Second Battle of al-Faw

The Second Battle of al-Faw (also known as the Operation Ramadan Mubarak (Blessed Ramadan), fought on 17 April 1988, was a major battle of the Iran–Iraq War. After their defeat at the First Battle of al-Faw two years earlier, the newly restructured Iraqi Army conducted a major operation to clear the Iranians out of the peninsula.

The Iraqis concentrated well over 100,000 troops from the battle-hardened Republican Guard. The heavy use of chemical weapons quickly disarrayed the Iranian defenses, which consisted of 15,000 Iranian Basij volunteers. The southern wing of the assault consisted of the Republican Guard's Madinah and Baghdad Divisions, which assaulted the Iranian lines and then allowed the Hammurabi Armoured Division to pass through and move along the southern coast of the peninsula and into al-Faw itself.

Meanwhile, the regular Iraqi Army's VII Corps attacked the northern end of the line with the 7th Infantry and 6th Armoured Divisions. While the 7th Infantry's attack became bogged down, the 6th Armoured broke through the Iranian lines, the 1st Mechanised Division pushed through, and later linked up with the Republican Guard divisions outside al-Faw. Thus the peninsula had been secured within thirty-five hours, with much of the Iranians' equipment captured intact. The battle saw extensive use of chemical warfare by the Iraqis against the Iranians.

Prelude

Following the Karbala campaigns of 1987, but before the end of summer, the Iraqi Army started secretly practicing maneuvers in the desert behind Basra.