4 - Willing and Unable

Summary

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