The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War Faith, Firepower, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded after the Iranian revolution in 1979, is one of the most powerful and prominent but least understood organizations in Iran. In this book, Annie Tracy Samuel presents an innovative and compelling history of this organization and, by using the Iran-Iraq War as a focal point, analyzes the links between war and revolution. Tracy Samuel provides an internal view of the IRGC by examining how the Revolutionary Guards have recorded and assessed the history of the war in the massive volume of Persian language publications produced by the organization's top members and units. This not only enhances our comprehension of the IRGC's roles and power in contemporary Iran, but also demonstrates how the history of the Iran-Iraq War has immense bearing on the Islamic Republic's present and future. In doing so, the book reveals how analyzing Iran's history provides the critical tools for understanding its actions today.

1. Introduction; 2. Guards: the establishment of the IRGC; 3. Historians: the IRGC's history of the Iran-Iraq war; 4. Striking while the Revolution's hot: the causes of the Iran-Iraq war; 5. Willing and unable: Iran confronts the Iraqi invasion; 6. The epic of Khorramshahr: Iran in the war from occupation to liberation; 7. Pursuing the aggressor: Iran's invasion of Iraq; 8. War for peace: the Iran-Iraq war, 1985-1987; 9. An end to a war without end: the Iran-Iraq war, 1987-1988; 10. Faith and firepower: Iran's prosecution of the Iran-Iraq war; 11. The holy defense continues: the Iran-Iraq war and Iran's national security; 12. Unfinished history: the IRGC and the Holy Defense Research and Documentation Center since the war; 13. Keeping the war alive: the IRGC's commitment to writing the history of the Iran-Iraq war.

Annie Tracy Samuel is a scholar specializing in the modern history of Iran and the Middle East. She is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and previously served as a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her publications include journal articles in International Security and Diplomatic History; her commentary on current events has been published in Lawfare, The Hill, CNN, and The Atlantic; and she has delivered talks at universities and conferences and briefed government agencies in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.