Welcome to the Deep Dive. I am incredibly glad
you could join us today. Yeah, thanks for being
here with us. Because we have a very specific,
almost, you know, microscopic mission ahead of
us today. We really do. Usually when we look
at history, we're taking the bird's eye view.
Yeah. We look at those sweeping arrows pushing
across giant maps or decades condensing into
single sentences. Right. The macro level. Exactly.
But today... We are taking a magnifying glass
to a single, hyper -specific, four -day window
in June of 1981. We're going to use this tiny
slice of time to understand how the sprawling,
chaotic, and frankly contradictory mechanics
of modern warfare actually work on the ground.
It is a phenomenal case study. When you zoom
in this closely on one isolated event, you stop
seeing the abstract concept of war and you start
seeing the grinding mechanical reality of it.
And our source material for this journey today
is, it's interesting all on its own. It's just
a single Wikipedia article. Just one page. Yeah.
Detailing a specific military offensive known
as Operation Commander -in -Chief. This took
place during the Iran -Iraq War. We are going
to dig into the data, the timelines, and the
historical records presented in this text. But
before we get into the tactical weeds of what
happened in those four days, we really need to
establish some parameters for how we are looking
at this information. Yes, please. This is a vital
caveat for you, the listener, to keep in mind
before we begin. Because this conflict involves
heavily charged geopolitical history. I mean,
we are talking about figures like Saddam Hussein
and Rouhani, along with intersecting interests
from massive global superpowers. It's a minefield.
It is. So I want to explicitly state right now
that our deep dive today will remain strictly
neutral. Right. We are not taking sides. We are
not endorsing any political viewpoints, nor are
we evaluating the morality or the overarching
policies of the nations involved. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Our goal here is entirely analytical.
We are merely unpacking the factual data, the
timelines and the historical records exactly
as they are presented in our source text. OK,
let's unpack this. Our mission today is to discover
how a seemingly minor three kilometer military
advance acts as an absolute masterclass in military
strategy, complex geopolitics and even modern
historical record keeping. It's a lot packed
into a very small space. It really is. Yeah.
And to really grasp. why those three kilometers
matter, we need to zoom out first and look at
the broader context. When you look at the timeline
provided in our source, the sheer scale of the
Iran -Iraq conflict leading up to this point
is just staggering. The pre -war incidents alone
set a very tense, highly volatile stage. You
don't just wake up one morning to a full -scale
mechanized war. Right. It builds over years.
The page outlines this whole cascading series
of events. You've got the 1975 Algiers Agreement,
the massive upheaval of the Iranian Revolution.
1979 Kurdish rebellion in Iran, the 1979 Khuzestan
insurgency, the Iranian embassy siege. It is
a relentless buildup of pressure. Yeah, all of
this happens before the 1980 Iraqi invasion even
officially kicks off. And when it does, it starts
with an airstrike and then immediately spirals
into these massive overlapping operations. Khaman
99, the first battle of Khorramshahr, Scorch
Sword, Dezful. It's a continuous back and forth
across a massive front. What's fascinating here
is the staggering list of international participants
drawn into this conflict. When you look at the
sidebar of this Wikipedia article, it lists the
supporters for both. sides oh yeah i saw that
and it reads less like a regional dispute and
more like a roster of the entire globe you have
the soviet union which the documentation notes
supported both iran and iraq wait pause on that
for a second the soviet union is actively supporting
both sides of an active brutal war yes that sounds
incredibly counterintuitive it's completely dizzying
when you try to map out the alliances it does
sound crazy but it perfectly highlights the proxy
nature of the war Superpowers were hedging their
bets. They were aiming to maintain influence
in the region, regardless of who ultimately won
the territory. Then you have the United States
officially supporting Iraq, but also simultaneously
entangled in the Iran -Contra affair, supplying
arms to Iran. So both superpowers are playing
both sides. Exactly. And the web just keeps expanding
outward. You have Britain. Involved in the arms
to Iraq scandal, you have Egypt, France, Israel,
Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, North Korea, Pakistan,
Singapore and Syria. There's half the globe.
And that doesn't even touch on the Kurdish involvement
with various Peshmerga factions or the United
Nations Security Council constantly trying to
intervene. Right. This wasn't just two neighbors
fighting over a border. It was a massive global
proxy arena where dozens of nations were projecting
their own geopolitical and economic interests
onto the deserts of Khuzestan. It's like the
entire world was pulling invisible strings in
this one geographic region. And that brings us
to the year 1981. The crucial year. According
to the timeline, by 1981, the initial chaos of
the invasion had settled into a very distinct,
very grim phase. The article literally titles
this section, The Stalemate. We see a list of
operations during this period, like Nasser H3
and Opera. But when we hear the word stalemate,
I think we tend to picture a timeout, like a
pause in the action. A stalemate in warfare is
anything but a pause. It is arguably one of the
most dangerous and grueling phases of any conflict.
How so? It's the grinding halt where front lines
freeze. But the consumption of resources, ammunition
and human life continues at a staggering pace.
This wasn't a ceasefire. Right. This was thousands
of men dug into the desert trenches, firing artillery
back and forth, burning through national resources
while the borders stubbornly refused to budge.
Which sets the stage for why Operation Commander
-in -Chief was suddenly so necessary. If you're
Iran and your entire front line is frozen in
this meat grinder of a stalemate, what do you
do? You have to act. Right. You have to test
the walls. You have to find a way to break the
stagnation because simply sitting in those trenches
is bleeding you dry. Iran found itself in a position
where it needed to launch completely new probing
offensives to free its territory from the Iraqi
forces. And that requires a very specific type
of military calculation. You don't just throw
your entire army at a fortified wall and hope
it breaks. You probe. You probe. You test. Let's
dive into the details of that test. No. In Persian,
the operation is listed as Amaliyat -e -Firmandi
-ye -Kolikova. But the complete translated name
is quite striking. It's Commander -in -Chief
Khomeini Ruakota. A very powerful title. Yeah.
It was officially launched on June 11, 1981,
in the Abadan and Darkoven regions. Now, the
combatants here are also worth noting. It was
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC,
moving against the Iraqi Baathist army. That
distinction between the forces is incredibly
important for context. You have the Iraqi Baathist
army, which is a highly structured conventional
military force. They are relying on traditional
armored divisions and established doctrine. And
they are up against the IRGC, which at this point
in 1981 is a paramilitary force born directly
out of the recent Iranian revolution. They are
operating alongside but distinct from Iran's
regular army. It's a fascinating clash of military
cultures and structures. And their objectives
for this specific push were very calculated.
It had a dual purpose. First, it was designed
to break the siege of Abadan. Yes. Abadan was
a critical location, an island city with a massive
oil refinery. And breaking that siege was a strategic
necessity for Iran. But second, and crucially,
this operation was explicitly intended to serve
as a test for a much larger, highly significant
upcoming offensive called Salman al -Amey. They
are essentially beta testing a massive military
offensive before committing the bulk of their
forces to seminal AMA. They need real world data.
Makes sense. They are probing the enemy's defenses,
testing their own logistical capabilities, evaluating
how their command structures communicate under
fire and seeing exactly how the Baptist Army
responds to a direct assault in this specific
challenging terrain. Here's where it gets really
interesting. And honestly, looking at these numbers
initially confused me. This operation lasted
for four entire days from. June 11th to June
15th. Four days of coordinated military effort.
A long time in combat. Exactly. And the total
distance advanced by the Iranian forces, just
three kilometers. When you think about modern
warfare with tanks and airstrikes and mechanized
infantry, a three kilometer advance over almost
100 hours of fighting sounds like a massive failure.
It absolutely sounds like a failure until you
visualize what those three kilometers actually
represent on the ground. Three kilometers is
roughly 3 ,000 meters. Right. If you, the listener,
are walking at a normal, leisurely pace, you
could cover that distance in under 40 minutes.
You probably drive that distance on your morning
commute in three minutes. Barely even noticing.
Exactly. But in the context of this war, moving
that front line took four days of intense, unrelenting
combat, immense logistical planning, and the
full weight of the IRGC pushing against incredibly
well -fortified Iraqi positions. It completely
reframes how we think about the speed of war.
Victory here isn't measured in sweeping maneuvers
across a province. It's measured in literal meters.
It's fighting for every single sand dune, every
single trench line. And that incredibly slow,
incredibly difficult advance brings us to the
most sobering part of the historical record we
are examining today. The sheer human and material
cost of those 3 ,000 meters. Let's look at the
brutal math of the battlefield. The numbers in
the Wikipedia info box for this three kilometer
stretch are stark. On the side of the Iraqi Ba
'athist army, the documentation lists 1 ,496
forces as killed, wounded, and captured. Almost
1 ,500 casualties. Furthermore, at least 32 tanks
and personnel carriers were listed as entirely
annihilated. On the Iranian side, 120 IRGC forces
were killed. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, these numbers tell us a very detailed,
very grim story about the reality of that terrain.
When you look at that high casualty rate and
the sheer volume of equipment lost, 32 tanks
and armored personnel carriers destroyed in a
space of just three kilometers, it tells us how
deeply entrenched and fortified those forces
were. Let's actually picture that. 32 destroyed
tanks and armored vehicles scattered over a distance
you could walk in less than an hour. It's a graveyard
of steel. That is roughly 10 heavy armored vehicles
burning every single kilometer. You don't lose
three dozen heavily armored vehicles unless you
are fighting tooth and nail for every single
inch of dirt in a highly concentrated area. The
text explicitly mentions that the Iranian forces
were recapturing powerful and significant positions
held by the Iraqi army in the area. Powerful
and significant. Right. We are talking about
taking a piece of land that is arguably smaller
than a typical city neighborhood. And yet the
density of the combat required to dislodge an
entrenched army from that tiny piece of geography
resulted in a bottleneck. absolute devastation.
Over 1 ,600 people killed, wounded, or captured
combined just to move the line an hour's walk
forward. It really paints a picture of a concentrated,
nightmarish bottleneck. And the fact that this
level of destruction was considered merely a
test run for a larger operation is mind -boggling.
It changes your perspective on the scale of the
violence. But this leads us to perhaps the most
compelling layer of our deep dive today. Not
just what happened on the battlefield in 1981,
but how we, sitting here today, actually know
what we know about it. Ah, yes. The historiography
of the event, how the narrative is constructed
and preserved. Yes, the meta -narrative. Because
right at the very top of this Wikipedia article,
before you even get to the info box, the casualty
numbers or the history there, is a very prominent,
very modern warning banner. I noticed that. It
was flagged by an editor in March of 2023. And
it states, some of this article's listed sources
may not be reliable. Please help improve this
article by looking for better, more reliable
sources. This raises an important question, one
that you should always ask when consuming historical
information, especially in a digital age. Who
is holding the pen? Right. When we scroll down
to the reference section of this article to see
where all these highly specific numbers come
from, we see 10 distinct footnotes. And when
you look closely at the URLs provided to those
footnotes, a very clear pattern emerges. See
domain. like difapress .airr, iznairna .airr,
resikkun .net, tasmimnews .com, and jamran .news.
If you group those conceptually, what you are
looking at is a collection of Iranian state -aligned
news agencies, cultural portals, and defense
-focused media. Okay. In the fog of war, and
particularly in the decades following a protracted
conflict, the historical record itself becomes
a fiercely contested battlefield. It introduces
a fascinating layer of digital historiography.
You have this incredibly brutal, complex, multinational
war from the 1980s. And how do we learn about
it today? Through a crowdsourced Wikipedia article
with a giant citation -needed banner slapped
on top of it by a random editor 40 years later.
It is entirely representative of our modern era.
It's a very modern way to consume history, where
the fog of war becomes a permanent digital reality.
It absolutely does. When we read that exactly
1 ,496 enemy forces were killed, wounded, and
captured, or that 32 tanks were annihilated,
or that the recaptured positions were powerful
and significant, we must recognize that these
specific data points and the adjectives used
to describe them are drawn from the perspective
of the victors of that specific battle or the
nation that is compiling the record. The history
is written by the victors. Always. The historiography
of war is rarely completely absurd. It is shaped
by the organizations, the state media and the
nations that catalog the events. A phrase like
powerful and significant positions is a narrative
tool just as much as it is a tactical description.
So what does this all mean? Why does this matter
for you, the listener, as you navigate the world
today? It's a powerful reminder of media literacy.
Essential media literacy. Whether you are prepping
for a business meeting, catching up on the morning
news or researching global history out of sheer
curiosity, the metadata. like that reliability
warning banner or the domain extensions in the
footnotes, is just as important as the data itself.
The context of where the numbers come from is
the only way to truly understand what those numbers
are trying to tell you. Acknowledging the source
does not necessarily mean dismissing the event
entirely. Good point. The battle happened. The
siege was real. Men died. But understanding the
lens through which the event is being shown to
you is the foundation of critical thinking. It
allows you to see the difference between raw
tactical data and curated historical narrative.
Okay, let's do a quick recap of the massive amount
of ground we've covered today. We took a deep
dive into a tiny four -day window in June of
1981 called Operation Commander -in -Chief. We
saw how a three -kilometer advance in the Abaddon
and Darkoven regions was utilized as a grueling,
highly lethal test run to break an agonizing
stalemate. It paved the way for larger, subsequent
operations like Salmonella May and Tarical Quads.
The stepping stones of the conflict. And perhaps
most importantly, we saw how this one tiny slice
of Kuzestan province served as a microcosm for
an eight -year global conflict, a proxy war that
somehow managed to pull in over a dozen international
powers and superpowers. It is a lot to process,
but I want to leave you with a final lingering
thought to explore on your own. When you look
at the source's massive cascading timeline of
back and forth operations from names like Scorch
Sword all the way to Eternal Light, you see a
relentless machine of offensives spanning nearly
a decade. A machine that never stops. Never.
If a single operation that cost well over a thousand
casualties and left dozens of armored vehicles
burning in the desert was considered merely a
test for a three kilometer advance, how did the
architects of war ultimately measure the value
of human life against the value of geography?
That is a heavy but absolutely essential question
to carry with you. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive today. Keep reading, keep
exploring, and most importantly, keep questioning
the contest of the information you consume. We
will catch you next time.