ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 concluded with the contention that revolution in Iran altered the ‘truth conditions’ of international conduct in the Persian Gulf. How can this abstract claim best be developed? To elaborate what we mean by ‘changed truth conditions’ a simple comparison between regional perceptions of war before and after the revolution is helpful. Whilst during the former period an Iraqi attack on Pahlavi Iran would have been evaluated as an aggression, the same act was considered legitimate against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Attacking Iran before the ascendancy of Khomeini was impossible not necessarily only because of the superior military capabilities of the Pahlavi state, but because the country’s privileged role as regional ‘gendarme’ was legitimated regionally and globally. The Ba’thist regime was deterred from an invasion of Iran because Iraqi decision-makers knew that a military assault during that period would have been immediately identified as a punishable aggression by international society. After all, the systemic backing of pre-revolutionary Iran was the dominant reason why the Shah felt empowered to pursue the delineation of the Shatt al-Arab along the thalweg, or seize the three Persian Gulf islands. It is well known that the former goal was pursued by a long-lasting covert war against the Ba’thist state via the Iraqi-Kurds and with substantial backing from the United States and Israel.196 In a conversation with the US Ambassador April Glaspie in July 1990, Saddam Hussein indicated the helplessness of the Iraqi state vis-à-vis the Shah’s requests, admitting that ‘forced to choose between half of Shatt al-Arab or the whole of Iraq . . . we [gave] the Shatt al-Arab away, to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish[ed] it to be’.197
