Iran’s focus on building a powerful ballistic missile arsenal, which the Americans, Saudis and Israelis, among others, see as a major threat, has its origins in the 1980-88 war with Iraq in which major cities were subjected to merciless missile and air strikes in which thousands of civilians were killed or wounded. The so-called War of the Cities involved five periods of systematic and intense bombardments with missiles, aircraft and even long-range artillery from February 1984, when Saddam Hussein ordered indiscriminate attacks on 11 Iranian cities, through February 1987. The objective was to inflict large civilian casualties to demoralise the...