Factional politics in the Iran-Iraq war Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017, 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article examines the domestic causes of the IranIraq War. It delves into secret discussions among Iranian political and military elites during the conflict, their analyses of their own performance on the battlefield, and their revealing public disputes and blame game decades later. It contends that an underexplored and yet critical driving force behind Irans prosecution of the war was factional politics. Along with state-level geo-strategic, regime-level security and individual-level ideological concerns, factional factors must also be examined to understand Tehran's war-time decisions. Irans factional rivalries began between the Islamists and the nationalists; and between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the army at wars outbreak, and eventually penetrated into the heart of the Islamist camp between the militant clerics and the IRGC.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

altmetric score

  • 1.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Tabaar, M. A.

citation count

  • 2

complete list of authors

  • Tabaar, Mohammad Ayatollahi

publication date

  • June 2019