A total mess

oppressive Shah regime
-> Islamic uprising; Clerics united against Shah
-> Clerics seize political power
-> Secularist clerics unhappy with extreme clerics; another uprising
-> Extreme clerics win and totalizes political power
-> Secularist clerics and extreme clerics terrorize each other
-> Extreme clerics "export Islamic revolution" to neighbouring countries targetting independence of all Shia muslims from Arab Sunnis
-> Iraq invaded (on my birth date) for fear of a United Islamic Republic
-> 2nd Arabic invasion on Persia in history; Iranians once more victimised; nationalists willingly fight for martyrdom backed with religious ideological support
-> Iran fought back and retrieved lost territory
-> Iran fought some more to effectively "export revolution"
-> Iran becomes bad guy
-> US sells weapon to Iraq to fight Iran
-> Iran helped to release Lebanese-held US hostages to negotiate for weapons
-> US sells weapon to Iran
-> Iranian nationalist got unhappy for dealing with US; expelled secularists support US sale of weapons against Iran

Initially Iranians really went to war fuelled by ideology, so no conscription was needed. That was how Iran sustained the war despite lack of weapons. Human minesweepers were gruesome examples of youths desiring martyrdom. Just imagine you believe that you are doing something incredibly noble and will go to paradise as a result. So you joyfully shout, "Let's go! Let's go!"; and run, and feel the breeze against your face, and hear this loud bang, and then feel nothing. Do you feel a little pain? Do you briefly see pieces of your flesh scattering in the wind? Do you continue to feel exhilarated?

In the end US, Iraq and Soviet Union combined to finish Iran, which was running out of people to fight. Political clerics were forced to cease fire.

Paragraphs that impressed me:

"While drawing strength from Iranian nationalism, Khomeini and the political clerics damned the Iraqi invasion as a war against Islam. This too fed into the national psyche, arousing the sense of injustice and martyrdom so central to Shia culture. Psychologically, every Iranian Shia is conditioned from childhood to feel the great historic wrong committed against the Shia by the Sunnis and to accept as their task the recapture of Karbala. Thus, as the war marched on day after day, it became less a heroic defense of Iran with both its Persian and Islamic traditions and more a daily enactment of Shia themes of sacrifice, dispossession, and mourning."

"By the summer of 1985, the political clerics were finding it increasingly difficult to justify to everyone, except their base constituency, a war in which the enemy held very little Iranian territory. It was proving equally difficult to totally blame an unofficial inflation rate of about 35 percent a year, dwindling foreign reserves, and severe economic woes on the "imposed war" which the regime consistently refused to negotiate."