Iran S Nuclear and Iraq

Iran’s Nuclear and Iraq

The Iran-Iraq War (also called the First Persian Gulf War or the Imposed War in Iran) was a war between Iran and Iraq lasting from September 22 1980 until August 20 1988 . The origins of the war was nothing but was fundamentally a war over dominance the Persian Gulf region. Rulers in both hoped to reduce the power of the in order to bolster their own domestic international power. The war began with an invasion of Iran which advanced quickly then into a defensive position for the bulk the war and then advanced again later the war. It was commonly referred to the Persian Gulf War until the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict ( 1990 - 91 ) which became known as the Second War and later simply the Gulf War . (????????????????????????free glossary.com To understand the psychology of Iran’s Foreign policy with Iraq, we have to look back to the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq fought a bloody eight year war, initiated by a reckless Saddam Hussein. The war between Iran and Iraq was one of the great human tragedies of recent Middle Eastern history. Perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. The resources wasted on the war exceeded what the entire Third World spent on public health in a decade. The war began on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi troops launched a full-scale invasion of Iran. Prior to this date there had been subversion by each country inside the other and also major border clashes. Iraq hoped for a lightning victory against an internationally isolated neighbor in the throes of revolutionary upheaval. But despite Iraq's initial successes, the Iranians rallied and, using their much larger population, were able by mid-1982 to push the invaders out. In June 1982, the Iranians went over to the offensive, but Iraq, with a significant advantage in heavy weaponry, was able to prevent a decisive Iranian breakthrough. The guns finally fell silent on August 20, 1988. Primary responsibility for the eight long years of bloodletting must rest with the governments of the Iraq -- the ruthless military regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and his desire to regain full control of Arvand/Shatt al-Arab waterway at the head of Persian Gulf an important channel for the oil of both countries. Saddam had recently come to power and interested in elevating Iraq to a regional superpower. A successful invasion of western Iran would make Iraq the sole dominating force in the region and its lucrative oil trade. France became the major source of Iraq's high-tech weaponry, in no small part to protect its financial stake in that country. The Soviet Union was Iraq's largest weapon's supplier, while jockeying for influence in both capitals. Much of financial backing came from other Arab states oil-rich Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The list of countries engaging in despicable behavior, however, would be incomplete without the United States. The U.S. objective was not profits from the arms trade, but the much more significant aim of controlling to the greatest extent possible the region's oil resources. Starting in 1982 with Iranian success the battle field the United States changed its less announced policy of Iraq to a clear direct support supplying with weapons and economic aid and normalizing with the government (broken during the 1967 Six-Day War ). In particular the United States along its allies (among them Britain France and Italy ) provided Iraq with biological and chemical and the precursors to nuclear capabilities. The States also engaged in a series of battles with Iranian forces in 1987 and 1988. The U.S. cruiser USS Vincennes ( July 3 1988 ) shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with the loss of all 290 and crew including women and children. Some interpreted this as a very severe warning end the war as it no longer the U.S. government. (????????????????????????free glossary.com). The war was characterized by extreme brutality the use of chemical weapons especially tabun by Iraq which was violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.. Very little pressure was upon Iraq by the world community to such attacks or to condemn its earlier of hostilities. Iraq and the US government at some time that Iran was also chemical weapons but these allegations were never by independent sources. The tactics used in war resembled those of World War I with costly human wave attacks commonly used by both sides but particular Iran. Chemical weapons are first and foremost weapons of terror, causing mass panic and human casualties. Unequipped and untrained, Iran’s ragtag army of “volunteer” foot soldiers was easy prey for poison gases, which dispatched them in flight. In the final years of the war, Iraq’s chemical bombardment of Kurdish civilian areas, both in Iran and Iraq, and the threat to similarly target Tehran eroded the popular morale that had underpinned the war effort to both Iranian military forces and Iraqi Kurdish insurgents.(IRAN”S Nuclear Posture….) Not only were Iranian claims of Iraqi chemical weapons use largely ignored at the time, Iran was declared a liar and a hypocrite. Eventually –adding insult to injury—the chemical charges were turned on the Iranians themselves, even if no convincing evidence of Iranian chemical weapon use was ever produced. The UN’s failure to uphold such precepts, the Iranians said, would undermine its credibility and impartiality, while giving rise to a regional arms race. The young and inexperienced Islamic Republic Learned two important lessons from its experience: first, never again allow yourself to be in a position of such strategic vulnerability and second, when you are facing the world’s superpower, multilateral treaties and conventions are worthless. It is assumed that toward the end of the war Iran had gained the capability to field its own chemical weapons. Parliamentary speaker (and future president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared two months after war’s end that “chemical bombs and biological weapons are poor man’s atomic bombs and can easily produced. We should at least consider them for our defense…Although the use of such weapons is inhuman; the war taught us that international laws are only drops of ink on paper.” In the 1990s Iraq was removed as a strategic threat, and Iran became an enthusiastic participant in international negotiations aimed at banning chemical weapons. (IRAN”S Nuclear Posture….) The war was extremely costly one of deadliest wars since the Second World War terms of casualties. (Conflicts since 1945 which surpassed the Iran-Iraq War in terms of include the Vietnam War Korean War the Second Sudanese Civil War the in the Democratic Republic of the Congo among others.) (????????????????????????free glossary.com)

Iran’s Interests in Iraq

Iran has immediate influence in Iraqi politics because of history and geography, as well as economic, ethnic, religious, and paramilitary ties.( Special Report)

Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which overthrew the Shah Iraq and other Arab countries also feared the possible spread the Islamic Revolution to their countries that put an end to their secular or Sunni dominated regimes. The Iranian regime disliked secular Ba'athist regime in Iraq and did try eliminating it. They funded Kurdish separatists in Iraq and Shiite leaders in the rest Iraq hoping to cause a civil war the Shi'ite majority in Iraq to revolt against Sunni dominated government. (????????????????????????free glossary.com)

Iranian influence in Iraq is widespread. Iran provided financial support to Shiite-backed political groups that helped them win a near majority in the Iraqi elections held on January 30,2005. The success of those elections has changed the political calculus in Iraq.

The complexities of the Shiite religion suggest that there would be rivalry between the clerical establishments, with Iraq’s powerful religious centers of Najaf and Karbala eventually providing alternative sources of theological discourses to Qom, the religious center of Iran; yet this could be the case even without a clerical government in Baghdad. What Iran would prefer to see ideally in Iraq is a friendly neighbor that presents no discernable threat to its clerical regime either military or politically.

To this extent, the role of the most powerful man in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is a critical variable. Sistani, who was born in Iran but has spent most of his life in Iraq, enjoys the support of the Iranian government:yet he believes that while clerics should exert political influence, they should not run the country.

The world would be a more dangerous place with nuclear weapons in Iran. A Persian power with a keen sense of its 2,500-year history, Iran occupies a pivotal position straddling the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. The country has the largest population in the Middle East, the world’s third largest oil reserves, the second largest natural gas reserves, and aspirations to again become the region’s major power. Add nuclear weapons, and this mixture become highly combustible.(The Continuing Problem of Nuclear Weapons. JOSEPH CIRINCIONE)