On a quiet Sunday afternoon, Iraqi MiG and Mirage jets appeared over Sardasht, a Kurdish town in northwestern Iran with no military significance. They released their payloads. The bombs did not explode with conventional force. They released a yellowish cloud that smelled of garlic and rotten onions. Mustard gas drifted through the streets, into homes and shops. Residents experienced immediate burning in their eyes and throats. Blisters erupted on their skin. Of the town's 12,000 inhabitants, an estimated 4,500 were exposed to the chemical agent. At least 130 civilians died in the immediate aftermath; thousands more suffered long-term injuries, cancers, and birth defects.
The Iran-Iraq War had seen extensive use of chemical weapons on battlefields since 1983, often with tacit international acquiescence. Sardasht was different. It was a war crime of clear intent, a test on an undefended urban population. The attack occurred in two separate bombing runs, ensuring the gas saturated the town center. Iran, lacking adequate protective gear or treatment facilities, struggled to manage the casualties. The international response was muted. A UN Security Council statement, issued weeks later, did not explicitly name Iraq as the perpetrator.
Sardasht established a horrific precedent. It demonstrated that the taboo against chemical warfare, already weakened, could be broken entirely by targeting civilians directly. The attack foreshadowed the more infamous chemical massacre in Halabja, Iraq, which occurred eight months later. Sardasht remains a central trauma in Iran's national memory of the war, a symbol of victimhood and international abandonment. For the global non-proliferation regime, it stands as a stark failure, a case where the use of weapons of mass destruction against a town elicited little more than diplomatic notes.