Iran’s successful ‘three phase’ strategy

Press, 4 June 1982, Page 12

Iran’s successful ‘three phase’ strategy

By

RALPH JOSEPH

in Teheran

Iran surprised the world recently when its forces went on the offensive in the war with Iraq, forcing the occupying troops out of more than '6200 square kilometres of its territory in the oil-rich Khuzestan Province and launching assaults to recapture the port city of Khorramshahr.

The Iranian successes have put the regime of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in danger of being overthrown, either by dissident army officers unhappy about his handling of the war, or by Shiite mullahs supported by the regime of Ayatollah Khomeiny in Iran.

“We knew all along that we would win the war,” says Brigadier-General Qasem Ali Zahir-Nezhad, the Iranian Chief of Staff. A white-haired, slightly balding officer with heavy’ black eyebrows and glowing eyes. Brigadier ZahirNezhad told reporters in Teheran recently that what was happening in the Gulf War now was part of an over-all Iranian strategy. “We knew we could not win a short war," he says, “because the enemy had been preparing for it for about six months while we were not even expecting it. We drew up the strategy after the war broke out, and decided to conduct it in three phases."

The first was to check the Iraqi advance as early as possible. The Iranians did in fact prevent the Iraqis from taking two major objectives: Ahvaz and Dezful. The first is the capital of Khuzestan Province. The second, Dezful, is a strategic town about 120 kilometres further north, through which all the province's communications passed — including telegraph, telephone, roads, and

rail links with the rest of the country, not to speak of the oil pipelines. The Iraqis, of course, did come pretty close to taking Dezful. being stopped only by a river about 20 kilometres west of the town. They almost completely knocked out the telephone and telegraph lines passing through the town. A 9metre Soviet-made Frog missile landed less than 100 metres from the main communications centre in the town during the early stages of the war. One official at the centre told me that of several thousand telephone lines which passed through the place, “only 18 lines remain."

Had the Iraqis taken Ahvaz and Dezful. they would have been able to claim that they had taken Khuzestan. After their advance was stopped, it looked as though the war had become stalemated. with neither Iran nor Iraq able to muster enough strength to push the other’s forces back. Brigadier Zahir-Nezhad, however, has another explanation. About this time, he says, the Iranians entered phase” of their strategy, which was to keep the Iraqis in their bunkers and trenches for a long time so as to demoralise them.

The Iraqis used the lull of several months to consolidate their positions, building concrete bunkers and asphalted roads to take supplies to their troops, right up to the frontline trenches. The prolonged monotonous stay in the bunkers may in fact have taken its toll on the Iraqi troops’ morale. They had been expecting to stay only a few weeks. President Saddam Hussein had calculated on a short regional war, of the kind in which fighting lasts only a few days or weeks at

the most, a ceasefire is called and the winning side then consolidates its position while endless negotiations continue to get them to pull back. The Iranians, says Brigadier Zahir-Nezhad, had seen this kind of thing happen too often before in other regional wars — in Kashmir, in Cyprus and in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They decided they were not going to fall for it. “We knew we would not win a short war," the Brigadier repeated.

They decided instead 'to outmanoeuvre President Saddam Hussein by refusing to accept any kind of ceasefire as the months dragged out. Then they suddenly launched what Brigadier Zahir-Nezhad calls the “third phase" of their over-all strategy — a large scale offensive to’ push the Iraqis out of their territories. This came about two months back, and even the Iranians were a little surprised to see the Iraqis lose battle after battle, surrendering by the thousands and giving up in a few days hundreds of square kilometres of territory they had been sitting on for almost a year and a half. Not to say the Iraqis did not fight. “They usually continue,to fight until they run .out of ammunition." one Iranian officer at the Dezful front told me. “Then they throw up their hands-and say: ‘God is One, Khomeiny is the leader!’’” (The line is taken from an Iranian propaganda song). s For the Iraqis, what was probably more demoralising than the long stay in the trenches was the sight of wave after wave of Iranians coming at them over the minefields and other barriers they had set up. Given the limited number

of Iranian troops available for an offensive of any kind (because of purges' and war losses), how did the Iranians manage to, use the “human wave” tactics, similar to those .used by the Russians or Chinese. whose armies are char--acterised by large numbers of troops? The answer lay in the almost limitless supply of revolutionary guards and their auxiliaries in the “Baseej" (mobilisation) organisation available to the Iranian armed forces. These were mainly fanatics with very little military- training and less discipline. The Iranian army were able however to use them as shock

troops in the initial assaults and thousands are believed to have been mowed down by Iraqi gunfire or were otherwise killed as they ran their motorcycles over Iraqi minefields.

In Teheran I was told that so many bodies of these revolutionary guards and "Baseejis" were brought back from the front that there was no place for them in the city mortuary, where their families and relations were expected to come and take them for burial. Not only was the mortuary itself piled high with bodies, but the corpses were also placed out in the open yard beside it. The stench filled the entire city centre.

The officers at the front had to admit there were boys of 14 to 16 years among the “Baseejis." This correspondent spoke to several of them, and the one thing that seemed uppermost in the minds of all was a thirst for "martyrdom.” Asked about them, Brigadier Zahir-Nezhad ■ said: "If the Imam (Khomeiny) has given his permission for young and old to go to the front, we cannot stop them ... Anyway. I can' say that none of our regular troops are less than 20 years old." Perhaps the presence of these boys at the front was the only thing the Iranian Chief of Staff seemed uneasy about.