Iran and Iraq have now been at war for a year. To put a precise date on the anniversary is awkward because this curious war has never been officially declared as such by either side. Formally the two governments maintain diplomatic relations even while denouncing each other as an abomination in the sight of God, calling for each other’s overthrow, and carrying out large-scale military operations against each other’s territory and population. It was however on September 22 last year that Iraq issued what amounted in practice to a declarion of war and that the Iraqi airforce for the first time attacked targets deep inside Iran.
It is not, as it has sometimes been represented, a conflict between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. Ideologically Saddam Hussein is a secular Arab nationalist, whereas the Ayatollah is an Islamic Internationaist. Implicitly, the Iranian revolution threatened every established regime in the Muslim world, just as the French revolution threatened all the crowned heads of Europe.
Yet the armies of the French revolution, which defeated those of the crowned heads and carried the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity beyond the Rhine and the Alps, were not sustained by that idea alone but also by a belief in themselves as representatives of la grande nation. Similarly the Iranians who have fought the Iraqi offensive to a standstill are not kept going solely by enthusiasm for revolutionary Islam. Two and a half years of revolutionary chaos and terror have dampened the enthusiasm of most Iranians anyway. But Iranian patriotism remains a potent force. Iranians of whatever political persuasion remain ready to fight to repel the Iraqi aggressor from Iranian soil.