Iran-Iraq War

On September 22, 1980, Iraq's president Saddam Hussein sends his army into Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan. He expects a short war against a country in revolutionary chaos. Instead it lasts almost eight years, until a ceasefire in August 1988, and costs several hundred thousand lives, with scholarly estimates from about 500,000 to a million for both sides combined, though official counts and some census-based studies are lower.¹³

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had toppled the Shah, purged the army and brought to power Ayatollah Khomeini, who called for exporting the revolution. Saddam, who ruled a Sunni-led state with a Shia majority, feared this appeal and also wanted control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway and the dominance of the Gulf. Iran recovered, drove Iraq back by 1982 and counterattacked into Iraq, sending waves of young volunteers against minefields and trenches.¹

The conflict turned into a war of attrition resembling World War I. Iraq used chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agents, against Iranian troops and, in 1988, against the Kurdish town of Halabja. Both sides attacked oil tankers in the 'Tanker War', and the United States intervened to protect Gulf shipping, shooting down an Iranian airliner in July 1988. Neither side won and the borders were unchanged, and the war left both economies badly damaged. Iraq emerged with huge debts to Gulf states, which Saddam used as one reason to invade Kuwait in 1990.¹²