'The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War' introduced

History book, 'The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards' by American scholar Annie Tracy Samuel is a seminal book drawing on Iranian documents of that imposed war.

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دوشنبه - ۱۴ ارديبهشت ۲۰۲۵ / 2025 14 February

This work on the Iran-Iraq War, known in Iran as the Sacred Defense has been translated into Persian by Mohammad Maleki (PhD). Tehran-based Tarikh-e Iran has released 'The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War' in 356 pages.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded after the Iranian revolution in 1979, is one of the most powerful and prominent but least understood organizations in Iran.

In this book, Annie Tracy Samuel presents an innovative and compelling history of this organization and, by using the Iran-Iraq War as a focal point, analyzes the links between war and revolution.

Tracy Samuel provides an internal view of the IRGC by examining how the Revolutionary Guards have recorded and assessed the history of the war in the massive volume of Persian language publications produced by the organization's top members and units.

This not only enhances our comprehension of the IRGC's roles and power in contemporary Iran, but also demonstrates how the history of the Iran-Iraq War has immense bearing on the Islamic Republic's present and future. In doing so, the book reveals how analyzing Iran's history provides the critical tools for understanding its actions today.

Annie Tracy Samuel is a scholar specializing in the modern history of Iran and the Middle East. She is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and previously served as a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Her publications include journal articles in International Security and Diplomatic History; her commentary on current events has been published in Lawfare, The Hill, CNN, and The Atlantic; and she has delivered talks at universities and conferences and briefed government agencies in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.