The Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War

Shortly after taking power in Iraq, Saddam Hussein brought his country into war with Iran. Iran had just had a Shiite Islamic revolution, in which the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers, along with a coalition of other disaffected members of the population, overthrew the Shah. In Iraq, where a minority of Sunni Muslims governed over a majority of Shiite Muslims, Saddam feared a similar ideological revolution. He also saw the instability in Iran as a prime opportunity to seize Iran's oil fields.

In September 1980, Saddam's troops invaded Iran. This invasion was unsuccessful, and the Iranians made a counter-incursion into Iraq. For the next seven years, Iraqi soldiers defended their country from trenches. The Iranians used "human wave" attacks, where a large number of soldiers would charge a fortified Iraqi position, hoping to overpower it by force of numbers. This strategy only resulted in large numbers of casualties for the Iranians, who lost approximately a million soldiers during the long war, while the Iraqis only lost half a million. Saddam used chemical weapons, condemned by the international community, to repel the invasion.

Near the end of the war, missile attacks intensified on both sides. Since Iraq had a modern air force, it was able to drop bombs on Iranian cities, while Iranians were limited to rockets launched from the ground into Iraqi territory. Support from the United States, which saw Iran as the bigger threat, is also credited in Iraq's eventual victory. According to Wikipedia, this war, which was over in 1988, was the longest conventional war of the twentieth century.

The war had been so costly that Iraq was forced to borrow vast sums from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq's neighbor Kuwait was a wealthy oil power, but Saddam had the stronger army, and calculated that invading Kuwait could help his country get back on track. In 1990, Iraq swiftly conquered Kuwait, and Saddam installed his cousin as governor of the occupied nation. When he turned his militant rhetoric toward Saudi Arabia, the United States feared that if Saddam were to invade that country, he would control the lion's share of the world's oil reserves.

The U.S. launched Operation Desert Storm, otherwise known as the Gulf War, in January 1991. Kuwait was liberated by the end of February, and Iraqi troops retreated, though not before setting more than seven hundred oil wells on fire. U.S. troops did not pursue them into Baghdad, and withdrew from Iraq, declaring victory within 100 hours of the beginning of the ground phase of the war. The decision by U.S. President George H.W. Bush to end the war after its primary objective had been achieved was often contrasted, during the following decade, with the decision made by his son George W. Bush to topple Saddam's regime.