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Tias posted:Getting an interest in the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. Anyone here know more about them than can be readily googled? Some folks say they were a really rowdy bunch more into looting and killing each other and converts than killing the pagans, but others mention them as honorable and determined crusaders. Can y'all help me sort the wheat from the chaff? I did an essay on the Teutonic Knights ( and by extension the sword brothers) way back in my undergraduate days, though I don't reckon I can find it. I don't recall anything about internal warfare on their part and they seemed fairly intent on killing pagans, and also Orthodox Christians given that is who Alexander Nevsky defeated in his most famous battle. If you ask a particular question I might be able to answer. chitoryu12 posted:I think medieval Europe would be the first time and place that the wealthy would be guaranteed to have a bed of the shape and comfort that we recognize today. What leads you to this conclusion? Rodrigo Diaz fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 8, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 13:42
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Awesome, thanks! Is it true one of their chapter masters died because he was axed by a drunk sergeant? Are the claims of them being more into looting and pillaging than waging holy war true, and to what extent?
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Oct 8, 2019 13:46
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I did an essay on the Teutonic Knights ( and by extension the sword brothers) way back in my undergraduate days, though I don't reckon I can find it. Speaking of crusading orders, not a lot of people know there is a statue in London commemorating the moment two unnamed Temple Knights invented getting on on horseback.  Their pioneering commitment to the open practice of free love was too much for even the French, and King Phillip had the order abolished.
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Oct 8, 2019 15:14
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Mr Enderby posted:Their pioneering commitment to the open practice of free love was too much for even the French, and King Phillip had the order abolished. I sort of love the idea that the real reason the Knights Templar were brought down is that European kingdoms thought they were acting "a little gay"
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Oct 8, 2019 15:34
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Nebakenezzer posted:I sort of love the idea that the real reason the Knights Templar were brought down is that European kingdoms thought they were acting "a little gay" That actually was one of the charges bought against them (though I don't think the cozy horseback rides were specifically mentioned).
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Oct 8, 2019 15:41
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Speaking of that it's kind of annoying how the proscription of the Knights Templar and their persecution, arrest and trial by King Phillip is so often viewed out of context, especially by those reading or writing about dumb conspiracies, pagan secret societies and holy grails. If you read up a little bit on Phillip IV, who was variously known as "the Fair" (as in handsome) and "the Iron King", you'll quickly realize that the whole Templar affair is kind of typical of how he operated, if still impressive in its scale and efficiency. The charges levelled against the Templars are very similar to those he also accused other political figures of throughout his life, especially when dealing with the French Church and the Papacy. Simply put, Phillip IV, who was an exceptionally ambitious and energetic king, needed money and wanted to extend the power of the central government over his country and its finances and put his considerable military, legal and religious resources towards achieving these end. Also because France at this time was the most powerful and organized kingdom in Europe and Phillip was constantly bullying the Papacy in order to control the Pope, most other countries simply had to go along with it when Phillip did such things as proscribing the Knights Templar, though in most places outside the reach of France, there were no trials and the local chapters instead disbanded and reorganized as new localized orders which continued exisiting, though many ended up eventually disbanding or being absorbed by other orders and such. Anyway, I encourage anyone to read about the reign of Phillip IV, he is certainly one of the most interesting and able of French kings, and medieval kings in general, and he was absolutely ruthless.
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Oct 8, 2019 20:30
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I think he sounds like a dick!
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Oct 8, 2019 22:05
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Milo and POTUS posted:I think he sounds like a dick! Possibly the biggest dick that France has ever produced. That's no mean feat.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:08
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Randarkman posted:Anyway, I encourage anyone to read about the reign of Phillip IV, he is certainly one of the most interesting and able of French kings, and medieval kings in general, and he was absolutely ruthless.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:10
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HEY GUNS posted:can you recommend a bio? Unfortunately I can't, because I've never read a dedicated biography about him, though now you've got me thinking that maybe I should look into correcting that. Most of my run-ins with him have been as a result of my studies, particularly when I took a course on Church reform in the Middle Ages, I'd recommend a book I bought and read for that course though which is The Medieval Church: A Brief History, which is, in my opinion, highly readable for an academic book, it touches on Phillip the Fair in his dealings with the French Church and the Papacy quite a bit IIRC. Much of the rest of what I know about him is from various articles and book excerpts over the years, though I do believe he's also featured quite heavily in a few lectures in the Great Courses series on the Late Middle Ages, which is quite good. Hope this helps, and sorry for not having a more specific recommendation.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:25
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Reading about medieval kings and and its just like . . . can't you figure out a way to settle your petty family disputes in a way that DOESN'T involve killing hundreds of people? If Normans like Richard the Lionheart and his family were alive today I don't think they'd be able to decide what's for dinner without raising the levies and pillaging each other's castles
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Oct 8, 2019 22:38
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Squalid posted:Reading about medieval kings and and its just like . . . can't you figure out a way to settle your petty family disputes in a way that DOESN'T involve killing hundreds of people? If Normans like Richard the Lionheart and his family were alive today I don't think they'd be able to decide what's for dinner without raising the levies and pillaging each other's castles As opposed to ther current government of the isles, which cannot decide what to have for dinner at all under any circumstances.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:50
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Squalid posted:Reading about medieval kings and and its just like . . . can't you figure out a way to settle your petty family disputes in a way that DOESN'T involve killing hundreds of people? If Normans like Richard the Lionheart and his family were alive today I don't think they'd be able to decide what's for dinner without raising the levies and pillaging each other's castles It's kind of amusing how utterly exasperated the medieval Church was with just how violent and unruly the nobility was, and kind of depressing when they tried to introduce measures to restrict violence and warfare how much they had to dial back their expectations and demands when they actually tried to put them into effect for real. There's also the somewhat more innocent trend of court chaplains trying to civilize the nobility by writing handbooks on table etiquette, though eventually chivalric romance (mostly written by court chaplains as well, and also some by women) was much more successful in presenting generally agreeable behavior to the nobility in manner which appealed to them.
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Oct 8, 2019 22:52
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Previous posts: Previous thread post index. Iran, Iraq 1983-84. Website versions of the lot, this one will appear at some point soon, was gonna format it all last week but got ill. Xthetenth has kindly offered his posts on naval design to be put up on that site as well from another thread on here so they will be appearing steadily, one is up right now and there are two more, so please go read them if you havent already. The arms trade in Iran-Iraq. As you may imagine, in 8 years of total war there was considerable attrition of equipment from both sides both on and off the battlefield. Very little of the initial equipment used by both sides would end up surviving the war due to the intensity of the fighting. As a result, given the relatively weak initial industrial bases of both nations it was necessary for truly eyewatering sums to be spent on armaments by both sides. This war would cost the warring nations something of the order of $1’100 billion dollars. Iraq suffered $450bn of this, $160bn from lost oil revenue, $110bn from debt, $90bn from damage, $80bn for arms purchasing and $10bn on other sundries. Iran suffered $650bn lost, $350 of lost oil revenue, $180bn of lost infrastructure, $35bn of lost industrial revenue, $25bn for victim family compensation (notably significantly for compensation of Pasdaran families), $20bn for war equipment directly, $20bn for other war related experiments and $15bn other sundries. The direct buying of arms represented a significant but not overwhelming share of the costs to each nation as a result of the war. Their respective GDPs are of the $50-90 bn range.  Oil revenue plotted against arms supply costs. Taken from Iran-Iraq by Pierre Razoux.  Principle arms suppliers, Iran (Left) Iraq (Right). Taken from Iran-Iraq by Pierre Razoux. This will not solely concern the arms trade because a lot of other trade is also very vital to what goes on and why. However, it will mainly concern it. One contextually very important thing which is perhaps lost today is that in 1980 we are just coming off the back of the first and second oil shocks of 1973 and 79. Oil prices spiked by as much as 400% during this time which completely buggered the economies of several nations. It was the Arab world, particularly through OPEC really flexing its muscles. This led to gas rationing in the US, the introduction of the 55mph federally enforced speed limit (which would last through 1995). It had spooked Japan hugely, badly hurt the Netherlands particularly in western Europe, and caused the death of the dominance of the huge car in the US and the rise of Japanese car manufacture (It’s a whole other really interesting topic). There had also been the previous embargoes that hit the UK and France in 1956, the UK and US in 67. OPEC was the real big beast of the international economy in the 70’s and 80’s and nations had to be genuinely very careful of upsetting them. And they were generally speaking dominated by the Arab states at this stage. This underlines the huge diplomatic imperative in staying on their good side. However, there was a slow waning of influence beginning at this time which lead many nations to adopt neutrality, or to sell to both sides, this was helped by the fact both belligerents were major oil sellers, the USSR was coming online with their huge reserves and North Sea oil was starting to be extracted. Turkey was delighted by the Iran Iraq war, it gave them exactly what they wanted, distraction from their own massive human rights abuses, the opportunity to sell to both sides to get their economy out of a ditch, and the ability to kill the Kurds in cooperation with both Iran and Iraq. Always the subtext of any Turkish diplomatic move really. Turkey would buy Iraq’s oil in quantity and at a cheaper price. They wanted the war to go on forever really. They would sell consumer goods in vast quantities to both sides who couldn’t afford to pay for more expensive western built goods and acted as Iran’s pretty much sole entrance point for much of their imports. Huge quantities of Turkish gest workers would enter Iran and their exports to both nations would grow by $2bn by the end of the conflict. They didn’t get much involved in arms sales so I’m mentioning them here because they were an important part for other reasons. But they didn’t want to risk ending the war earlier or upsetting one side too much because they were minting it in non-military sales. Very few nations kept out of this entirely, only one European nation was completely uninvolved and that was the Republic of Ireland. Pretty much every major nation on earth was involved in this to one degree or another. Equipment overview. At the start of the war the regular armies of Iran and Iraq were of comparable size, I’ve covered this previously in some detail, but the important part was largely how much equipment each side had at varying points.  Iranian Chieftain tank. At the start Iran had a cumulative total of 2’810 AFV’s, two thirds of which are tanks. A significant proportion of them were out of action due to lack of spare parts. Iran’s chief tanks were the M-48/M-60 and Chieftain mark 3 and 5 and Scorpion light tanks. The Chieftain being a notorious maintenance hog even when you have access to spare parts which Iran did not. They had a whole bunch of Soviet BTR and BMP-1 AFV’s of various types bought when the Shah was trying to butter up the USSR. They would go on to acquire genuine USSR equipment typically via North Korea and significant quantities of Chinese copies of said equipment from the PRC (Notable large quantities of Type 59 and 69 tanks). Their armoury would grow to include variants of the T-54/55, T-62, and T-72 (largely captured from Iraq) as well as also purchasing large quantities of EE-9/11 Cascavels and Urtus from Brazil In terms of other equipment Iran had 2’900 artillery pieces, mainly of US manufacture, mainly the M101 105mm and the M114 155mm along with 203mm artillery. As the war went on, they would buy 130mm and 152mm from China in large numbers as well as from North Korea. They possessed HAWK missiles in very limited quantities and one or two operational harpoon missiles and via the mujahedeen in Afghanistan acquired US redeye missiles and captured Soviet equipment equivalents such as SA-7’s. They were able to acquire SA-7’s legitimately via North Korea. The Iranian navy had 7 warships of significant size and 34 smaller patrol boats. These were your typical cold war navy mix of US and British decommissioned ships that were then sold off. No major combatants would be bought but dozens of light speedboats would be bought from Sweden. They had a collection of maritime patrol aircraft from the US such as the P-3. The Iranian airforce started with 550 fixed wing planes, almost entirely of US origin, F-4, F-5, F-14 C-130 and various Boeing utility and electronic intelligence aircrafts. They had 80 helicopters, which were also mainly US with Cobra’s, Hueys and Chinooks. This would not grow appreciably, they would secure light prop trainers from Switzerland and F-6 (MiG-19) and F-7 (MiG-21) fighters from China in small quantities.  Domestically produced Iraqi T-72 (Lion of Babylon) Iraq had a total of 5’350 AFV’s, around half of which are tanks. Their tanks were at a pretty typical stage of readiness that you might expect. Their tanks at this point are almost entirely communist bloc, T-55s, some T-62’s, produced in both the USSR and Romania. They had AMX-30’s in reasonable numbers, France was Iraq’s major western backer generally. At the wars outbreak they had significant amounts of BTR series vehicles and ERC90’s from Panhard. As the war goes on, they would acquire OT 62/64 from Czechoslovakia, EE-3/9/11 Jararaca/Cascavels/Urtu’s from Brazil, Panhard M-3’s which are just the doofiest looking thing. As for tanks they would eventually acquire T-72 tanks in bulk from the USSR and Poland and would begin a project to build their own copies of the T-72 called the Lion of Babylon. Iraq’s artillery was almost entirely Soviet bloc and it started with 2’250 tubes, it was the standard array of stuff you would expect, 122, 130 and 152mm howitzers and the array of light AA guns you would expect. This mix wouldn’t change that much over the war as they were well able to acquire most of their ammunition requirements easily and getting new tubes wasn’t challenging as you just went shopping around the eastern bloc and international arms traders were almost giving the things away. The Iraqi navy was very small due to their much more restricted nature of their coastline, they had a bunch of Soviet missile boats and French helicopters (Alouette III’s mainly) at the start of the war, along with Westland 52’s. As the war went on, they would acquire HOT missiles to mount on their acquired Gazelles they would use to attack close in coastal targets.  Artwork of a (non-Iraqi) DeHavilland Heron. The Iraqi airforce started with 400 aircraft and 280 helicopters, these were majority Soviet bloc with a collection of British planes, typically Mig-21/23’s, Il-28’s and Su-7’s with Hawker hunters, they also possessed a small number of Tu-22’s and Tu-16’s and would acquire Chinese versions of the Tu-16’s as the war went on. They had a mishmash of transport and utility plane, An-12/24’s, Il-14/76’s and de Havilland Herons. As the war went on, they would acquire Mirage F-1’s, Super Etendards, MiG-25’s, MiG 29’s and significant amounts of Su-20’s and Su-25’s. Their helicopters were of the Mi-4/6/8 family along with a variety of French designs. As the war went on, they would acquire the Mi-24 and updated French designs in quantity. The general thrust of all this is that as you can imagine, both sides faced a sticky logistical problem. They had to buy almost all of the arms they were employing, certainly at the higher end of sophistication. They both solved this in different ways, Iraq was far more able to just open the wallet and buy what they needed as far more people were willing to sell to them, they had both more money and more access. This meant that excepting the early days of the war when the USSR was unhappy with them and restricting their access to arms, they had no real issues keeping their stuff running. Iran had to resort to subterfuge to get what they needed which lead to a huge quantity of scandals that would ensue around the world as well as reducing their reliance on technology of their military. Going beyond these figures however Iraq also had far more access to equipment like radar, trucks, chemicals, alloys, concrete mixers, earth movers and other necessary equipment. As the war went on the numbers would change, in 1984, Iraq had increased the number of AFV’s they had to 8’100, of which 5’000 were tanks. Iran had dropped to 2’200 AFV’s of which 1’050 are tanks. In 1988 Iraq had dropped slightly to 7’310 AFV’s but increased the share of tanks to 6’300. Iran had a similar change with having around 2’300 AFV’s of which 1’800 were tanks. In artillery there was significant growth from both sides to 1984 with Iraq growing to 7’750 pieces, and Iran to 5’660, though as both sides cash run out you see very dramatically the effect going into 1988 with Iraq dropping to 3’400 and Iran to 1’900. With regards to the Navy, neither side really grew that much in terms of shipping. The significant losses involved were when Iran got one of their large frigates sunk by the USN. But naval weapons were not a major focus of growth. The disparity however is apparent nowhere more strongly than in the air. In 1984 Iraq had increased its airforce to 640 planes and 400 helicopters, while Iran’s had dropped to 161 planes and 80 helicopters. Both sides would drop again into 1988 with Iraq having 511 planes and 350 helicopters and Iran 140 planes and 75 helicopters. Iran’s spares rate was so parlous that they were able to operate readiness rates for their planes of around 60% for the F-4 and F-5, but only around 20% for the F-14. Arms sales. Iraq Pre and early war The USSR was a long-term Iraqi backer ever since the mid 1960’s they saw Arab socialism as typified by the Ba’ath party as their best route into influence in this area, especially as a counterweight to western backing of the traditional Arab-Islamist monarchies. As a result, they sold arms extensively to Iraq in a huge variety of not terribly sexy ways because it was all pretty much above board (as much as it can be when selling weapons). Largely speaking Iraq didn’t need another weapons supplier than the USSR because you can really get whatever you want to varying degrees of quality off the shelf from them. This helped the USSR greatly with their balance of payments owing to the unique and beautiful way their economy functioned (more on that later).  President Georges Pompidou France was also a long-term Iraqi ally, ever since De Gaulle declared neutrality in the 1967 war, he would flatter the Iraqi delegation relentlessly in 1968 and was really the only western nation willing to do so given Iraq’s links to the USSR. Iraq would reciprocate by including France in the nationalisation of their oil industries and would order arms starting in early 1972. French industry would hurriedly organise a pro-Iraq media blitz to get the government to negotiate with Saddam so he would protect their industrial interests as Iraq nationalized. Not all of the French government was on board with this, the minister of foreign affairs particularly detesting the Iraqi regimes authoritarian nature. However, President Pompidou was very pro Iraq with Iraq serving as Frances advocate on OPEC and excluding them from the oil embargo in the oil crisis recently. They would sign a 10-year agreement for protection of French industrial interests and offer advantageous oil prices. In return for significant French arms sales including mortars, light armoured vehicles, modern radars, light aircraft and planes. Later war While there will be a million small contracts from a dozen nations, the figure to keep in mind is that 3 nations, USSR, France and PRC supplied Iraq with 85% of its weapons. The rest are included because they are interesting, but they were considerably less important. Iraq was mainly able to continue with state to state arms sales due to its thicker wallet and avoided many of Iran’s pitfalls with arms dealers and illegal dealings. Iraq agitated the Soviets quite badly by invading Iran without checking with them first, the USSR was playing the game of trying to peel Iran off the western sphere entirely and have them enter their orbit and Saddam definitely was Not Helping, one of their client states had just attacked a third world country that had just escaped from the grips of Western Imperialism, so Saddam was in the dog house. They refused from 1980-83 to increase deliveries of weapons and spare parts to Iraq. The thawing of this was in 1983 they finally signed a new contract with Iraq to build a new major repair depot and rocket manufacture facility in Iraq and provide new armaments after the USSR gave up trying to negotiate with Iran. The lack of spares and ammunition would dog the Iraqi war in this period until they got new suppliers in place, they approached other nations in order to plug the gap and started up their own manufacture. However, the USSR would ship Iraq its first mustard gas in 1982 that it would employ soon afterwards. They employed shells bought from Spain and Egypt in a plant constructed by the FRG, with ancillary equipment having been bought from the Danish, Dutch and Belgians. They would also begin shipments of SCUD/FROG missiles in earnest in 1983, committing to deliver 300 of the missiles in that year alone. Iraq would attempt to locally adapt these missiles to be capable of hitting Tehran. They would also begin their own domestic missile program which successfully proved capable of creating missiles for these launchers.  Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft. Later in the war in 1987 the USSR would sell Iraq the very best, the USSR was very short on cash and just wanted this entire war to stop mucking up their southern border. To that end they sold Iran MiG-29’s, Su-25’s and significant quantities of SA-13 launchers and missiles along with thousands of AT-4 Spigot missiles and associated launchers. They also committed to a constant sale of whatever Iraq needed in terms of spares for its current equipment to keep fighting. Over the course of the war the USSR would supply Iraq with 280 combat planes, 1000 tanks, 300 howitzers, 600 APC’s, 20 SCUD launchers and 300 missiles, 5 missile boats, SA-2/3/6/7/8/13/14 launchers and missiles, AA-2/6/7/8/11 missiles and AT-3/4 AT missiles and a huge quantity of ammunition generally. This comes to roughly 40 billion dollars, or about half of Iraqi weapon deliveries. Romania under the USSR’s oversight would ship 300 tanks, 200 AFV’s 100 howitzers and thousands of AK’s, light vehicles and missiles. Czechoslovakia would ship around 200 APC’s, 24 training aircraft and various ammunition. Poland would deliver 200 tanks, 300 APC’s, 100 howitzers, various ammunition, missiles and vehicles. Hungary would ship around 150 APC’s and 400 AA guns the combloc tally outside of the USSR comes to about $4bn. With the USSRs reticence early on we have the start of the almighty free for all, Iraq immediately turned to China and France. The PRC were interested at this stage in doing 3 things in the middle east, displacing Soviet influence, gaining export orders and in prolonging the war as long as possible in order to aid 1 and 2. Iraq was able to secure the start of Chinese deliveries in late October of 1980 (the war having started in late September). This consisted of quantities of Type-59 and 69 tanks (T-54 development), significant quantities of 130mm M-46 artillery, Type-56 (AK type) and huge supplies of ammunition. These would start rolling in from early 1981 onwards and would not stop. China would also later in the war commit to deliver Iraq 4 H-6D (Tu-16) with capability for launching C-601 silkworms, which would have proven devastating for Iranian tankers had they ever been put into service. At the same time, they would also sell Saudi Arabia CSS-2 DF3 missiles, this is one of Chinas MRBM’s, though sold without the nuclear tip, in order to allow them to deter Iran. China over the course of the war would ship 1500 tanks to Iraq, (Type 59 and 69), 300 howitzers, several silkworm batteries, 30 fighters, 4 bombers and associated ammunition for a total of around $6bn. France would supply Iraq gladly, honouring a signed agreement for 40 Mirage F1’s to be delivered in 1980 which would help bring Iraq’s air force up significantly in quality compared to Iran’s US planes. Saddam would successfully employ negotiations with French industrialists to get them to pressure the French government as a hugely successful bargaining tool. They would also deliver Iraq its nuclear reactor in this timeframe, Osirak, despite the efforts of Mossad who sabotaged parts as they were leaving France and would assassinate several physicists involved with Iraq’s nuclear program. France would open the taps on sales, selling tens of thousands of missiles of all kinds, (HOT, Milan, AS-12, Magic) and their associated launching equipment to Iraq with radar, more armoured vehicles and electronic equipment included.  Super Etendard coming in for landing on the very carrier they would leave from to fly to Iraq. France would respond to Iranian aggression in Lebanon and France itself (embassy bombings, kidnapping of hostages, murder of dissidents etc.) by selling more to Iraq. Iraq approached them in early 1983 to attempt to buy 20 Super Etendards and associated Exocets. However, Dassault had stopped the line and there were none to be had, they counter-offered with 24 Mirage F-1’s modified to fire the Exocet which would be ready in 1985, Iraq accepted but needed a stopgap. Dassault pressured the French government to loan Iraq Super Frelon helicopters and half a dozen French navy Etendards. The navy threw a shitfit seeing where this was going, but were overruled, Mitterrand authorised the sale of 6 Super Frelons and the rental of 5 Etendards for 2 years. The US pressured France to knock that poo poo off, but they ignored them and delivered them anyway. Flying from the Clemenceau they hugged the ground along the Syrian - Turkish border (violating both airspaces) and landed in northern Iraq. This provoked more violence from Iran with the bombing of the French and US barracks in Beirut occurring 2 weeks later killing 58 French and 242 American soldiers. France tried to retaliate by parking a 500kg bomb outside the Iranian embassy in the same city but the person responsible for leaving it there forgot to set the fuse, so it was disarmed. France would ship Iraq 121 Mirage F1’s, rent them 5 Super Etendards, deliver 62 attack helicopters, 210 light AFVs (Panhard armoured cars and AMX-10P’s mainly). 80 self-propelled howitzers, 60 Roland SAM systems and a dozen Crotale SAM batteries. Significant radar and ECM systems. HOT and Milan missiles and launchers, 4-500 Exocet missiles, AS-30L ATG missiles and a variety of air to air missiles (Magic 1 / 2 and Super 530) for a total of around $17bn The rest of the world Europe at large would also supply Iraq, the EEC managed nothing other than a declaration of concern before opening up the armouries. Europe would fight aggressively against a UN arms embargo on two grounds, first because they feared they would retaliate with a joint oil embargo against them which would dickhole everyone’s economy pretty much, but also because they wanted the opportunity to sell, sell, sell. Britain took the official position of neutrality, it was insulated somewhat by North Sea oil so could sell more freely. They would sell Iraq spare parts for captured Chieftains, its existing scorpions, along with pharmaceuticals, trucks, cars and significant quantities of machine tools and would bring Iraqi students to Sandhurst for training, along with radar guidance systems for their artillery. Germany would also sell to Iraq, but in less quantity, they were neck deep in Iran to a much greater extent, but Saddam was not going to choose to be picky, they bought chemicals and factories for the production of chemical weapons, armoured recovery vehicles, machine tools, heavy trucks and entire army hospitals. They also sold them 60 Bo-105 helicopters and stockpiles of the HOT missiles to arm them. They sent these via Spain to avoid Israel pitching a fit publicly about them arming the violently anti-Israeli Iraqi regime. German companies would also sell pesticide producing factories to Iraq, Karl Kolb Gmbh was building 3 plants for the production of nerve gas. Nobody in their right mind believed Iraq was under the effects of a biblical plague of locusts that mandated that level of nerve agent production, they were well aware of what they were going to be used for. Eventually the FRG would stop them, so Iraq would go to the DDG who would gladly continue their Western neighbours work for cash. Italy would attempt to sell ships to Iraq and Iran early on, but the government fell, and the Socialist party got in who banned all weapons sales. Unfortunately for Italy they had just laid down something like 20 ships for sale to both sides. In another incident of dark comedy Italy ordered construction continue on the larger Iraqi ships to maintain employment, so these ships were made for Iraq but then rotted in the drydock. Eventually Iraq would take possession of these ships, but they were not permitted to leave the Mediterranean. So just sort of pottered around there, probably giving their crews a lovely Italian holiday. Italy would do some very spicy under the table selling but more to Iran than Iraq which we will cover later. Yugoslavia would sell Iraq significant quantities of weapons, including an entire frigate, three minesweepers, 100 130mm howitzers, 300 mortars, tens of thousands of M70’s (AK derivatives) and ammunition in the hundreds of thousands of rounds for all that Iraq might desire. They would gain over $1bn of sales to Iraq alone. Spain would sell slightly to Iraq, generally light weapons in the form of mortars and recoilless rifles, but they would connive in being a conduit for arms from Germany and sell locally produced Land Rovers to the Iraqi military. Scandinavia also had significant North Sea oil as a buffer against potential retaliation and so also sold to both sides. However, there wasn’t much Iraq really wanted from them other than ammunition and explosives components so their opportunities here were more limited than selling to Iran. Also, in the slight supply tier was Egypt, who supplied them with spares for their soviet equipment as well as much of their outdated spares, most notable among their deliveries was 250 T-55 tanks. They would however support Iraq on the battlefield by sending a squadron of Mirage 5’s in 1986. Iran Pre and early war Arms and the sales thereof are really at the basis of a lot of Iran’s problems. Reza Pahlavi had not set out to necessarily make a lot of friends but to make Iran into a significant regional hegemon. He had threatened to go to war with India in support of Pakistan after the events of the Bangladesh independence war and wanted to be prickly enough to stop the soviets from acting to surround him via Afghanistan and Iraq. This meant he spent a lot on arms, Iran was the worlds biggest importer of arms pre-Iran-Iraq, with over $12bn spent 1973-79 and another $10bn on order from the US alone. They were angling to replace Britain in the area who had acted as the self-appointed policeman of the zone until their withdrawal of the early cold war over budget constraints meant that a vacuum was left.  Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carters National Security advisor Post revolution however, the Carter administration weren’t particularly wedded to the former Shah, the majority of pressure on this front came from the Republicans. However, there was a significant effort to get along with the new regime. Nobody really understood who who was, in the new regime because it was all such a mess. The Carter administration had really two objectives when dealing with Iran, the first was maintaining stability in the oil markets, and the second maintaining the eye watering arms contracts that had been signed for $10 billion by the Shah. Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to meet personally with Khomeini in 1979 to discuss this, however he was prevented by the hullabaloo of congress when they found out. This snub is said to have particularly angered Khomeini who was apparently flattered by the US sending someone of such a high level to recognise and meet with him so soon. However, economics got in the way and Iran cancelled its arms contracts due to chaos in their oil revenue, US industrialist poo poo hit the congressional fan, and this meant that they got slapped by a huge embargo on all spare parts which would dog Iran throughout the war. This would be double buried by the start of the US embassy takeover. Iran had a similar contretemps with France, they were much less involved with them because Iran was generally regarded as British and American turf, so France was involved mostly in more mundane industrial projects, still worth huge sums. However, the really big issue was that of Eurodif. Eurodif was a European project under the auspices of the IAEA for a central plant for the enrichment of uranium that could be used by multiple countries to try and control the spread of nuclear technology. France sold Iran a 10% share in the project for a $1bn loan, other nations involved were Belgium, Italy and Spain. This was agreed to get them 10% of the output of enriched uranium and Iran would pay $200mn for several nuclear sites to be built in Iran itself which started construction in 1978. When Khomeini returned to Iran, he would do so aboard an Air France plane, in a moment of panic they agreed with the US and FRG to back Khomeini to try and get a foot in the door at a summit in Guadeloupe in 1979. As soon as he returned pretty much the new Islamic government denounced the whole nuclear deal, suspending payments and demanding return of their $1bn (There is significant hostility to nuclear power, and particularly nuclear weapons among the theocratic thought of Iran at this time, which would obviously go away). France told them to get stuffed and this really sunk Iranian-French relations for the next 10 years, it was not helped by the fact that in a ballsed up assassination attempt on an Iranian exile Quds force soldiers had killed a police officer and a civilian in Neuilly that year. The reason this is important is that it firmly put France in the Saddam camp. As Francois Mitterrand took power in 1981, he would assure Saddam that France was in his corner. This ties in a lot to French cultural attitudes about religion, particularly state religion, Iraq was touted as a bastion of modernism, progressiveness and secularism in an area of the world dominated by conservative theocracies in the oil monarchies and particularly Iran. (Darkly amusingly, also a component of the reasons why the USSR would back Iraq so strongly). Iran and Britain were very much in bed together, most notably of which was a large order for Chieftains. They had bought 750 before the revolution and had a further 1450 on order as it broke out. This would have left Iran’s armed forces of a comparable size to Frances after its completion. They would own 4 British frigates and a significant supply of Westland helicopters. The legal battle over the £400 million bill for those tanks continues to this day. Later war Iran was much more diplomatically isolated as a result of the efforts of the USA largely, who threatened any nation who supplied Iran. Only 4 nations were brave, or foolhardy, enough to risk US displeasure by dealing openly with them. Syria, Libya, PRC and North Korea. These four together met about a third of Iran’s needs, the rest having to be obtained by arms dealers or threats and coercion against other nations or just plain corporate corruption. They were frequently swindled, the most notable guy was Benham Nodjoumi, who sold them 34 crates of scrap iron he led them to believe were TOW missiles. He surrendered to British authorities and went to prison when he got tired of dodging Iranian hit squads who were on his trail.  Adnan Khashoggi, one of the worlds richest arms dealers. Looks like a jolly chap. Iran organised their arms sales mainly through three overseas corporations, one which was organised through the National Iranian Oil Corporation based in London, and two based in the Caribbean (but incorporated in London) called JSC international and Metro International. Their activities in the US were organised by Balanian Hashemi who was an exile who was trying to worm his way back into their good graces. Other notable figures include Saudi Adnan Khashoggi, (The uncle of the recently murdered dissident Jamal Khashoggi), Iranian Manucher Ghorbanifar, who will play a big part in Iran - Contra and Briton Frank Craddock, head of the Commerce International Group, whose company sells to Burma, North Korea, Sudan and others to this day (though now under his son). North Korea slid smoothly into an arms intermediary role for Iran, in 1981 a delegation would arrive who would reach quickly an agreement to sell Iran Type 69 tanks (T-54 developments), Type 59 130mm cannons, Type-63 and BM-11 rocket artillery systems, SA-7 MANPADS and mortars. As the war progressed, they would sell capabilities for producing the FROG-7 missile as well as 200 SCUD-B’s. A midget submarine, various patrol boats and mines and ammunition for a value of around $3bn. China would sell Iran pretty much whatever they could afford, they sold them 200 Type 59 and 69 tanks, 80 F-6 (MiG 19) and F-7 (MiG 21) fighters, significant quantities of silkworm batteries, SA-2 and SA-3 batteries. 1000 medium mortars and millions of spares, shells and rounds for a total value of $3bn. Syria would sell Iran soviet spares from their stockpiles, and also facilitate the transit of Hezbollah fighters to Lebanon. This notably includes large quantities of RPG-7, AT-3’s and SA-7’s. This would come to a total of around $800mn. Dodgy dealings with the rest of the world Here we have the Iranians dancing around nations that technically have them embargoed. This becomes an issue of how those nations decide to deal with this. Many wink at it until it gets scandalous then arrests a couple of people. Some just straight sell sell sell and others avoid the whole idea.  Manucher Ghorbanifar, this guy certainly has the arms dealer look about him, I suspect a long haired cat lies out of frame. The Iranians would attempt to buy US arms and spares through suspect channels, Mark Broman, the director of the US Embassy Military Cooperation Office in France would attempt to convince Egypt to buy F-16’s by fraudulently buying back their F-4’s via Paraguay, via links with the US Ambassador there they would be diverted to be sold to Iran. He would leave his job in 1984 and become joint owner of European Defence Associates who would be involved in the sale of 80 tanks, multiple small arms, aircraft parts and chemical resistant uniforms. The scheme was exposed and foiled and the other partner in EDA, Paul Cutter, was sentenced to 5 years in prison. The two maintained close ties to Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar. Europe would prove equally willing to sell to Iran, Britain would sell spares to Iran for its Chieftains along with Rapier SAM’s and ECM equipment and radar maintenance for their navy and ground stations. Iran would be the second biggest recipient of UK arms in the middle east after Saudi Arabia. Germany was neck deep in Iran. Iran held a 25% stake in Krupp, Chancellor Kohl would preserve this at almost all costs, very willing to supply Iran with parts for the G3 rifles and support for their local production of them. Most importantly they provided Mercedes built trucks and tank transport trailers to ease Iranian logistical issues. They would sell significant quantities of gas protective equipment to Iran, doubtless of great comfort to the Iranian soldiers who were saved from the nerve gas produced by German equipment in Iraq. They were attempting to sell them their excellent type 209 diesel submarine, but the entire world threw so much of a poo poo-fit over this (particularly France, US and Saudi Arabia) that they called it off. Austria, Sweden and Switzerland were of particular value to Iran for obtaining new weapons, Austria sold Iran 140 of their GHN-45 howitzers and plentiful ammunition for same. Switzerland gave them a total of 60 prop light trainers and utility aircraft, cryptology equipment and ammunition as well as radar equipment. Sweden had officially banned sales, but its companies went in anyway, selling 300 RBS-70 MANPADS, 40 boghammer light boats that would be instrumental in attacks on shipping in the gulf and equipment for an entire munitions factory to build ammunition of calibres up to 40mm. Bofors also sold hundreds of thousands of rounds for its weapons to Iran. This led to a scandal where Mats Lundberg and Karl Erik Schmitz were sent to prison for being the ringleaders for their involvement in a wide-ranging cartel supplying Iran. This was trans-European involving companies from: UK, France, FRG, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Norway. They were shipped out using several Caribbean based shipping lines and two phony airlines, one of which was headed by Schmitz. They were found to have sold 30’000 tons of explosives to Iran. They involved the Yugoslav government as the phony “end user” to go on the paperwork who took a 3% cut to ship it on to Iran. As mentioned earlier Italy would allow under the table sale of light weapons, this lead to the event of when the Italians sent a minesweeping force to the gulf in 1987 they had to sweep their own mines sold by their own companies under the table to Iran, the designated end user was the Nigerian army, but the mines were infact sold to Syria (Also under Italian weapons embargo) and then shipped to Iran . The CEO of the company responsible, Valsella (A subsidiary of FIAT), Ferdinando Borletti and Giovanni Borletti (his son) were arrested for breaching export restrictions. (Among other crimes including arming Abu Nidal linked terrorists and running drugs for the Mafia.) When their boats were seized Italian police discovered “appropriated” US made Hydra rockets stolen from USAF bases in Italy along with LAW 72’s, redeye missiles and what was termed grenade launchers. Spain and Greece were both vital lifelines for Iran’s airforce. They would take US equipment for their F-4’s and sell it on at a steep mark-up to try and debugger their economies. This was so rampant both legally and illegally that the readiness rates of their airforces suffered for this and it greatly exasperated the US. Belgium would also get involved in a similar but less radical scheme, Iran tried to buy their obsolete F-104’s, it was stopped at the last minute by the Belgian legislature, but instead they just sold the engines to be fitted to Iranian F-4’s. South Korea, Taiwan, Ethiopia and Singapore would all take a similarly mercenary approach to all this, they discretely sold US equipment to Iran for a significant mark-up who paid immediately and in cash, 12 F-4’s from South Korea and F-5’s from Ethiopia. Japan however would avoid Iran’s overtures because it was completely dependent on the Arab world for oil. South Korea would also supply large quantities of spares for the M48/M60 tanks that they had, F-4/F-5 fighters and AH-1 helicopters. Total values were around $1.2bn for South Korea, $730mn for Spain, $350mn for Greece. Values for others are unknown. Greece would notably pay for this when one of their large arms export warehouses was blown up in 1987, almost certainly by agents of Iraqi intelligence. Other minor sellers would include South Africa who sold Iran 30 G5 howitzers and associated ammunition, and Brazil would sell Iran 180 of the EE-9 Cascavel and 300 of the EE-11 Urtu and significant quantities of 155mm ammunition for around $450mn Pakistan would back Iran tentatively, however they would not deliver weapons as they didn’t want to upset their position as a neutral arbitrator of Islamic disputes and their good relations from Iran. However much illegal smuggling would go on, particularly of Chinese weapons, through the highlands of Pakistan into Iran itself. They would also discretely train Iranian pilots on the F-6 and F-7 fighters that were delivered by China. France I single out France here because there is an interesting scandal which occurs that illustrates the farce of French governmental unity in the 80’s.  Rene Audran, a vanguard of things to come. France seem to be seen to toy with Iran slightly in August of 1984, Rene Audran, Engineer General of France, who had responsibility for French international arms sales would tempt Iran with weapons sales to try and resolve an ongoing hostage crisis. He did this covertly by sending a deputy to Tehran, however when the rest of the government found out he was stopped. Shortly later in 1985 he was assassinated by Action Directe, the most likely reason is that this was part of the system of reciprocal favours between European and Middle Eastern terrorist groups at the time. The most likely culprit for commissioning the hit is the Islamic Jihad (Later Hezbollah), who had strong ties to Iran. The Luchaire Corporation was a French arms export outfit that would become the centre of what would be called the Luchaire affair. Starting sometime in 1983 the Luchaire corporation had started delivering artillery shells to Iran. This turned into a massively corrupt abject shitshow in incredibly short order. In 1984 Admiral Lacoste, director of DGSE and General Wautrin, head of DPSD (External and internal intelligence respectively) notified Minister of Defence Hernu of this activity, however no action was taken, Lacoste would notify President Mitterand of this as well who told him to take it to Hernu, no action was taken. This all started coming to light in 1986 on the eve of the French elections, the Socialists were in power and the Republicans were looking to take over the Prime Ministerial post. This scandal didn’t help the Socialists who were probably going to lose anyway, however the Republicans got in, the new Minister immediately ordered an investigation, and two months later a damning report was delivered. France had delivered half a million 155 and 203mm shells to Iran using false end user certificates for Peru, Brazil, Thailand, Greece and Yugoslavia and the former minister had covered for this actively along with much of the staff of the French MOD had conspired to defraud the CIEEMG (Interministerial commission for scrutiny of war material exports, but in French). 100 million francs were paid to middlemen and officials, no conclusive evidence was found that it had funded the Socialist party directly or Hernu personally, but Lacoste and Wautrin both alleged it at the time. This report was buried until 1987 when at last two key Hernu deputies, Dubos and Dewavrin were indicted, however the judge involved was unable to sentence either of them without causing significant damage to the French MOD and so in 1989 when the French socialists retook power the case was dismissed. Its likely that this was not pursued because had it gone ahead it would have revealed the massive scale of French arms smuggling to Iran. The National Company for Gunpowder and Explosives had delivered 250 tons of gunpowder to Iran for small arms ammunition directly, with much more via the European gunpowder and explosives cartel. The head of this company would be dismissed by the Minister of Defence in 1987 for selling after being ordered to stop. Matra sold radar to Iran and braking tail kits for bombs. Thompson-CSF sold 200 night vision kits for Iranian planes and the DGSE were neck deep in supplying Milan missiles to try and free French hostages in Lebanon. Manhurin (whose name you may remember from the riots around the deposition of Mubarak) sold hundreds of thousands of rounds of light ammunition to Iran. Israel Israel is a very interesting and vital part of this, they would be Iran’s fourth biggest weapon supplier over the course of the war. Everyone publicly hates them, but they are willing to deal with anyone who is willing to hurt Saddam who was their biggest enemy. Israel was undergoing an economic depression at the time and saw this as an opportunity to sell their old equipment to Iran, hurt Saddam, and use the money to modernise. They would also be employed as the US middleman to try and trade arms for hostages, but more on that later. They also used this as a tool to repatriate Iranian Jews. However, they had lost all official contact with Iran, so as soon as the war started the former Israeli military attaché to Tehran sent a fax to a guy, he knew in the Iranian airforce to try and re-establish contact along the lines of “what can we do for you?”. It was evidently successful as shortly thereafter he received a shopping list of parts for pretty much all of Iran’s equipment. Iran would reciprocate by giving Israel information about Osirak for their bombing raid and oil at preferential rates. Israeli planes would use an Argentine charter airline, they would fly from Israel to Cyprus, then over turkey and into Tabriz in Iran. There were a huge variety of maritime front companies used to deliver the bulkier equipment. We have fairly good information about what went on because it created a scandal. Israel supplied Iran with 4-500 HAWK, sparrow and sidewinder missiles, 1’300 TOW missiles, jammer pods, 600 jeeps, 50 155mm howitzers, 150 AT guns, several thousand assault rifles and tens of thousands of rounds for same in the short space of a year and a half. This all came to light when the flight going over Turkey strayed into soviet airspace, it was intercepted by Su-15’s and shot down and it crashed into Armenia. There was a significant cover up at the time, but it would all come to light in the mid 1980’s. Israels involvement will come up again with regards to Iran-Contra. Over the course of the rest of the war they would provide parts for F-4 fighters, M48 and M60 tanks, AH-1 helicopters and HAWK missiles. This was all for a rough value of $2bn. Continued in Post 2. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 23:00
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Continued from post 1. US involvement.  Good ol’ (very ol’ at this stage) President Reagan, declaring he is not a crook. While holding up the report on his crookery. You may notice I haven’t mentioned America at all yet, that is because they deserve their own section, not because of the significance of what they supplied, that is barely a drop in the bucket compared to even North Koreas contribution. But because it’s a drat good and interesting story. I have no doubt that there are other really intriguing stories behind other arms acquisitions, but they haven’t been written about in English (or at all), so Iran Contra here we come. Operation Staunch. The US was targeted by several bombings in Lebanon in 1983, I have written about it before so I will skip over the details. But as a result, the US enacted Operation Staunch, a far more effective way to strike back at Iran than their aborted and generally ill planned military retaliations. They also used this moment to properly get back into bed with Iraq. This was the start of US intelligence sharing with Iraq, as was summarised by the CIA officer in charge, “This cooperation was never, frank nor particularly good, but it continued because Iran had to be contained and the Gulf monarchies protected.” The CIA was not too happy about the order from Reagan to share intelligence with Iraq, they set up a centre for intelligence sharing in Baghdad and passed a steady stream of low-grade information to keep the link open but weren’t particularly enthusiastic about it as they didn’t view Saddam as the lesser of two evils necessarily. Operation Staunch was an attempt to curtail all weapon sales to Iran, Iraq was removed from the terror sponsors watchlist and replaced by Iran. It was headed by Richard Fairbanks, a US diplomat who went on to head the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He concentrated on preventing them gaining sophisticated equipment, issuing statements and instructions to all US diplomatic personnel to push operation Staunch locally to them. It yielded fairly quick results, in 1984 scant months after it began in late 1983, South Korea had agreed to stop selling plane parts, Italy had stopped slipping Iran Chinooks and the UK stopped the flow of Chieftain parts. There were reductions in supplies from the FRG and others as well. The US would re-establish diplomatic relations with Iraq in 1984 and a full CIA station was established there, they were given access to live feed information from ELF-One, a US AWACS plane which patrolled Saudi airspace, and also satellite data and imaging of the Iranian positions which were used by the Iraqis to great effect repelling the Dawn offensives. It was however at this point that Iran-Contra gets going. The whole affair really pissed off everyone, particularly the Arabs, they didn’t believe a word of the US defence that it was a rogue operation done without presidential approval. Correctly so, but this was of pretty scant comfort. To try and rebuild their standing the Americans approached Staunch with renewed vigour. This time with much more effect, sales from Western Europe in 1986 accounted for just over $1bn, but it dropped to just under $200mn in 1987, the UK closed the Iranian weapons procurement office in London through which the overwhelming majority of Iranian acquisitions were ran. Iran-Contra  Bud McFarlane, Reagans NatSec Adviser. Crook adjacent. In 1985, Bud McFarlane, the National Security Adviser presented a proposal entitled “US Policy Toward Iran”. He proposed a massive change in tack, to prevent USSR influence growing in Moscow and them gaining influence over such a major nation on the edge of the Persian Gulf the US needed to openly and actively engage with Iran. He proposed using allies to sell Iran weapons to undercut soviet leverage, curry favour with moderate Iranians and gently pull Iran back to an anti USSR stance. This was a farce for several reasons, the US had no means of identifying who the moderate Iranians were, the USSR was mid pull out from relations with Iran, and it undercut the entire point of Operation Staunch and US credibility of they got caught. This horrified the Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger, his view, probably the accurate one, was that all Iranian moderates were in the grave, his staff shared the same view. It was rejected by both of them. However, this was the genesis of what would become Iran-Contra. Two competing imperatives would lead to this getting past SecDef and into the oval office, the first was the attempt to circumvent congressional restrictions on supplying anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua (The Contras) and second, to sell weapons to Iran in order to release seven US hostages held by Hezbollah and engage in a normalisation of relations with Iran. And the man who would be responsible for melding the two, Oliver North, needs almost no introduction. The ally involved would be Israel.  Oliver North, definitely also not a crook. The director of the Israeli foreign ministry would visit McFarlane in 1985, the two were friends, he described an Iran close to collapse and an undercurrent of moderate forces who want to dispose of the theocracy and return to more normalised relations with the West. But these people needed help, they could promise to intercede to release US hostages in exchange for military equipment. It sounded too good to be true and that should have given the NatSec Advisor pause, but it didn’t. He mentioned it to Reagan, who was a deeply emotional man. Many people describe how deeply personally affected Reagan was by the US hostages in Lebanon and also in Iran generally, some people (typically those that were in his administration) describe that as representative of his humanity, I take a cooler view, he let that cloud his good judgement and made several utterly cataclysmic blunders because of it. Without a doubt it informed his judgement throughout the whole fiasco. He instructed McFarlane to explore this further. This idea had come around before, Israel had been pushing since 1982 for US support and approval for arms sales to Iran, both united by a common enemy in Saddam. The US was aware of Israeli continued support to Iran as they found a warehouse in Portugal stuffed with Israeli weapons ready to ship to Iran. The proposal came in 1985, shortly after Reagan had been hospitalised from surgery to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon. Israel had found an intermediary, a gentleman named Adolph Schwimmer, an arms merchant close to the Israeli PM of the time. He said that he had contact with an Iranian, Ghorbanifar (recall his name from earlier) who said that he could exchange 100 TOW missiles for improved relations with Iran and hence the 7 hostages release, the missiles would come from Israeli stockpiles the US would then replenish. Not necessarily at this stage an unreasonable deal. Certainly, an illegal one, but one can see the argument. This argument was writ large in the oval office. SecDef immediately opposed the idea, he said it was illegal and would need to be passed by Congress, he also said that Iran had shown no signs directly of having any change of attitude. The Secretary of State Charles Schultz agreed as well, he said it was a straight arms for hostages swap. The CIA director was on the side of McFarlane as he wanted to counter USSR influence in Iran and desperately wanted a way in to the closed society of Iran and thought it worth a punt. Eventually Reagan would decide to go ahead with it, he would talk at length about the fate of the hostages. So, the missiles were sent via Israel, they landed, they were unloaded, and they vanished, and no hostages emerged. Ghorbanifar who had supervised the shipment claimed the IRGC had absconded with the weapons and they hadn’t reached the moderates. He then said the US needed to send 400 more in order to secure one hostage release. Somehow nobody stopped them, and the president authorised the second shipment. Iran then offered to release one hostage, the US asked for William Buckley, the CIA station chief, Iran replied he was too ill to be released (he had been tortured to death 3 months prior). So, they requested and got Reverend Weir, who had been part of the Presbyterian Church mission in Lebanon. And he was released. At this point no money has changed hands. However, like one of the four horsemen, Marine Colonel Oliver North was assigned to the NSC to work out the details. We now enter 1986, Ghorbanifar is pretty much known to be a con-man, however he has proven to have some influence and has some access in a nebulous way to high officials in the Iranian government who NEED American weapons and need them now, Operation Staunch has been doing a number on Iran’s operational readiness and they are getting a bit desperate. On the Iranian side in the blue corner we have the realists lead by Speaker Rafsanjani (who I have mentioned previously), he had Prime Minister Mousavi on his side. In the red corner we have Ayatollah Montazeri, the heir apparent to Khomeini at this time, a relatively liberal person by Islamic cleric standards (to the extent that he believed in a multiparty limited democracy and opposed the mass executions of 1988), he deeply hated the USA and maintained his own personal militia headed by a family member who had been jailed under the Shah for murdering rostitutes and homosexuals. Khomeini learned of what was going on and sided with Rafsanjani, giving the Iranian government clear direction in this matter. This gave the lie to Ghorbanifar’s assurances of a moderate undercurrent in Iran. No such thing existed, the entire lot of them knew what was going on and had the endorsement of the supreme leader. It was not going to bolster the hand of the moderates in an internal power struggle one iota. They sent Ghorbanifar back for Phoenix and Hawk missiles, Harpoons and Sidewinders.  Hassan Karoubi - Iranian “moderate”. Ghorbanifar introduced the Israelis to someone he claimed as the leader of the Iranian moderates, Hassan Karoubi, who claimed to spend 3 days a week with Khomeini, they evidently put on a good show because this got its way back to MacFarlane who was delighted that they had contacted such a high official. They balked at some of the requests, but Reagan agreed to send 80 HAWK missiles via Israel. Oliver North is supervising this process on the US end. Now someone fucks up, Israel was going to fly to Portugal, unload the hawks to a deniable plane and then fly on, but they forgot to obtain landing permits and Portugal, smelling a rat, refused it landing rights. So North calls up someone at the CIA, Duane Claridge asking for his help, it was outlined to him that they needed to ship “oil drilling equipment” to Iran and outlined the issue. Claridge almost certainly knew it wasn’t that, but also knew not to ask, so he ordered a CIA plane from St Lucia Airlines to fly it directly from Tel Aviv to Tehran. Unfortunately, this plane could only carry 18 of the promised 80 missiles, and Israel had sent first generation HAWKs (not that Ghorbanifar had promised) replete with prominent star of David livery. And on the tarmac was Prime Minister Mousavi who saw this and went ballistic at Ghorbanifar, who then went ballistic at Israeli intelligence. If you think that this was a near thing that probably should have tipped them off that it wasn’t really a good idea, you are apparently not cut out for a job in international intelligence, because the lesson the US took from this was that they needed to be involved directly to avoid Israeli incompetence messing it up again.  Admiral John Poindexter, replacement National Security Advisor moderate crook. McFarlane resigned around this time, the reasons are still unclear, he was replaced by John Poindexter, who was not liked by SecDef as he had little foreign policy experience. He was a very intelligent man who had done well managing NSC staff and was known to be loyal. He also didn’t like congressional oversight. He discussed with Reagan in November of 86 the problems and they agreed it was Israel’s fault for snarling the whole thing up. So, the US must step in. There was a meeting, SecDef and SecState both argued passionately for stopping the whole affair now, SecDef particularly said at this stage that it violated the Arms Export Control Act as well as their own arms embargo. Reagan responded “Well, The American people will never forgive me if big, strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages over this legal question.” To which SecState would reply that visiting hours are on Thursday. The decision hung in the balance, Reagan had a fantasy in his head that these weapons were going to moderate Iranians, and he couldn’t seem to deal with the fact that the US really had nothing it could reasonably do to influence Hezbollah. He failed to make a firm decision, instead signing an order giving the CIA charge of the arms transfer with the order of strengthening the moderate elements of the Iranian government and to make every effort to free the hostages. The CIA brought in a retired USAF general turned arms dealer, he had been employed to ship arms to the Contras on an ongoing basis by both the CIA director Casey and by Oliver North. Iran would ask through Ghorbanifar for a list of the Iraqi order of battle. There was a meeting in the CIA about this and they produced a detailed map of the disposition of Iraqi forces along the frontline, they justified it on the grounds it was perishable information. Iran employed this to launch an effective night attack that the Iraqis repelled with their armoured reserve. Much of the CIA distrusted Ghorbanifar, regarding him as a cheat and a crook, they quizzed him on detailed questions about Iran which he failed at answering 13 of 15 in a polygraph test. However, the CIA director Casey remained committed to this, saying he was exaggerating his influence but clearly had something. Reagan at this stage ordered 4000 TOW missiles be given to the CIA. The first lot of 500 were loaded up in Texas and shipped to Israel then on to Iran, arriving in February 1986. Ten days later another 500 were delivered. Not one hostage was released. North and Poindexter kept pushing however, they arranged for a meeting in Frankfurt between someone from Moussavi’s office and the IRGC and the US delegation including North. The Iranians asked for phoenix missiles for the F-14 and were provided with another map of Iraqi positions by North who tried to impress on them the danger from the USSR. They agreed to another meeting on the island of Kish. This fell apart immediately, Ghorbanifar demanded an array of weapons similar to before, Hawks, sidewinders, harpoons. North took this request and worked out a scheme where there would be a sequential trade of those for the hostages. But it didn’t get off the ground. The CIA dispatched their foremost Iranian expert, George Cave, to support North. Cave didn’t like Ghorbanifar and was incredulous that the Israelis had recommended him. Israel at this point is playing the game of keeping the US supplying Iran to keep them hitting Saddam as long as possible. North and Cave would go to meet Ghorbanifar and his new Israeli handler, Amiram Nir. Cave pulled Nir aside and asked if they had vetted him, to which end Nir replied that they had, and he was trustworthy. Nir had been explicitly given the role of keeping the US in with Ghorbanifar.  NSA Director General Odom, definably not a crook. At this point North tried to cut out SecDef and SecState, he ordered the NSA director to exclude them from intercepts to do with this topic, but Director Odom told him to get stuffed because he didn’t work for North. He would then take the care to have the intercepts hand delivered to SecDef Weinberger. He offered the intercepts to SecState who refused to get involved. Odom urged SecDef to convince the president to call it off, saying that it was going to leak, and it was going to cause a hell of a mess, to which SecDef replied that he had, endlessly, and Reagan would not budge. Ghorbanifar would then mosey back into view. He proposed a meeting with Rafsanjani and Mousavi in Tehran as a final negotiation point for release of hostages. Cave and North were to fly to Tehran with him to lay the groundwork for a meeting with McFarlane, who though he had resigned was to take a part in this as a presidential envoy. So, this happy group would touch down in May 1986, North, Cave, Macfarlane, NSC member Howard Teicher, Nir who was posing as an American, and a CIA technical officer. They had a palette of hawk missile parts, and another plane standing by for immediate dispatch once they had the hostages. They then waited for someone to appear while the Iranian base commander desperately attempted to keep them entertained by putting on an impromptu airshow. Nobody had told him they were coming until they appeared in his landing pattern. Infact Iran was not remotely ready, they had agreed and been told the details, but they didn’t expect the US to come. The IRGC had no idea who these people were so they scoured the files, they found a reference to Cave in the former US embassy files, but not to North or McFarlane so they agreed to meet them. An hour later Ghorbanifar appeared looking dishevelled with Moussavi’s deputy Kangerlou and escorted them to the Iranian Hilton (now the Independence Hotel). So, meetings began at 5pm. It became very quickly apparent that Ghorbanifar had misled both sides, the Iranians thought the US was there to deliver huge quantities of weapons and spare parts (not just the HAWK missiles) for the release of the hostages later, the US position I have already covered. McFarlane threatened to leave, the Iranians found someone higher ranked, Hadi Najafabadi, Rafsanjani’s deputy, who had the advantage that he spoke perfect English and had the remotest degree of actual authority and seemed to at least know what was going on to the US delegation. Negotiations then actually got off the ground. McFarlane presented a CIA dossier on soviet forces on the Iranian border and said that they knew of soviet plans to invade in support of Iran. Najafabadi concurred and presented his demands. Hezbollah had required Israeli evacuation of the Golan, release of prisoners in Kuwait and monetary compensation. The US were unsure as to whether this was the Iranians trying to get more out of the affair or if they generally had little control over Hezbollah. The answer was probably both. McFarlane stuck to his guns and insisted on hostage’s release. The talks would continue but would founder on mutually unacceptable grounds. So, the Americans left, they had to be snuck out as someone within the Iranian regime had caught wind of this and had organized a mob to come and take them hostage. Fortunately, they were extracted without incident. This is another point where it should have ended, you gave it the good old college try, they got in a room and actually met the Iranians and found that no common ground could be found. McFarlane recommended as such. But it didn’t, Reagan didn’t stop it, and Ghorbanifar and Nir encouraged North to keep it going and so he did. Later that year another hostage was released, Father Jenco, head of Catholic release in Lebanon, Ghorbanifar promised Iran the remaining 12 palettes of HAWK parts when they did, this validated Ghorbanifar to CIA director Casey. Jenco carried a message criticising Reagan from another hostage for not doing enough to free them which the president took rather personally. The CIA dropped all pretence at bringing Iran in against the USSR and it devolved into solely a consideration of arms for hostages at this stage. Poindexter at least had the good sense to want to cut out Israel, Ghorbanifar and Nir. He told North to find another route into Iran, it took them a long time, but they found a nephew of Rafsanjani who was travelling abroad on nebulous business, he was a member of the IRGC and in September of 1986 Ali Bahramani would enter the white house with two other IRGC officers. They would talk for 2 days, Iran arrived with a shopping list and they left with a general agreement for a tit for tat exchange of arms for hostages. Cave managed to establish a fairly good relationship with Bahramani who asked him for US assistance in bringing about a ceasefire with Iraq. This can be taken as pretty much Iranian unofficial policy at this stage; the visit had been approved by the Supreme Leader. Negotiations went on, essentially it went for 500 TOW missiles for a hostage, then the US would try to get Kuwait to release some of the Iranian backed Hezbollah fighters they had imprisoned after the terrorist attacks of 1983. Then 500 more missiles for one more hostage, then the US considers sending intelligence on Iraq and artillery ammunition. It began, the first missiles from this round of talks arrived in October 1986. Then, as I suspect you have all been waiting for, three more hostages were taken. So, state of play after about a year is the US are down several piles of HAWK parts and a couple thousand TOW’s and are up a net of 0 hostages.  Ayatollah Montazeri (right) next to Ayatollah Khomeini. Then it starts to leak. The Lebanese magazine al-Shiraa ran a story about McFarlane’s meeting with Tehran, Cave suspected Ghorbanifar leaked it out of pique for being cut out. The actual culprit was Ayatollah Montazeri, the head of his militia I had mentioned kidnapped a Syrian diplomat and was put in prison for it, so he leaked it to embarrass Khomeini. This started to spread and wouldn’t go away. Reagan dissembled about it and then they held a crisis meeting. SecState delivered a really meaty I fukkin told you so and summarised the start of the farce very neatly that Israel had sucked them up into their operation to support Iran so they couldn’t object to Israel’s sales to Iran. Reagan himself was in denial, sticking to the idea that he never authorised a straight arms for hostages swap, that it was part of a normalisation of relations effort with Iran. SecDef then pointed out that the Israelis or Iranians could now blackmail them very easily, so Reagan went onto TV to try and get ahead of things. Reagans address is not particularly impressive, whether he believed his half truths himself or knew he was at best dissembling is up to debate. But his summary of events bears little relation to fact. In Iran Montazeri denied he leaked it and got into a public disagreement with Khomeini, Montazeri was removed as his successor and his militia leader Hashemi was executed. Despite this they still tried to keep it going. Tehran turned up and tried to get the missiles out via talking to Cave, who reported to Washington. Schultz took over at this point under orders of Reagan, talking to the Iranians but said that they would talk but there would be no arms and no intelligence. This was reported to SecDef by NSA Director Odom who subsequently hit the roof and sent a very hostile message to Schultz basically boiling down to “why are you still meeting with these utter clowns, I testified to Congress that we were done on this, why are we not done?” At that point they were infact, done. Nicaragua To avoid diluting the Iranian narrative I have left out the Contra part of Iran Contra until now. I shall now slide it back in again, it’s a fairly short story. Broadly speaking when the US delivered arms to Iran, Iran paid for them in cash, the CIA then took that cash and used it to buy weapons to ship to the Contras. I’m not going to go into depth here because its not relevant but the reason this was necessary was due to a piece of legislation known as the Boland amendment. Left wing members of congress were against US actions in Nicaragua, which was funding rebel groups against the Sandinista government, which was itself funding left wing revolution in neighbouring countries. This led to the passing of three progressive acts known as the Boland Amendments. Broadly these limited the executive’s discretional power to spend funds appropriated by congress for intelligence operations by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Particularly in reference to Nicaragua. The second Boland amendment was passed because people discovered the CIA had mined the harbours in Nicaragua and had blown up oil storage tanks in Corinto. The new amendment passed explicitly forbade “the CIA, the DoD, or any agency or entity of the US involved in intelligence activities” from using their funding appropriated by congress in Nicaragua. Bulletproof one might say. They also sought other funds from allies, they got $32mn from Saudi Arabia, and $2mn from Taiwan. In 1985 however the Intelligence authorization act banned US government agencies from seeking third party national assistance to fund the contras, excepting humanitarian assistance. So, they turned to private funds, they successfully raised around $3mn from private individuals from fundraisers at the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund (run by a major republican donor) which was funnelled to the contras. However, this isn’t really enough to run a war on. So North came up with the idea of overcharging the Iranians for weapons and using that money to pass to the contras, the proceeds from the sale of arms to Iran was not appropriated from congress, it was bilked from the Iranians, so the NSC, particularly Oliver North used that to get the funds to keep funding the contras. The NSC was not necessarily an intelligence agency so they tried to employ that to protect them from the Boland amendments. The fact that they enacted this scheme right as congress were about to pull them in for questioning over hearings for their previous dodgy dealings before they start selling weapons to Iran to finance this revolt almost beggars belief. Round-Up This is an awful lot of facts and numbers, but I think is representative of an era really before significant and effective international arms control existed. Things like the Chemical Weapons Convention wouldn’t be signed until 1993 which would ban what Iraq was doing specifically. Efforts like the Convention on Cluster Munitions or proper landmine regulation are still decades off. The unrivalled free for all of the 1980’s had a long running effect which started a push for what would in 2014, become the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate international trade in conventional weapons. This includes much of the west, but notably excludes Russia and the PRC. The only thing keeping it in check was the collective conscience of the nations involved, or pressure by the USA, or fear of the retaliations of other nations. That is why it became such an almighty confusing mess. Israel really showed its true colours again that they are ruthlessly out for themselves, even to the great expense of their only consistent ally the US with the whole affair. Whether that attitude and actions are acceptable is something you must judge for yourself on, I can sympathise with their view but ultimately, I don’t find it terribly productive, like many of their actions. But then again, I don’t live in danger of annihilation with three wars in living memory to try and erase my state. I will say it was a quintessentially Israeli plan and it worked out pretty much exactly how they wanted it to. Nobody really had particularly clean hands, some were dirtier than others but it was really a failing by the entire international community, there were some late plays by Europe to try and get a proper arms embargo done via the UN in 1986, but it was vetoed by the PRC and USSR, though the cynical might say that their populaces reactions had cut off their own access to the trough and now they were trying to claim the moral high ground rather late. There is certainly some truth to that, but I wouldn’t necessarily 100% accept it. In reference to the idea of the IRGC blowing up the Canadian airliner that was raised, I don’t buy it because there really isn’t a reason for it to happen in 1985, Iran are desperate for weapons, the US seems to be delivering on them, albeit sporadically, and their chosen method of pressure is taking hostages in Lebanon which is proven to work, why would they risk their one real lifeline to perform this act? Potentially it was carried out by the IRGC as a rogue op, but it would be their largest one to date, and they tend to get found out after the fact because they aren’t terribly subtle. Egypt isn’t exactly prime stomping grounds for them in the 80’s and it would require significant penetration of the apparatus there to get away clean. We know so much about the inner workings of the US government in that era owing to extensive congressional investigations, despite Norths desperate shredding, that I cannot imagine such a cover up could be conducted without some reference to it appearing and being pursued. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 8, 2019 23:01
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Back when people in the US identified themselves firstly by their home state, would foreigners refer to them as such or as Americans? ie if someone (I assume pre 1865...) was from Georgia and said they were a Georgian, would a British person call them that or just say they were American?
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Oct 8, 2019 23:47
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Milo and POTUS posted:Back when people in the US identified themselves firstly by their home state, would foreigners refer to them as such or as Americans? ie if someone (I assume pre 1865...) was from Georgia and said they were a Georgian, would a British person call them that or just say they were American? Most foreign English literature and history sources from the time will simply state that someone is an American, occasionally even describing people from modern Canada or British Carribbean posessions as "Americans" too in the way they would have done so before the revolution. When people are described in more detail, locationally, it's much more common to have someone from Virginia specifically be referred to as a Virginian than say someone from Georgia. Mostly because Virginia was extremely prominent and wealthy - you also see a general trend of this with other wealthy and powerful states versus other relatively poor and unpopulated ones. You also see a lot of specific references in foreign literature to New Englanders or "Yankees" in the specific region sense rather than listing their specific states most of the time. I'm stating this stuff based on having read a bunch of older English speaking works from that time period, usually because they were referenced from more modern histories - or were popular fiction from the time. So obviously that's mostly British people and these were more formal works and literary convention. Not sure how much relation that bears to what common people of the time would say.
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Oct 9, 2019 00:15
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Whole that's a whole lot of posts about Iran! Going to have to bookmark and read the second half later. Still reading about the mess of smuggling front organizations was interesting because it feels like none of that has changed. The exact same kind of thing still happens and funnels arms through Turkey and the Arab world.
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Oct 9, 2019 00:48
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Anyone have a lecture or podcast about MacArthur's defense of the Philippines or lack thereof?
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Oct 9, 2019 02:48
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SimonCat posted:Anyone have a lecture or podcast about MacArthur's defense of the Philippines or lack thereof? It's just about the American tankers in Luzon, but there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StKbLprUxFI There's also the official army history available online here.
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Oct 9, 2019 04:06
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Milo and POTUS posted:Back when people in the US identified themselves firstly by their home state, would foreigners refer to them as such or as Americans? ie if someone (I assume pre 1865...) was from Georgia and said they were a Georgian, would a British person call them that or just say they were American? 
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Oct 9, 2019 04:20
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These posts continue to be fantastic.
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Oct 9, 2019 11:55
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Mr Enderby posted:Have we all read Rogue Male? It's a thriller written in the immediate run-up to the second world war, about a sportsman who tries and fails to kill a lightly-disguised Hitler. It's an interesting book for a number of reasons, not least because the narrator is very morally conflicted about the actual ethics of the assassination. The most dangerous game....is Hitler Also I think that's the exact plot from a Star Trek episode except instead of der furher it's a lizard alien
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Oct 9, 2019 16:58
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Tias posted:Awesome, thanks! Looting and pillaging were an integral part of waging a holy war.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:35
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Nessus posted:I remember in Dracula they took pains to say Quincey Morris was a Texan not just an American, but Texas has always been big on branding Texas is a bit of a special case, having actually been it's own country though.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:43
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The Lone Badger posted:As opposed to ther current government of the isles, which cannot decide what to have for dinner at all under any circumstances. The Republic of Ireland seems to be decisive enough? 
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Oct 9, 2019 17:57
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A fantastic post!! I've a few small questions. First, I read an account (possibly through you, possibly on Wikipedia) that at some point the Iraqis started attacking Karg Island with their bombers, which lead to the Iranians using their F-14s and Phoenix missiles to shoot them down? I just ask because if so, this, weirdly, is the only time the Phoenix was used operationally. Second, Tu-22 bombers in Iraq. Were they actually operational? I remember in the Libyan-Chad conflict Libyan Tu-22s had to be operated and maintained by Soviet personnel as the honkies were nightmares to keep flying. A comment more than a question: Canada around the time of the Iranian Revolution was in the middle of choosing a new fighter jet. At one point, Canada was toying with the idea of buying Iran's F-14A fleet. The Iranians were initially interested, but walked away when it was learned the covert extraction of a bunch of Iranian hostages was done with Canadian help. Probably for the best. While the F-14 was the last of the red-hot western interceptors, they were also maintenance pigs, and the A type had that lovely engine. Another Comment: that "shootdown" of a cargo aircraft bordering with the USSR I know a bit about thanks to another odd Canadian connection. The aircraft was a CL-44 Yukon, a Canadair modification of the Bristol Britannia. The cargo version had a hinged tail section, with the entire tail swinging aside so cargo could be loaded faster. The RCAF divested themselves of the type in the early 1970s, and these aircraft in particular would have vibrant second careers as dodgy cargo haulers, as in the 1970s, the CL-44 was just about the biggest/most powerful aircraft on the used cargo market. The one that was intercepted was Argentine, with three Argentinians and one Briton as the crew. The interceptor was a Su-15, and the wiki says it "deliberately rammed" the CL-44, but I expect that's communist spin on one of their interceptors messing up and actually colliding with their target. The Soviet pilot ejected and survived. Polyakov posted:In reference to the idea of the IRGC blowing up the Canadian airliner that was raised, I don’t buy it because there really isn’t a reason for it to happen in 1985, Iran are desperate for weapons, the US seems to be delivering on them, albeit sporadically, and their chosen method of pressure is taking hostages in Lebanon which is proven to work, why would they risk their one real lifeline to perform this act? Potentially it was carried out by the IRGC as a rogue op, but it would be their largest one to date, and they tend to get found out after the fact because they aren’t terribly subtle. Egypt isn’t exactly prime stomping grounds for them in the 80’s and it would require significant penetration of the apparatus there to get away clean. We know so much about the inner workings of the US government in that era owing to extensive congressional investigations, despite Norths desperate shredding, that I cannot imagine such a cover up could be conducted without some reference to it appearing and being pursued. Yeah, if there's one takeaway from your latest, it is that the timing, at least for Iran, doesn't really make sense? I don't have the book with me, but I think the Islamic Jihad Organization did take credit for the Arrow disaster; I've no idea how credible such calls are, and the wiki at least makes clear that it was a group make specifically to do dirty stuff so Hezbollah wouldn't get the blame. Not *too* familiar in this area, but I'm pretty sure organizations like that are not huge into meticulous record keeping.
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Oct 9, 2019 18:05
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feedmegin posted:Texas is a bit of a special case, having actually been it's own country though. considering the reason texas declared independence was to do slavery I'd say texas was always american to some extent
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Oct 9, 2019 18:12
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Polyakov posted:Iran-Iraq
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Oct 9, 2019 18:44
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Polyakov posted:Iran-Iraq Fantastic posts. What would you recommend for further reading? Iran-Iraq by Pierre Razoux is one you cited, but I'd like to know more.
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Oct 9, 2019 18:50
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Squalid posted:Reading about medieval kings and and its just like . . . can't you figure out a way to settle your petty family disputes in a way that DOESN'T involve killing hundreds of people? If Normans like Richard the Lionheart and his family were alive today I don't think they'd be able to decide what's for dinner without raising the levies and pillaging each other's castles In The Knight's Tale (~1387), two nobles want to duel to the death over a woman, and instead Theseus decrees that they should each bring 100 friends to fight over her. The moral of the story is that we're all going to die anyway, so you might as well die to enrich your betters. And certainly a man has most honour To die in his excellence and flower. When he is secure in his good name, Then hath he done his friend nor him no shame. And gladder ought his friend be of his death, When with honour yielded his his breath, Than when his name appalled is for age, For all forgotten is his vassalage.
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Oct 9, 2019 19:00
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Nebakenezzer posted:A fantastic post!! I've a few small questions. The Iranians would use the phoenix a few times throughout the war against various targets, indeed successfully against Iraqi Tu-22's who were bombing Iranian cities most notably, in defence of Kharg and just generally whenever they had the opportunity. They seemed to load them up as part of standard loadout as a shot down F-14 gave the Iraqis and hence the soviets a complete Phoenix in the mid-war. An Iranian F-14 pilot is credited with shooting down 3 Iraqi MiG's with a single phoenix, which im not sure i believe because i cant find any original sources on it but is oft repeated, but they seem to be very much in frequent use as much as their supplies allowed. Iraq widely employed its Tu-22's, I've nearly finished a post today which covers them using them in city attacks and getting them shot down by Iranian F-14's which ill post soonish. They had significant soviet technical assistance and generally speaking were of a much higher level of technical sophistication generally than Libya and so i suspect had a generally easier time of it . Kangxi posted:Fantastic posts. Iran Iraq by Razoux is what i get most of my stuff from if you read it you will recognise the chronological structure of these posts as i use it as the framework for this stuff (what i do is largely check my notes on that book, summarise, check for additional information or confirmation on things that smell a bit "off" in other sources and round out specific areas), i think its the best book on the subject. Other books i draw on include : "The Iran - Iraq war, a military and strategic history" and "Immortal - A military history of Iran and its armed forces". The US stuff i go to "The Twilight War - The secret history of Americas 30 year conflict with Iran" and "America's first clash with Iran - The Tanker War". Theres also specifically a bunch of available declassified CIA documents on Iraq if that is your bag. Theres a book i havent read from the Cold War Histories series called The Iran-Iraq war which i understand is good, particularly on the international diplomatic front, but i havent obtained it yet. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 19:34
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Kangxi posted:Pierre Razoux THis guy sounds smart and handsome
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Oct 9, 2019 19:45
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Polyakov posted:France had delivered half a million 155 and 203mm shells to Iran using false end user certificates for Peru, Brazil, Thailand, Greece and Yugoslavia and the former minister had covered for this actively along with much of the staff of the French MOD had conspired to defraud the CIEEMG (Intermenstrual commission for scrutiny of war material exports, but in French). I take it they release monthly reports...? (Thanks for an excellent post series, Polyakov)
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Oct 9, 2019 20:08
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Chamale posted:In The Knight's Tale (~1387), two nobles want to duel to the death over a woman, and instead Theseus decrees that they should each bring 100 friends to fight over her. The moral of the story is that we're all going to die anyway, so you might as well die to enrich your betters. The Knight's Tale is often taken as a deeply cynical and ironic take on chivalry, with Theseus as a shrewd rear end in a top hat staging wargames that maim potential enemies, etc. The end of the Tale has a particularly vivid passage where one of the protagonists is gruesomely dying and lamenting over the shittiness of life
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Oct 9, 2019 20:25
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here's a video of a spitfire and 190 flirting with each other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeglorsv_8 those griffon spitfires were hot rods
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Oct 9, 2019 20:26
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Previous post Its further up the page. 1984-5: Total all encompassing war. Here we get into what is known as the War of the Cities, where Iran and Iraq are slugging at each others population centers and the fronts of the war really stretch from capital to capital. It’s a bit of an open question as to who started attacking each others population first in Iran-Iraq. Evidently when Iraq rolled through Khorammshahr in the opening days of the war a lot of civilians got caught in the bombardment. When Iran took it back and attacked Basra the same thing occurred. There had been sporadic air attacks from both sides on targets in cities. But there is a distinction to be drawn between the attacking of cities that you are actively trying to assault and take, and the systematic attack on the population centres themselves as part of a terror bombing campaign. The former is largely unavoidable, if deeply distasteful, the latter is a conscious choice you are making to try and win the war. And this is how the war would develop. There will be unavoidable comparisons to the strategic bombing campaign in WW2, but I think in Iran Iraq it is something very distinct. The WW2 bombing campaign developed as much as it did initially out of an inability to do anything else, Britain couldn’t invade Mainland Europe, it was engaged in a few side theatres yes, but especially after the point of invasion of the USSR the only way to actually help the soviets effectively and directly was in bombing German cities. When Iraq starts firing Scud missiles at Iranian cities, they know that they can’t hope to really have an effect on Iranian warmaking capacity, Pretty much the entirety of Iranian “production” is located overseas where they purchase arms using oil money. Iraq does attack Iranian oil capacity too and with far more vigour than it conducts the attacks on civilian centres. The same logic holds true for Iran when they retaliate via the same method. The two nations were definitely not ignorant of this and would spend much effort attacking each others oil industries. This will also see the start of the tanker war in true earnest that I have covered in depth in another post, there will be passing references to it, its vitally important, but go back to the other post if you want to know more.  Iraqi FROG-7 launchers captured after Gulf-2. The contrast comes that because of the very scale of the attacks against Germany and Japan, they were destroying enemy production capability and were doing so at quite a prodigious clip. There was no way in hell that you could buy enough missiles at around a million dollars a pop, especially given the CEP of the Scud-B’s and FROG-7’s that were being flung were 450m and 600m respectively. To really actually do damage to specific targets you would need to level the city with them. Somewhat grimly, the less effective nature of the campaign in terms of its destructive power makes it less defensible as a tactic, there is no argument for military efficacy to be made here. Iraq is not in a situation where it has no other way to fight back, it is engaged on a multiple hundred-mile front, every dollar it spends on TBM’s to huck at Iranian cities is a dollar not spent on weapons to fight the Iranian armed forces. This is I think the key distinction between the two, much as the USSR chose to neglect strategic aviation in WW2 in favour of focusing hard on winning the actual active front war, Iraq and Iran would both have benefitted from that approach given the limitations they were under. Of course, it would not break either sides morale, it would really unite the Iranian population, which was still quite fractured even in 1984, in a way that the Ayatollah could only really dream of. It would also put the idea of a mass Shia rebellion against Saddam out of the reach of the Ayatollah. The frontline is largely stale at this point, neither side seems able to advance after the Dawn offensives and they are both digging in, so it is understandable why at this point they start looking for alternate means of pressure to apply to each other. This is why the tanker war kicks off at around this time as well as the war of the cities. One of those would be a far more effective means than the other. The beginning of the war of the cities. In late 1983 Iran exploded a massive truck bomb in a crowded Baghdad city centre, killing about a hundred Iraqis and injuring hundreds more. Iraq publicly swore revenge on Iran for this attack and it was the public justification used when on February 1st 1984, they announced their intention to attack 11 Iranian cities within 5 days, warning their citizens to evacuate. Tehran responded by threatening to shell Basra. (More directly into the city centre one can only assume, given they were already shelling Basra). However Saddam went ahead, on Feb 12th he fired a salvo of Scud missiles at the city of Dezful, killing 40 Iranian civilians and wounding 200. There had been some degree of firings before this point but this is the point at which we start to see proper dedicated campaigns for each side attacking cities.  Iran-Iraq border and the cities that would eat the majority of the war of the cities. Tehran promptly retaliated, firing artillery at the cities of Basra, settlements on the Al-Faw peninsula, Mandali and Kanaqin. Iraq would return fire with more missiles at Abadan, Ahwaz, Susangerd, Andimeshk, Ilam and Kermanshah. Iraq would also start bombing Iranian cities with its airforce, the same ones mentioned above, to which Iran would also retaliate, using its F-4’s. This would result in heavy casualties for both sides, Iraq would lose 3 of its precious 7 operational Tu-22’s in an attempted raid on Tehran, the planes falling victim to Iranian F-14’s which had been put on alert to intercept exactly this sort of affair, the whole thing carrying somewhat amusing echoes of the purpose of the F-14 in the first place, to intercept soviet bombers before they hit US carrier groups. Iran lost several of its F-4’s in this effort to Iraqi ground fire. Its worth noting that 60% of Iranian airforce losses were caused by ground fire and it was in exactly this type of foolhardy endeavour that their losses were highest, F-4’s falling victim to everything from 37mm light AA on a Baghdad rooftop to SA-2 missiles out over the Persian Gulf. Iraq would stop its air campaign after its losses and would switch to attacking other targets while Iran would attempt to keep going for some time. Iraq would decide that missiles were the future for attacking Iranian cities, it was far easier to obtain them and far less risky to fire them than going with bombers. They would dedicate their airforce to attacking Iranian oil infrastructure, nuclear infrastructure and tankers in the gulf. Iraq attacks Iranian nuclear capacity  Reactor 1 at Bushehr, picturing the dome that was cracked by Iraq. The Iranian reactor at Bushehr had continued being constructed after the outbreak of war, originally laid down by Kraftwerk Union AG (A joint venture between Siemens and AEG) in 1975 under the Shah it was not finished by the time of the wars outbreak. They would pull out in 1979 after iran failed to pay their bills. It was around 50% complete at this time. Iran would be attempting to complete it to the point of being able to use it to refine plutonium fuel at this time. Iraq would start their raid on March 24th, their recently delivered Super Etendards took off with a load of Exocets, they had set the missiles to lock onto static structures of roughly nuclear reactor size and fired off 8 missiles at it. This was done with US satellite reconnaissance of the area. Damage assessment afterwards would reveal that there had been only minor damage, the missiles had largely locked on to secondary support structures and hit them. What it did do was focus the IAEA’s attention on the site, as well as the world medias, all of whom suspected or accused Iran of trying to proliferate. Iraq would launch several more raids on this as the war went on, largely to limited effect, though in November 1986 a pair of Mirage F1’s would launch 4 AS-30L laser guided missiles that would crack the reactor dome of one of the plants reactor. Iran would divert significant resources to defend this site as the war went on, diverting them from other targets, making this one of Iraq’s more successful air campaigns in terms of effect in terms of resources invested. Iraqi airforce reforms Iraqs airforce has been pretty uninspiring up to now, its leaders had been party loyalists largely lacking in even basic competence. But now General Hamid Shaban would come to head the IQAF. He wasn’t a brilliant pilot however he did have a very firm grasp about objectives. Iraqs airforce up to now had been somewhat directionless, it pandered to Saddams whim and the glory hound aspirations of the well-connected pilots that flew the planes. It failed to act in a cohesive manner towards a specific end. Shaban looked at this and decided that the Iraqi airforces mission would not to be to ride out to glorious honourable air combat in the sky, but to direct itself specifically for attacking ground targets both at the front and deep in Iranian territory accurately. He changed acquisitions to focus on ground attack, requesting MiG-23BN’s, Su-22, Su-25 and Mirage F-1EQ’s and ordered the mirages already in Iraqi inventory modified to incorporate the EQ’s functions and features for ground attack and requested Dassault send 60 technicians to perform these modifications. The modifications included hardpoint expansion, ECM equipment from Thompson-CSF, more fuel capacity and capability for the AS-30L missile. Indeed those technicians would take back knowledge which would be instrumental in influencing the French airforce to acquire the Mirage F-1CT in 1988 as their own ground attack variant which would serve them very well.  Iraqi F-1EQ having made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after being hit in a raid on Farsi Island. Honestly Shabans reforms are probably the most important thing Iraq really did in terms of getting its act together, it gave their airforce a purpose and they would fulfil that purpose pretty competently. The tanker war would do more damage to Iran than anything else Iran did and that was conducted entirely by the IQAF. Iraq had much less use for an airforce that fought the enemy airforce because Iran’s airforce itself was far more focused on winning air superiority. When it turned its hand to ground attack its planes ran into significant problems with Iraq’s ability to throw cash at missiles and thousands of pieces of light calibre AA that took a very heavy toll on Iran’s air force. This is not to say the IQAF abandoned air superiority, in this year they would shoot down two Iranian tomcats and retrieve a phoenix missile from the wreckage that they would send to Moscow. Irans airforce reforms. Iran also got an airforce chief change, Colonel Seddigh, his predecessor having been disgraced and executed for allowing too many defections and his cautious use of his planes. The new chap was seen to be loyal enough that he was able to persuade the Ayatollahs to allow his pilots to resume training properly (restrictions had been put in place to prevent defection from the Shahs previous favoured branch). He had 20 F-6’s (MiG-19) delivered from the PRC for use as jet trainers and started sending his planes out to aggressively attack Iraqi planes. In engagements shortly after this policy there would be 8 Iraqi planes shot down for the loss of two Iranian planes. F-14’s would also shoot down one of Iraqs precious Super Etendards a few weeks later while the IQAF was raiding Kharg. However he was more benefitted by circumstance, since the start of the war Iran had been unable to access its stores of spare parts that it had bought in quite significant quantity, because there had been a fancy-schmancy new computerised stock inventory system implemented for it. But before the US technicians who installed it could teach anyone in the country how to operate it they, rather sensibly, fled. So Iran had a lot of spare parts, but no way to know what was what. In mid-1984 they managed to decode this system which gave them access to this stockpile, along with significant Iranian buys of parts abroad, including from a ring on the USS Kittyhawk which was in the gulf at the time. As a result, Iranian airforce readiness rates doubled, giving them a ready stock of 30 F-14’s, 60 F-4’s and 50 F’5’s which were combat ready.  Iranian F-14 carrying a modified HAWK missile This was brought up while I was writing it so I thought I would address it directly, Iran was able to briefly maintain a much higher sortie rate in 1984 though they soon started to run dry again. This meant that they adopted a ground ready posture, where they waited on the tarmac until Iraqi ground attack planes were sighted then they scrambled. This meant that they frequently failed to intercept in time, their initial success with this method was to do with the fact their missiles were working well at the time. However as time dragged on into 1985, the Phoenix particularly became more and more unreliable. The reason is that the internal battery was starting to go dead, and spares were almost unfindable, especially for the Phoenix, though they had more luck on the AIM-9’s and AIM-7’s just in terms of availability. Iran in desperation attempted to modify their HAWK missiles for aerial launch from the F-14 to replace the role of the Phoenix but were ultimately unsuccessful. The home front. Iraq  Saddam (front) with best bud Hammurabi (right) and Nebuchadnezzar II (back). Both sides had problems with morale and grumbling at home, times were hard, lots of peoples sons, brothers and husbands were coming back in boxes and there was no end in sight. Iraq doubled down on a cult of personality around Saddam, depicting him as Nebuchadnezzar, Hammurabi and Saladin varyingly, smiting the Persian lion. There was constant media coverage of him among the workers in a very socialist style, as well as the soldiers and prominently with heads of foreign states. There were huge patriotic blood drives and a state saving bond scheme along with urges to donate a days wages, or for women to donate their jewellery, that effort resulting in a windfall of 4 tons of gold in a single year, 1984, which netted Iraq $500mn. The regime also encouraged women to have at least 5 children, another slightly creepy reminiscence of Nazi Germanies policies, though without the racial purity overtones. (Though the birth rate was enough of a problem for France in the 30’s that they viewed contraceptives and their use as a national security issue in some areas of the government). They would echo Iran in putting significant propaganda in the schooling system and militarised the education system by introducing basic training for males 15-17 (them being drafted at 18). There were civic efforts to drain the marshes along the fronts and many other programs of public works. A citizen accolade program was introduced, where those who put in prominent effort became a Friend of Saddam, granting them free healthcare, preferential access to university education for your children and preferential loan rates, and for the truly deserving a brand-new suit and a reception with Saddam. Iraq would also hold elections to “confirm the legitimacy” of its regime, Saddam reserved 40% of the seats in parliament for Shia Iraqis to diffuse Iranian pan-Shia propaganda, and subsequently baited Iran by saying that the heart of Shiism was in Iraq not Iran. Which worked fairly well, Iran responded angrily and called for the destruction of Iraq and liberation of Najaf and Karbala, which made the Iranians look like lunatics and helped Iraq pretend to be the victim. Iraq managed to achieve a good level of unity in the face of the war, Saddam was very conscious of the need to maintain civilian life. As soon as the air defence network seemed to deter Iran from bombing Baghdad he lifted the curfew and a huge proportion of the states budget went to ensure stores were well stocked and affordable. He privatized agriculture and successfully improved production doing so. Over a million guest workers from Asia, Palestine and Egypt were brought in to run the oil industry and female labour rate participation was encouraged and increased dramatically. Saddam also ensured good conditions for the army in particular. Officers were granted cars for good performance, Colonels and Generals being given the much-coveted Mercedes or even in some cases a villa. The families of dead soldiers were granted a pension, plot of land and an interest free loan to build a house on said land. All of this came together to help Iraq retain the ability and will to fight. Iran  Fountain of blood in Tehran 1984. No they weren’t being allegorical. Its red dye. Many other fountains would appear in other Iranian cities. Iran on the other hand took the approach of a cult of the martyr, rather than the cult of the dictator, more fitting their theocratic leanings and governmental structure. The martyr died for god, god is represented through the Ayatollahs etc. etc. etc. They erected a Fountain of Blood in Tehran to represent the sacrifice of the faithful at the front, streets, schools and other buildings were named for prominent martyrs, largely from the Pasdaran. Media coverage was relentless and effusive in their praise of those that martyred themselves at the front. Anti-Americanism and Anti-Israeli messages were common in an attempt to link Iraq into the Zionist conspiracy they claimed wove it all together. In prayer services all over the nation they would recall the sacrifices of prominent Shiite martyrs from the past and promised that all who died on the front would be sent to paradise for their sacrifice. Dress codes for governmental bodies was set to black, the colour of mourning, and also a nice economy measure in terms of buying and producing mass quantities of cloth. The war was cast in a context of a crusade, Shia against Sunni, by Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as a nationalistic struggle, Iranian against Arab. This was an effective approach, especially among Iran’s predominantly quite poor and poorly educated rural populace, this approach, repeated through mullahs down to the village church is something we have seen throughout history as a means of motivating the masses and it worked just as well here as it has in other places. This is not to say that it was limited to them, it was a national fervour and many recruits to the Pasdaran also came from the educated urban classes. Iran also adopted a policy of compensation to its soldiers, those wounded on the front were given priority for government jobs. Khomeini issued a fatwa to authorise children to enrol in the Basijj militia without parental permission, stating that fighting for Islam was a higher calling than work or education. There was the establishment of the Martyrs Foundation who issued a state pension to the family of dead soldiers. Very poor families were very well aware that if their children were to die at the front then their own material situation would improve dramatically, for large rural families this was certainly a compelling, if very depressing, argument. A strong reason for many Pasdaran/Basijj militia was that were they to die, their families would be granted a better future. Further to the idea of it being a crusade, there was establishment of the religious police, who further enforced a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, particularly with regards to the rights of women, particularly with regards to dress codes. This was done simultaneously with encouraging them to work in factories. There are some rather grizzly anecdotes of veils coming loose and getting caught in machine tools. I am certain that many factory foremen were pragmatic about this for the most part, except when the religious police were scheduled to come round. They also adopted the same policy as Iraq for the donation of jewellery, those that donated the most were widely praised in the papers. Civil servants who were of an age to fight were ordered to go or pay a large fraction of their salary to the state, farmers were taxed heavily with in-kind donations for the same. There were scheduled power cuts and a return to bartering as the black market exploded. The Bazaar had been a major component of the unrest that had brought down the Shah, and the Ayatollahs were aware that they could not push it too hard and so largely left the black market unchecked. They would subsidise staple products and try to ensure their supply to various degrees of success. They would order the construction of massive underground shelters when the war of the cities began, though these would be slow in construction. Despite all this largesse from the government, the hardline Islamic Republic party was savaged in the 1984 elections despite direct support from Khomeini, the IRP would win the plurality of votes but not a majority forcing them to enter coalition and replace the Minister of Defence Mohammad Salimi who was blamed for a lot of the problems with Hussein Jalali. Iran was significantly more unstable on the home front than Iraq, reflecting their fractured and for want of a better word, slightly more democratic form of government than Iraq. But also their inability to adopt as significant a guns and butter approach than Saddam did. This instability would lead to further trouble for Iran as they suffer more military reverses throughout 1984 and early 1985. Battle of the marshes, round 2.  Battles around the marshes in 1985. Again taken from Razoux. Iraq would launch a counteroffensive in the Hoveyzeh marshes in early 1985, they launched an attack on the Majnoon islands. Employing boat borne assault troops from two Iraqi special forces brigades, with supporting forces of four divisions they launched a significant artillery attack on the Islands followed up by the special forces attacking the islands beaches. It was a particularly bloody battle with the Iranians rushing troops along their pontoon bridges and dykes and it ended with the Iraqis repelled from the northern island but keeping a presence on the southern island. They started constructing their own dyke back to their lines to reinforce and would dig in. To attempt to hammer out some kind of national unity in the government it was agreed to make another major offensive in the marshes to repel the Iraqis and follow up to Iranian advances in that region in 1984. This offensive was set for March 11th 1985 and was to take place in the Hoveyzeh marshes and had the same strategic aims, cut the Baghdad - Basra road and isolate the city. The marshes will provide advantages over Iraqi firepower etc. etc. etc. We have seen these justifications before in the previous post and I won’t re-iterate them. It wasn’t just a straight replay, they were more prepared this time, they had secured significant supplies of atropine, gas masks and gas capes, enough assault rifles to supply everyone reliably and more supplies of RPG’s. There had been work to improve Army-Pasdaran cooperation and coordination, a concentration of equipment was achieved in the area held by 3 divisions of the 6th Iraqi corps while diversionary exercises were conducted in the leadup to the attack in the areas held by the 3rd and 4th Iraqi corps. 11 divisions were assembled with the majority of Iranian bridge crossing equipment and they would employ repeated maximum pressure human wave assaults to overrun Iraqi defenders and take the road. This attack would fall in the al-Qurnah, al-Azair gap much as the offensives of the past. It was to be called the Badr offensive, named after the battle of Badr from the 7th century and a famous victory of Muhammed over the denizens of Mecca. The attack would be launched to immediate success, the Iraqi 35th ID was overrun quickly by attacks from 2 Pasdaran and 3 mechanized army divisions and fell back to the river, mostly shattered with significant proportions of them being captured. They quickly reached the shore of the Tigris and built pontoon bridges to cross the bridge and allowed the mechanized forces to cross and successfully cut the Baghdad Basra road between al-Azair and al-Qurnah. Elsewhere two Pasdaran divisions assaulted the Iraqi 4th ID in the south, using artillery support floating on large barges and successfully drove them back to the Tigris. Iraq was lacking in support for its men in this sector, with the marshes proving unsuitable for the mounting of heavy artillery support in the style they were used to employing and this badly harmed their ability to resist Iranian attacks. However the Iraqi counterattack was swift, three Armoured divisions, and two mechanized divisions, one a Republican guard unit were rushed to attack the Iranian breach. Iraqi helicopters and heavy bombers pounded Iranian units, with the Tu-16 bombers attacking Iranian staging grounds from high altitude back in the Hoveyzeh marshes. Three special forces brigades were ferried deep into the marshes to cut the Iranian pontoon bridges and cut off their retreat as airpower attacked Iranian boats in the marshes. On March 14th the Iraqi armour attacked with the support of significant quantities of chemical weapons. This did less direct damage but Iranian troops were not well prepared to fight with the penalty to vision and endurance from wearing gas masks and were badly disorganized by it. Iraqs troops were far better prepared and their tanks were equipped to deal with contaminated environment and they successfully pushed Iran back into the marshes. Within 8 days Iraq had recaptured all territory lost in this assault and inflicted 30’000 casualties on iran for 11’000 of their own. The losses of AFV’s and helicopters was about even on both sides at around 100 and 12 respectively. Iraq was elated by the swift victory and lavished gifts upon his victorious troops, Iran was predictably morose. Rafsanjani came under significant fire from Ayatollah Khamenei (The man who would succeed Khomeini eventually) who had emerged as his main political rival. The MEK (Peoples Mujahedin) would carry out several attacks in Tehran and conduct several high profile bombing attacks around this time causing much internal turmoil. As a result of this Rafsanjani decreed a temporary halt to massive offensives to deal with internal conflict and capitulated to army demands to end human wave offensives for the time being. Crucially Rafsanjani would expand the Pasdarans naval division at this time, equipping them with high speed small motorboats bought from China, Sweden and North Korea and the rocket launchers to arm them. This would form the majority of Irans offensive action against ships in the gulf. This also ties in to Iran’s desperation for TOW missiles displayed at this time with Ghorbanifar and Iran-Contra, they had been driven back again and again by Iraqi tanks and needed a solution. Mubarak would visit Baghdad to show his support for Iraq in the middle of this assault and encourage more support for Iraq from the gulf monarchies. This was the real thawing of relations between Egypt and Iraq, which had been somewhat strained since Saddam took power. In return Saddam promised to support Mubaraks effort to get the seat of the Arab League returned to Cairo from Tunis after its suspension in 1979 as a result of Sadats peace agreement with Israel. The war of the cities heats up  Al-Hussein domestic Iraqi Scud copy being inspected. Saddams immediate response to Operation Badr was to enact a new bombing offensive aimed at Iranian industrial infrastructure, hitting oil facilities near Khorramshahr and at Kharg island. Iran would retaliate by launching an attack directly on Baghdad in March, employing its newly acquired Scud-B missiles that it had received from Libya. This embarrassed and enraged Saddam who was especially aggravated that he could not hit Tehran back. He authorized the release of FROG-7 and Scud attacks on the Iranian border cities that were within range. He ordered Shaban to find a way to attack Tehran. And Shaban’s life probably depended on the answer. The Tu-22’s had been savaged previously and so were dismissed, the Tu-16 was an even less promising option. The only alternative he could see was using the MiG-25, it was much faster than the bombers and better able to evade interception, it just needed to be modified. The USSR had developed a system allowing the MiG 25 to drop 500kg bombs at high Mach numbers and Iraq got wind of this and requested it be delivered to them. For two weeks in late April. The mission profile was a MiG-25 would be loaded with 4 500kg bombs and external fuel tanks, take off from Kirkuk and burn the external fuel reaching the Iranian border, it would jettison its external fuel tanks and climb to 60’000 feet (Above the F-14’s service ceiling of 50’000 feet) and accelerated to around Mach 2.5 and sprint at Tehran, twenty minutes later it would reach a point 25 miles from Tehran and drop its bombs which would follow a ballistic trajectory for the last leg of their journey and drop into Tehran. The MiG-25 would then dive and book it for the Iraqi border. It had an accuracy of around +/- 3 kilometers employing this attack, or around a tenth of the length of the city. This would continue every night for the next month, even targeting the holy city of Qom when Khomeini was there for a visit. No MiG-25 was lost in these attacks. Iraq would also heavily bomb border cities for the loss of two MiG 23’s. Saddam declared 1985 as the year of the pilot and lavishly gifted daring pilots with rewards for their exploits. Iranian generals would scream for more HAWK missiles to try and stop the MiG 25’s but they never succeeded in getting a missile battery in the right place to intercept. They mostly retaliated by bombing Baghdad, Tikrit, Mosul and other major cities, losing two of their F-4’s over Baghdad in one particularly bungled attack. Saddam would call for another ceasefire, even going so far as to relinquish his territorial claim to the Shatt-al-Arab and negotiations over reparations. However, Iran stuck to their guns about the removal of Saddam and return of Shia refugees (who they wished to use to undermine the entire regime, much as they would when the US would finally push Saddam over). They delivered this reply via a salvo of a dozen Scuds at Baghdad. Iraq would retaliate by ordering a bombing of Tehran with his 4 Tu-16 bombers, equipped with heavy jamming pods they destroyed significant parts of downtown Tehran and killed 80 and wounded 300 Iranian civilians who at this point were generally sleeping in shelters. Eventually both sides started to run short of missiles and in June a truce in civilian targets was agreed supervised by the UN that put a stop to the war of the cities for the time being. However, Iran had another plan to win. To apply pressure on Iraq at every point to force Iraq to maintain such levels of personnel at the front to ruin the Iraqi economy. This was focused around the Hovyezeh marshes initially, with Iran employing light infantry attacking in light boats into Iraqi lines at night in order to wear them down. These operations would last through from June to the start of the rainy season in the late autumn. They also kicked up activity in Kurdistan. The Kurds get shafted. Again.  Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK. The PUK under Talabani had assured Saddam of their neutrality a year or so prior. Talabani denounced the agreement in 1985 on the grounds of Iraqs agreements with Baghdad to allow them to hunt down the PKK (The major Turkish based Kurdish group of the time) in Iraqi Kurdistan. He did this in part in order to gain the support of Abdullah Ocalan who would help him in his internal power struggles against the Barzani brothers and the KDP. Talabani was also of the view that the Iranians might well end up taking over Iraqi Kurdistan and he had to hedge his bets. Saddam offered an amnesty to the PUK if they laid down their arms but it was rejected and the PUK went underground and started fighting the Iraqis. This meant that Kurdistan degenerated into a free for all that took on all the characteristics of a farce. In March 1985 you have the PUK wading into the fight, fighting the Iraqi Popular Army (the Iraqi equivalent of the Pasdaran militia), the Barzani clans KDP fighters, the KDPI of Ghassemlou aligned with Baghdad, all at the same time, there are also the extra factions of the PKK fighters who fled from Turkey who are fighting Turkey and also Baghdad and the PDKI, but not generally the other Kurdish forces or Iran, and the Iranian armed forces who are fighting Baghdad and the KDPI. The PDKI would seek rapprochement with Iran in negotiations abroad, Iran hoping to neutralise the KDPI via these and free up their forces currently keeping them suppressed. They wouldn’t get anywhere until they assassinated Ghassemlou in 1988 and signed an agreement with his successor. Iran would launch another assault in the area in July 1985 in cooperation with the PUK who seized the fortress of Hassan Beg to distract Iraqi forces while Iranian forces overran Iraqi forces at Penjwin and tried to take the Darbandikhan dam again but were repulsed. Two weeks of bloody counterattacks followed which drove Iran back past its starting positions. They suspended operations in the Kurdistan area and focused their attempts in trying to get the KDP and PUK to play nice, to no real avail. The Kurds are really hamstrung a lot by their own internal divisions in this era, divisions stoked and fed by those that want to keep them down certainly, but this is creating and seeding feuds that will last for decades and are still not forgotten today. I’m not suggesting there was much that could be done differently, I don’t really like the Barzani’s particularly as they seem to run their affairs very much in a dictatorial fashion in KDP areas. I don’t pretend to be an expert on Kurdish internal politics but that is very much an observation as to their issues in this period. Around this time is the first time that use of chemical weapons on the Kurds is mooted in internal Iraqi discussions to target leadership and command centres of Kurdish groups, (generally involving the term Special Arsenal, Iraqi code for chemical weapons). Summary During this period a few interesting things crop up. The Iraqis start attempting to engage in Scud hunts, using their Mirages to scour the Iranian countryside for the launchers after a launch was detected, however very little effect was had. Something that was echoed a few scant years later when the coalition tried to find Iraqi Scuds that were firing on Saudi Arabia and Israel. During this period of time. Up to 1985 Iraq would fire a mixture of FROG and Scud missiles at Iran totalling 273, Iran would fire in retaliation a total of 18, almost all at Baghdad. From this point on Iranian acquisition of Scud’s from Libya would ramp up their attacks on Iraq and they would not be shy about retaliating for past grievances while Iraq attempted another PR move by suspending their own attacks. Both nations are now very close to creating their own domestic missile, Iraq’s Al-Hussein (developed from the Scud) and Irans Oghab missile (developed from the PRC Type-83). The Al-Hussein would prove to be far more sophisticated and dangerous, reflecting Iraq’s higher funding and technological level in its development. We see the start of the fight with the Kurds which will end up in Chemical Ali’s rise to infamy, and the real deadlock developing which will dog the war for the remainder of its duration. There will be a few brilliant attacks executed which will shift the lines somewhat, but there will be a lot more bloody failures than successes. The war of the cities and the tanker war both ramp up about now reflecting this state of stalemate as both sides wrestle to find any way to break the deadlock. Both armies have now learned to fight, but having done so at the same rate they are as locked in stalemate as they were before. As a footnote, I have a problem with this endeavour that I want to complain about briefly. I often have to stop and check myself as I disbelieve stuff that I read, as it sounds like what I would recognise today as the insane ramblings of islamophobes. So I go and check, but a lot of this stuff, particularly the martyrdom stuff Iran is really really leaning into did occur and its often very hard to wrap your head around. It’s a type of state I just can’t quite “get”. I understand Iraq a lot more, it’s a recognisable dictatorship with your usual dictatorship trappings, it’s a comprehensible evil. But understanding Iran is difficult. The justifications for why many Iranians fought is complicated, ranging from religious fervour to patriotism to just trying to provide for their families, but the fanaticism that pervades the entirety of the Pasdaran and much of the government is sometimes a little too much when you see the tenth picture of an Iranian kid a full head and shoulders shorter than the men surrounding him going in to fight. This isn’t meant as a particular moral judgement about which of the two regimes is more evil, which is an entirely pointless effort but simply an observation that the life experiences of people in Iran must have just been so far removed from my own that they would put up with and even vote for these people. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 20:54
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crosspost from the baseball thread: here is a cool video of dudes shooting arrows at armor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE 200 lbs bow, jesus christ
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Oct 9, 2019 21:02
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So for Fleet week we have the USS Somerset visiting our fair city. I had a few questions about their role and how they differ from troops ships. Are they meant to operate solo? Or is the expectation that there are a few of them operating in concert to land on a beachhead. And are they mean to be used in opposed landings, or is it more here's a troop compliment and some AFV's quickly, get them on ground first and then fight. also it looks kinda dorky, is that on purpose?
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Oct 9, 2019 21:13
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Polyakov posted:As a footnote, I have a problem with this endeavour that I want to complain about briefly. I often have to stop and check myself as I disbelieve stuff that I read, as it sounds like what I would recognise today as the insane ramblings of islamophobes. So I go and check, but a lot of this stuff, particularly the martyrdom stuff Iran is really really leaning into did occur and its often very hard to wrap your head around. It’s a type of state I just can’t quite “get”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre
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Oct 9, 2019 21:26
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