Documenting nearly five centuries of history is no small feat, and Kaveh Farrokh does it well in Iran at War: 1500–1988. Maybe not quite at the reading level of the titans of the seminal authors of history in Toynbee and Gibbon, but Farrokh is still able to hold his own even if it mimics Gibbon is in his incredibly uncanny gift for storytelling and the often laborious, but detailed account of key figures and dates on history’s battlegrounds.

What is refreshing, however, is that the book discusses the Islamic Republic of Iran without painstakingly rehashing the Islamic Revolution, which appears in just about every book on the country. This is apparent when one visits the country, as I did in 2010. When traveling to Rasht in the north, as well as Tehran, Khorramshahr, Isfahan and Mashhad, one cannot pass by a single mosque without seeing visages of the Grand Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. Mention of either is reduced to a whisper and instills great fear in its citizens. It is perhaps a country obsessed with the past and misdirected for its path in the future. And Farrokh truly takes advantage of this by writing this narrative.

As the title rightly indicates, the subject matter is simply that: war. And through six separate, yet interrelated, chapters, Farrokh interweaves his way through the Safavid Dynasty, the rise of Nader Khan in the mid-18th century, the all-important Qajar Dynasty that ruled until the close of World War I before Reza Khan and his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, virtually brought the 2,500 year rule of the monarchy in Persia to a close — perhaps finally allowing Cyrus the Great to once again rest in peace. Unfortunately, following the human rights atrocities of the SAVAK (or secret police) in the 1960s and 1970s, the downfall of the shah came with the triumphant return of Ayatollah Khomeini; and the rest is history.

The strongest chapter indeed is Farrokh’s last, one dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, a bitter feud that lasted from 1980 to 1988, causing millions of casualties on both sides. It was also a war that the US and other regional powers did not want to see succeed on both sides. Other than the much-publicized Anfal campaign or the Halabja massacre in 1988 — chemical warfare directed toward the Kurdish minority and one of the crimes against which Saddam Hussein was tried — not much is known about the Iran-Iraq war. Farrokh helped change that. The final section ‘catastrophic destruction with no winners’ really tells all. With brief forays into each other’s territories, not a great deal of land was confiscated, and the utilization of young boys as martyrs in manning the Iranian front lines enacted a terrible loss of life. 

The author states that one of the reasons for the warfare seemed to be centered around a Persian pan-Islamism belief versus a Baathist ideology in Saddam’s Iraq. The Battle for Khuzestan appears to be the most important, a strategically located province on the tip of the Persian Gulf. Even though Iraq had several other shipping avenues, control of the Khuzetani cities of Basra and Abadan, the Fao offensives and battle over the Arvand Rud/Shatt al Arab waterway really were telling stages of the war. For Iran, the control of three strategic islands where the bulk of oil and shipping cargo traveled was a priority, to posit a great understatement. With an almost month-by-month and sometimes daily account, Farrokh’s incredibly detailed description of the Iran-Iraq war rivals any accounts of modern-day warfare history that this reviewer has lay witness to.

What is telling, and what the author illustrates as an important part of his research, is the detailing of the territorial boundaries of the state — in 1772 stretching from Ghazni in modern day eastern Afghanistan west to Diyarbakir in modern day Kurdistan or Turkey proper. The empire reached as far north as the North Caucasus as well as encapsulating both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. Several maps throughout the book illustrate the growth and significant receding landmass of Iran. Presently, more than 200 years after the 18th century Afghan invasions, Iran still presents itself as an imposing state and a necessary inclusion in all conversations in negotiating mention of the volatile Middle East.

The book is a must for the progression of modern day and historical Iranian scholasticism. At 480 pages, absorbing the book over time is best — a book that’s content contains such detail demands and deserves it. bt

Iran at War: 1500–1988
Dr. Kaveh Farrokh
480 pages, hardcover
Osprey Publishing, 2011
LE 180