Thirty-five years ago the longest conventional war of the 20th Century broke out when forces belonging to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked neighbouring Iran, following the latter’s Islamic revolution and a long history of border disputes. It was to be eight long years before the fighting would end, and by then casualties were estimated at upwards of a million, and possibly much more. Today, with so many more recent crises gripping the Middle East, the conflict is in danger of being overlooked by the wider world. How were those involved affected? And, what are the longer term legacies for the region and the international order?

The first part of the programme consists of a documentary recounting the experiences of combatants, civilians, and others, amid a seemingly endless struggle that, like World War One before it, quickly came to epitomise the futility and immense suffering of war. We hear from the former soldiers of both sides, and some of their relatives, and learn about some of the personal consequence that the call to arms has had upon them.

But the Iran-Iraq war had some wider ramifications, including the fate of Iran’s Islamic revolution and those who have sought to reform it, the determination of Iran to become a nuclear power, and the attitude of both sides to the West and in particular, the United States. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and all that has stemmed from that crisis, up to and including the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Muslim elite in Iraq and the subsequent sectarian conflict, can also be seen in the context of the war with Iran. These ideas are discussed within the documentary and in the debate which follows.

(Photo: Iraqi soldiers pose 20 April 1988 in front of a huge bullet-pocked mural of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini in the Faw peninsula. Credit: Getty Images) Show less