Inventions of the Iran - Iraq War
For many years historians of west Asian affairs have preferred to refer to a descriptive reading of international events in the region as if they were trying to define law-like causalities, unchangeable continua or inevitable facts to the multifarious transformations and diversity intrinsic to the ‘Middle East.’ The methods that empower these historians to pursue this mode of analysis are partly engrained in the discipline and partly borrowed from other social sciences with a strong positivistic and empiricist tradition, especially economics, political science, and, albeit to a lesser extent (and perhaps unconsciously), ‘realist’ international relations theories. What has been written about the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–88 is no exception. A quick perusal of the literature reveals three recurrent themes: first, Saddam Hussein seized the favorable international moment that was conducive to a military attack against the newly established Islamic state in Iran (realist, power politics argument); second, the Iran–Iraq war was inevitable due to the ‘historic’ enmity between the two states (‘orientalist’ argument); and third, the Ba’thist state felt threatened by the spillover of the Islamic revolution and decided to pre-empt further Shia uprisings in Najaf, Karbala, Samarra, Kazimiyah, and Baghdad as a means to contain a Shia resurgence in the greater west Asian area (balance of power argument).