May 21, 2015

The bodies of 175 Iranian divers who were reportedly buried alive with their hands tied during the Iran-Iraq War were returned from Iraq, said Gen. Seyyed Mohammad Bagherzadeh, commander of the committee to find missing veterans of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The news touched off a wave of sympathy on Iranian social media, with many sharing the last pictures of the divers before they disappeared in 1986.

At a ceremony honoring the return of the bodies to Iran May 18, Bagherzadeh said, “The bodies of 175 martyrs who today entered the country belong to the divers of the Islamic Republic from the Sacred Defense [Iran-Iraq War], who were martyred with their hands tied by the Baathists during Karbala 4 operations.” He added, “Some of the bodies were discovered with no injuries, and we realized they were buried alive.”

According to Bagherzadeh, the bodies were brought into Iran from Shalamcheh, a city located in Iran’s southwest Khuzestan province on the Iran-Iraq border. The city was one of the main sites of the Iraqi invasion into Iran in 1980, which sparked the longest war of the 20th century. Operation Karbala 4, in which the divers went missing near the Arvand Rud waterway, took place in the latter stages of the eight-year war. Iranians suffered heavy losses in the three-day operation, mostly due to their heavy use of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and volunteer Basij forces to push inside Iraq against the Iraqi military's superior arms.

In an interview with Fars News Agency in 2011, Gen. Abdullah Araghi, who participated in Operation Karbala 4, called it “the most anguishing and difficult operation of the Sacred Defense.” The operation set the stage for Operation Karbala 5 in 1987, which became the largest battle of the war, with both sides losing tens of thousands of soldiers.

The Iran-Iraq War has strong emotional connotations for both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people, and Iranian social media reacted strongly to the news. Many tweeted the news with the hashtags #175martyrs and #tiedhands.