Authors
Dmitrii Asinovskii1; 1 Central European University, Austria Discussion
In June 1979, a group of scholars led by the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies (IVAN), Evgenii Primakov, submitted a report on their analysis of the consequences of the 1978-79 Iranian revolution. One of the warnings clearly outlined in that report was the growing probability of conflict between Iran and Iraq. However, as many other sensible considerations made in the report, this warning had no evident influence on the policy of the Soviet leaders who were genuinely surprised by Saddam Hussein's attack in September 1980.
Charmed by the perceived anti-imperialism of Ayatollah Khomeini and considering Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a primary Soviet ally in the Middle East, Moscow saw a war between the two as a disastrous development for its own global Cold War strategy. However, when the war broke out, many commenters from the West immediately blamed Moscow for inspiring Saddam Hussein's attack. While many historians later refuted this allegation, some works in historiography argued the opposite: that the Soviet Union, by imposing an arms embargo on Iraq and secretly supplying weapons to Iran, took Iran's side in the conflict.
Using recently declassified materials from the Russian archives, including the protocols of the Politburo sessions, this paper intends to rebuff these different versions of the Soviet "green light" theory. Moscow did not support Iraq in its invasion and was genuinely furious about it. Seeing the war as a liability for its Cold War positions, Soviet leaders tried their best to stop it in the early stages and did not fuel it with arms supplies to Iran. The paper also intends to show the complexity of Soviet attempts to manage its Middle Eastern allies, Syria and Libya, that openly took Iran's side. 
