Khomeini's forces were winning the war against Saddam, when Iran ran out of tanks. The US made sure China and Russia would sell Saddam all the tanks Saddam wanted, and even then Saddam had a tough time defeating the Iranian troops. The final treaty was Saddam agreeing to return ALL of the lands he had tried to steal from Iran and give up all claims to those lands. Thus Saddam gain NOTHING in that war, Iran ended up turning to Russia for military equipment AND building its own equipment.
The Iranian Army of that war was still dependent on US Equipment and the lack of US spare parts did them in (Yes, I know that the Shah had British Chieftain tanks, but Britain also boycotted spare parts to Iran, The Germans had armed the Shah with the G-3 rifle).
My favorite maneuver in that war, was Saddam using his planes to launch missiles on Iranian oil tankers. That lead to the US sending in its fleet to protect Iraqi oil tankers from similar attacks from Iran. This did not change even after an Iraqi Jet launched a Missile and hit a US Naval Ship. Iran was the enemy, even if the US was being attacked by Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark_incident
Without air cover, without tanks and going into the deserts of Iraq where the lack of both was the most critical, Khomeini agreed with his military commanders and signed a peace treaty to give them time to rebuild the Iranian Army. In the mountains, river valleys and swamps of the area inside Iran, infantry tactics could defeat tanks even without air cover. In the open desert No. There were few "Human Wave" attacks in that war. The reports were made based on Iraqi propaganda reports that in that war the Western Press took as gossip, even through it was being released by the same people they called "Baghdad Bob" in John W. Bush invasion of Iraq.
As to the M-60, it is still a very good tank. It is NOT an M1, but I hate to say this ISIS even if they found an intact M1, they do NOT have the capacity to maintain it (Old rule of thumb, for every hour of operation, a tanks gets two hours of maintenance). Thus, even if the Turks only had M4 Shermans, they would have better tank capacity then ISIS for the Turks can MAINTAIN them. Thus the M-60 is good enough for any operation against ISIS, IF the Turks want to do that. One school of thought is the problem with ISIS is NOT that they are radical islamics, but that they have gotten lose from their paymasters, the House of Saud (Who are allies of the US, a major supply of oil to the US and Islamic radicals themselves). Thus no one whats to destroy ISIS, they just want to direct ISIS to the "right target" i.e. NOT Iraq but Assad.
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