of the most critical issues in international affairs today.
Book Synopsis The ISIS Reader by : Haroro J. Ingram
Download or read book The ISIS Reader written by Haroro J. Ingram and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of its "Caliphate" declaration in 2014, the self-described Islamic State has been the focus of countless academic papers, government studies, media commentaries and documentaries. Despite all this attention, persistent myths continue to shape--and misdirect--public understanding and strategic policy decisions. A significant factor in this trend has been a strong disinclination to engage critically with Islamic State's speeches and writings--as if doing so reflects empathy with the movement's goals or, even more absurdly, may itself lead to radicalisation. Going beyond the descriptive and the sensationalist, this volume presents and analyses a series of milestone Islamic State primary source materials. Scholar-practitioners with field experience in confronting the movement explore and contextualise its approach to warfare, propaganda and governance, examining the factors behind its dramatic evolution from failed proto-state in 2010 to standard-bearer of global jihadism in 2014, to besieged insurgency in 2018. The ISIS Reader will help anyone--students and journalists, military personnel, civil servants and inquisitive observers--to better understand not only the evolution of Islamic State and the dynamics of asymmetric warfare, but the importance of primary sources in doing so.
Book Synopsis Could the Houthis Be the Next Hizballah? by : Trevor Johnston
Download or read book Could the Houthis Be the Next Hizballah? written by Trevor Johnston and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-30 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors analyze the prospect that Iran will further invest in Yemen's Houthis and develop them into an enduring proxy group. The authors examine the history, current relations and trajectory, and possible future of the Houthi-Iran relationship.
Book Synopsis They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate by : James Verini
Download or read book They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate written by James Verini and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "They Will Have to Die Now is the story of what happened after most Americans stopped paying attention to Iraq…It will take its place among the very best war writing of the past two decades." —George Packer, author of Our Man and The Assassins’ Gate James Verini arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2016 to write about life in the Islamic State. He stayed to cover the jihadis’ last great stand, the Battle of Mosul, not knowing it would go on for nearly a year, nor that it would become, in the words of the Pentagon, "the most significant urban combat since WWII." They Will Have to Die Now takes the reader into the heart of the conflict against the most lethal insurgency of our time. We see unspeakable violence, improbable humanity, and occasional humor. We meet an Iraqi major fighting his way through the city with a bad leg; a general who taunts snipers; an American sergeant who removes his glass eye to unnerve his troops; a pair of Moslawi brothers who welcomed the Islamic State, believing, as so many Moslawis did, that it might improve their shattered lives. Verini also relates the rich history of Iraq, and of Mosul, one of the most beguiling cities in the Middle East.
Book Synopsis The Iran–Iraq War by : Williamson Murray
Download or read book The Iran–Iraq War written by Williamson Murray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iran-Iraq War is one of the largest, yet least documented conflicts in the history of the Middle East. Drawing from an extensive cache of captured Iraqi government records, this book is the first comprehensive military and strategic account of the war through the lens of the Iraqi regime and its senior military commanders. It explores the rationale and decision-making processes that drove the Iraqis as they grappled with challenges that, at times, threatened their existence. Beginning with the bizarre lack of planning by the Iraqis in their invasion of Iran, the authors reveal Saddam's desperate attempts to improve the competence of an officer corps that he had purged to safeguard its loyalty to his tyranny, and then to weather the storm of suicidal attacks by Iranian religious revolutionaries. This is a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the history of war and the contemporary Middle East.
