Chapter 3 shifts focus to the postrevolutionary era and how the revolutionary ideology and the national identity it inspired were used and misused by the new Islamic Republic. It also looks at how the Iranian people continued to appropriate and challenge the state’s ideology and representation. The chapter discusses the significance of the Iran–Iraq war (1980-88) in the early years after the revolution and how the war shaped contemporary Iran. While the Pahlavi’s maintained a discourse of monarchical ancient Iran and Persian supremacy, the new Islamic Republic made use of the Karbala paradigm and the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, which played especially well into the context of war and attack from an external force. Though the history and state remained the same, the opposing narratives offered by the old and new rulers speak to the nature of constructed national identities. In both cases, nationalism and Islamism have been crucial to their resistance movements. The Islamic Republic was brought to power by a revolution, whose opposition to the shah was embedded in anti-imperialist and Islamist rhetoric. Echoing Hamid Dabashi’s claim that Shiites must be perpetually engaged in resistance to oppression, the state depicts itself as continuously revolutionary and supports regional movements with analogous rhetoric.

Chapter 5 explores Iranian cinema and television. While cinema and television were important mediums before the revolution, they became especially significant after the revolution in legitimating the newly established Islamic Republic. Media has been used and often tightly controlled by the I.R. for its own ends, but after the war artistic expression became gradually more relaxed and Iranian cinema began to flourish in the late 1990s. In spite of its international acclaim however, cinema in Iran still operates with structured guidelines and artists have come under severe pressure from authorities. Here, we see the interaction of the state and the people and the contest over media and identity formation. While popular films such as Āzhāns-e Shishehi (The Glass Agency) and Ekhrāji-ha (The Rejects) picked out themes from the Iran–Iraq war, both films also challenged stereotypes and depictions of the war. Films like A Separation captivated Iranian audiences for their realism in portraying multifaceted characters and stories of everyday life. The characters in these films questioned the simple binary of good and bad often depicted in war films. Instead, they added layers and nuance to the nature of Iranian people, the lives they lead, and the complexity of their identities.

The 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran and Iraq brought an end to Iranian support of the Kurdish opposition, marking a turning point in the Iraqi regime’s conciliatory policies toward the Assyrian community. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein had risen to power within the Baʿth, gaining the presidency in June 1979. The Iran–Iraq War heightened the Baʿthification of society by the state. As a result, Assyrians began to experience the reversal of conciliatory policies towards their community, which led in turn to the reconstitution of the Assyrian nationalist movement as a whole.

After the historical cycle which started with the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, all of Kurdistan was affected by war and violence. Between 1979 and 2003, two structural dynamics of the Kurdish conflict, which had determined Kurdish history, have also been radicalized and militarized: the centrifugal one tearing apart the Kurdish space along the line of the state borders, linguistic and sectarian zones, partisan traditions and political cultures, and centripetal one unifying it across these many borders under the idea and ideal of ‘Kurdishness’ and by many forms of pacific or armed mobility. This tension was not an easy one to bear, but it has been managed, although at a high cost. The 1980s (and as far as Turkey is concerned 1990s) have probably constituted the darkest period of the Kurdish history with a rough estimation of Kurdish victims, namely, civilians, reaching some 200,000 people. By the beginning of the 2000s, however, Kurds’ survival as a part of Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria and thus, in the trans-frontier Kurdistan, seemed to be out of any major threat.

Chapter 3 “Consolidation (1979–1989)” explores how RJ further safeguarded its existence and promoted its expansion by demobilizing its opponents and those of the IRP, including shah loyalists and royalists, communists and Marxists, Sunni and ethnic separatists, traditional elites and other counterrevolutionaries, and Iraqi forces and their collaborators. By monitoring these adversaries and embellishing the threat that they posed to the IRI, RJ created a self-fulfilling prophesy by radicalizing and pushing Khomeini and the IRP into further confrontation with them. The Cultural Revolution (1980–83) and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–89) facilitated and accelerated the mobilization and expansion of RJ and allowed it to help the IRI in its efforts to Islamize the provinces and villages, and repel invading Iraqi forces and their allies along the western border. RJ further marginalized its opponents and those of the IRI by physically and ideationally penetrating the provinces and villages through infrastructure, healthcare, education, culture, and religion.

This chapter explores the organizational culture of Iraq’s army between its founding in 1921 and its collapse by the time of the American invasion in 2003. During this eighty-two-year history, the organizational culture of the Iraqi Army moved from the face of a foreign occupation in the 1920s, to a political tool of internal social and political coercion, to “probably the most potent military ever wielded by an Arab government.” However, by the time American troops pulled down the statue of Saddam in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, the army’s organizational culture was but a faint echo of not only its Iran-Iraq War pinnacle but also its historic norm. Saddam’s role was the critical factor in this change. Saddam needed professional military officers competent in developing and employing a large modern armed force, but he preferred the counsel of “violent and ignorant personalities.” Saddam could never reconcile the fundamental difference between what he called tribal and civilized (or state) warfare and the professional elements of the Iraqi armed forces could not survive in his shadow.

The American Civil War presented an exceptional state of affairs in modern warfare, because strong personalities could embed their own command philosophies into field armies, due to the miniscule size of the prior US military establishment. The effectiveness of the Union Army of the Tennessee stemmed in large part from the strong influence of Ulysses S. Grant, who as early as the fall of 1861 imbued in the organization an aggressive mind-set. However, Grant’s command culture went beyond simple aggressiveness – it included an emphasis on suppressing internal rivalries among sometimes prideful officers for the sake of winning victories. In the winter of 1861 and the spring of 1862, the Army of the Tennessee was organized and consolidated into a single force, and, despite deficits in trained personnel as compared to other Union field armies, Grant established important precedents for both his soldiers and officers that would resonate even after his departure to the east. The capture of Vicksburg the following summer represented the culminating triumph of that army, cementing the self-confident force that would later capture Atlanta and win the war in the western theater.