a review on strategic evolutions of the imposed war during 1361

the eight years of the imposed war was full of successes and defeats, brilliant and bad memories. this holly defense taught us many valuable lessons. by the time this war was imposed, our country was recovering from the aftermaths of the revolution and the armed forces were not in perfect state. though, our armed forces accompanied with our brave people could stop the invaders. recapturing operations proved iran›s military power. in these operations, both military and morale factors were effective in regaining the occupied areas and forcing the enemy to retreat to the internationally known borders. in the next step which was named punishing the «invader», war continued in iraq territory with more difficult and important operations. some factors that caused operations to be more difficult are: first, iraqi army had become familiar with iran›s military tactics and innovations. so iran could no more use surprise tactic. second strong obstacles and constructions helped iraqi forces regain their morale and decreased iran›s ability to confront. third, the war scene was familiar for iraqi forces. this improved their morale. fourth, regional and trans-regional powers were supporting iraq and helping it to rebuild its war machine, while iran had difficulty providing its necessary weapons and equipments. these reasons and some others caused iran›s operations not to be fully or to be totally unsuccessful in this phase. so, ircg commanders investigated different factors affecting these un-successes and failures in various sessions. this document is the commanders› opinions on the mentioned topic in written form. since this document is essentially spoken, some editions have been made to make clarifications