Radio War Nerd EP #70—Iran-Iraq War (1980-8)

john is really at the top of his game during this era of RWN

Wild listening to the discussion towards the end here now and knowing about the soleimani assassination that would come within a few years

Those human wave attacks are fucking unbelievable. They don't grow 'em like that in the U.S.

Man, going back through the old episodes and I really appreciate how much work you've put into improving the audio. Not that the old ones are unlistenable, but the new ones are orgasmic in comparison.

im finally a patron!

I read in a newspaper article a while back that the Iraqis had got really good at hydrological engineering and used it effectively for defensive purposes. So much so that the Americans were worried about it when they invaded Iraq. Was it ever really a factor in this war?

Great episode. I read Efraim Karsh's book recently and this was a good refresher of lessons from this tragic conflict. However, I have to say that the "both sides do it" argument carries no weight at all for me. I fail to see what those who use this rhetorical gambit are trying to accomplish. If both the Russians and the US shoot down airliners and then deny it, does this make it any better? If the goal is to identify hypocracy, that is one thing, but beyond this, what is the point?

Tbh all I want for valentine's day is another episode of radio war nerd

I loved this episode. Keep up the good work guys.

Iraq had an expeditionary force in Syria during the 73 war and they did pretty well for an arab force. So they had real combat experience !

You guys mention that the CIA (and others) thought the Russians had to be behind the Iranian revolution. The meme, as I remember it, was that the Russian's needed a port on the Indian ocean, which was also used re: Afghanistan

What was the outro music from?

This is an excellent episode and a further testament to the excellent work product which is consistent. It's rare to find this kind of a podcast. You guys can't produce these fast enough.

This is a top-notch episode. At about an hour in I snapped out of the trance and thought "wow - this is amazing". When John gets going on a good war description it really becomes magic.

Amazing episode. Best five bucks I spend every month

Great episode, loved it. As for the Ukrainian offensive, did you see the transcripts or video of McCain/Graham's recent visit? I wonder how much effect it had. <a href="http://www.macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/31180/53/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/31180/53/</a>

Great work. Only problem with this episode was its short length.

Recent subscriber here. Have you done any episodes on mediaeval Europe?

What was the song at the end of the episode? Also great episode! As an American who was born in Tehran just before the shah fled I am endlessly interested in this tumultuous era and region.

Show was great as always, but also wanted to say considering you were having problems with the audio, the episode was seamless and I'd have never even noticed had you not mentioned it. Well done.

Also re:Carter I can see how you could write off a lot of disgusting foreign policy under him as being enacted by the US deep state (not intervening when ROK started sending in the military during the Kwangju protests, Contra funding starting under his administration etc) but one of the causes he was personally involved in during his time as governor was creating a holiday honoring the army in protest when Calley was sentenced for My Lai, which puts him pretty far away from even a heavily qualified pacifist.

For Swedish readers I'd recommend Zahak by Sven Delblanc, which doesn't seem to be available in English translation. It's a literary travelogue written by a Farsi-speaking academic and author who went to Iran for a couple months in 1971, which actually calls most of what you talk about. As his sympathies were mostly with the radical milieu at the time he spends some time talking to both Iranian leftists and some actual poor people, and comes to the conclusion that Tudeh etc are almost entirely urban and middle class and no members have any understanding of, or even an interest in talking to, the rural population that at the time still makes up most of Iran. At the same time speeches by banned clerics can be heard on cassette in a lot of villages and there's a widespread dissatisfaction with the regime, which makes him come to the conclusion that the religious party will probably end up in power when dissatisfaction with the shah inevitably explodes, so I wouldn't say that it was impossible to say that the left was weak or that there were other parties also opposing the American client state ahead of time if you actually took an interest in Iran, even if anyone working from the general media sentiment probably was blindsided.

I am curious about the million Iranian dead number you cited. Did you mean casualties, or dead? It seems that the censuses taken since that time have led to a conclusion that the overall dead were lower than initially reported (still well north of 100k dead on both sides).

On a semi-related page, James Baker III not only was seen in the stands at the Super Bowl with Mike Pence, but also gave a long interview on US foreign policy (past and present) along with his views on the chaos of the Trump administration thus far: <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/james-baker-interview-donald-trump-ronald-reagan-214742" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/james-baker-interview-donald-trump-ronald-reagan-214742</a>

@Tupac: I've tried to give my RWN collection some sensible file names + show dates: <a href="http://imgur.com/a/F4ZYv" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://imgur.com/a/F4ZYv</a>

I'd like to add mp3s with variable bitrate (VBR) to that wishlist. The shows have grown way past 130mb again.

OT: Is there a single summary page/document that gives a synopsis of all the podcasts? It can be something as simple as a spreadsheet of all the episodes with the summaries for each posted podcast in the cell next to it. Also, do you intend to produce transcripts? Those could probably be produced fairly cheaply with someone proofreading a machine generated first-pass copy for names of people and places. That would be very useful to find that one fact or reference that is too annoying to re-listen to a couple complete episodes to find.