Ba'athist Iraq during the war with Iran had a very interesting and evolving relationship with religion- as did Iran. Ba'athist Iraq sought to be the pre-eminent Arab power, and Saddam saw himself as a great bastion of Arabness against the larger world. Saddam framed the war with Iran as a nationalist war. Saddam's ambitions to annex Khuzestan were founded on the sizable Arab population in the region. During the war, the Iraqi press referred to the war as "Saddam's Qādisiyya" (قادسية صدام) referencing the battle of al-Qādisiyya in 636, where the early Rashidun Caliphate defeated the Sassanid Persians in a crushing victory that conquered Iraq and led to the Islamic conquest of Persia. Persians were frequently referred to as "Majoos" (مجوس) by Iraq, which is a term previously used to refer to Zoroastrians. By using the term majoos, Iraq implied that the Iranians were somehow non-Muslim by nature. Iraq also leveraged their control over Shi'ite holy sites such as the city of Karbala- an important city for the Shi'a, over the Iranians. As the war dragged on, religious motifs in the Iraqi army grew more common as Saddam portrayed himself as a great guardian of Karbala against the "Zoroastrian" hordes of Iran.