Heroes of the 8-year Holy Defence (1)

The first of the Iranian month of Mehr that fell on September 22 in 1980 was the day on which, without any provocation, Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Baghdad, on the orders of the US, launched a full scale ground, sea and aerial invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a bid to seize the oil-rich border lands and to overthrow the dynamic system of government, established by that Sage of the Age, Imam Khomeini (God bless him).

The elaborate plots of the invaders soon went awry, when Iranian Muslims, on the instructions of the Father of the Islamic Revolution, rallied to the warfronts to stage epics and blunt the full-fledged aggression, although the war dragged on for 8 years because of tens of billions of dollars poured into Saddam’s coffers by his Arab reactionary backers, mainly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as the military hardware provided to him by Global Arrogance.

There are brilliant epics in the history of every nation, in view of the resolve of the people to offer self-sacrifice for defending the honour of their country and religion. Without the least doubt, the Islamic Republic of Iran is one such nation, which infused by the grassroots movement of the people, at a time when the world was divided between capitalist west and the communist east, gained victory with the slogan “Neither east, nor west, Islam is the best”. The US and its accomplices viewed the emergence of a strong, independent and Islamic Iran, as a danger to their vested interests in the region, and hatched a wide variety of plots in a bid to overthrow the Islamic Republic system of government. They backed the antti- revolutionaries, and terrorists of all hue and colour, by attempting to spread seditions and separatist currents in some border provinces, such as Kurdistan and Khuzestan.

Their plots, however, failed, thanks to Iran’s committed youths that got together to form the Basij mobilization forces and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps for the defence of the country and to safeguard the achievement of the Islamic Revolution, at a time when the regular armed forces were being purged of officers influenced by the US and the enemies of Islam and Iran. These popular forces, after defeating the seditious and separatist moves, fully displayed their commitment and religious-national aspirations, by enacting epics throughout the 1,200 km long border with Iraq to defeat the armed-to-the-teeth Ba’thist war machine.

The memories of these immortal heroes, who sacrificed their limbs and life, are alive today. The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has rightly hailed these heroes of Islam and Iran, since Jihad is one of the basic tenets of Islam. The late ideologue of the Islamic Revolution Martyr Ayatollah Morteza Mottahari had said in this regard: Islam is not a religion that says if someone slapped your face on the right, offer the left to him for another slap. It considers defence of faith necessary, and as is evident in the holy Qur’an, in order to safeguard faith, one should either migrate from that land, or if he has the means, should organize jihad against the devilish forces.

Thus, in view of these facts and as per the dynamics of Islam, Iranian youths, not only rallied to the fronts for liberating the occupied parts of their homeland from the Ba’thists, but for defending their faith and revolution, embarked on efforts in various fields to make the country self-sufficient. One of the leading defenders of the country on the battlefield was Dr. Mostafa Chamran. He undoubtedly remains one of the immortal heroes of the Holy Defence. Born into a religious family on 8 March 1932 in Tehran to Hassan Chamran Savoji who was originally from Chamran village of Saveh, after completing his preliminary studies, he graduated from Tehran University’s College of Technology in the field of electro mechanics.

After a year’s teaching, he won scholarship for higher studies in the US where he obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Plasma Physics in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley. Parallel to his scientific and academic pursuits, Chamran was active in the political and social fields, as a person, who from his youth was a committed Muslim, having been one of the first members of Tehran University Students’ Islamic Society. In the US also, he founded many revolutionary societies and organizations such as the Iranian Students’ Society, the Iranian Students’ Islamic Society and Islamic Society of Muslim Students.

He worked for a while at one of the NASA-related research centers in the US named Bell Laboratory, where he was active in the field of satellites, guided missiles and three-dimensional. Because of his political activities against the despotic Pahlavi regime, his work in the US was cut short, forcing him to go to Egypt, where he obtained guerilla warfare training for two years. In 1965 he went to Lebanon and became a prominent assistant to Imam Musa Sadr. He helped found the Movement of the Deprived and then the Amal Organization for fighting the Zionist entity. 

The third phase of Dr. Chamran’s life started after the victory of the Islamic revolution of Iran. He returned after 21 years of life abroad and put his scientific and revolutionary experiences in the service of the country. He strove to groom the first group of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. Then as deputy Prime Minister for revolutionary affairs, he bravely embarked on nullifying the anti-revolutionary plots.

His unforgettable epic in organizing resistance in the city of Paveh in Kurdistan is legendry. One of the missions entrusted to him by Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, was to free the army and popular forces from the siege of anti-revolutionaries in Paveh. He admirably discharged his duties and liberated Paveh. The Imam appointed him Defence Minister and he spared no efforts for organizing the country’s defences.

Dr. Chamran was not seeking power, wealth and fame. For this reason, on the outbreak of the Iraqi war, he went to the warfronts to set up irregular war headquarters in Ahwaz the capital of Khuzestan for countering the Ba’thist army. Dr. Chamran succeeded in preventing the advance of the Ba’thists and in some regions he managed to drive them back. This well-known solider of Islam was finally martyred in one of his missions on the battlefield and gained his cherished wish of martyrdom in the path of God. Imam Khomeini in a message on the occasion of martyrdom of Dr. Chamran said:

“Chamran spent a lifetime, from start to end with a grand divine purpose and a pure and untainted ideology without attachment to any political groups and bands. His life was dedicated to gaining the light of divine knowledge and earning proximity to God and he strove on that path and sacrificed his life for it. He lived and died in honour. May his soul be joyous and may he be always remembered!”

FK/AS/SS