Oral History Interview with Mohsen Rezaie – Part One

The following text is a part of an oral history interview with Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC), reprinted for importance of its contents and its challenging and critical method.

Gholamali Rashid: Popular organization was realized because of its potentiality of defense and liberalization. The enemy was expulsed from the occupied zones using this popular organization and the presence of figures like Asadi, Ghasemiyan and others. But whether it was possible to advance in Iraqi territory and defeat its army through this kind of war or not? Considering the type of organization and facilities, I think the answer is negative. We went up to borderlines, but we did not realize that this was not possible until entering Iraqi soil. It took us 6 years to find out that we would achieve no progress by this way.

Mohammad Doroodian: Basically popular war cannot be utilized to accomplish chasing and progressive war. I have some reasons for this claim. This is the point why we did not achieve victory.

Mohsen Rezaie: Do you mean that we did not achieve victory in war?

Mohammad Doroodian: I do not mean that, but our military guidelines to collapse Saddam did not bear fruits.

Gholamali Rashid: Imam Khomeini had some goals in mind that would have been realized if Iraqi army would have cooperated and what had happened in Iran, would have happened in Iraq too. And we could achieve our targets in war.

Mohammad Doroodian: Collapse of Saddam basically rooted in the 6 years of war after Khoramshahr conquest, but we didn’t achieve this victory through military guidelines. You, as a former combatant and guerrilla, for sure know defensive war and liberalizing war, but not progressive and chasing war, can be accomplished by public forces.

Mohsen Rezaie: Will a different definition of victory resolve this problem?

Mohammad Doroodian: It is better not to make victory proportional, as what has been done about liberalizing.

Mohsen Rezaie: We want to make it ultra-military, not proportional. What was our real look at war, revolution or annexation?

Gholamali Rashid: It is better to look at it as a revolution.

Mohammad Doroodian: Our look at defense was that of revolution, but our look altered in liberalizing. It altered once more after Ramazan operation. Basically why could Imam Khomeini organize defensive war in Iran? He did so, because he replaced the revolution by war. If not, popular defense would not be formed. This was his art. He would return from war to revolution if he had an opportunity and our situation would be another one. But his life did not suffice and we could not return to revolution from war.

Mohsen Rezaie: It is true that war had a military form and we did it in its own form, but the nature of war and its goals was far beyond that. I have told several times before; we concluded that present form of revolution is achieved through war.

Mohammad Doroodian: Do you mean that war has replaced revolution and victory in war will advance revolution?

Mohsen Rezaie: No, I mean revolution is the nature of war.

Gholamali Rashid: So you mean war promotes revolution.

Mohammad Doroodian: And all these mean replacing revolution by war.

Gholamali Rashid: You have told before that we had much more capacity to expand war.

Mohsen Rezaie: Yes, but do you know why; because our victory in Tariq-al-Ghods operation discomfited Nonaligned Countries conference.

Mohammad Doroodian: It was not related to revolution, it was the correlation of war with politics, that is, you advanced political goals through military victories. This is the logic of correlation between war and politics not between war and revolution.

Mohsen Rezaie: In those days I have repeatedly indicated in my interviews, that there are two wars now, the war of Arabs and Israel and our war. In the latter we wanted to prove that our war has the specifications of a revolutionary war.

Translated by: Asghar Aboutorabi