also invoked, with little success, the symbolism
of the Shii Imams ali ibn abi talib (d. 661) and
Husayn in order to maintain the loyalty of Iraq’s
Shii majority. Iran and Iraq soon became locked in
a long war of attrition, during which Iraq bombed
Iranian towns and cities and used chemical weap-
ons to lethal effect in battle.
Iraq was supported by other Arab countries
and received logistical support from Europe and
the United States through secret third-party trans-
fers. The United States in particular followed a
policy of containment (strategic isolation) first of
Iran, then later of Iraq, in order to secure greater
influence in the region and control the spread of
revolutionary shiism. The war came to an end in
1988 with assistance from the United Nations, but
without a formal peace treaty. Fervor for war was
also reduced following Khomeini’s death in 1989,
allowing Iran to take concrete steps toward mak-
ing peace with its neighbor. It was not until after
Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990, when it needed
to be on good terms with Iran, that Iraq withdrew
from all occupied Iranian territory, conducted
prisoner exchanges, and agreed to reopen the
Shatt al-Arab to commercial traffic.
The war exacted a terrible price on both coun-
tries: A total of about 1 million lives were lost at
the cost of billions of dollars to the infrastructure
and economy of each country. Nevertheless, the
war allowed Khomeini to eliminate domestic
opponents of his Islamic revolution, and it gave
the government an independent militia, the Basij,
which still plays a leading role in helping the gov-
ernment maintain its power.
ThE GulF WAr OF 1990–1991
(AlSO CAllED ThE FIrST GulF WAr)
This short war was precipitated when Iraq invaded
Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq had long claimed
sovereignty over Kuwait, which was made a Brit-
ish protectorate in 1899. In the late 1980s, at the
end of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Husayn came to
resent the close relationship Kuwait had formed
with the United States, which was impeding his
ambitions to make his country the chief power in
the Gulf region. At the same time, Iraq held a large
national debt because of its war with Iran, and it
resented the fact that the other major Arab oil-
producing countries were not willing to keep oil
prices high so that it could pay off this debt. More-
over, Husayn complained that Kuwait had been
illegally tapping into the Rumayla oil field that
lies on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. When regional
and international mediation efforts failed to sat-
isfy Iraqi demands, Iraq’s forces took the country
by force. In the ensuing months, an international
coalition of 34 countries, led by the United
States, formed first to protect incursion into saUdi
arabia, then to compel Iraq’s withdrawal from
Kuwait. United Nations resolutions authorized
these actions, in addition to several resolutions
that imposed economic sanctions and condemned
Iraq for human rights violations.
The world was deeply concerned that the
looming conflict would affect oil supplies, and
many observers worried that Iraq might resort to
the use of chemical or biological weapons against
the coalition. While serious diplomatic efforts
were being made to resolve the crisis, the coalition
assembled its forces in the Gulf region in what was
called Operation Desert Shield, the first phase of
the war. This was the defensive phase, but the sec-
ond phase involved attacking Iraq in order to force
it to withdraw from Kuwait. The United Nations
gave Iraq until January 15, 1991, to withdraw
peacefully, but it resisted, hoping to rally the sup-
port of the Muslim world and find a diplomatic
alternative. On January 17, 1991, the United
States launched the offensive phase of the war,
known as Operation Desert Storm, with a crip-
pling aerial bombing campaign. Iraq responded
by launching missiles with conventional warheads
at targets in israel and Saudi Arabia. The missiles
inflicted minor damage, except for one that hit a
U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
killing U.S. military personnel there. On February
22–23, Iraq began to set fire to Kuwait’s oil fields,
causing serious environmental damage.K 274 Gulf Wars