Dobb-e Hardan is a forest and village on the outskirts of Ahvaz that was occupied by Iraqi troops in the opening days of the Iran-Iraq War.

The settlement of Dobb-e Hardan is located in the Ismailieh rural district of the central district, seven kilometers west of Ahvaz city in Khuzestan Province, surrounded by irrigation canals branching off from the Karkheh-Noor and Karun rivers.⁠[1] The village is over a hundred years old. Its residents are Arabic-speaking and make their living through farming and animal husbandry.⁠[2]

When the Iran-Iraq War broke out, on September 27, 1980, Iraqi forces with more than fifty tanks — backed by artillery and mortar fire — attacked Iranian positions from the west of the Ahvaz Road and advanced as far as Dobb-e Hardan, fully occupying the village on September 28 and positioning their artillery and tanks there to shell Ahvaz from that location.

The first defense of Ahvaz took place on September 28, under the command of Ali Ghayoor Asli, the Khuzestan Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) training officer, through a surprise night operation he led in the village. From that point on, the operational zone southwest of Ahvaz became known as the Dobb-e Hardan front, where the first cells of popular resistance took shape. The region remained a site of military confrontations for months. On September 30, 1980, the Iraqi army stationed in southern Ahvaz and the Dobb-e Hardan area moved northwest toward Hamidieh with the aim of reaching Ahvaz and encircling the Dasht-e Azadegan region. However, the Iraqis were forced back south to the Karkheh-Koor River and the Dobb-e Hardan area because of Iranian resistance.⁠[3]

After the Iraqi troops withdrew from Susangerd and Bostan on October 3, 1980, their remaining armored units moved southward, crossed the Karkheh-Koor River via three military pontoon bridges they had built, passed by the villages of Sayar, Ahmadabad, and Hamoodi, and reached as far as two kilometers of Dobb-e Hardan.

On October 12, 1980, Iraqi forces in Dobb-e Hardan split into two groups: one moved toward the Karkheh-Koor, where they were deployed on its southern bank, while the other pushed toward kilometer 40 and continued shelling Ahvaz until the second phase of Operation Beit al-Muqaddas was executed.⁠[4]

On October 21, 1980, the intelligence and operations unit in western Ahvaz— led by Hassan Baqeri — breached the embankments of the Seyyed Karim and Seyyed Yousef canals (branches of the Karkheh-Koor River) to direct water southward. This move — which became known as the “ water war” — trapped the Iraqis in the resulting marsh and forced them to withdraw from Dobb-e Hardan to the area around the Imamzadeh Seyyed Taher (as) shrine, six kilometers south of the Ahvaz– Khorramshahr Road.⁠[5] Iranian forces immediately set up a defensive line on the eastern side of the Imamzadeh Seyyed Taher (as) shrine and the Ahvaz Road, denying the Iraqis any freedom of movement in the area until Operation Beit al-Muqaddas. This defensive line became known as the Navard Line.⁠[6] Iraqi forces in the vicinity of Dobb-e Hardan subsequently pumped water from the Karkheh-Koor River, built earthen dams, cut through the Ahvaz– Khorramshahr Road, and redirected water back to the east of the road to hold out against Iranian forces.

After the war, a commemorative monument was built near Dobb-e Hardan, five kilometers east of the Ahvaz– Khorramshahr Road, beside a tank platform marking the furthest point of the Iraqi army’ s advance into Khuzestan.

Dobb-e Hardan has a paved road, a drinking water network, a local council, a health house, a telecommunications office, and a mosque.⁠[7]