The conflict has been compared to World War I in terms of the tactics used by both sides, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across fortified defensive lines, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, Iranian human wave attacks, Iraq’s extensive use of chemical weapons, and deliberate attacks on civilian targets. A notable feature of the war was the state-sanctioned glorification of martyrdom among persian children; the discourses on martyrdom formulated in the persian Shia Islamic context led to the widespread usage of human wave attacks and thus had a lasting impact on the dynamics of the conflict.