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zers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Saddam. American military and CIA
officials offered advice to the Iraqis on Iranian deployments and battle plans.
Toward the end of the war, U.S. advisors were in the field when Iraq used
chemical and biological weapons against the Iranians. As a position statement
from the National Security Agency explained, the U.S. was willing to do
“whatever was necessary and legal” to help Iraq defeat Iran, and it was willing
to stretch the definition of “legal” to great limits in the process. At the same
time, as we have seen, the U.S. was also selling arms to the other side, Iran,
in order to get funds to send, in violation of the law, to the Contras in
Nicaragua. In short, the U.S. was funding and arming Iraq in its war against
Iran, while selling weapons to Iran to get cash to send to the Contras in
Nicaragua. At the same time, Americans were creating a group of Muslim
fighters to battle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, but the Russians
were also providing large amounts of aid to Iraq, as was the U.S.
By 1988, then, the consequences of America’s involvement in Iraq and Iran
were disastrous. The border disputes between the two Middle East countries
remained outstanding, but Iran, especially due to the use of chemical and
biological weapons, suffered many more losses than Iraq–about a million casu-
alties, or two to four times more than Iraq. Each side spent about $600 billion,
and oil and industrial production dropped significantly, causing economic and
political problems that would persist into the next decade and cause more
global crises. In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, both sides were in ter-
rible shape, with huge human losses, devastated infrastructure, and debt. Iraq’s
debt was in the area of $140 billion, and, making matters worse, the price of
oil, the mainstay of its economy, had dropped significantly, as oil production
was high, and thus prices were low.OPEC took measures to alleviate the oil
problems, establishing guidelines on production and prices to try to boost the
Middle Eastern oil industry. Not all the oil countries went along, however. Just
to the south of Iraq was a small country, Kuwait, which had been a region of
Iraq until split off by the British in the 1920s, to prevent Iraq access to the
Persian Gulf, and recognized as a separate country. During the 1980s, Kuwait
had supported Iraq, and Baghdad owed it $14 billion just from loans from the
war. Kuwait, however, was not abiding by the OPEC agreements and contin-
ued to produce large amounts of oil and lowering the price, which the Iraqis
estimated were costing them about $14 billion a year. In addition, Iraq charged
that Kuwait was “slant drilling,” meaning that it was using technology to drill