The main objectives were to drive enemy forces from Iranian soil, seize Iraqi territory in the Amarah area, and move on to the city.

Seizure of the city of Amarah would give Iran the upper hand in disrupting troop and supply movements from Baghdad to Basra.

The Iranian forces consisted of mostly 'last reserve' Pasdaran and Basij volunteers backed by two divisions of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.

Regardless, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani further boasted: The people expect this offensive to be the final military operation that will determine the destiny of the region.

Operation Fajr al-Nasr (Before the Dawn/Dawn of Victory), launched on 6 February 1983, and it saw the Iranian shift of focus from the southern to the central and northern sectors.

The Iranians wanted to penetrate and capture the cities of al-Shabeeb and al-Amarah, and to reach the highways linking Baghdad down to Amarah and further down to Basra.

The reality was much more bleak, however, as Iran continually resorted to crude tactics, including the use of soldiers in human wave charges across no man's land, which was always met with withering fire from the Iraqis.

Lightly equipped, inadequately supported, and poorly trained Iranians attempted to charge dug-in Iraqi infantrymen firing from trenches.

Residents of the city of Ahvaz, 100 miles (160 km) behind the front, reported that their morgue was filled to the rim with bodies from the field.

It has been cited from Ian Brown's, Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: The Story of Iran's Boy Soldiers: After only a month's training at a camp near Khorramshahr, I was sent to the front.

The Iraqi Air Force was also effectively deployed, with fixed wing fighters massing fires on Iranian formations in the southern sector.

[64] In addition during April 1983, the Mandali-Baghdad northcentral sector witnessed fierce fighting, as Iranian attacks were stopped by Iraqi mechanised and infantry divisions.