Chapter 9 takes a closer look at one of the book’s overarching themes, the relationship between faith and firepower. In the existing literature and the news media alike, much weight is given to the rhetoric Iranian leaders used during (and since) the Iran-Iraq War and the importance of faith and revolutionary fervor in understanding the Islamic Republic and its prosecution of the conflict. As this chapter demonstrates, the IRGC sources and Iran’s actions reveal a different story. By taking those as the basis of analysis, here the book illustrates that Iranian leaders prosecuted the war by relying on all the tools at their disposal, which included both faith—religious commitment, revolutionary ideology, and popular morale—and firepower—military professionalism, strategy, and weapons. In the second half of the chapter the theme of faith and firepower is utilized in another way, to examine how the Guards conceptualized the war in relation to Islam and the Iranian Revolution, and to demonstrate that they did so in order to expound the significance of the conflict.

Chapter 2 traces the development of the IRGC’s efforts to document the Iran-Iraq War, including the people, activities, and publications that make up that enterprise. It focuses on the project’s origins and foundations, the work undertaken to record the history of the war as the conflict was ongoing, the methodology and approach applied to those efforts, and the publications that have resulted therefrom and on which the present book is based. In doing so, it demonstrates that the development of the IRGC’s documentation of the war mirrors the evolution of both the Iran-Iraq War and the IRGC as a whole, which highlights how the project emblematizes the organization and the war’s centrality to its legitimacy and identity. It argues, in other words, that in order to understand the IRGC, we must understand its members not just as Guards but also as historians.

Chapter 3 begins the analysis of the IRGC’s history of the Iran-Iraq War. It examines how the IRGC authors explain the war’s outbreak and the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion. Like other historians of the conflict within and outside Iran, the IRGC authors strive to tease out the variety of causes that led to the war and, in particular, to understand the role of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution in the war’s onset. These connections between the war and the revolution constitute both a prime concern for the Revolutionary Guards and a main theme of the present book. According to the Guards, the success of the revolution was the most important catalyst for the Iraqi invasion. Further, Iraq made the strategic decision to strike while the revolution was still hot—to attack the Islamic Republic in the midst of its revolutionary transition, when the new regime’s power was tenuous and its readiness for war diminished.

The Introduction begins with a look at how the contested legacies of the Iran-Iraq War have permeated the debate concerning Iran’s relations with the United States, which draws the reader into the story by demonstrating that the IRGC’s efforts to construct the history of the war represent an important front in the struggle for Iran’s future. After setting out the book’s main subjects and arguments, the first chapter then provides a brief overview of the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, and the IRGC. The following section discusses the existing literature on those topics, the book’s contributions thereto, and the approach to the subject and methodology. The Introduction concludes with a narrative outline of the rest of the book.

Chapter 5 presents the story of how Iran finally turned the tide, of how the revolution progressed to the point that it could help instead of hinder the war effort. What the IRGC authors term “the epic of Khorramshahr”—Iran’s retaking of that city after months of Iraqi occupation—marked the culmination of the reversal. For the Guards, the liberation of Khorramshahr represents a case in which faith could be used effectively against firepower. Though the Iraqi forces retained their advantage in firepower, the Iranians’ faithful determination gave them the ultimate edge in their fight to retake the city. The liberation of Khorramshahr signified a turning point both in the war and for the Revolutionary Guards. The campaign marked the IRGC’s most substantial participation in the war to that point and initiated its transformation into the powerful and professional military that experience has allowed it to become.

Chapter 1 introduces the book’s main protagonists, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or Sepah, Corps. It examines the Sepah’s emergence, formal establishment, mission and duties, early institutionalization, and role in fighting counter-revolutionary and ethnic separatist groups. It traces how the Sepah formed from groups brought together by the shared goal of protecting what they saw as the revolution’s most important principles. It emerged in the days after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran on February 1, 1979 and in the midst of the Islamic Revolution’s turbulent and precarious transitory phase, which was characterized by political and violent struggles over the nature of the new regime. A particularly contentious issue, and one especially critical in the Sepah’s formation, was the fate of the Artesh, Iran’s regular military, and the nature of military power in the new regime.

Chapter 12 ties together the book’s central themes and highlights its main contributions. It argues that the Revolutionary Guards have endeavored to write the history of the Iran-Iraq War because of the way the Guards view the importance and meaning of the conflict in Iran today, the way they understand the nature and dynamism of history, and their commitment to what they view as the historical imperative of keeping the war alive.

Chapter 8 completes the chronological analysis of the IRGC’s history of the Iran-Iraq War by examining how the Revolutionary Guards assess the conflict’s conclusion. As the indelible declaration from Supreme Leader Khomeini made clear, deciding to end the war was agonizing for Iran, akin to drinking from a poisoned chalice. The assessment of the IRGC sources presented in this chapter reveals why that was so and why the decision was finally made. Understanding the disquiet that surrounds Iran’s acceptance of the ceasefire also reveals the IRGC’s view of the conflict as unfinished, a view that represents one of the ways the Iran-Iraq War continues to have a profound impact on the Islamic Republic.

Chapter 10 examines some of the most important ways the Iran-Iraq War and its history impact the IRGC and the Islamic Republic today. These include efforts to derive political and strategic lessons from the conflict and how Iran’s experience in the war gave rise to a security doctrine that seeks above all to establish effective deterrence and ensure Iran’s independence, in part by integrating Iran into the wider region and utilizing asymmetric and soft power. Running through these and many other aspects of the war’s ongoing significance is the conception that the conflict has not ended, and therefore that the Holy Defense continues. Additionally, the chapter puts the IRGC’s published histories in the broader context of the IRGC, of Iran’s ruling establishment, and of how the war’s legacies and lessons shape Iranian policy.

Chapter 4 continues the examination of how the IRGC analyzes the war’s early stages, and turns to Iran’s response to the Iraqi invasion. That response, according to the Guards, was characterized by a combination of willingness and inability. Just as Iran’s Islamic Revolution provided the underlying catalyst and opportunity for the Iran-Iraq War, it also had a definitive impact on the war’s early stages. Though many Iranians scrambled to repulse the attack on their territory, their nation, and their Islamic Revolution, they generally proved unable to do so. That dynamic exposes another of the connections between the Iran-Iraq War and the Iranian Revolution. One of the central arguments the IRGC authors make in their publications is that Iran’s ability to prosecute the war depended in large part on whether the revolutionary conditions in the country helped or hindered that effort. In this initial stage of the fighting, the disorder left in the revolution’s wake debilitated the Islamic Republic, rendering it unable to prevent Iraq’s occupation of parts of its territory.

Chapter 11 examines the ongoing processes of how the war has continued to shape the IRGC and how the IRGC has continued to shape the history of the war. The former is discussed in the first half of the chapter, which assesses how the war transformed the IRGC into a more complete and professional military and how the organization has used its contributions to the war effort to justify its growing power in the years since; and the latter is discussed in the chapter’s second half, which examines how the Holy Defense Research and Documentation Center has expanded and promoted its projects.