Operation Mersad - 26 July 1988

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foto :
www.iranamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32768
Operation Mersad from the Persian word meaning 'ambush' was the last major military operation of the Iran–Iraq War, ending in a decisive victory for Iran. The operation involved a successful Counterattack against a July 1988 military incursion from Iraq, by a military force of about 7,000 members of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK). The MEK soldiers were armed, equipped and given air support by Iraq. Led by Lt. General Ali Sayad Shirazi, Operation Mersad began on 26 July 1988 and lasted only a few days, where the Iranian Armed Forces crushed the MEK in what was the last military operation of any significance of the war.
Both Iran and Iraq had accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which would end the war on 20 July 1988. However, shortly thereafter the Iraqi supported Mujahedeen-e-Khalq militant group attacked central Iran. The attack was decisively defeated by the Iranian military.
Prelude[edit]
After almost eight years of bloody warfare, the Iran Iraq War was coming to an end under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which was passed 20 July 1987. Iran had suffered major defeats in southern Iraq during the Second Battle of Al Faw and Operation Tawakalna ala Allah, and had decided to accept the UN ceasefire. However, made confident by recent Iraqi victories, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided to violate the ceasefire agreement and let the MEK launch an invasion of Iran itself.

The attack agreed upon by the Iraqi leadership would be a two pronged assault. Another group would attack forces in Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, the latter area still within Iranian and Peshmerga hands. When the Iranian armies moved to fight that in Kurdistan, the renegade Iranian militant group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), supported by Iraqi air power, would launch a large scale incursion into the central portion of Iran, aiming towards the heart of Iran. The MEK under their leader Massoud Rajavi harbored the hope that the attack would lead to a general uprising against the Islamic government of Ayatollah Khomeini. Rajavi would lead the Mujahedeen with Iraqi support in an attack on the western borders of Iran.