In striking contrast to the Arab-Israeli conflict — a long-standing, much-studied dispute — the Iraq-Iran war is recent and little known. A veteran government analyst who recently began writing publicly under his own name, Anthony Cordesman, has been perhaps the most helpful writer on the subject, and this study may be his finest book.
Cordesman's appraisal turns on the evenness of the conflict: "The war is in its seventh year precisely because the military forces and strategic capabilities of both sides have remained in so close a balance." Both countries are stretched to their limits; in both, butter is steadily cut back for guns. While chance or a single military mistake could decide the war's outcome, Iran's revolutionary fervor and favorable geography make it far less vulnerable. This accounts for a cautious Iraqi strategy bordering on the paralytic.
The author is pessimistic about postwar conditions, for he believes the war may spur a long-term rise in Kurdish separatism in Iraq and a long-term decline in Iran's standard of living. An Iraqi defeat could also split that country along religious lines. And though he calls the territorial disagreement behind the war "stupid and pointless," he foresees it continuing even after fighting stops.
Cordesman's policy recommendation deserves close attention: The West "can afford to wait and to act in its own interests.... A consistent and balanced Western policy toward, both nations — protecting Iraq from defeat while maintaining the offer of better relations and economic ties with Iran—is all that is necessary."
