The Iran Iraq War

In a tradition that dates back to the time of Thucydides, and the Peloponnesian War, the systematic examination of conflict and war has long been a preoccupation of political scientists seeking to resolve the enduring question: Why do wars occur? This study directly engages this question with a specific focus on explaining the conflict between Iran and Iraq, arguably the longest and one of the more costly conventional wars of the twentieth century.

The Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. The memory of it may have faded in the wake of more recent wars in the region, but the harrowing facts remain: over one million soldiers and civilians dead, millions more permanently displaced and disabled, and an entire generation marked by prosthetic implants and teenage martyrdom.