The Last Total War?: Iran-Iraq War

A great refresher from Real Time History

This war, which cost the lives of several hundred thousand people, started over 40 years ago, but its repercussions are still with us today.

This is an in-depth, 40+ minute documentary, and, like all other documentaries in this series, very well-researched.

This story follows the money, and there’s a segment that shows which countries supported either Iran or Iraq or both, and why. Some of those whys are still very relevant today.

On a personal note, my destroyer was on Operation Preying Mantis in 1988, which the documentary mentions. I wasn’t there, because my ship needed a new IFF radar technician trained and my wife was pregnant at the time, so I was attending an Electronics Technician school when that went down. Lucky me.

But I heard the story firsthand from my shipmates. The Iranian ships the documentary speaks of were Swedish-made speedboats with .50 caliber machine guns mounted on them.

They took on an American destroyer and a frigate, charged straight at them and ran into surface radar-controlled 5-inch guns. It was no contest. Afterwards, anyone who called Iranians cowards around my shipmates would get a ration of shit, and most of them concluded the US Navy had been acting as a mercenary force for the oil companies.

“Join the Navy, see the world. Meet interesting people and kill them,” they said.

Few re-enlisted.

If you want to watch this, get comfortable first. I think you’ll enjoy it and probably learn a couple of things. I know I did.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully watching and commenting, good day or night and good luck.