an invasion into Iran. Hussein had several reasons for going to
war. First, he—like other Middle Eastern leaders—feared that
Khomeini’s legions were working to spread their revolution
all across the Islamic world. Second, he knew that Khomeini
considered him an enemy of the first order. The ayatollah
despised Hussein’s policies and his Baath Party, which he called
“infidel.”^41 Khomeini despised Hussein personally because
Hussein was a Sunni Muslim, a traditional rival of the Shiites.
Hussein believed his forces easily could conquer an Iranian
military that was weakened by the revolution. If successful, he
could demand key territory in the border region and, he hoped,
rise to prominence among leaders of the Middle East.
It may seem odd that Khomeini would bear such loathing for a
neighboring country that had been his home in exile from the
mid-1960s until 1978. However, the Iraqi government had not
been a particularly gracious host. It had ordered Khomeini’s arrest
more than once and had ultimately expelled him from Iraq.
Moreover, as the foremost Shiite leader, Khomeini had no
more respect for Hussein than he had for the deposed shah.
Hussein came to power in 1980, the year after Khomeini returned
to establish Iran’s Islamic Republic. Hussein’s Baath political
party, which had been formed in Syria in 1953, was rooted in
socialism. It had certain basic objectives in common with those
of Khomeini: notably, a united Islamic world, independent of
outside influences. What it mainly lacked, though, was Khomeini’s
fiery insistence on Islamic influence in government. To Baathists,
Islamic teaching is a secondary interest; the destruction of Israel
and Muslim unity in a Marxist-style utopia are primary. Khomeini
went so far as to call Hussein and the Baath Party “anti-Islamic.”^42
He urged Iraq’s majority Shiite population to rise up in revolu-
tion, as his followers had done in Iran. Understandably, Hussein
decided it would be in his best interest to wreck Iran’s dangerous
new regime, or at least neutralize it.
The invasion initially went well for Iraq. Its forces occupied
some ten thousand square miles of territory in Iran, including the
major port of Khorramshahr at the border and important oil64 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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