The former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, had described the Iran-Iraq war as the “holy defense”, in an attempt to legitimize what is the biggest crime against humanity that the regime has committed to the Iranian people. The consequences of the Iran-Iraq war were devastating for Iran, with 2 million Iranian people killed or injured, this included hundreds of thousands of schoolboys who were employed to help clear the minefields. Further to this, fifty cities were destroyed and three thousand villages were destroyed.

The impact that the war had on the lives of the Iranian people is immeasurable. Families lost countless loved ones and were left in poverty without the breadwinner of the home. The cemeteries were overcrowded and daily funerals left families mourning their loss in every street, even in the most remote towns. It is necessary to question how this war could have been justified and why Khomeini led Iran into such a destructive war.

One of the founders of the regime agency the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Javad Mansouri, revealed in an interview in 2017: “If there had not been a war, I think the Islamic Revolution would have been destroyed. It was through the war that we were able to suppress the internal counter-revolution, to suppress the grouplets (PMOI / MEK Iran).”

 Khomeini’s background

When Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of Iran after the revolution in 1979, he was extremely popular. The people of Iran were fed up with the Shah’s dictatorship and Khomeini made many promises about economic welfare and social and political justice and freedoms. These promises were false and the people weren’t aware of Khomeini’s true nature.

Khomeini said: “I may have said one thing yesterday and another today and another tomorrow. It does not make sense for me to say that because I said something yesterday, I have to stick to it.” (Sahifa Noor, vol. 18, p. 178- December 11, 1983)

It was the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran) that first took a stand against the advancing new religious dictatorship of the Khomeini and the regime, revealing the dark reality of their rule to the Iranian people. The MEK began a campaign of awareness that exposed Khomeini. The state-run free distribution daily news publication the Islamic Republic reached about 18,000 people during this time, while after just two years, the MEK’s official publication, Mojahed, which was secretly published, circulated to more than six hundred thousand people daily.

Khomeini desperately needed a way to maintain his newfound power and justify the oppression of the people in response to their legitimate demands.

“At this time that we are engaged at war, calmness must be maintained. If some people make speeches across the country, and their speeches cause tension, whoever he is, in whatever position, I will put him in his place,” Khomeini said.

The former IRGC Chief Commander, and regime’s secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, admitted in an interview with the state-tv in 2014: “We had a movement inside the country, under the guise of demonstration of unemployed people with a high school diploma, demonstration of Women against (forced) hijab, a flow of guns into Iran,.. this trend would have led to something before the war if we didn’t prevent them.”

This shows that after the 1979 revolution, with the campaign of the MEK and peaceful demonstrations of different sectors of Iranian society, the regime would have been overthrown. Despite all of the loss and suffering that the Iranian people endured, Khomeini deemed this to be worth it in order to keep the power of the regime intact.

The events of the war

The tragic events that took place during and immediately after the war are indicative of how Khomeini used the war on Iraq to cover up the internal war that the regime was waging on the Iranian people and the resistance force, the (PMOI / MEK Iran).

Between October and November of 1980, the year the Iran-Iraq war began, the regime started to crack down on the MEK and its public awareness campaign. Several of their publications, including the “Mojahed”, the MEK’s official publication and the most widely circulated magazine in Iran to date, were prohibited. In November, an arrest warrant was put out for all MEK leaders, a senior MEK official, Mohammad Reza Saadati, was put on trial on charges of espionage, and hundreds of MEK supporters were arrested and tortured, with many being sentenced to years in prison.

While Khomeini had no military knowledge, he wanted to carry on the war at whatever price. He enforced operations with no plan or strategy but simply to continue to cause distraction and oppression. This included sending untrained soldiers in “human waves” to the front lines, only armed with individual weapons, many of the soldiers were students and children, even as young as thirteen years old. Former President of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, confessed in Friday prayers on 31 October 1997 that 36,000 school children had lost their lives on the front lines.

The war continued in this devastating manner and Khomeini took every opportunity to prolong its effects. On 24 May 1982, Iraqi forces were being driven out of Iran and this may have been a possible ending to the war, however, Khomeini saw the war as a blessing and not a crisis to be ended. The war did not end for another six years, on 20 August 1988, and this was only due to intervention from the United Nations.

The destruction and suffering caused by the war were present in all areas of the lives of the Iranian people. Not only did they face the pain of the 2 million people killed and injured and the obliteration of thousands of cities and villages, but they were hugely economically impacted.

According to an article published by Kayhan in 1989, the per capita income of the country reached on third of the previous decade and 14.5 million young people over the age of 20 were unemployed.

A 2010 report by the Institute for Humanities and Cultural studies stated: “More than 52% of the population over the age of 6 were deprived of literacy, with 20,000 villages without any schools in the country. The Cotton products down to 1/3rd, Sugar beets to ½, and Copper to ½ at the time. This is a catastrophe that decades after the end of the war, the consequences can still be seen in the destruction of industry and agriculture and the complete destruction of Iran’s entire national market.

It is clear that the Iran-Iraq war was one of the most brutal methods of oppression to be used in history. Khomeini instigated the war in order to assert his control over Iran and ensure that the MEK and the Iranian people did not rise up against the suppressive theocratic rule of the regime. It did not matter how many lives were lost or the devastation caused to Iran, Khomeini was ready to sacrifice the Iranian people to continue his criminally ran dictatorship.

MEK Iran (follow them on Twitter and Facebook)

and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran – MEK IRAN – YouTube