| Iran-Iraq War, an
armed conflict that began when Iraq
invaded Iran in September 1980 and ended
in August 1988, with an estimated total
of 1.7 million wounded and 1 million
dead. The underlying cause of the war lay
in the long-standing regional rivalry
between Persian Iran and Arab Iraq. The immediate cause, however,
was a border dispute that had its origins
in the mid-1970s. In 1974 Iran had begun
supplying weapons to Kurdish nationalists
in northern Iraq, enabling them to stage
a revolt against the Iraqi government. In
order to halt the rebellion, Iraq in 1975
compromised on a dispute with Iran
regarding the border on the Shatt al Arab
estuary. In exchange, Iran stopped
supplying arms to the Kurds.
In 1980 Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein invaded Iran hoping to
reverse the 1975 border settlement and
perhaps to gain control of the rich,
oil-producing Iranian province of
Khűzestân. Hussein also wanted to put
an end to religious propaganda directed
against Iraq's secular regime by the
Islamic government of Iran, which had
come to power in 1979 under Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini.
Khomeini and most
Iranian Muslims belonged to the Shiite
sect of Islam. Hussein feared that the
propaganda would undermine the loyalty of
Iraqi Shiites, who comprised about 60
percent of his country's population.
Hussein believed that
victory would be easy; he assumed that
Iran's military strength had been greatly
weakened by the revolution that had
brought the Islamic Republic to power in
Iran the previous year. However, he was
mistaken. Although Iraqi forces won early
successes, Iran rallied, held the
invaders, formed new armies, and took the
offensive.
By 1982 Iraqi troops
had been cleared from most of Iran.
However, Iran rejected the possibility of
peace and pursued the war. Iran's only
clear objectives were to punish Iraq and
overthrow Hussein.
Between 1982 and 1987
the fighting resulted in a stalemate.
Iran mounted offensives all along the
border between the two countries, but
especially in the south, where Iran tried
to capture Al Basrah, Iraq's main port.
Iraq resisted stubbornly, aided by
donations and loans from other Arab
states in the region and by arms from the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) and France. Iraq held back Iranian
troops with superior firepower and gas
warfare, while the Iraqi air force
attacked Iranian cities and oil
installations, as well as tankers
approaching or leaving Iranian ports in
the nearby Persian Gulf. Iran retaliated
in kind, also attacking the ships of Iraq
and its allies.
The attacks on shipping
in the Persian Gulf indirectly drew other
countries, including the United States,
into the conflict.
In 1987 the United
States and other nations stationed
warships in the Gulf to protect shipping.
By 1988 Iran had lost the will to
continue the war. Iraqi forces resumed
the offensive, but with economic
development in both Iran and Iraq at a
standstill due to reduced oil exporting
capabilities, an agreement for a
cease-fire was reached in August 1988
with the help of the United Nations.
Peace negotiations between the two
countries stalled until August 1990 when
Iraq dropped demands for full control of
the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway. Iran
and Iraq restored diplomatic relations
that same year, and divided control of
the Shatt al Arab.
By early 1991 Iraqi
troops had withdrawn from Iranian
territory and many prisoners of war had
been exchanged. Full settlement of
disputes over border demarcation,
prisoners of war, and control of the
Shatt al Arab had not yet occurred as of
1996.
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