Guards and Martyrs

The Iran-Iraq War was starting its seventh year by the start of Winter in 1986. Casualties on both sides numbered in the hundreds of thousands and both sides had resorted to chemical weapons, missile attacks against their opponent’s cities, and an escalating air and sea campaign in the Persian Gulf that threatened to bring Super power intervention. The Iranian government felt that an offensive to take the crucial city of Basra, Iraq’s only port and primary gateway for shipping out its oil and receiving goods from abroad, could end the war with a victory. Dubbed “Karbala 5” the Iranians amassed much of their Revolutionary Guard formations supported by new weapons secretly purchased from the “Great Satan” USA (via the illegal Iran-Contra affair) as well as North Korea. A feint attack north of the battlefield, Karbala 6, by much of the Iranian armored force would tie up Iraq’s reserves. The resulting battle for Basra was one of the largest and bloodiest battles fought in the war, with both sides fighting with all they had. In the end the battle for Basra would prove just as indecisive as the larger war, with neither side able to claim a clear victory.

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