The Iran-Iraq War, which ended in August 1988, one month short of its eighth anniversary, was one of the longest,
bloodiest and costliest Third World armed conflicts in the twentieth century. It was a revolutionary struggle waged
for the advancement of an age-old religious doctrine, a war fought with the most advanced weaponry but with largely
dated tactics. It involved large scale infantry assaults on heavily fortified positions matched only by those of
the First World War, ferocious air and missile attacks on population centres, economic infrastructure and civilian
shipping, as well as extensive use of poisonous gas.The war also had far reaching international ramifications,
from the destabilization of the world oil market, to the spread of militant Islam, to the acceleration of the Middle
Eastern non-conventional arms race: chemical, biological and nuclear. No less importantly, it sowed the seeds of
the 1991 Gulf War by bringing Iraq to the verge of economic ruin and, in consequence, leading to the invasion of
Kuwait in an attempt to incorporate its fabulous wealth into Iraq's state structure. Professor Karsh addresses
the causes of the Iran-Iraq War, unpacking the objectives of the two belligerents and examining how far objectives
were matched by strategy. He assesses the war's military lessons regarding such key areas as strategy, tactics
and escalation and in particular the use of non-conventional weapons, Finally, he examines the utility of armed
force as an instrument of foreign policy.