Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 24 - Iran Iraq War Part 2: An Army Full of Red Shirts

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

Episode 24 - Iran Iraq War Part 2: An Army Full of Red Shirts by

Hey everybody, this episode is brought to you by Lift Big Eat Big's new workout program, the Phalanx Method. Coach, powerlifter, strongman, and historian Brandon Morrison took a unique approach in his creation to this three-block, six-month-long effort. Using ancient sources and modern techniques, he was able to recreate the training of one of history's most destructive military forces, the Phalanx. And it's not just the sales line either. This is only three days a week inx. And it's not just the sales line either. This is only three days

a week in the gym and it's brutal. I've competed in powerlifting, CrossFit, and spent way too much time doing brutal army PT. And this is the hardest thing I've ever done before. And you can do it at a commercial gym or like me from your garage. He also includes little historical tidbits every week to keep you interested and to keep you hooked. If you want to challenge yourself or just try something new, go to www.liftbigeatbig.com and enter the promo code donkey to get 15% off. The Phalanx Method. Are you ready to become a warrior of oak and bronze? Good evening from Baghdad.

One of the world's oldest cities has become one of the world's newest power centres. As soon as major hostilities broke out between the two oil producers, Iraq and Iran, we came here to Baghdad to watch OPEC at war. To look in particular at a regime seeking supremacy in the Gulf, and at its remarkable president, Saddam Hussein, one of the least known but most effective rulers in the Middle East. As the conflict between his country and Iran got underway earlier this year, it was Saddam Hussein who declared, whoever climbs over our fence, we shall climb over his roof.

Hello, welcome to another episode of Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. That's us. I'm Joe. I'm Nick. And today we're on part two of the Iran-Iraq war. And Nick is over there smelling his own armpits, which is interesting. Honestly, my deodorant smells fucking fantastic. I bought a new one, a new stick the other day, because I usually stick with the same one,

the Old Spice Swagger Pure Sport. Bought a new one, smells fantastic. I never understood why Old Spice went from being normal-sounding deodorant names to Swagger Mountain Wolf Gun. This makes any sense to me anymore. It's not supposed to. Mine says wolf horn on it. God, it's so stupid.

Or kraken. Except when I'm listing the things I want to smell like, a wolf is a number one and a sea creature is number two. Yeah. All right. So like I said, we're going to be talking about Iran or Aquar part two today. So if. So like I said, we're going to be talking about Iran-Iraq War Part 2 today. So if you're just tuning in, go back a week, listen to Part 1, or don't, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

Yeah. So last week when we left off, Iran and Iraq were at each other's throats. Iran was full of revolutionary fervor and wasn't going to put up with Saddam's shit any longer. While Saddam saw a weak hamstrung government without a functioning military and start getting ideas about oil wealth. Things only got worse from there. So anti-Bathis riots arose in Iraq,

Shia areas by groups who are working towards an Islamic revolution in their country. These events were obviously led, organized, and planned by agents of the Iranian revolution. In April 1980, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr and his sister Amina Haydar were hung as a part of a crackdown and to restore Saddam's control over the area. The execution of Iraq's most senior Ayatollah caused outrage throughout the Islamic world. What the goal was was pretty clear to everybody. I killed one

Ayatollah, I will damn sure kill another. Probably not a good time to be an opponent religious leader in Iraq. He's going for that shock and awe. Ooh. A couple decades early for that one. So in April, 1980,

Shia militants assassinated 20 Bathurst officials. Deputy prime minister trick Aziz was actually almost assassinated as well as he surrendered, but 11 students were killed in the attack. Sorry, I said surrendered. He survived. Yeah. Um,

he, he survived, uh, and survived the attack. Um, it, as he's an interesting character and kind of undercoats what the interesting government that Saddam himself led because he was a secular dictator. He was a piece of shit.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people may have came away with the idea of the last episode that I was like on a pro Saddam side here. And it's just not the case. But Saddam was a was a fucking garbage monster. But he did have a strange secular government. And Aziz was actually a Christian. Yeah, he's a they're called Chaldean. But yeah, he he was a Christian.

Still a giant fucking monster. But Christian. Yeah. And he would he would lead a regular life all the way until the American invasion in 2003 and was arrested and later sentenced to death. So, yeah, he got what was coming to him. So three days after the assassination attempt, the funeral possession was being held to bury all the students that were killed on accident. That was also bombed. Yeah.

Nice. yeah nice yeah uh iraqi information minister latif uh nassim al jassami was barely survived themselves and uh it was a all assassination plots that were plotted by uh shia militants trained funded and inspired by iran um it was pretty clear to everybody that uh in iraq's government that this was had iran Iranian fingerprints written all over it. So the funeral was bombed. Yes. Where the people in the funeral, like the dead people, were bombed again. Yes.

Okay. Twice dead. Yeah, because we were talking about a place in world history now where people are blowing up dead bodies. Yeah. Okay. So Saddam was pretty terrible towards the Shia population in the first place. So galvanizing them to try to kill Saddam

wasn't really hard for Iran. But Saddam wasn't the kind of person to take blame for anything. So instead of trying to mend his relationship with the Shia population, he just crushed them brutally. At the same time, he decided if Iran was going to fuck with his country, iran was gonna fuck with

his country he could damn well fuck with theirs um how oh so i i think yeah i go into this a little later but saddam got away with a lot um mostly because he wasn't iran and that's pretty much what it boils down to iran was the international boogeyman yeah well i know saddam was like backed by countries and shit oh like like us yeah yeah and russia and china and france and yeah pretty much everybody yeah um actually the only enemy that they had during this whole time ironically enough was syria oh yeah, but yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit later. Um, he,

uh, so I'm soon helped to instigate riots among the Iranian Arab population in the Kuzestan provenance. Uh, remember that's the one that he really, really wanted, right? Uh, this worked well for Saddam.

He could play both roles that he loved to champion. That was pan Arabism and socialism of which he was actually neither. And, he just leveraged themselves to make himself rich and powerful this guy but uh why did saddam need more oil money you think like is this something cool he already has all this oil um but it's because he ran his country like a fucking spoiled drunk trust fund kid um he kept no accountability of how much money he was spending. Right. Um,

Dan Blazarian. Cool. Yeah. Like it's like Dan Blazarian. If he had the access to an entire country's GDP, like even like he, at the same time he was promising all these massive infrastructure projects. He was also spending like something like 25 percent of his gdp on the military

and this is before the war yeah so he wasn't spending his money well at all um getting some brand new shit and that's just to go into the personality quirks that he had i mean at one point he sent an entire boeing 747 full of gifts to his personal magician which is something he totally had yes yes and that's what he said i just has gifts i couldn't find anything in particular what i hope it was like the can with this fake snakes coming out of it yeah i got a ton of those he's a zany individual that's it um and then you know he also had like uh fleets of luxury cars and rolexes and like gold-plated ak-47s and gold-plated toilets i mean at this point,

we've all kind of seen pictures of his palaces too. I mean, that's where this money is going. You're really describing this whole Dan Bilzerian thing. Yeah, like I said, he's exactly, Saddam Hussein is a Trump. And that is he spends money like a poor person thinks a rich person should spend money. Because Saddam Hussein did grow up poor as shit. He grew up as like a

nomadic farmer kind of in the Dekrete area. He grew up dirt poor. The only reason he made it this far is because he was really good at killing people. Seems like it. His first position as a Bathurst official was as an assassin.

Was he any good? Yes, he was very good. He was very good at it. And that's how he kept getting promoted. So and back on topic, because I could talk about some of his personal life all day, like he's a romance novelist. That's not what we're here to talk about. He has those. He's like two of them.

I think he has two of them. I think I think we need to do a book, a little book report. I'm so for that later. And I've actually been looking for a copy of a book, a little, a book report. I'm so for that later. And I've actually been looking for a copy of the book and they're really hard to find. All they are is some shitty allegory about him. Like it's a Rome. One of them's a romance novel where he is a loving King and they're all about him. Yes.

He's the main character in all of them. I've kind of figured that like it's, I really did. It's all like a weird romance allegory whereory where he's the good guy and his the woman that he's longing for is instead uh falling in love with someone who absolutely is supposed to be the united states yeah they all came out like the early 2000s or the late 90s one of the two anyway back in time that's awesome could do this to me that's awesome yeah i think one's called likeanaya and the King. You just went back off topic on your own. I know.

So with these ends in mind, he began to whip up his own little civil war. He began to support the Iranian Arabs in labor disputes, which eventually led to uprisings and armed battles between the Arab activists and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and other militant groups. They ended up killing about 100 people on both sides saddam's proxies in the kuzestan providence would carry out multiple attacks against iranian targets ostensibly for like iran uh arab sovereignty

in the region um but saddam didn't want arab sovereignty he just wanted to dominate them i'm assuming like if he had agents on the ground i'm assuming he did, that they just left that part out. Like, no, dude, we're totally here for your independence. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We're all Arabs, bro. The most notable of these events was just one that most people have probably heard about, and that's the Iranian embassy siege

in London in 1980. So, six armed Kuzestani Arab insurgents took control of the Iranian embassy staff and took them hostage. Eventually, the insurgents got jumpy and executed a hostage. And that's when the British SAS counter-revolutionary warfare wing stormed the embassy in broad daylight in front of live camera audiences. And this is like the middle of the day during like, I guess, the British version of sweeps week. So there's like millions of people watching.

It could not have happened at like a more opportune time for the most people possible to be watching this. I'm pretty sure a lot of us have seen some videos of it. Yeah, and there's a YouTube, there's multiple YouTube videos that I'll post onto the Twitter feed when this episode comes out. And, you know, it had a weird drawback to the SAS.

Actually, two drawbacks. Now, most people know the raid for being the first time the world's premier special forces unit ever was seen going to work by normal people. But another thing was that several of the SAS soldiers were actually accused of outright murder. Oh. Yeah, it was uncrowded. Nobody was ever punished for it. And it's just one of those footnotes. Not saying that they did it. I'm just saying it needs to be said., uh, I think, uh, one or multiple of the, of the insurgents, um, were wounded and they just finished them off. Oh, okay.

Um, which is honestly pretty common in SAS Green Beret type operations. Yeah. Um, there's actually a U S Navy seal that's currently facing charges for doing the exact same thing to a NISIS fighter. Another issue with the SAS is it became so popular that the Ministry of Defense almost disbanded it entirely. It's kind of like this idea of it becoming too popular

is kind of laughable now. But back in the day they operated in shadows. Nobody was supposed to really know who they were. Instead, it drove up like recruitment to the point they stood up like three or four more sas units so it all ended up working out for them they weren't the seals i mean they still uh the sas doesn't exactly have a great reputation for not writing a whole bunch of books either they made a whole movie about it

they did bravo 20 yeah yeah i think his name is like andy mcnabb yeah how many of those movies and then how many navy seal movies well you have to look at the differences shit ton you have to look at the differences of the of the nations where they come from though um troops aren't exactly given the hero worship treatment in the uk as much as they are here um i mean it exists but not to like the the almost comical extent it exists in the United States. Yeah, I know nothing about that whole UK. I might just be pulling that on my ass. But I mean, it certainly seems that way from an outsider looking in.

Any of our British or Irish or Scottish listeners, feel free to correct me on that because I know there's at least two of you. I'd like to know, too. Yeah. So anyway, the raid had a strange benefit for Iraq. Even though the terrorists were absolutely Saddam's boys, and there's good reason to think that the British knew this. Because remember, not only did the Brits hate Iran already, they absolutely had MI6 operatives in Iraq. They had to know this was Iraq. Right.

But they weren't going to say that. They needed Iraq. Because, I mean, like I said, Iran's the international boogeyman. The person that they know they can use against is Saddam, or at least as a blocking force, them and and the Saudis. So there's absolutely intelligence operations going on all over the place. I highly doubt that this group of people traveled all the way from Iran to to the uk without mi6 no yeah um so the british government instead blamed iran for the attack on the west despite the fact that iranian agents have never actually done that at this point um did iran say anything like that

wasn't us oh no no they used it to build street cred nice um uh so what was it um so even though like so the brits kind of blame this on the on the revolution which is kind of stupid because they were arab insurgents fighting for sovereignty of a completely different providence and had nothing to do with the revolution. So, despite all that, once Iran was blamed for the attack, they never once said, hey, look, that was Iraq. Like anybody in their right mind would have done.

And again, they knew this was Saddam as well. They would have known that they sent these dudes out there. Sometimes you need that street cred in order to get your stomping grounds squared away well i mean even then they they still didn't make this work for them in any rational sense so first they believed on the u.s and the uk as a false flag like any good alex jones fan and then they said that the terrorists killed in the attack were quote martyrs to the revolution so which one is it, Ayatollah? Yeah, it doesn't make any fucking sense.

I mean, so, yeah, it had nothing to do with the revolution because they're both Arab nationalists, effectively, and they were anti-revolutionaries. So this is what a chess match must look like between two total fucking idiots. Where does this piece go. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just going to put it here. And I mean, I can insult the Ayatollah's intelligence all I want.

Now he's dead. I'm not Iranian. Fuck you. I don't care. But and he was a piece of shit. But he was smart enough to pull off this entire revolution, subvert all of his political opponents to get to this far. But he couldn't figure this out.

And at the same time, he could even send out like a cohesive message the whole time like if it's you cool it's you but like you know yeah they're martyrs of the revolution yeah take that you western fucking devils but like within weeks he's just changing his mind left and right i know he's maybe he forgot about his like first story he's like fuck fuck fuck what i say yeah nobody took cliff notes of that shit so all this combined with the now daily skirmishes at the border told Saddam that it was now time to act

military intelligence got back to him and it did not do Iran any favors either guarding the entire Providence was about one battalion of poorly led and poorly equipped soldiers and the entire area was onlyan providence was about one battalion of poorly led and poorly equipped soldiers and the entire area was only supported by one company of functioning tanks making matters worse for the iranians their sparse defense was fixated around the shah al-arab river

under the idea that no one would be able to cross it but saddam had plenty of river crossing equipment yeah like plenty of it and they. Yeah. Like, plenty of it. And they probably should have known that if they were paying attention. The real threat Iran posed, at least in Iraq's thoughts, was the former Imperial Iranian Air Force. So how was Iran going to, or how is Iraq going to deal with that? Well, they had just been on the receiving end of a textbook preemptive airstrike only a few years prior during the six-day war named operation focus carried out by the israeli air force they weren't a direct target of it because they're just too far away yeah but um all of their allies got their shit stomped in by this and they the only thing they noticed about it was they used mirage aircraft those are fucking cool and uh well i mean

that kind of all boils down to saddam's line of thinking it wasn't good planning it wasn't good pilots it was the planes i need mirages so he went out got them from france and that's like kind of one of his things is like yeah sure equipment is cool and having the good stuff is like obviously good but uh you still need the people in the planning and the well more more importantly what the iraqis lacked this entire war was any kind of functional cohesive military intelligence structure at all which we'll talk about a little bit later but um so that's what he wanted and that's what he got and that's what he planned to do um that's all he was going to do was launch a

massive one-day strike surprise attack on all iranian air bases um the problem is tehran is about a thousand miles away um give or take that's really far i'm just ballparking that okay he didn't have plane he had a couple planes that could make it that far but not a whole lot also they had no intelligence on the on the Iranian Air Force and its capabilities but one would assume

that they would learn some lessons no they really don't all Saddam said is well the Israelis did it. I have the same planes that the Israelis used. Therefore, I can do it. Bing, bang, boom.

That's what he tried to do. And on September 22nd, 1980, the Iraqi Air Force launched a surprise attack on 10 Iranian airfields, including the capital. It turned out, however, that the Iraqi Air Force was not the Israeli Air Force and the Iranian planes were not seriously damaged whatsoever. Air Force was not the Israeli Air Force and the Iranian planes were not seriously damaged whatsoever. The reason for this was a few reasons but it was because the Iranians had simply parked

their jets in hardened reinforced hangars, which is something that the Iraqis should have known if they had any kind of reconnaissance. Who needs planning? As pretty much anybody would have done and something that the Israelis did before their attack, but that was kind of an implied task. Yeah.

So the Iraqis should have known if they were paying attention. I know what you're thinking. Why the hell didn't they do any recon before launching the entire damn war? Well, Saddam had told his generals to plan for war about a week before they actually started. Plenty of time. A week. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, his, and this, this is the, a bad part because Saddam himself had been roommates on this war for months, if not years. Um,

at least since the revolution, like at least since the revolution kind of began, he's like, shit, now's my chance. He's never thought about it. He never thought to tell generals, Hey,

start coming up with a plan. He's been dreaming about it. He never thought to tell generals, hey, start coming up with a plan. Yeah, he's been dreaming about it. He just never thought to tell anybody to start coming up with a plan about the fucking thing. I mean, his military leaders are morons. That will go, you'll see many reasons why they're morons later on. But I mean, even like if you put enough idiots in one room, they'll come out with something resembling a decent plan. But not if you give them a week. Depends on what you put in the in one room, they'll come out with something resembling a decent plan, but not if you give them a week. Depends on what you put in the room with them, I guess.

So the only thing that saved the Iraqi Air Force from getting shot out of the sky was that the Iranian Air Force was so crippled by the purges of the revolution, it couldn't even launch a counterattack. Meaning that Saddam's Air Force has dispatched to destroy an entire enemy's Air Force and only succeeded in denting some airplane hangers.

And to make matters worse, that the Iraqi air force reported back to Saddam that their mission had been a resounding success. I'm pretty sure they just didn't want to say boss. Like, Hey, we've, we've fucked up.

No. And you'll find out why soon. Um, it turns out that they didn't have morale as much as they had crippling fear of failure. Um, I would imagine. Yeah. At the same day as their attack, Saddam proudly proclaimed that the Kyrgyzstan was the newest

province of Iraq. Just like that. Can you do that? You didn't have troops in it yet. Yeah. Can you do that? No, you can't. I mean, it's just I mean, technically it's called an annexation normally, but you don't

launch airstrikes before you annex something. That's just taking over something. That's mine. I mean, that's kind of... Everybody does. That's what Russia did to Crimea. But I don't go in front of your house and say, this is my house. No, no. I mean, you didn't launch

airstrikes first. I mean, I don't even have the capability to do that. Yeah, so get the fuck off my lawn. Now I will find the capability to do it. I'm going to find a fucking Cessna circling my house tomorrow. Get really nervous. Yeah. I'm going to drop fucking baseballs because that's all I can afford after a Cessna.

Cessnas are expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Any planes, any planes expensive. Yeah, you're right. You can just rent out one with a sign that says your house is not mine a little fucking banner on the factory yeah uh so uh after he proclaimed the kushistan province to be his own uh you would think that the rest of the international uh neighborhood would be like you're fucking stupid get the fuck out of here saddam i would

assume it was immediately supported by pretty much every Persian Gulf state and the United States, including France. They heard about the success? Yeah, it was a resounding success. They're like, well, clearly Iran can't possibly stand against them now. Pretty much the only power to reject Saddam's claim was the Soviet Union, who, despite previously pouring millions upon millions of dollars with military equipment into Iraq, the two are no longer friends.

This is mostly because Saddam, who was not a socialist, massacred pretty much all of Iraq's communist party, which the Soviet Union has some qualms with. It's kind of the thing. The next day, Iraq launched its ground invasion, spearheaded by six divisions outfitted with the best Soviet equipment.

Four of the divisions would cut towards iran's crown jewel and saddam's main target the kujistan uh not only did they want to secure those oil fields he also had some misplaced belief that such a loss of an important and rich providence would strike a blow to the young government's prestige and magically cause it to fall apart. It makes no sense. Um, it, I, I, I tried to rationalize that.

Like maybe people like, Hey, this government's really weak. Let's kick it out. But they literally just got shot in the street. Yeah. Trying to, you know,

take over the Shah's government. I, I don't know. Did Saddam have any real military background he had no military back okay that could possibly explain something um the most military background he had was that he took part in a military coup uh for independence oh but it's not like he was a soldier right he was just like i said he was a political thug for the Ba'athist party. That's pretty much it. So the other two Iraqi divisions pushed straight ahead into Iran to cut off any counterattack.

Iran might be able to scrape together from its fractured military. Instead of putting up a coordinated resistance to the large Iraqi front, the Iranian defenders pretty much just scattered, went back to the cities and dug into wait, which would end up being a really good idea. Soon, the important Iranian port cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr were put under direct siege. It was around now that the Iraqi military began deploying chemical weapons for the first time around Susangard. Oh, fuck. To mostly unknown effects.

It's really hard to get a solid figure. Somebody told me that in the beginning of the war that their chemical uh warfare process is pretty shoddy and their gas would be about 20 fatal but i mean gas even in its most fatal in war especially when it's deployed like theirs was through bombs and artillery strikes it's not the direct casualties it's fucking terrifying and demoralizing like getting atomized with an artillery

shell sucks like nobody wants that to happen right I think everybody would pick that over getting your eyes scalded out of your head by a fucking chemical gas or watching your friend drown his own lung juices like nobody wants to stick around and fight that shit no nobody wants to even put on the gear to do it too yeah that's a good reason for it so fuck that uh iraqi forces pushed seemingly unopposed into iran and the iranian air force finally got shit

together and launched a counter-attack american made f4 phantoms and f5 tigers targeted iraqi infrastructure like oil pipelines and the capital city of bagdad itself and Mosul air base. Phantoms are so cool. Um, the Iraqi anti-air defense was so lax that the Iranians hardly took any casualties during the strike while I, Iraq took heavy casualties. Uh, dozens of Soviet made Iraqi jets were down within the first two days.

And these were things that could not be replaced. Um, in Iraq at this point, Iraq had something resembling infrastructure to build, replacement parts, stuff like that for their tanks. A little bit for their helicopters. Definitely not their jets. So you would think your job

as anti-air would be to anti-air. And this didn't happen? Well, I mean, Iraq didn't have really any... They didn't plan ahead for the concept that they might be under air attack. Oh, because the mission went so well. Right.

Okay. And I mean, they're the ones invading. They had this weird thought that, well, if I had an air force and somebody invaded me, I would attack the invading army, not like let's attack their support and supply networks right which is exactly what iran did they're like well we could blow up their their forward forces too but if we just take out all their gas and repair parts they'll eventually just break down and stop ended up being a really good idea ended up being a really good idea um

iranian flown american-made cobra attack helicopters began to harass and strafe the advancing Iraqi army divisions inflicted horrible losses. Um, they didn't really have any effective count a counter attack, uh, for any helicopters, like, which is weird because they had shoulder fire anti-aircraft missiles for this

exact purpose. They never really worked for shit. Oh, um, it was around this time that the world saw its first ever helicopter dog fight, uh, with Iraqi Heinz clashing with Iranian sea Cobras on several occasions. Oh,

that's fucking cool. Now everybody talks about the Iran Iraq. We're like, Oh dude, so sweet that there's a helicopter dog fight, but it wasn't a dog fight. It wasn't a dog fight like in the normal sense of a dog fight because helicopters aren't really equipped to do that.

Uh, I don't know if they are now, but they certainly weren't then. Uh, um, so really what it was is that one helicopter stumbled upon another helicopter on accident and launched an anti-tank guided missile at it and took it down.

And that ended up kind of being the thing is like one helicopter would sneak up on the other one and try to blow it out of the sky. That's fucking cool. Yeah. I mean, I still would love to see that, but like, it wasn't like they're circling around each other and like this whirlwind of

death. Yeah. Um, and there's actually multiple accounts of jets and helicopters going at it with the helicopters losing in every documented case for obvious reasons. Yeah. Uh, there's actually a,

a unconfirmed report that an Iranian Cobra managed to take down an Iraqi mig. Uh, there's no proof of this, but if it did Iranian Cobra managed to take down an Iraqi MiG. There's no proof of this but if it did happen that's like a one in a million shot. That pilot's getting fucking shunned dude. You know he had a fucking like PCS or something Yeah it's like I just need some time to myself guys. He had a fucking

reclass. On the 30th I'm pretty sure reclassing in Iran or in Iraq is just getting shot in the back of the head Dude you died like that? Fuck. So on the 30th I'm pretty sure reclassing in Iraq is just getting shot in the back of the head. Dude, you died like that? Fuck. So on the 30th of September, Iranian Air Force jets would launch their most daring attack ever.

Operation Scorch Sword was a surprise attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor that was funded and built by France, which was built with the sole reason of making nuclear weapons. That's the only reason why iraq wanted it i mean it was built so far away from like everything else that it wasn't like powering any cities or anything just like yeah it was just there don't mind us we're just you know refining uranium for other reasons um so it would actually be the first ever attack on a nuclear reactor in the history of warfare and the first ever pre uh prevent ever attack on a nuclear reactor in the history of warfare and the first ever preventative attack on a nuclear facility. And I say that because Iran knew as much as pretty much anybody else is like if Iraq had a nuclear weapon, they would totally be using it in Iran because they've already been gassing the dog shit out of it.

No mercy. It didn't do a lot of damage because it was hardened. And I mean, it was a military facility and is in everything except name. So it was hardened. There was bunkers and anti-air defense all around. Right. But a couple of years later, the Israelis actually came in and flattened the goddamn thing. Whoa.

Yeah. So Iran and Israel actually worked together. Yeah. An accident. Yeah. But not. But it happened. Yeah.

Meanwhile, back at the city of Kormshah the iraqi military uh had expected an easy victory and they were getting torn to shreds um the iranian defenders were a loose collection of around 3 000 revolutionary guards random volunteers some officer cadets from the local high school police and navy commandos yeah none of them were actually working together um they don't kind of work together and loosely uh organized teams but nobody was communicating with the other for like a collective defense which is it sounds bad but it worked really well and i think it worked really well because it was so decentralized like one group could get fucking wiped out in a gas attack and it didn't hurt any kind of command and control. I'm just a high school.

Yeah, yeah. It was like the JRTC from high school. Those fucking memes are true. Yeah, yeah. And they didn't surrender. No, they didn't. And we'll go further than that. Despite all of this,

the Iranians dubbed the city the city of blood and martyrs and wrote on every single building they could find we will defend the motherland to the last drop of blood and you can actually find these signs and buildings in kormshar to this day uh they left them up as a as a memorial to all the revolutionary martyrs so a raid against them was more than 20,000 Iraqi troops and around 500 tanks. That should be enough. That's a lot. Yeah.

Uh, while the Iraqis made steady progress, they would do so over piles and piles of their own dead bodies. Um, Iraqis desperate to secure the shot, all airport cities kept pouring men and material into the attack. And the defenders turned the city into a killing ground by flooding the surrounding marshlands,

forcing the Iraqi soldiers to move over small strips of land towards the city in pretty much single-file lines. I like that. Yeah, and the water was so deep in those areas, the tanks couldn't drive through them. So they were like, oh, we're going to line everybody up in a fucking conga line of doom and march slowly towards the city.

Kind of getting a D-Day vibe on that one uh it made them incredibly easy targets for obvious reasons um the iraqis launch large-scale tank attacks with absolutely no infantry support nice yeah uh making their tanks easy pickings for revolutionary guard anti-tank teams armed with rocket repelled grenades recoilless rifles and molotov cocktails uh remember how i told you earlier that the iraqis never learned from history? Because we've known for about 100 years not to launch unsupportive armor attacks. Probably from the first battle. Yeah, from pretty much 1918.

We've known this. But, you know. Who needs training when you got new stuff? That's right. By September 30th, the Iraqi forces managed to break through the defenses on the outskirts of the city. Instead of victory.

However, they're greeting by entrenched fighters, defending each house, um, room to room, like defending the couch from the fucking lump seat type situation. HGTV. Yeah.

Open concept. They're making some open concept of Iraqi bodies. Uh, the Iranian defenders would not yield. And the Iraqis broke once again, retreating out of the city back to where they started. By October 14th,

the Iraqis were trying again. The Iranian defenders were exhausted, running low on supplies and pretty much they just couldn't hold the opening of the city anymore. They withdrew in good order

back to the city's Grand Mosque and ordered whoever was left in the city who hadn't evacuated to get the fuck out. Why? Because they were calling in airstrikes on their own position. Nice. The survivors pulled across the Karun

River under Iraqi artillery bombardment while a small force of teenagers, cops, and other volunteers launched a suicidal real-guard action to slow them down. Not only did they succeed, but they didn't get wiped out. Everything is swinging Iran. Yeah, they dispersed back into the city and operated as something of like a guerrilla force for months afterwards.

Yeah, everything's just going their way. So when Iraq took the city over, they pretty much got an empty city full of their own dead bodies and a couple of guerrillas lurking around the shadows. But we got it. Yeah, but we took the city, guys. city full of their own dead bodies and a couple of gorillas lurking around the shadows. But we got it. Yeah. But we took the city guys. Um, and you know, one of the issues that they had continuously, uh, throughout the war is, um, Iraq's military doctrine was pretty much Soviet world war two doctrine where you, no matter what the target was, you'd surround it and then just lay waste to a artillery

bombardments, which isn't a terrible doctrine. Um, but it makes that works in a war where things aren't moving. Like everybody has hundreds of tanks and hundreds of APCs and helicopters and jets. Like they moved really slow. And, uh,

not only that, this operation was planned to take only two days. Um, it instead take a month and cost Iraqi military around 7,000 dead, around 200 destroyed armored vehicles. These are things that the Iraqi military cannot replace. It was around this point in the war that Iraq learned a valuable lesson. Just because your soldiers are wearing and using the most modern equipment

does not make them good soldiers, nor does it motivate them. So they're learning now. No. Oh, OK. This is the point they should have learned that lesson, but they didn't. The Iranians were fighting on their home turf, riled up by revolutionary fervor against invading army. This was the Iranian they shall not pass, not one step back moment. You know what I'm saying?

Like this is their moment of national awakening against an outside force. The Iraqis didn't have any of that. The Iraqi soldiers were described by a British journalist, Patrick Brogan as quote, badly led and lacking an offensive spirit. And to make matters worse, the Iraqi army had long since tossed aside tactical training in favor of political indoctrination.

Some had lived through enough coups to know what a strong, well-led, well-trained, independently motivated army could do to a government. That was kick his stupid ass out, and he didn't want that. Any actual military control of the military was stripped and its power centralized

around Saddam, which is problematic since Saddam had never had any military training. For starters, he thought being a soldier was like being a singer or being an artist or something. It was something that you had or you didn't have. It wasn't something you'd get from training. This is from an article called Saddam's War. It says, quote, Saddam believed that military effectiveness was a matter of the warrior in as much as medieval terms of the warrior and the

spirit and morale of soldiers, not necessarily the training organization or discipline. To him, bravery on the battlefield, exemplified by a personal vision of the Arab fighter, was only a reasonable measure of military effectiveness. Bravery, that's it. Okay, yeah. That isn't to say that they didn't go through any training at all however

but what training they did have was suitably insane um according to an iraqi war veteran named adnan um and i guess coming out against this war because this is from like 2003 coming out against this war was is and was super unpopular in Iraq to this day. They kind of washed Saddam off the picture, and they're like, well, hundreds of thousands of us still died, so we should still respect it. So he's going under a pseudonym. He goes by Adnan.

He says, quote, I was enrolled in training. It was very harsh for all the company. I remember the trainers holding batons. Those trainers hit you on your head, on your shoulders, and on your chest. I felt it from the beginning. They were putting down the morale of the company. I remember the trainers holding batons. Those trainers hit you on your head, on your shoulders, and on your chest. I felt it from the beginning. They were putting down the morale of the army. You know, and like when a random conscripted private

knows what you're doing is bad for the entire army, like you seriously have fucked up. You're not screaming like, fuck. You're not screaming patriotism from the start there. I mean, they are. are i mean it's all political like they're beating getting asked questions about bathism and about saddam and that's what they all cared about it's kind of like you can kind of compare it very very loosely to the old prussian military training of just brutal discipline to make you so afraid

of the outcome if you run or don't listen that you're just a little stay and fight. Yeah, but I also imagine that they're not going like fuck Saddam's cool while getting hit. No, but they better be. It's true. It's harder. Thank you, Daddy Hussein.

Also, it didn't help that a full 80% of the Iraqi army was Shia. Oh. Yeah. Making them hesitant to fight hard against the people they had more in common with than the ruler that was already under war. So he instead settled for a politically loyal army. There's an even popular saying among the ranks of it better be a good

Bathurst than a good soldier. Yeah. Why is that? What? How's that a saying? Because it a good soldier. Yeah. Why is that even? What? How is that a saying? Because it saves your ass. It's not good. I mean, because you can be a really, really good soldier and make everybody look bad and

you're fucked. But if you tow the party line and learn all the slogans or whatever and Saddam's fucking favorite color, you'll probably get promoted faster. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so the battle had taken so long that the Iranian,

it gave the Iranian government time to rally. So I'm thought, um, kind of like Hitler thought during world war two, like you'd kick in the front door and the whole rotten structure would come down. Like that's what he said when, when he invaded the Soviet Union.

Um, but instead of turning on their government, like he thought they would, um, it turned the iranian people to include those arab uh kujistan arabs that he he won on his side they all just rallied around their new government against the foreign invader um it was actually kind of funny because the whole time the sun had been planning this, he had been told time and time again by his intelligence chiefs that he'd be welcomed by the Kyrgyzstan province as a liberator. That welcoming party never showed up.

Who told him that? Someone who probably didn't want to die. Yeah. So he'd been funding those militants in the area for so long, he probably should have known. But I'm just going to assume that he has been lied to for years and years about this sort of thing. Yeah. Instead, those Arabs actually swelled loyalist militias and went and fought the Iraqis themselves. In the weird jumble of different armies fighting this.

That's right. That's one army. Oh, it gets more confusing. We'll go into that later. That's right. That's one army. Oh, it gets more confusing. We'll go into that later. And, you know, this whole time, remember, he understands that, like, bad things are

happening because, like, there's tons of people dying. But, like, everybody is still saying, like, yeah, it's going great. We took over Kormshar. Like, we totally took it over, man. You're doing great, boss. Yeah. You're doing real good. I mean, we still have, like, hundreds of thousands of soldiers left.

The medals on your chest look really good today. Yeah. Look really good today. Yeah. Um, so that siege in Khorramshahr had actually damaged the cities or the damage Iraqi military so badly, they would no longer be able to advance into Iran. Instead, they would dig in and prepare for the roles to be reversed.

Um, it had been held off for so long that the Iranian military is able to play catch up and begin deploying its new fanatical army to the front lines full of all of those dudes who swelled around the revolutionary flag. I feel like, yo, Iraq just took over a port and everybody. And that's when Saddam was like, this is I'm 10 seconds away from winning. And then suddenly he has a whole new army facing him. Hundreds of thousands of people spelled the Iranian military like overnight. So this is another army that iran has yeah most of them would fall into the revolutionary guard

and oh um other offshoots of the revolutionary which i'll talk a little bit more i think in the next episode because that's when they start coming in okay um what it boiled down to was revolutionary guard were moderately armed decently trained to the extent of like they knew how to fire their weapons they knew something that looked like small unit tactics kind of didn't have a lot of heavy equipment um and there's still the iranian army but everybody looks at it sideways because it was the shah's army but we'll get into that yeah um so at the same time while they've been throwing themselves against kormshar the iranians have been bombing the piss out of iraq to include their fuel and uh ammo supplies and they'd effectively strangled the country in an aerial siege which is something

i don't think has ever been effectively done yet like they have the city they have the entire country of iraq fucked i wonder if they're still telling saddam yeah they're still good yeah we totally fucked him up i mean at this point i think they know but i don't know if he's accepted i feel like he's still living in his own little castle probably probably um on the other hand iran supplies had not been exhausted uh and despite sanctions and the military's often cannibalized spare parts, like one vehicle to get the other one to go. Oh, they're rat fucking. Yeah. Yeah.

And also they were brought to start buying stuff on the black market. Like anything that looked like a military vehicle was being bought up. Pickup trucks were good enough. Like anything. That camo Toyota looks good. Yeah. I mean, shit, half of, like, half the world went selling weapons. So it's, if anybody is selling weapons, they're friends now.

Yeah. So the Iranian knew they had them trapped in the siege of Abadan as well. And they did that by trapping the Iraqi army in a naval battle. A lot of shit's going on here. Yeah, well, the Iranians actually had a surprisingly powerful navy. And at one point, the US was creating a special class of destroyer or something for the Shah's Navy that he never ended up getting a chance of buying, but like it was going to be even stronger.

I'll just wait for you to explain. I want to know what happens. Um, well in one battle, the Iraqis lose 80% of their entire Navy. Holy fuck. Yeah. Um,

and this, I'm not sure if it was exactly because the iranian navy or because the iranian air force just bombed the dog shit out of them and at this point the iranians pretty much have air superiority right um the iraqi air force they're i would say they're at least equal to or maybe even greater than in material but like their pilots were awful in comparison it almost seems like they're non-existent that's pretty common let's see throughout the world the only thing the iraqis were ever really good at a static defense at least they have cool shit not for long yeah that's cool too um are you gonna drink your drink by the way oh i'm working on it okay um so uh once they lost their navy they had no way

to uh seal off abaddon so because like it's a port city so they have it sealed off on three sides the fourth side being the ocean um well now but they're too dumb to figure that out or they just maybe so i'm gonna give them permission to pull back so they're still locked into the siege could be it and iran knows they're locked into the siege. So they just keep feeding the city supplies to keep the Iraqi army there and dying. And that would go on for a very long time. So that was when on December 7th, 1980, Saddam announced that Iraq was going on the defensive. That's right. In about almost a year.

Not almost a year. A couple couple months give him a couple months he went from having the fifth largest military in the world to being completely spent with this the war would turn into a modern day version of the western front world war one and one of the worst attrition wars of the 20th century

and that is where we will pick up next week. I ran a wreck war part two. Yes. Electric Boogaloo. I can't call it that because it said it called the war of 1812 part two. That's what we've called a lot of things. It's my go-to sequel name.

It's a good sequel name. Yeah, I mean, and I'm not sure what surprises me more about part two. If it's the Iraqi army's complete inability to fight or the Iraqi military's complete inability to plan. I have two things on this for part two. The first one is how much men did it take to tell Saddam, hey, we need to go on the defensive?

I don't think anybody told him that because... Or he just realized it? I have an anecdote here in a little bit later that you'll find out what happens to people who question Saddam's plans. That's what I'm saying. How many men did he go through to tell him,

hey, we need to go on the defensive? What I'm willing to believe was there's enough international gears at play, and we'll talk about that a little more in part three, of trying to feed him money and supplies. Even Saddam knew, hey, I need to sit back and wait for all these my new sugar daddies to kick in the money and the supplies,

and then I can go on the attack again. Okay. I don't know if that's true or not. Okay, yeah. But I think that's more likely than Saddam listening to one of his generals. So like six guys? I would say that there's probably more than one that said, hey, sir, maybe we should try this. Bam!

Yeah, just fucking shot. Immediately. Yeah. Also, second part. What happened to the magician? Unknown at this shot. Immediately. Yeah. Also, second part. What happened to the magician? Unknown at this time. Okay. Will we go into it later?

We will assume that he was voted in recently. Is that a part three? Into the new Iraqi parliament. He's not in the part three, huh? He's never named again. Fuck. I regret to inform you. No, he is not.

So far, my favorite part. He got a plane full of fucking cool magician shit, probably. Well, he did get a plane full of cool magician shit. Yeah. I don't know. It kind of pains me that we're not able to talk about his sons either because they didn't really play a part quite yet because they're snidely whiplash levels of insane and madness. If you were to make

a comic book character the picture of evil, they would be Saddam Hussein's sons and then people would be like, that's unrealistic. But they existed. There was two of them. Uday and Kuse.

Why am I drawing a blank here? I don't know, but it makes me sad. Yeah. Oh, well. Well, they both died in a gun battle with U.S. troops. So that gives me an excuse to actually do an episode on them. Oh, okay. Because that's military history.

They died in a gunfight. But that's either here or there. So this is part two. Thanks for tuning in. Tune in next week for part three. As always, you can follow the show on Twitter at lines underscore by. You can follow me at jcas 99 follow me at nick cas m1 if you think what we do is worth a buck throw us a buck on patreon or

buy a sticker or a coffee cup or something still haven't seen the sticker i'm false flag stickers they don't actually exist and or uh what's also become a popular method of giving us stuff send us booze. Yeah. Yeah. We just got a package from Ireland in the mail and it's full of whiskey and it's awesome. It's fucking great. So until then, we will see you next week.

Hi. Hi, this is Nate Bethea and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. This show is brought to you by Audible. And as it just so happens, Audible is offering our listeners a free audio book with a 30-day trial membership. Just go to audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys and browse the selection of audio programs. Download his title for free and start listening. Once again, that's www.audibletrial.com forward slash donkeys to get started.