Chapter 2 traces the development of the IRGC’s efforts to document the Iran-Iraq War, including the people, activities, and publications that make up that enterprise. It focuses on the project’s origins and foundations, the work undertaken to record the history of the war as the conflict was ongoing, the methodology and approach applied to those efforts, and the publications that have resulted therefrom and on which the present book is based. In doing so, it demonstrates that the development of the IRGC’s documentation of the war mirrors the evolution of both the Iran-Iraq War and the IRGC as a whole, which highlights how the project emblematizes the organization and the war’s centrality to its legitimacy and identity. It argues, in other words, that in order to understand the IRGC, we must understand its members not just as Guards but also as historians.

Chapter 3 begins the analysis of the IRGC’s history of the Iran-Iraq War. It examines how the IRGC authors explain the war’s outbreak and the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion. Like other historians of the conflict within and outside Iran, the IRGC authors strive to tease out the variety of causes that led to the war and, in particular, to understand the role of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution in the war’s onset. These connections between the war and the revolution constitute both a prime concern for the Revolutionary Guards and a main theme of the present book. According to the Guards, the success of the revolution was the most important catalyst for the Iraqi invasion. Further, Iraq made the strategic decision to strike while the revolution was still hot—to attack the Islamic Republic in the midst of its revolutionary transition, when the new regime’s power was tenuous and its readiness for war diminished.

This chapter has been structured around the question of the periodisation of the emergence of Kurdish nationalism and the Kurdish question in Iran. Raising the question of periodisation of the Kurdish question and politicisation of Kurdish national sentiment has been a precondition for understanding the background and reasons for the emergence of the Kurdish national movement. Identifying the root causes of the ongoing Iranian Kurdish question has required reflection on the contribution and impact of political and historical events with relevance to the emergence of Kurdish nationalism in earlier centuries (e.g. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). In order to respond to and meet this requirement, studying the role of Kurdish intellectuals such as Ahmad Khani and Haji Qader Koyi in awaking Kurdish national sentiment and how this national self-understanding and self-image have been reflected through printed media have been the core elements of this chapter.

Through this chapter light is shed on the different aspects of the Iranian Kurdish movement during the turbulence of the period from 1979 to the 1980s. The Islamic regime’s hostile attitude towards the non-Persian and non-Shiite people and communities’ claim of autonomy and decentralisation of power in Iran is dealt with as an explanation for violent clashes between regime forces and forces of nationalist groups in Iran’s peripheral regions. It is highlighted that the changing regimes in Tehran have, throughout the modern history of the country, failed to provide the non-Persian national communities with their political and cultural rights. In addition, the chapter concentrates on the relations in the twentieth century between Iran’s changing regimes and the non-Persian communities, showing that this relation contains several examples of the regime’s brutal attacks on the country’s Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkemens and Arabs. In this chapter I argue that a mutually mistrusting relationship between the sovereign and these mentioned non-Persian national groups has shaped Iran’s modern history of citizenship.

The Introduction begins with a look at how the contested legacies of the Iran-Iraq War have permeated the debate concerning Iran’s relations with the United States, which draws the reader into the story by demonstrating that the IRGC’s efforts to construct the history of the war represent an important front in the struggle for Iran’s future. After setting out the book’s main subjects and arguments, the first chapter then provides a brief overview of the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, and the IRGC. The following section discusses the existing literature on those topics, the book’s contributions thereto, and the approach to the subject and methodology. The Introduction concludes with a narrative outline of the rest of the book.

As discussed in Chapter 8, while the exiled section of the Iranian Kurdish movement experienced massive decline in its activity and was forced to passivity (kampnshini), the Kurdish civil society has in the 1990s and more recent decades innovated and experienced a new trend, known as the era of flourishing NGOs and civil society associations. Though emergence of this trend has been argued to be a development that emerged as result of the reform era under Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005), the evolution, politicisation and discourse of Kurdish civil society has been unique to this region and has cherished Kurdish nationalism, culture and language. However, as this chapter highlights, another aspect of this development is that through the latest two decades Kurdistan has entered into a new phase of securitisation, expressed through mass arrests, persecutions and executions of Kurdish journalists, civil society and human rights activists, etc. Securitisation of the Kurdish region has been a development intensified through Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s (2005-13) and Hasan Rouhani’s presidencies (2013-).

Chapter 5 presents the story of how Iran finally turned the tide, of how the revolution progressed to the point that it could help instead of hinder the war effort. What the IRGC authors term “the epic of Khorramshahr”—Iran’s retaking of that city after months of Iraqi occupation—marked the culmination of the reversal. For the Guards, the liberation of Khorramshahr represents a case in which faith could be used effectively against firepower. Though the Iraqi forces retained their advantage in firepower, the Iranians’ faithful determination gave them the ultimate edge in their fight to retake the city. The liberation of Khorramshahr signified a turning point both in the war and for the Revolutionary Guards. The campaign marked the IRGC’s most substantial participation in the war to that point and initiated its transformation into the powerful and professional military that experience has allowed it to become.

Among many other characteristics, Kurdish nationalism and the Kurdish question carry strong crossborder features. Crossborder interaction between the Kurds of different parts of Kurdistan has a long history, in which crossborder solidarity has worked as an invaluable source of movement mobilisation. In this chapter, light is shed on the KDPI leadership’s attempt to re-establish the Iranian Kurdish movement in the 1960s through reliance on crossborder interactions with the Iraqi Kurdish movement, under the leadership of the KDI and Mostafa Barzani. Through this chapter the Iranian Kurdish movement’s interaction with the Kurdish movement in Iraq, and the impact of this interaction on the content and direction of the Iranian Kurdish movement, are highlighted. In addition, in order to reflect on critical aspects of this interaction, minor and major events and episodes that contribute to understanding this crossborder Kurdish interaction are included in this chapter.

This chapter discusses the regional conditions that have shaped the framework, direction and content of different forms of mobilisation and conduct of the Iranian Kurdish movement from the 1990s to 2015. This analytical focus includes the activities of the political parties of Iranian Kurds based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). This chapter explains why, during this period, the exiled (KRI-based) Iranian Kurdish movement experienced massive decline in its military and political activities. Taking the early 1990s as the starting point for the latest stage of the Iranian Kurdish movement, it is claimed that this phase was a product of comprehensive regional shifts with impacts on Iran’s domestic and regional policy. In addition it is highlighted that movement decline, misconducted crossborder interaction, thickening and diversification within the movement are among some features and hallmarks of this era’s Iranian Kurdish movement.

The main focus and argument of this chapter is that the Kurdish movement in this period experienced the emergence of several new tendencies that distinguish this era from the previous period (the 1960s). The trends and tendencies which occurred through this era allow us to classify this period as an era of diversification and thickening of the numbers and the spectrum of ideologies of the actors and organisations that participated in this period’s movement. The most eye-catching trend is related to Komala’s announcement of its official activity and its focus on the class problematic in Kurdistan. In line with Komala’s emergence as a new actor within the Kurdish movement, different examples of challenge and difficulties occurred in the relation between this organisation and the KDPI, which resulted in half a decade of war between these major organisations of the Iranian Kurdish movement. These factors and their impact on the post-revolutionary Kurdish movement are discussed in this chapter.