Word: basra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...negotiators. Iran's cooperation may have been motivated in part by the battlefield losses it has suffered recently in the eight-year-old gulf war with Iraq. Last week Iraqi troops recaptured Iranian-occupied territory east of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, beyond the battered southern port city of Basra...
Iran's setback in the gulf was serious enough, but the loss of the Fao was devastating. The peninsula, gateway to the Shatt al-Arab waterway and the southeastern port city of Basra, had been captured by Iranian forces in 1986. In a surprise offensive code-named Blessed Ramadan, after the Islamic holy month that began last week, President Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi Seventh Army, supported by elite Presidential Guards, to attack the peninsula's Iranian defenders. Early last week, following a successful 36-hour armored blitzkrieg, the Iraqi victory was complete...
...Iraqi territory on the Fao peninsula. The missile plunged harmlessly into the water off a Kuwaiti beach. Most of the ships hit by Iran were sailing to or from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which are allies of Iraq. Iran also renewed its artillery bombardment of the Iraqi city of Basra. Late in the week the ship insurers at Lloyd's of London raised war-risk premiums for vessels sailing into the Persian Gulf by 50%. Oil prices, however, remained stable...
...Iranian policy at home and abroad. Since Baghdad started the conflict by invading Iran in September 1980, some 300,000 Iranians and 200,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in the fighting. Tehran's hopes for victory soared in January, when its troops pushed within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. In the past few months, however, Iran has made little headway in its drive to crush Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the Iraqis have succeeded in reclaiming much of their lost ground...
...plane had taken off from its base in Saudi Arabia, which operated the electronics-laden Boeing 707 jointly with the U.S. On radar, the combined U.S.-Saudi crew detected a single Iraqi Mirage F-1 aircraft as it lifted off from the Shaibah military airport ten miles southwest of Basra at around 8 p.m. Heading southeast along Saudi Arabia's coast as Iraqi planes often do, the Mirage flew much closer to Bahrain than was normal. Suddenly, the fighter jerked into a sharp left turn, heading east. The Iraqi pilot apparently had spotted a target on his scope...