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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (226414)	4/8/2007 10:16:07 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 281500

"Except when they conquered Iraq, I think you mean." Don't you have US confused with Iran, Nadine? Oh wait, we never really got it "conquered", did we?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (226414)	4/8/2007 3:08:50 PM
From: Noel de Leon	Respond to of 281500

Iran did invade Iraq. Here is your source. "But yet another conqueror, Tamerlane (Teymur-e Lang), was to be seduced by the mirage of an Empire of the Orient. In 1370, he entered into Iran. Over a period of thirty years, he conquered Iraq, Syria, Anatolia, Russia and northern parts of India; he was about to invade China when he died in 1404. He chose Samarkand as his capital and his kingdom, while administered by Turkmen, was of distinctively Persian culture." en.wikipedia.org Here's a little recent history. "Meanwhile, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to take advantage of what he perceived to be disorder in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and its unpopularity with Western governments. The once-strong Iranian military had been disbanded during the revolution, and with the Shah ousted, Hussein had ambitions to position himself as the new strong man of the Middle East. He also sought to expand Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf by acquiring territories that Iraq had claimed earlier from Iran during the Shah's rule. Of chief importance to Iraq was Khuzestan which not only boasted a substantial Arab population, but rich oil fields as well. On the unilateral behalf of the United Arab Emirates, the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs became objectives as well. With these ambitions in mind, Hussein planned a full-scale assault on Iran, boasting that his forces could reach the capital within three days. On September 22, 1980 the Iraqi army invaded Iran at Khuzestan, precipitating the Iran-Iraq War known as Saddâm's Qâdisiyyah in Iraq and the Imposed War in Iran. The attack took revolutionary Iran completely by surprise. Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran Donald Rumsfeld meeting Saddam Hussein on 19 December - 20 December 1983. Rumsfeld visited again on 24 March 1984; the same day the UN released a report that Iraq had used mustard gas and tabun nerve agent against Iranian troops.Although Saddam Hussein's forces made several early advances, by 1982, Iranian forces managed to push the Iraqi army back into Iraq. Khomeini refused a cease-fire from Iraq, demanding huge reparation payments, an end to Saddam's rule, and that he be tried for crimes against humanity. Khomeini also sought to export his Islamic revolution westward into Iraq, especially on the majority Shi'a Arabs living in the country. The war then continued for six more years until 1988, when Khomeini, in his words, "drank the cup of poison" and accepted a truce mediated by the United Nations. Tens of thousands of Iranian civilians and military personnel were killed when Iraq used chemical weapons in its warfare. Iraq was financially backed by Egypt, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states, the United States (beginning in 1983), France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and the People's Republic of China (which also sold weapons to Iran). All of these countries provided intelligence, agents for chemical weapons as well as other forms of military assistance to Saddam Hussein. Iran's principal allies during the war were Syria, Libya, and North Korea. With more than 100,000 Iranian victims[39] of Iraq's chemical weapons during the eight-year war, Iran is the world's second-most afflicted country by weapons of mass destruction, second only to Japan. The total Iranian casualties of the war were estimated to be anywhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000. Almost all relevant international agencies have confirmed that Saddam engaged in chemical warfare to blunt Iranian human wave attacks, while unanimously announcing that Iran never used chemical weapons during the war.[40][41][42][43]"