For most Iranians, the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War was like World War I on steroids. Like World War I, trench warfare marked the Iran-Iraq conflict. Lines barely moved for years, but failed charges across no-man’s land at machine gun nests and into barbed wire took tens of thousands of lives. The Iraqis used chemical weapons; many Iranian veterans remain scarred and blinded today, with little medical care. What made the war even worse, in many cases, than World War I’s Western Front was the “war of the cities,” the exchange of imprecise modified SCUD missile variants, which killed thousands across Iraq and Iran.
Tehran was a boom town for the quarter-century before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Indeed, its rapid growth amidst Iran’s industrialization and economic development was one of the contributing factors to revolution, as villagers with conservative religious mores poured into the city, hoping for jobs, but ended up offended by cosmopolitan society. In 1960, Tehran had less than 2 million people. A decade later, it had grown to around 3.3 million and, in 1980, it was over 4.5 million. The Greater Tehran area was over 10 million people in total.
When Iraqi missiles began raining down on the capital in February 1984, many Tehranis fled eastward, out of range of the Iraqi missiles.
The Iran-Iraq War changed Iran’s cities dramatically. The Iraqi army occupied several Iranian cities, including Khorramshahr, Susangard, Bostan, Hoveyzeh, Mehran, and Qasr-e Shirin, and devastated others. The Iraqi siege of Abadan lasted more than ten months and destroyed much of the city. Those displaced by the fighting flocked to Tehran. Then, when Iraqi missiles began raining down on the capital in February 1984, many Tehranis fled eastward, out of range of the Iraqi missiles.
In 1966, Tehran was Iran’s most populous city, followed by Isfahan, and then Tabriz and Mashhad running neck-and-neck. Isfahan remained Iran’s second-largest city just prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with Mashhad barely edging out Tabriz for the number three position. By 1986, Mashhad’s population had more than doubled to 1.4 million—almost double that of Isfahan, Tabriz, and Shiraz. The reason? A sense that distance from Iraq and the tensions of the Persian Gulf could bring security and normalcy of life. The frontier of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan was only 160 miles away but, by that time, any Soviet threat to Iran had disappeared. Few Iranians traveled to Afghanistan, and so that war was out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
With war again touching Tehran, many top Iranian leaders and generals reportedly have relocated to Mashhad. Even without war, months ago, President Masoud Pezeshkian revived a long-simmering debate about moving Iran’s capital. Tehran is overcrowded, its infrastructure crumbling, and it sits in an earthquake zone. The leaders who now flee their capital, of course, are leaving for another reason: Perhaps they believe 2026 is the new 1986, and that being in Mashhad buys them survival, but they are wrong.
Iranian rhetoric suggests their war aim is to bog the United States down into a war of attrition, much like they once did Iraq. They are wrong. The two militaries are nowhere comparable. Iraq’s army was manpower heavy but reliant on old Soviet equipment. The United States strikes Iran with precision, using mostly aircraft, missiles, and drones, and has no desire to occupy mainland Iran.
Iranian rhetoric suggests their war aim is to bog the United States down into a war of attrition.
Iran’s religious, political, and military leadership may believe that by sitting in Mashhad, they can avoid becoming victims of a war their nuclear program and decades of “export of revolution” precipitated.
President Donald Trump should demonstrate to them how wrong their assumption is. After having targeted Kharg, Trump should now direct the U.S. military to hunt down regime officials in Iran’s de facto wartime capital. Bombers, of course, should steer clear of the Shrine of Imam Reza, a holy shrine around which the city grew, but could target Revolutionary Foundation (Bonyad) offices and the homes and compounds of Iran’s leadership.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the clerical leadership believed they could both run and hide, leaving ordinary Iranians behind to suffer Iraq’s onslaught. Today, Trump should make clear two things: The regime leadership can neither run nor hide and, unlike in the war of the cities, the Iranian people can sit on the sidelines confidant in the fact that they will not be a target.
