The Karbala-4 Massacre: When Iran's Commanders Sent Thousands to a Known Death Trap

Summary

On the night of December 24, 1986, thousands of Iranian fighters plunged into the dark waters of the Arvand River, advancing toward Iraqi positions in what would become one of the Iran-Iraq War's most catastrophic operations. Operation Karbala-4 was designed to capture the strategic city of Basra and force Iraq to the negotiating table. Instead, it descended into a bloodbath that claimed at least 5,000 Iranian lives and left 11,000 wounded within 26 hours. The operation's failure would have been tragic enough, but evidence now reveals something far more sinister: senior commanders, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Mohsen Rezaei and acting war commander Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, knew the operation had been compromised by Iraqi intelligence yet ordered it to proceed regardless. Decades later, the discovery of 175 diver corpses, many with hands bound and buried alive, reignited public fury and exposed a pattern of deliberate sacrifice, systematic lying, and complete impunity that defined the Islamic Republic's prosecution of the war.

The Path to Disaster

By late 1986, the Islamic Republic found itself in a strategic trap of its own making. Four years earlier, Iranian forces had successfully expelled Iraqi troops from Iranian territory, recapturing the city of Khorramshahr in May 1982. At that moment, with Iraq weakened and seeking peace, Iran faced a choice: accept a negotiated settlement or continue the war into Iraqi territory to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government. Against the advice of professional military commanders, the leadership chose war. That decision, driven by ideological fervor and political calculation, would consume an entire generation.

The war had settled into a grinding stalemate. Despite repeated offensives costing tens of thousands of lives, neither side had managed to capture even a single provincial capital from the other. Iran's one significant achievement, the February 1986 capture of the Faw peninsula in southern Iraq, had failed to break Iraqi resolve as anticipated. Instead, it prompted Iraq's Western supporters to increase military and intelligence assistance. By autumn 1986, the Islamic Republic leadership recognized that time was working against them. International sanctions were strangling the economy, Western-supplied Iraqi aircraft were conducting unprecedented bombing campaigns against Iranian cities and infrastructure, and oil revenues had collapsed from their earlier highs. The regime needed a decisive military victory to force negotiations from a position of strength.

The strategic objective was straightforward: capture Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and main port, thereby cutting off Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf and oil exports. With Iraq's economic lifeline severed, Saddam would have no choice but to accept Iranian terms, including recognition as the war's aggressor and payment of massive reparations. Rafsanjani reportedly told Ayatollah Khomeini that seizing Basra would give Iran "a strong card" to impose conditions on Iraq. Professional military commanders from the regular army disagreed. They submitted reports warning that such an operation would cause massive casualties without achieving strategic benefit, noting that Iraq could still export oil through Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The warnings were ignored.

In preparation for what IRGC and regime officials termed the "decisive operation," the Supreme Council ordered the formation of 1,500 new battalions at an estimated cost of 25 billion toman, borrowed from the Central Bank. The IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei issued orders to mobilize 550,000 troops, including 95,000 Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), 222,000 Basij militia volunteers, and 160,000 regular army conscripts. This represented the largest military mobilization in the war's history. By December, however, reality had fallen far short of ambition. Only 250 battalions comprising approximately 24,000 combat-ready troops had actually been equipped and trained. The gap between revolutionary rhetoric and operational capacity was stark, yet the operation moved forward regardless.

A Compromised Operation

The seeds of disaster were planted in the operation's planning phase. Rather than maintaining operational security, regime officials launched an unprecedented public mobilization campaign. The newly formed Mohammad Rasul-Allah Division was celebrated with a massive rally at Tehran's 100,000-seat Azadi Stadium. State radio and television broadcast repeated programs glorifying the new force. Senior commanders gave multiple interviews discussing the scale and importance of the coming offensive. For Iraqi intelligence services, already on high alert and receiving extensive support from American reconnaissance assets, this was a gift.

Iraq's intelligence apparatus had been dramatically enhanced by Western assistance. American AWACS surveillance aircraft provided continuous monitoring of Iranian territory. CIA satellite imagery revealed Iranian troop concentrations and staging areas. More than 60 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers were embedded with Iraqi forces, providing combat planning assistance and what one official termed "targeting packages." The extensive fortifications Iraq had constructed around Basra, with five defensive rings supported by artificial lakes, minefields, electrified underwater obstacles, and concentrated artillery, were positioned based on advance knowledge of Iranian attack routes.

The evidence that Iraqi forces knew the operation was coming is overwhelming. Commanders present at the scene reported that Iraqi forces were in full alert status before the operation began, with defensive positions reinforced and additional troops deployed to anticipated crossing points. Maneuvering occurred in broad daylight, allowing Iraqi reconnaissance to observe Iranian preparations. Iraqi aircraft bombed Iranian staging areas, including camps housing the elite diver units that would spearhead the assault. When Iranian forces finally launched the attack on the night of December 24, Iraqi forces responded instantly with illumination flares, concentrated machine gun fire, and pre-registered artillery barrages.

Ahmad Soudekar, a senior IRGC intelligence official, later revealed that complete Iranian operation plans, including maps marking all participating units by name, were subsequently found in captured Iraqi positions. This indicated someone had physically transported classified planning documents to Iraqi intelligence. The leak came from the highest levels. Senior commander Ghulam Ali Rashid stated that Mohsen Rezaei himself acknowledged "the operation was leaked at a very serious security level."

The most credible explanation for how operational details reached Iraqi intelligence involves Ali Hashemi Bahramani, Rafsanjani's nephew and an officer in the Revolutionary Guard. In August 1986, just months before Karbala-4, American officials established Bahramani as a key contact within the Iranian government as part of the covert Iran-Contra initiative. CIA officer George Cave and NSC official Oliver North held multiple meetings with Bahramani in West Germany during autumn 1986. In a 2019 book, Cave recounted that during one of these meetings, Bahramani revealed Iran's plan to launch a final offensive to capture Basra. Whether Bahramani's disclosure was authorized by Rafsanjani to signal Iranian intentions, or represented a breach of security by an inexperienced officer seeking to impress his interlocutors, remains unclear. What is certain is that American intelligence shared Iranian operational information with Iraq throughout the war.

The Slaughter

At approximately 9:30 PM on December 24, IRGC commanders monitoring Iraqi responses realized the enemy was fully prepared and waiting. Radio intercepts confirmed Iraqi units were tracking Iranian movements in real time. Illumination rounds began lighting the sky over the Arvand River crossing points. Iraqi machine gun positions opened fire on approach routes. The evidence of compromise was unmistakable. Despite this, at 10:30 PM, the operation code was transmitted and units across all sectors were ordered to attack.

The Iranian plan called for elite diver units to enter the water first, swimming silently across the river to neutralize Iraqi defensive positions on the opposite bank, clearing the way for follow-on infantry to cross in boats. Approximately 500 divers entered the water at 9:00 PM. Within minutes, Iraqi forces began firing directly at the crossing points. What followed was systematic massacre. Iraqi troops, positioned in dense concentrations along the riverbanks, fired heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons, and artillery at shapes visible in the water. Flares turned night into day, eliminating any element of surprise.

Mohammad Ali Asfenani, a Majlis representative who participated as a diver, described the scene: "We couldn't use oxygen tanks and had to float on the surface, holding guide ropes so we wouldn't lose our way. When Iraqi aircraft dropped flares over the water, the area became bright as daylight. They saw us and opened fire with everything they had. Many of our divers were killed immediately. We had no way to use our weapons and no way to retreat, so we continued forward." Of the 500 divers who entered the water, fewer than 200 returned. Some who reached the Iraqi shore were captured alive. Images later published in Iraqi newspapers showed bound prisoners executed by firing squad.

The main infantry assault fared no better. Sixty battalions attempted to cross the river at multiple points along a 40-kilometer front. Iraqi forces, dug into hardened positions behind minefields and artificial water barriers, subjected the Iranian troops to withering fire. In sector after sector, units were pinned down, unable to advance or retreat effectively. By midnight, commanders were reporting catastrophic casualties. The 31st Ashura Division had been stopped completely. The 14th Imam Hossein, 21st Imam Reza, and other divisions sustained crippling losses in the first hours. Radio communications captured during the battle preserve Mohsen Rezaei's response: "Continue. The situation is not normal." The phrasing revealed the commander's awareness that something had gone fundamentally wrong, yet his order was to persist.

At approximately 3:00 AM, with casualties mounting and no breakthrough achieved, Rezaei finally acknowledged that enemy awareness exceeded what could be explained by normal reconnaissance. In his own subsequent account, he admitted, "At dawn we became certain where [Iraqi defenses] were open and where they were closed. We stopped the operation. We did not continue." The passive voice conceals agency. Rezaei and the command structure stopped sending additional forces into the killing zone only after 40 of the 60 battalions committed had already been destroyed or severely damaged, and after it became undeniable that no tactical success was achievable.

The official casualty count released by the regime understated the disaster. Acting war commander Rafsanjani, citing Deputy IRGC Commander Ali Shamkhani, reported 1,000 killed, 3,900 missing (presumed dead), and 11,000 wounded. This yields a total of approximately 5,000 dead and 11,000 wounded from Operation Karbala-4 alone. The abnormally high ratio of missing to confirmed killed reflected the operation's chaotic collapse; bodies were abandoned on the battlefield and in the water, subsequently recovered by Iraqi forces. Ten days later, Iran launched Operation Karbala-5, a renewed assault on Basra from a different approach. That operation produced an additional 12,000 casualties. Combined, the two December-January offensives killed 17,000 Iranians and wounded 26,000 in approximately six weeks of fighting, without achieving any strategic objective.

The Deception Within the Deception

Rather than accept responsibility for the catastrophe, regime officials immediately began constructing an alternative narrative. Within 24 hours of the operation's termination, Rafsanjani and Rezaei agreed to publicly claim that Karbala-4 had been a deliberately planned "deception operation" intended to mislead Iraqi forces about Iran's true objective. According to this story, the assault on Basra from the south was meant to draw Iraqi reserves away from the real attack route, which Iran would exploit ten days later in Karbala-5. The narrative was pure fabrication, invented to salvage the reputations of commanders whose errors had killed thousands.

In a June 2015 interview with ISNA news agency, Rafsanjani admitted the truth: "Mr. Rezaei and I announced the news in such a way that it appeared to be a deception operation. In this way we neutralized enemy propaganda." The statement is remarkable for its casual acknowledgment of deliberate, systematic lying to the Iranian public about the reasons their family members died. For three decades, this lie was maintained as official history. Then, in December 2018, on the anniversary of the operation, Mohsen Rezaei posted on social media claiming Karbala-4 had been designed from the beginning as a feint. "With Operation Karbala-4 we made the enemy think this was our only annual operation," Rezaei tweeted. "Ten days later, in the same area, when Iraqi army forces had gone on leave, we launched Operation Karbala-5."

The tweet provoked immediate public outrage. Asiyeh Bakeri, daughter of Hamid Bakeri, a senior commander killed during the war, responded: "Mr. Rezaei, before invoking the name of Mehdi Bakeri [another fallen commander], you must apologize to the families of martyrs whose children were lost as a result of your mistakes and deception operations in war management." The backlash forced Rezaei to issue a hasty "clarification," claiming he had been "misunderstood," and that Karbala-4 had actually been a real operation, but that "divine guidance" led commanders to retrospectively classify it as deception. "God put it in our minds that this failed effort could be converted into a deception," Rezaei stated, inadvertently confirming that the deception narrative had been created after the fact.

Qassem Soleimani, then commander of the IRGC Quds Force, contradicted Rezaei in a televised interview days later, insisting Karbala-4 had been a genuine operation and defending the decision to proceed despite its compromise. "The enemy was informed about most of our operations," Soleimani argued. "It was not logical to cancel an operation we had prepared for months just because the enemy was notified." This rationale exposes the fundamental contempt senior IRGC commanders held for the lives under their command. Advance warning that transforms an assault into a frontal attack against prepared defenses multiplies casualties exponentially, yet in Soleimani's calculus, the political embarrassment of canceling an operation outweighed the certain death of thousands.

The Disappeared

In May 2015, nearly three decades after the war's end, the Committee for Search of Missing Persons of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff announced it had discovered the bodies of 175 Iranian divers in a mass grave near Abu Fulus in southern Iraq. Forensic examination revealed many of the bodies bore no combat wounds; their hands had been bound, and they had been buried alive by Iraqi forces after capture. The announcement, intended as a solemn commemoration, instead triggered one of the most intense public reckonings with the war in Iranian history.

For years, families had waited for information about missing loved ones. The discovery confirmed what many had suspected: that the "missing" designation often meant not simply unrecovered remains, but men who had been captured and executed, their fates concealed by both Iraqi and Iranian authorities. The revelation that 175 men had been subjected to a particularly brutal death, buried alive in pits prepared in advance, personalized the larger tragedy of Karbala-4 in a way that statistics alone could not. Social media erupted with demands for accountability. Why had the operation proceeded when commanders knew it was compromised? Who had leaked the plans? Why had no one ever been held responsible?

The regime's response was telling. Rather than address the substantive questions, the Committee for Search of Missing Persons issued a statement accusing critics of attempting "a coup and overthrow," claiming they were using the discovery of the divers' bodies as a "weapon to strike at the system." The Fars News Agency, close to the IRGC, published articles attempting to shift blame to opposition groups like the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the National Front, and the Freedom Movement. But the agency also included a striking admission, noting that according to IRGC command statements, "the leak occurred at high political levels of the state."

Networks of Failure and Complicity

The Karbala-4 disaster cannot be understood in isolation; it exemplifies systemic problems in how the Islamic Republic conducted the war. By 1986, three years into Iran's offensive phase, divisions between the IRGC and the regular army had become acute. The Revolutionary Guards, created after the 1979 revolution as an ideologically pure parallel military force, viewed professional officers with suspicion. The feeling was mutual. Regular army commanders, trained in conventional warfare, regarded IRGC tactics as primitive and wasteful of lives.

Ali Sayad Shirazi, commander of Iranian ground forces, represented the professional military opposition to IRGC dominance in war planning. When presented with the Karbala-4 operational concept, Shirazi argued it was tactically unsound and would result in unacceptable casualties for no strategic gain. His objections earned him a physical assault from Mohsen Rezaei, who struck him in the face in front of other officers. An army colonel present described the scene: "When Rezaei slapped the commander of our ground forces, the army commanders around them were shaking with rage, waiting for Sayad's signal to tear Rezaei apart. But Sayad just smiled and offered the other side of his face, saying 'if you hit me out of brotherhood, you can hit the other side too, it's fine.'" The incident revealed not merely personal animosity, but the complete subordination of military professionalism to revolutionary ideology and IRGC institutional power.

Thirteen years later, in April 1999, Shirazi was assassinated outside his home in Tehran by a gunman disguised as a municipal street cleaner. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq claimed responsibility, but the killing came amid a series of targeted attacks on officials who had opposed regime policies. Shirazi's murder eliminated one of the most prominent surviving critics of how the war had been managed. Other critics had already been silenced. Hassan Bagheri, deputy commander of IRGC ground forces and among the most capable Iranian military planners, was killed in January 1983 near Fakkeh. Before his death, Bagheri had delivered an incendiary speech criticizing the casualty indifference he observed: "It has become hard to accept martyrs during reconnaissance, but giving 3,300 corpses in an operation and then retreating has become very easy. Working before an operation has become very difficult, but giving casualties inside operations has become very simple."

Even Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, designated as Khomeini's successor and among the revolution's founding figures, could not escape punishment for speaking truth about the war's conduct. In 1985, a year before Karbala-4, Montazeri wrote to Khomeini expressing alarm at complaints from senior IRGC commanders that operations were being launched without adequate preparation, resulting in needless deaths. "Some IRGC veterans say 'save the IRGC,'" Montazeri wrote. "They say we are creating conditions for youth to be killed because they are not given equipment. There is no serious plan for war after the liberation of Khorramshahr, and many operations have been compromised." Montazeri asked what answer could be given "to the parents of martyrs on Judgment Day" for deaths caused by poor planning.

Khomeini did not respond substantively to Montazeri's warnings. Three years later, in 1988, Montazeri again challenged the leadership, this time over the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners. His objections cost him the succession. Montazeri was placed under house arrest where he remained until his death in 2009, his status transformed from designated Supreme Leader to dissident. His treatment sent an unmistakable message: even the most senior clerics would be punished for questioning the decisions of those in power.

The American Connection

While Iran's internal dysfunction created the conditions for disaster, external actors played a direct role in the operation's compromise. Throughout the Iran-Iraq War, despite official American neutrality, the United States provided extensive military intelligence and logistical support to Iraq. This assistance intensified dramatically after Iran's capture of the Faw peninsula in February 1986, which alarmed Gulf Arab states and prompted increased Western intervention.

U.S. support took multiple forms. AWACS reconnaissance aircraft based in Saudi Arabia conducted continuous surveillance of Iranian airspace, providing real-time intelligence on Iranian military movements. American spy satellites photographed Iranian staging areas, troop concentrations, and supply lines; this imagery was provided directly to Iraqi military intelligence through liaison officers stationed in Baghdad. The U.S. established a dedicated satellite downlink facility in the Iraqi capital to speed intelligence transmission. More than 60 Defense Intelligence Agency officers worked with Iraqi commanders, providing "targeting packages" that identified Iranian positions for air strikes and artillery bombardment. American officials have since acknowledged they knew Iraq would use chemical weapons when attacking positions identified by U.S. intelligence, but provided the intelligence regardless.

The intelligence sharing had been underway since 1982, but achieved new intensity in 1986 as American policymakers concluded that an Iranian victory threatened regional stability. Simultaneously, however, the Reagan administration was secretly selling weapons to Iran through back channels as part of the Iran-Contra affair, using an Israeli intermediary and Iranian contacts to secure the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The primary Iranian intermediary was Ali Hashemi Bahramani, Rafsanjani's nephew. Beginning in August 1986, Bahramani met repeatedly with U.S. officials including Oliver North and CIA officer George Cave in Germany.

Cave later wrote that during these meetings, Bahramani, eager to demonstrate Iran's military capabilities and impress his American contacts, disclosed that Iran was planning a major operation to capture Basra. Bahramani was "younger and more naive than he realized about what he was saying," Cave assessed. Whether Cave or other American officials shared Bahramani's disclosures with Iraqi intelligence remains officially unconfirmed, but the coincidence of timing is striking: Bahramani's meetings with American officials occurred in autumn 1986, and by early December Iraqi forces had clearly received detailed warning of the coming offensive, adjusting their defensive positions accordingly.

The exposure of American arms sales to Iran, leaked to the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa in November 1986 just as Karbala-4 was entering final preparation, created a separate crisis within Iran's leadership. The leak came from associates of Mehdi Hashemi, a radical cleric and brother-in-law of Ayatollah Montazeri. Hashemi led the Office for Liberation Movements, which provided support to revolutionary movements abroad, particularly Hezbollah. He represented the "export the revolution" faction within the regime, which viewed Rafsanjani's secret dealings with "the Great Satan" as betrayal. Hashemi was arrested in October 1986 on Rafsanjani's orders. His supporters leaked the arms deals to embarrass Rafsanjani and derail the negotiations. Mehdi Hashemi was executed in September 1987 despite Montazeri's pleas for clemency, eliminating another critic of the pragmatist faction's policies.

The Economic Desperation

Understanding why the regime leadership insisted on launching Karbala-4 despite its compromised status requires examining Iran's deteriorating economic situation. By late 1986, the war's costs had become unsustainable. Iran's oil production, which had exceeded four million barrels per day before the revolution, had collapsed to less than two million. International sanctions prevented Iran from accessing Western technology needed to maintain petroleum infrastructure. Skilled foreign workers had fled, and domestic expertise proved insufficient to prevent steady decline in output.

Simultaneously, global oil prices were plummeting. After peaking above $35 per barrel in 1980, oil prices crashed in 1986 to below $15 per barrel as a global supply glut developed. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, alarmed by Iran's revolutionary rhetoric and concerned about Iranian military advances, deliberately increased production to drive prices down, calculating this would weaken Iran economically. The strategy worked. Iran's oil revenues, which had provided approximately 85 percent of government income, fell by more than half just as war expenses were reaching their peak.

The economic crisis constrained military operations. The 25 billion toman borrowed from the Central Bank for the Karbala series represented a massive commitment that drained available resources. The fact that only 250 of the planned 550 battalions could actually be equipped demonstrated the gap between revolutionary ambition and fiscal reality. Yet having taken on such debt and launched such an extensive mobilization campaign, the leadership felt compelled to show results. Canceling the operation after spending billions would constitute a political and economic catastrophe alongside the military one. This created perverse incentives to proceed even as evidence mounted that the operation was compromised.

Rafsanjani's reported comments to IRGC commanders after the Karbala-4 failure illuminate the decision-making process. According to Ahmad Gholampour, a senior operations commander, Rafsanjani convened a meeting of IRGC leadership in the absence of army commanders and told them: "You who say if anyone speaks of ceasefire you will make heaven and earth meet. If you say war, the Imam says continue. If you say no, the Imam says no. Because the Imam's view depends on yours." The statement is extraordinary. Rafsanjani, the acting supreme commander, was telling the IRGC that Khomeini's decision to continue the war rested on their advice, and that if they lacked confidence to continue, they should say so directly to Khomeini.

It was a trap. IRGC commanders, having built their institutional identity around revolutionary zeal and commitment to total victory, could not admit they lacked the capacity to win. To do so would undermine their political position and perhaps their survival within the regime structure. So they continued to promise victory, and Rafsanjani and Khomeini continued to authorize operations, and tens of thousands continued to die. This dynamic, with ideological imperatives overriding practical limitations and commanders unable to deliver honest assessments without risking their positions, persisted until the final months of the war, when Iraq's recapture of Faw and successful offensives into Iranian territory finally forced acceptance of reality.

Children as Cannon Fodder

Among the most disturbing aspects of Iran's war prosecution was the systematic use of child soldiers. The Basij militia, formed in 1979 as a people's volunteer force, initially served domestic security functions. After Iraq's 1980 invasion, the Basij became a source of military manpower, with standards lowered progressively as casualties mounted. By 1984, Basij members as young as 12 were being sent to the front. Official Iranian statistics acknowledge that more than 33,000 high school students were killed in the war, with thousands more wounded or captured.

The child soldiers were used in "human wave attacks," masses of lightly armed infantry sent against fortified Iraqi positions. Their function was to overwhelm defenses through sheer numbers, absorb enemy fire, and create openings for follow-on forces. In minefields, young Basij were used as clearance assets, their bodies detonating explosives to create paths for vehicles and regular troops. Survivors and analysts have noted the abnormally high ratio of killed to wounded among Basij units compared to professional military forces, indicating inadequate training and exposure to concentrated enemy fire.

Recruitment of children was presented as voluntary religious devotion. Schools and mosques conducted intensive campaigns glorifying martyrdom. Clerics assured families that sons who died would attain paradise and intercede for their relatives on Judgment Day. Material incentives were also provided: preferences for university admission, government employment, and ration cards for families who sent sons to the front. The mobilization peaked in December 1986, precisely the moment of the Karbala-4 and Karbala-5 operations, when an estimated 100,000 Basij were deployed to the front lines.

International human rights organizations condemned Iran's use of child soldiers as a violation of humanitarian law. A Child Soldiers International report documented cases of boys as young as nine being used for combat operations. Iranian regime officials justified the practice by citing the national emergency and the voluntary nature of Basij service. But the volunteerism must be understood in context: intensive ideological indoctrination of children, family pressure, economic incentives, and a social environment where refusal to participate carried stigma. Many who did volunteer had no conception of what combat actually entailed until they found themselves under artillery fire, at which point their options for escape no longer existed.

Endgame and Legacy

The failures of Karbala-4 and Karbala-5 did not end the war, but they marked the beginning of its end. Over the following 18 months, Iran launched additional offensives, but with decreasing effectiveness. Iraqi forces, reinforced and reorganized, held their positions. The military balance tilted decisively after April 1988, when Iraq recaptured the Faw peninsula using massive chemical weapons attacks against Iranian defenders, many of them Basij volunteers. Iraq followed with successful offensives that reclaimed other territory and pushed back into Iran. Simultaneously, U.S. forces increased their presence in the Gulf, ostensibly protecting oil shipping but effectively constraining Iranian military options. On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 civilians aboard in what the U.S. termed a tragic mistake. Iran interpreted it as a deliberate escalation.

Ten days later, on July 20, 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini announced Iran's acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598, which called for an immediate ceasefire and return to internationally recognized borders. Khomeini described his decision as "drinking from a poisoned chalice," a phrase that captured both his personal anguish and the political humiliation involved in ending the war without achieving any of Iran's stated objectives. Iraq had not been defeated. Saddam Hussein remained in power. No reparations would be paid. No international tribunal would judge responsibility for the war's beginning. Nearly 200,000 Iranians had died, and likely a similar or greater number of Iraqis, for borders that remained unchanged.

The war formally ended on August 8, 1988. For the families of those who died, particularly in operations like Karbala-4 where the circumstances suggested avoidable catastrophe, the ceasefire brought not closure but questions. Why had their sons and brothers been sent to attack an enemy who knew they were coming? Why had commanders ignored warnings that the operation was compromised? Why had professional military officers who objected been physically attacked or sidelined? Why did the same commanders who presided over these disasters remain in power, their reputations intact, while those who questioned their decisions were assassinated, executed, or marginalized?

These questions acquired new urgency with the 2015 discovery of the divers' bodies. The image of young men bound and buried alive crystallized the betrayal: they had been sent into a death trap by commanders who knew it was a death trap, and for three decades those commanders had lied about it, claiming the operation had been a clever deception rather than a costly failure. The public anger forced even regime loyalists to address the issue. Mohsen Rezaei's attempt to revive the deception narrative backfired spectacularly, exposing him to accusations from families who had believed for decades that their losses served a strategic purpose.

Yet accountability never materialized. Rezaei faced no investigation, no tribunal, not even an official inquiry. He continued his political career, serving as secretary of the Expediency Council and running unsuccessfully for president multiple times. Rafsanjani served two terms as president (1989-1997) and remained an influential figure until his death in 2017, under circumstances his family believes involved assassination via poisoning. Qassem Soleimani rose to command the Quds Force, conducting operations across the Middle East until his assassination by the United States in January 2020. The system that enabled Karbala-4 survived its perpetrators.

A Regime's True Nature Revealed

The Karbala-4 operation offers a concentrated view of how the Islamic Republic functions beneath its religious rhetoric. When faced with evidence that an operation had been compromised and would result in massive casualties, the leadership chose to proceed because the political and economic costs of cancellation exceeded the human cost of slaughter. When the operation failed as predicted, the leadership fabricated a false narrative and maintained it for three decades, lying to families about how and why their loved ones died. When critics within the military and clerical establishment objected to the casualty indifference and poor planning, they were attacked, sidelined, or eventually killed. When the truth finally emerged through the discovery of the divers' bodies, the regime responded not with accountability but with accusations that those demanding answers were attempting to overthrow the system.

This pattern extends beyond Karbala-4 to the war's entirety and indeed to the Islamic Republic's governance more broadly. The decision to continue the war after 1982, despite military advice that victory was unattainable, resulted from ideological commitment and political calculation, not strategic necessity. The systematic use of child soldiers as cannon fodder reflected not desperate circumstances but deliberate policy choices that valued revolutionary ideology over human life. The tolerance for massive casualties in pursuit of unachievable objectives demonstrated that for the regime's leaders, ordinary Iranians existed as instruments to be expended rather than citizens to be protected.

The absence of accountability reveals the most important truth. In functional political systems, military disasters of Karbala-4's magnitude trigger investigations, consequences, and reforms designed to prevent recurrence. In the Islamic Republic, the commanders responsible faced no inquiry. The intelligence failure that allowed the operation to be compromised was never seriously investigated. The individuals who leaked operational details to enemies, whether deliberately or through carelessness, were never identified and punished. The systemic problems that made such catastrophes possible were never addressed. Instead, those responsible continued to wield power, their failures erased from official history by convenient lies about "deception operations" and "divine guidance."

For the families of the 175 divers discovered in 2015, and the thousands more who died in December 1986, the message is unambiguous: their sacrifice meant nothing to those who commanded it. The bodies bound and buried alive represent the ultimate expression of contempt. Not merely killed in a failed operation, but murdered after capture, their fates concealed, their remains abandoned. That their commanders knew the operation was compromised yet sent them regardless transforms tragedy into crime. That these same commanders faced no consequences for this crime reveals a system where power flows from revolutionary credentials and factional loyalty, not competence or accountability, and where human life has no intrinsic value beyond its utility to those in command.

The Karbala-4 massacre stands as testament to what happens when ideology replaces strategy, when lies substitute for truth, and when those who order thousands to their deaths never answer for it.