Abadan: Oil City Dreams and the Nostalgia

In September 1980, however, Ābādān was almost overrun in the course of Iraq’s surprise invasion of Khūzestān. The Iraqis failed to take Ābādān, but their artillery and aerial bombardments destroyed its refineries and reduced most of the city to rubble. After the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988, Iran restarted petroleum refining and petrochemical production in Ābādān on a smaller scale using reconstructed plants. The city’s port reopened in 1993. Pop. (2006) 219,772.