Iran–Iraq War

The Gulf has something different.

The Gulf Cooperation Council was founded in 1981 by six monarchies, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates two years after Iran's revolution and in the first year of the Iran-Iraq War.

Gulf officials have described it as a response, in part, to threats from Iran, and it deliberately left out both Iran and Iraq.

Members signed a joint defense agreement in 2000, and in March of 2024, the Council published what a Stimson Center analysis called the first explicit articulation of a collective security vision in its 43-year history.

A call for all the states around the Gulf to join one collective system.

and for outside powers to stay out.

It drew on a United Nations resolution from 1987 that helped end the Iran-Iraq war.

Russia floated its own collective security concept for the Persian Gulf the same year and reintroduced it in October of 2020, proposing an organization of the eight shoreline states with Russia, China, the United States, the European Union, India, and others as observers or associates.

Right.

You know, others will liken it to the early days of the Iran-Iraq war when you had a revolutionary regime which decided for domestic political expediency to actually prolong the war because it helped them consolidate power, helped the revolution consolidate power.

So that is really a fundamental question, Aaron, which is difficult to answer.

The final thing I'd say, though, here is that...

Of course, being next to Afghanistan when the poppy cultivation exploded was a stroke of awful luck, but the Iranian people have been under enormous strain since the 1979 revolution, and in truth, probably well before that.

The revolution was followed almost immediately by the Iran-Iraq War, an eight-year conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and left many more wounded, shell-shocked, and never quite the same.

Then came decades of international sanctions, periodic economic crises, inflation, unemployment, and an increasingly isolated economy.

More recently, the country has experienced repeated waves of protests, violent government crackdowns, and growing frustration among younger Iranians over political and social restrictions.

I think I remember it was a few years ago, but you read the book, but you discuss that maybe in the biggest frame of concerns for Saddam, Iran is the absolutely terrifying power.

The United States is a bad power that beat it badly in the Gulf War, but the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s was catastrophic.

that in some ways to show weakness, to show to the region, I don't have weapons of mass destruction, I don't have this, that was maybe more worrisome, and that you mentioned not keeping great records, they did destroy huge amounts of those weapons of mass destruction, but they didn't keep any records, and there's no way they could show to the West they'd actually done it.

Was that in his mindset?

It's a very specific place.

It's where like all the oil comes from, but also like, it's where like the war took place, like the Iran-Iraq war and, and yeah, you know, and, um, and then now being in Canada and, and how, uh, so now I've been in Canada for like longer that I've been in Iran.

The, by a year.

So like, what does that mean? What does that feel like? You know? And I was also like, uh, I was born with the stutter as well, which, uh, it's, it's a character.

I had to channel it into something.

And I guess the whole process, like, again, it's an Iranian film, A Good Day Will Come, you know, it's a, and, and like, I haven't lived in Iran for the last, like, you know, 15 years.

So, and then I'm like, all safe and sound in Canada, you know, doing these interviews or in other places, you know, and, talking about the film and it just all felt very and it all like helps helps my situation like helps my uh sure like I'm putting a light on what's going on and I felt like I had to do it because of my privilege that I have here which is like you can't make that film back home so like and I have the funding system here so if I don't do it like uh if I don't do it then who will you know so it's like yeah but then it's like you know but then i reap the rewards of that you know which is like uh it's like you know it's okay well like it's like the it might help my career you know or whatever you know so as a filmmaker so and and that's where like the uh metaphor for vital uh I was looking for metaphors to channel that through.

And then the Oregon trade, which is very specific to Iran because of the laws that we have.

So the military commander of Iran is a guy named General Rezai.

And he was literally a battlefield promoted guy back in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, when he rose from being a junior officer to a general in just a couple of years by having battlefield success.

And that doesn't happen very often.

After the 80s, he was in the military.

It's more savage than Korea.

More savage than the Iraq-Iran War.

It's savage in a way that we moderns are not used to.

I think it disturbs the present, disturbs me.

It's more savage than Korea.

More savage than the Iraq-Iran War.

It's savage in a way that we moderns are not used to.

I think it disturbs the present, disturbs me, I'm sure it disturbs you, but there's an inevitability of trying to take high ground from low ground with infantry, especially with drone warfare.