The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

199 – Holy War


The Iranians had taken a devastating defeat on the battlefields of Southern Iraq when fighting the American-led Coalition. Just before the superpowers went to war, Iran saw its ambitions in Iraq near destroyed in the face of American firepower. When the Soviet Union and the United States started fighting each other, Iran began that fight as a co-belligerent of the Soviets in that: not as a full ally. Their simultaneous war with Iraq petered out though there remained clashes with the Americans. Soviet air and naval forces made use of Iran as they took part in strikes against the Americans themselves, doing far more damage to them than the Iranians could do. One US Navy carrier was annihilated and another knocked out of action during those clashes. That fighting at sea came with the Soviets losing their own naval forces in the region – the seas were swept of Soviet ships and submarines – but that didn’t necessarily negatively affect Iran. The Americans turned their attention away from the Middle East towards Europe and the Far East. They pulled out air units first despite their weakened naval air presence. American troops inbound for the fight against Iran were turned around, causing quite the chaos with the logistic train, before there began in recent days a general pull-out of the majority of their already deployed ground forces too. The bulk of their army which had beaten the Iranians near Basra were being diverted to Europe to ‘save France’. Leaders in the West had decided that France was more important than Iraq. The British and French followed the American lead: they were withdrawing many of their forces too, something long delayed by political wrangling but now underway. Despite tensions between Moscow and Tehran, where Iran wouldn’t budge an inch on matters it regarded as threatening its sovereignty, there were much Iranian-Soviet cooperation still. This included intelligence links. Stavka had a team with the Iranian military high command and the assessment from those Soviet officers was that the time was ripe for an Iranian attack to take advantage of how the situation had changed. Not fools, the Iranians understood that the Soviets wanted them to disrupt the American withdrawal to cause problems with the redeployment of them to Europe. Only when Iran was ready would it strike, no matter what the Soviets wanted. The attack came when it came: there wasn’t a deliberate tie-in with other events as was suspected by President Reagan.

Ayatollah Khomeini found the time ripe today to launch his Holy War. The orders had gone out and those on the frontlines, without any clue of the bigger geo-political picture, followed them. Iranian soldiers went into battle following a demand that they fight with the required revolutionary and religious zeal which Khomeini wanted them to. There were a lot of them, those Iranian soldiers, who went into the Second Battle of Southern Iraq. A lot. Human wave attacks commenced with men on the ground and even some being transported by air too. They were going to give the unbelievers a defeat worthy of history: for the glory of God, Khomeini had said.

The Americans were caught looking the wrong way. On the face of it, the failure to see Iranian preparations for an attack on this scale was inexcusable. With all of their reconnaissance assets and intelligence gathering capabilities, just how could CENTCOM miss this!? They had a reason to be looking elsewhere though. Almost every Middle Eastern nation, plus those beyond into North & East Africa, was at war. General Crist’s CENTCOM were responsible for a fight over a huge area with assets deployed in support of many allies. They had been stripped of much of their capability too. Iran was regarded as already beaten, something which the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defence had agreed with. Iranian deception but, more importantly, the manner in which they went about their attack readiness in an unconventional manner, threw the Americans off-balance. Crist’s intelligence staff was looking for the wrong things when it came to keeping an eye on the Iranians. They knew full well the miserable current state of Iran’s air force and navy where neither was no longer any threat. Iran’s best equipped ground forces, the heavy units especially, had been pounded into the sand (well… marshes) of Iraq already. For them to bring so many infantry into play as they did when Khomeini ordered an attack would be stupid when CENTCOM had blasted apart better protected forces with almost contemptuous ease. However, the Americans had done that using combat units either withdraw or in the process of pulling out. They were stripping away the majority of their ground units and replacing them with those of Coalition allies from neighbouring countries. The Saudis had brought up many troops following the arm-twisting done of King Fahd to do what he hadn’t wanted to do before and send troops into Iraq to face off against the Iranians. The Saudis, while they could claim they were victorious in defending their country when Iraq had invaded them, were worn down. Even if they hadn’t been, they couldn’t take the place of first-rate US Army units withdrawing. Those Saudi troops had also not been sent into the slivers of Iranian territory taken on the northern side of the Shatt al-Arab (nothing special but forward ground) after the US Marines had left there: this gave them no outposts ahead of their main positions. CENTCOM also didn’t believe that the Iranians would do some of the daring things that they did. Imagining human wave attacks on the ground was already too much; the idea that they would send paratroopers into Kuwait was preposterous!

The Saudis melted under the Iranian attacks. They were based to the east of Iranian-held Basra, between there and the mouth of the Persian Gulf where US Marines who’d been pulled out had fought before. Tens of thousands of Iranians came at them. It was a psychological collapse. The Saudis were equipped to make a fighting withdrawal using firepower of their own and what they could still call upon from the Americans. But there were so many attackers… The Iranians came forward into sustained heavy fire. Those shot down or blown up were replaced by more. It seemed like the Iranians had an endless stream of men coming forward. That they didn’t but it looked that way to those standing in the way of it. Some of the attackers got in among the Saudi’s positions. Once they did, any hope of an organised retreat was gone. Soldiers dropped their weapons and ran while commanders joined them. The disaster which unfolded was quite something. The whole Saudi position there was gone in a few hours leaving the road to Kuwait open. On the inland flank, there remained the now slimmed down US XVIII Airborne Corps. The 9th Infantry & 101st Air Assault Divisions were still here; gone in recent days had been the 24th Infantry & 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment & 157th Infantry Brigade. Only those American paratroopers were currently in France with the rest en route via Suez and the Med. Around Basra and west of there, the Iranians came at the Americans. Surprised they were and they took losses, but the XVIII Corps put up a strong fight. They faced more Iranians than they could successfully take on where they were positioned and fell back to give them room to properly engage those attackers. The Iranians were blasted and blasted again by XVIII Corps and CENTCOM firepower. They would have been perfect targets for a big air strike – an Arc Light attack with B-52s would have done wonders here – but the Americans had to make do with what they had. The staged retreat was well done and would have been an overall success if it hadn’t been for the Saudi collapse in the east. That made all the good American work here to re-establish themselves now a moot point.

Into Kuwait came the Iranian Army’s 23rd Commando Division along with multiple Revolutionary Guard units of battalion size. They were flown into that small country on all sorts of aircraft and helicopters. Losses on the way in were high. American and Coalition aircraft, plus missile defences, took their toll. In a pure military sense, this was a costly disaster. Once on the ground, the Iranians found themselves scattered and in a fight against a lot of the enemy. Whereas up in Iraq, they had the manpower advantage, it was the opposite case here. They fought Americans, Brits and Arab troops. The US Marines had their 1st Marine Amphibious Brigade here (soon to depart after handing over forward positions to the north to those doomed Saudis) while there were Coalition troops from several Gulf countries as well as Egypt. The British had their 24th Infantry Brigade currently on the Red Sea side of Saudi Arabia loading into allied shipping to take them to France but the 3rd Commando Brigade here in Kuwait. The brigade designation didn’t mean the same as it meant for the Iranians. These were Royal Marines, Paras and Gurkhas. Back home, the decision had been made by the War Cabinet to return to Europe the 24th Brigade ahead of the 3rd Brigade because the former had more combat strength (tanks, armoured vehicles and self-propelled artillery) on-hand over the latter. There had been calls for both brigades, not just one to leave yet Prime Minister Whitelaw had been convinced to leave a presence in the region to support allies. This was a political decision: a grave mistake many called it. Those British troops fought alongside their allies against the suddenly arriving Iranians. Kuwait was once more a battlefield. Throughout the day, the majority of the Iranians were either overcome or contained. They’d wrecked the Coalition’s rear areas in Kuwait though, hitting the airbases for what air support there was on-hand especially hard. The Iranians would have done best going after the logistics network instead if they really wanted to achieve something special but Khomeini’s military advisers were, to put it kindly, substandard in their thinking on that matter. Blowing up F-16s with RPGs were what their commandos were ordered to do, not ambush lightly-protected trucks laden with supplies.

Faced with their flank torn open and the mess in Kuwait – even in victory, Coalition forces there were in no state to march to the rescue of the Saudis –, the XVIII Corps was forced into making a much wider withdrawal than they would otherwise have done so. They withdrew back through the deserts of Southern Iraq west of Kuwait. This was the battlefield on which only recently they had comprehensively defeated the once powerful Iraqi army. Burnt-out tank carcasses were seen, so too even bodies had been let exposed to the elements. The withdrawal was successful and opened up a large distance between them and the less mobile Iranians while also securing flank connections with Coalition forces in Kuwait. The ignominy of retreat was something new for the XVIII Corps. Since they’d been in the Middle East, the very first engagement aside when a battalion of the 82nd Airborne was lost facing tanks, there had only come victory after victory with onwards pushes. Now, they were doing what the US Army Europe had done in falling back while giving up hard-won ground. This wasn’t good for morale.

Urgently re-tasked CENTCOM reconnaissance assets were busy late in the day and into the night after taskings over Libya and Syria were cancelled due to Iranian actions. Aircraft and satellites began to deliver intelligence on what was going on far behind the new frontlines. Pockets of Saudi resistance, those who’d stubbornly held on in isolated spots in the Shatt al-Arab were overcome. Beyond there, looking into Iran, enemy armour was spotted coming south through Khuzestan. First panicked reports suggested it might be Soviet forces because the Iranians weren’t known to have such forces available. This was soon corrected though: the nationality of the tank crews and the thinking that Iran couldn’t move around its forces like they were. These were Iranian heavy units that had been in Iraq fighting towards Baghdad some time ago but had been secretly withdrawn back into Iran to make the trip southwards. They were now heading in the direction of Kuwait via Basra. Khomeini still had his mass of indoctrinated troops taking part in the Holy War ready as foot soldiers in human waves attacks but he was bringing down tanks too. The XVIII Corps’ own tanks were few in number after so many armoured units had been redeployed to Europe.

Crist made a request up the chain of command. CENTCOM’s commander wasn’t asking to have the pull-out of troops reversed, as Moscow had believed he would ask once the Iranians struck, but was calling for something else instead. He wanted to use nuclear weapons – on land – to stop the Iranians from catching up with and wiping out the XVIII Corps.