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Iran-Iraq War Research Paper

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The findings of the Ottoman Empire date all the way back to 1299 under Osman I, the founder and leader of the Ottoman Turks in northwest Anatolia. By 1900, the Ottoman Empire was a large multinational, multilingual empire, consisting of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, Northern Africa and even the oil fields of Southern Iraq. Although being under Turkish rule, this large population of this geographic area was full of different nationalities containing multiple ethnic and religious groups, many of which disliked each other. Due to this aversion of one another, these groups identified themselves to their own distinct nationality rather than being part of the Ottoman Empire. The result of this internal conflict led to a fragile nation that struggled …show more content…

Iran has been the center of the Shiite branch of Islam, while Iraq, where Shiites are in a slight majority, has been led by political elites from the Sunni branch of Islam. On September 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran by air and land. Iraq maintains that Iran started the war on September 4 with artillery attacks on Iraqi towns. The aim of Iraq's attack, according to President Saddam Hussein, was to boost claims for Iraqi sovereignty over the Shatt al Arab, and for a shift of the boundary to the Iranian side. Hussein also demanded border adjustments in the north and the return to "Arab" sovereignty of three islands at the mouth of the Gulf that Iran occupied in 1971. Experts on the fighting say Hussein began the war to topple the Khomeini regime and to make Iraq the dominant Gulf power. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute confirms that 95 per cent of military supplies to him came from France, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. Saddam fought the Iran-Iraq war with Soviet tanks and artillery, Soviet and French aircraft, and French electronic air defenses. Iraq used chemical weapons repeatedly against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and against the

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