The Iran-Iraq War

The first visible evidence that America had tilted towards Iraq came in 1980, in the months preceding the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war. At this time, Iraq was coveting the Arab-speaking Iranian province of Khuzistan. By seizing it, Iraq could gain that long sought-after prize of access to the sea. Iraq had formally relinquished its claim to this region in 1975, but seeing Iran in a weakened state & ill-equipped to deal with an external threat, Saddam reasoned that the time was right to break the treaty & seize Khuzistan in what hopefully would be a war lasting only a few weeks. He also wanted to portray Iraq as protecting the weaker Gulf States from being subverted by Iran's Islamic revolution. Success in this venture could give Iraq de facto regional superpower status.
At the same time, the U.S. was in the process of being humiliated by the new Iranian revolutionary government. Iran was still holding American diplomatic personnel as hostages in Tehran, a rescue attempt had failed miserably, & Iran was publicly declaring America to be the great Satan. The U.S. was also very concerned that Iran would export its Islamic Revolution to the fragile monarchies & emirates of the Gulf oil states, upsetting the delicate status quo in the Gulf. The U.S. thus saw in Iraq a proxy which could indirectly punish Iran for its betrayal of America & at the same time serve as a strong secular regional counter-balance to the militant forces of Islam.
Today, Iranians of all factions are convinced that the U.S. actively encouraged Iraq to attack them. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was then director of the CIA, admitted that at the least, the CIA had known of an impending invasion & had advised President Carter accordingly, who did & said nothing.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security advisor to President Carter, had stated publicly the view that Iran should be punished from all sides & that he would not mind an Iraqi move against Iran. A fall 1980 report in the Financial Times of London took things a little further, reporting that U.S. satellite & intelligence data, which purported to show that the Iranians would crack easily if attacked, had been made available to Saddam through third party Arab governments. Interestingly enough, these third parties" were Kuwait & Saudi Arabia.
All the evidence points in a single direction, that the U.S. knew that Iraq was planning an unprovoked assault on a neighboring country & at the very least, took no steps to prevent it, & at the most, encouraged Iraq to attack, promising logistical & intelligence support. Gary Sick, who was then responsible for Gulf policy at the National Security Council, stated that, we didn't think Iraq would take ALL of Khuzistan in 1980." The unspoken inference is, of course, that they were expecting Iraq to take some of it. But again the U.S. miscalculated, & what had been planned as a short, clean war became an eight-year war of attrition that inflicted over one million casualties on both sides. It was to be the bloodiest war in the Middle East since the Mongol invasion in the 1200s.
It is important to realize that whatever support or acquiescence the U.S. accorded Iraq; it did so with the full knowledge that, according to international law, Iraq was clearly the aggressor & in the wrong, as it had formally relinquished any claims to Khuzistan in 1975. One can only ask, given the stated moral justification for the Gulf war, why this attack on Iran was not, in U.S. eyes a violation of international law, an act of naked aggression that would not stand", as they claimed when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The West Supported Iraq

The quick victory that Saddam had gambled on failed to materialize as the Iranians defended their homeland with unexpected ferocity, & the conflict settled into a lengthy stalemate, punctuated by massive battles. Although America's help had been covert at first & it officially remained neutral throughout the war, when events began to go badly for Saddam in late 1981, the U.S. concluded that American interests in the region would be seriously harmed if Iraq were to collapse. It therefore began to help Iraq more openly by providing satellite intelligence & spearheading an international arms embargo against Iran. The other Western powers joined in & from that time on, the floodgates of military & economic aid to Iraq were opened.
The degree to which the West armed Iraq was nothing short of massive. Financed largely by generous donations" from the other oil-rich Gulf states who were eager to underwrite the cost of the war to contain Iran, but unwilling to shed their own blood, Iraq bought from the West & the Soviets the latest in military technology. Between 1982 & 1989, Iraq purchased about $43 billion worth of arms. In 1984 alone, according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, Iraq spent about $14 billion, or half of its gross domestic product on weapons. Every year since 1985, Iraq was the largest importer of weapons in the World, accounting for more than 9 percent of the World's arms purchases. France alone sold Iraq over $16 billion worth of arms, continuing long after the war ended in 1988 & only stopping a few months before the invasion of Kuwait because Iraq had fallen behind in payments. By 1990, Iraq had the 4th largest standing army in the World.
Although the U.S. was not a major supplier of arms to Iraq, all these sales were quietly sanctioned by Washington, as it had concluded that the purchases were essential to keep Iraq from losing the war with Iran. However, the U.S. did not alter its policy after the cease-fire took effect in 1988. This U.S. policy of indulgence also encouraged shady companies from Western Europe to offer Baghdad expertise, technology & raw materials that Iraq could use to produce chemical or even nuclear weapons. The now famous WMD.
Economic aid grew tremendously during the 1980's as well, so much so that by 1990 Iraq was a virtual client state of the U.S., with only Mexico receiving more guaranteed food credits. The U.S. government provided loan guarantees to underwrite the purchase by Iraq of billions of dollars of American wheat, rice, corn, chickens, dairy products & manufactured goods. As Congressman Dan Glickman of Kansas later put it, The U.S. basically provided Iraq with all the food they needed for five years, at subsidized prices."
The U.S. also moved on the diplomatic front to strengthen relations with Iraq. Diplomatic relations, which had been cut off after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, were restored in 1984. Iraq was also taken off the terrorism list, despite the fact that it was common knowledge that some of the more radical Palestinian terrorist factions, including those who masterminded the deadly attacks on the Rome & Vienna airports in 1985, made their headquarters in Baghdad. Noel C. Koch, then the Defense Department's director for counter terrorism, explained that Iraq had not been removed from the list because it was any less of a haven for terrorists. No one had any doubts about Iraq's continued involvement with terrorism," Koch said. The real reason was to help them succeed in the war against Iran."
The U.S. largely turned a blind eye to all sorts of reports of Iraqi atrocities, such as the Iraqi gassing of Kurdish civilians, the jailing & routine torture of political prisoners & the summary trials & swift executions that were common. Apart from mild reprimands, the relationship continued largely business-as-usual, right up until the Aug. 2nd invasion of Kuwait. Geoffrey Kemp, then the head of the National Security Council's Middle East Section, explained the logic of the American policy planners at the time. The memory of the U.S. hostages in Iran was quite fresh; the Ayatollah was still calling us the Great Satan & attempting to undermine governments throughout the Gulf States. It was not that we wanted Iraq to win the war; we did not want Iraq to lose. We really weren't naive. We knew Saddam was an S.O.B., but he was OUR S.O.B."

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