Diplomacy from the Bully Pulpit: Saddam Hussein’s “Address to Nation Concerning the War with Iran”
By: Kilian B. White
Tags: Commentary, History, Middle East Studies, Middle East, Nonfiction Writing

Saddam Hussein in 1982.

Six days after the outset of the Iran-Iraq War, on 28 September, 1980, Saddam Hussein addressed the Iraqi public. His speech outlined his justifications for the war, and outlined an Iraqi-centric scheme for Arab resistance to the emergent Persian threat. While delivered to the Iraqi public the speech was addressed greater pan-Arab community, and the international community at large. Far from being a mere declaration war, Saddam Hussein’s 28 September address on the commencement of the Iran-Iraq war is very specifically drafted. It recalls both Iraqi nationalist values as well as pan-Arabic ones, in order to advance the cause for war against Iran to the Iraqi people, the nations of the Middle East, and the international community.

Even in Hussein’s opening remarks the pan-Arab nature of his address is clear. His introduction contains an inclusive rhetorical gesture to Arabs everywhere: “greetings of the national and pan-Arab struggle.” This equation of Iraq’s war with Iran to the “pan-Arab” struggle hints at Saddam’s objectives and audience in this speech. The address is is directed at all Arabs, not just those residing in Iraq. Furthermore, not only are all Arabs meant to hear Saddam’s entreaty, they are asked to sympathize with and contribute to his war effort — for after all, the Iraqi and pan-Arab struggles are one and the same.

Hussein does not merely direct his entreaties towards the pan-Arab cause. Speaking in 1980 as the leader of one the Middle East’s dwindling number of secular governments, Saddam was all too aware of political Islam’s growing role in Middle Eastern governance and was wary of the threat revolutionary Iran posed to his own secular regime. Thus he opens his address “in the name of God.” He is reminding his audience that he too is a both Muslim and an Arab Leader. Addressing the Middle East’s burgeoning class of political Muslims is only half of Hussein’s intention with these words. His nation sits on the cusp of conflict with the self-proclaimed Islamic Republic of Iran. He is not just demonstrating his own piety, but also seeking for religious parity the newly-minted theocracy he is waging war against.

As a technical fact, this address is directed at Iraq’s population. And much of the language used reflects that reality. Hussein’s speech harangues “glorious Iraqis” and “dear brothers.” He names the various segments of Iraqi society whose allegiance he will need in the coming fight, from Iraq’s “brave officers and soldiers” to the civilians that “raised their happy voices during the air raids…changing the battle into a wedding celebration.” Saddam’s language throughout demonstrates an intent to foster national identity and portray the looming war as a matter of national pride and interest.

Iraqi troops during the Iran-Iraq War.

It must also be recognized that Saddam Hussein was, in 1980, Iraq’s unchallenged leader, if not in letter than certainly in fact. As a result, responsibility for Iraq’s entry into war with its neighbor fell squarely upon him. It is little surprise, then, that Saddam relies upon what amounts to a royal plural when outlining his decision to enter into war. “To defend Iraq’s honor, sovereignty, and vital interest, we had to take the necessary measures to deter the enemies” Saddam declaims (emphasis added). Thus it can be seen that once again Saddam projects his personal actions and goals as matters of “vital interest.” The language also disperses responsibility for the war’s outcome to all the Iraqi people, not just himself.

But the address is not intended just for Iraqis. Saddam also sought the allegiance of all the Middle East’s Arabs, with his invocation of pan-Arabism as their uniting factor. With the downfall of the Shah, the Iranian government proved a novel presence on the Middle-Eastern political stage. Iran had transitioned from a country ruled by nationalist strongmen to one dictated by religious leadership — in essence, a new paradigm of government was emerging in the Middle East, and one that offered a potential alternative to Saddam’s own style of government.

Thus Hussein’s call for pan-Arab unity served also as an attempt to dissuade allegiance with his larger neighbor. This desire to gain allies against Iran is rendered explicit firstly by Saddam’s choice of pan-Arabism as his rallying cry. Iran, during its revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini’s subsequent consolidation of power, had firmly established itself as an Islamic Republic. Thus not only is Saddam explicitly requesting that the pan-Arab peoples express solidarity and support for the Iraqi government, but he is also implicitly inviting pan-Arab nations and governments to condemn and oppose the newly-minted Islamic republic of his neighbors.

A statue of the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran is torn down in Iran (above). The Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, shown below, was the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In addition to emphasizing Iraq’s Islamic legacy, Saddam’s also strives undermine Iran’s own religious credibility with his language. According to him, Iran’s regime is not Islamic at all, but rather a “pagan, oppressive and conceited clique of heretics.” This comment attacks the foundational principles of the new Iranian government. If the leaders of Iran are in fact heretics, it would follow that they have no legitimate claim to be ruling an Islamic republic. This argument further cements Iraq’s right to wage war against them, and invites the other Muslim nations of the region to ally with Iraq against Iran’s government of Islamic pretenders.

Hussein further emphasized that support for Iraq is a pan-Arabic obligation, as well as a Muslim one. After all, Iran’s population is majority-Persian, not Arab. And, according the Saddam Hussein, these Persians present an insidious and omnipresent threat to the security of Arab nations. He denounces Persians living in Arab nations, saying that the Iranian government “started to communicate with the Persian communities in the Arab Gulf states in order to create confusion and foment trouble” in preparation “for swallowing [the Arab Gulf states] one by one.” The pan-Arabic world faces an existential threat, according to Hussein, from the Persian menace brooding in Iran. If not rallied against, the Iranian threat promises to engulf and destroy the Arab world.

The bogeyman of a Persian fifth column in Iraqi society was a potent tool for Saddam. More than a mere rhetorical gesture, Hussein had used the excuse of anti-regime activities to expel Iraq’s Persian citizens en masse earlier in 1980. Especially for the Iraqi citizenry, such references would have been highly resonant and would enhance the image of Saddam Hussein as a man not of mere words but of actions as well.

The idea of a Persian “other” was more than a mere tool of Ba’athist internal politics — it also allowed Saddam to rhetorically redefine Iraq’s place in the Arab world. Egypt, which under Nasser was recognized as the leading nation of the Arab world, was heavily censured for coming to terms with Israel in the 1979 Camp David Accords, an action that prompted Egypt’s expulsion from the Arab League, and which would, in 1981, motivate the politically Islamic assassins of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Meanwhile Iraq, flush with oil revenues from the tumultuous preceding decade, was in an ideal position to usurp Egypt as the leader of the Arab world.

Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic terrorists for signing the Camp David Accords. He is shown here meeting with Israeli diplomats at Camp David.

However, as the assassination of Sadat demonstrated, the ascendancy of political Islam posed a very real threat to the existing order in the Middle East. And no nation represented the political capabilities of Islam better than the Islamic Republic of Iran, which had so recently cast off its foreign-backed dictatorship for a locally-lead and unabashedly Islamic regime. Thus it was critical that Saddam Hussein drive home the unchanged outsider status of Iran’s Persians and thus did he employ such linguistic distinctions in his speech as that between the “Iranian people” and the “Arab nation.”

Saddam’s rhetoric was also directed at the international community. While the bulk of the speech addresses explicitly the citizens of Iraq, Iran, and the Arabic countries of the Middle East, it also acknowledges the strategic realities Iraq’s situation. Foreign interference was and continues to be a hallmark of modern Middle-Eastern history, and Saddam sought to stymie that interference from the onset. Thus he warns “any foreign power which tries to exploit the situation” that “the countries of the region are capable of protecting [its] safety.”

This was not an idle threat — Saddam continues in the same vein that the nations of the Middle East are capable of “guaranteeing freedom of shipping in [the region].” The Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz were and remain crucial passages for oil exportation from the Middle East, and any threat to their safety would not be taken lightly be the oil-reliant nations of the developed world, especially in the wake of the 1979 energy crisis. Saddam’s recognizance of local control over maritime navigation in the Persian Gulf, at that particular historical moment, demonstrates that he was not speaking in the general, but rather issuing a specific warning against outside interference in the conflict between Iran and Iraq.

During the Iran-Iraq War, oil tankers were escorted by US Navy ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saddam Hussein’s public declaration of war with Iran was directed towards a heterogeneous audience, from the lowest Iraqi foot soldier to the highest offices of Washington, D.C. and Moscow. The speech’s language is indicative of its place in history; Hussein appeals to the waning strength of pan-Arabism in order to fight the ascendant might of political Islamism and cautions against the omnipresent threat of Great Power interventionism. Finally Saddam rightly identifies the political tensions, which, twenty-odd years later, would destroy his own regime and throw the region into chaos for years to come. While the speech, is, ultimately, the propaganda of a nation at war, it retains an eerily predictive quality which makes it well worth consulting even today.