Khorramshahr was occupied by foreign-backed Saddam regime’s brutal military in September 1980. The city remained under the occupation of the enemy for 575 days (19 months.)
The enemy attack on Khorramshahr began on September 22, 1980, the very day that the Iraqi Baathist regime’s aggression against Iran began, attacking border cities and airfields throughout the country.
It has not become evident that the Saddam regime had been lured into initiating the war against Iran, as its backers were infuriated by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
The defenders of Khorramshahr, which was not a large city at the time, resisted the well-equipped of Iraqi army before it was occupied.
Saddam Hussein clearly underestimated Iran’s military and paramilitary strength immediately after the success of the Islamic Revolution and expected the Arabic-speaking population in Khuzestan to support him and welcome him as a “liberator”.
It was a grave miscalculation. Khorramshahr, with only a few thousand armed men, successfully resisted tens of thousands of foreign invaders for a full month and a half.
In April 1982, Iran launched the Beit ol-Moqaddas, recapturing all the occupied southwestern territories, including Khorramshahr, which was liberated after a fierce battle.
During the weeks-long operation, some 6,000 Iranian soldiers were martyred and nearly 24,000 others injured.
In retaking the city, the Iranians captured some 19,000 troops from the Iraqi army. Some estimates suggested the Baathist regime lost half of its troops in the battle for Khorramshahr.
The liberation of the city is called the Epic of Khorramshahr in honor of heroism and sacrifices on the part the Iranians who fought for their homeland against a coalition of Saddam regime and its powerful allies to retake it.
The outcome came as a great shock to the West-backed Iraqi regime and all its regional and international patrons, who found it hard to fathom that an isolated and sanctioned Iran could defeat an army supplied with sophisticated arms and chemical weapons by Western powers.
The victory in Khorramshahr is commemorated every year as a turning point of the imposed war and a symbol of Iranian heroism and national unity.
May 24 is considered a turning point as Iranians went on offensive afterwards and the Iraqi dictatorial regime and its backers adopted a defensive stance and called for an immediate ceasefire.
The Saddam regime later resorted to using banned weapons such as chemical weapons, handed over by the Western powers to stop the Iranian military.
