ness to stop the fighting. A formal cease-fire went into effect on August 20. Subse-
quent attempts by UN diplomats to negotiate a formal peace agreement failed, how-
ever. As with many other conflicts, the Iran-Iraq War simply stopped: no immediate
effort followed to reach a military or diplomatic resolution of underlying issues. The
two countries in September 1990 finally restored diplomatic relations and resolved bor-
der disputes that Saddam Hussein had cited in launching the war; this step coincided
with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, itself another outgrowth of the war.
Eight years of war caused massive destruction and misery in both countries, par-
ticularly in the border areas, where most of the fighting took place. Neither Iran nor
Iraq has published a reliable accounting of its dead and wounded, but unofficial esti-
mates by historians and others range from a low of about 500,000 to a high of more
than 1.5 million. Whatever the total, the consensus among experts is that many more
Iranians died than did Iraqis, largely because of Iran’s widespread use of volunteers in
its “human wave” attacks. The war was an economic disaster for both countries, par-
ticularly Iraq, which saw its oil exports plummet because of Iranian destruction and
occupation of its oil terminals along the Shatt al-Arab.
In the war’s aftermath, Iran and Iraq embarked on a new arms race in the
expectation that the fighting would resume one day. That never happened, but two
years later, in August 1990, Hussein sent the Iraqi army into Kuwait, apparently with
the expectation of seizing Kuwait’s flourishing oil industry to subsidize the Iraqi econ-
omy. The invasion led early in 1991 to the second major, late twentieth-century war
in the Persian Gulf. This brief conflict would end with Iraqi troops being forced from
Kuwait and the stage set for a much more far reaching conflict a dozen years later,
with the United States invading Iraq to oust Hussein from power (Persian Gulf War,
p. 455; Iraq War, p. 504).
Following are the text of Iranian president Ali Khamenei’s letter of July 18, 1988, to
UN secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuéllar accepting Security Council Resolution
598, declaring a cease-fire in the war between Iran and Iraq, and excerpts from a
message to the people of Iran delivered over Tehran Radio on July 20, 1988, in which
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini explains the decision to accept Resolution 598.DOCUMENT
Khamenei’s Letter Accepting UN
Security Council Resolution 598
JULY18, 1988Excellency, please accept my warm greetings with best wishes for your excellency’s suc-
cess in efforts to establish peace and justice.
As you are well-aware, the fire of the wars which was started by the Iraqi regime
on 22 September 1980 through and [as received] aggression against the territorial
IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 439