Iraqi regular army
A Soviet-equipped force that opened the war and later grew into a mass conscript machine.
Iraq began with more armour and air; Iran answered with numbers, revolutionary infantry, and later better combined operations. Both improvised under sanctions and suppliers' politics.
Naval and air attacks on tankers made the Gulf a third service's war.
Systems
Iranian army + IRGC
A dual structure of regulars and revolutionary guards -- politically as important as tactically.
Missile and air raids
The war of the cities as a political system of fear.
Gulf navies / US escorts
Tanker protection as an international force layer after 1987.
Supplier networks
Credits and parts as a coalition of invoices.
UN ceasefire machinery
UNIIMOG observers after 598 -- a thin but real end-institution.
Meters
Duration of grinding
80
English memory
22
Chemical crime weight
88
Economic wreck (both)
78
UN end-script role
70
Tech novelty
40
Hotspots
Khorramshahr / Abadan
The first city war.
Basra approaches
Iran's long bid that failed.
Faw
1986-88 peninsula hinge.
Gulf tanker lanes
The internationalised front.
Halabja
The named civilian crime site.
Materials
Oil and tankers
The prize and the target.
Water and marshes
Southern geography as an obstacle and a weapon of terrain -- described, not instructed.
Imported munitions
A war fought on other people's factories.
Chemical agents
Recorded as crime, not as a recipe.
Force history here is organisational and political. It is not an employment guide for chemical or any other weapons.
Human-wave descriptions in Western press often erased Iranian learning after 1984 -- a bias to correct without denying the cost.