Word: basra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Iraqi Shi'ites and fomented skirmishes along the border. Iranian forces blunted the Iraqi offensive, and two months after the war began, the conflict was largely stalemated. After years of fighting, Tehran lost all hope of victory when Iraq stopped an Iranian drive for the port city of Basra in early 1987; a year later, Iraq began the offensive that eventually brought Iran to the peace table. The fighting reportedly cost both countries an estimated $500 billion. More than 900,000 Iranian lives were lost; 300,000 Iraqis died during...
During the past three months, however, Iran has suffered one military reversal after another. The turning point may have been its failure to seize the strategic southern port city of Basra during the winter offensive of 1986-87. Despite Iranian human-wave assaults, Iraqi defenders managed to hold on to it. Iran's confidence was further shaken by two Iraqi tactics early this year. One was extending the range of Iraq's Soviet-made Scud-B ground-to- ground missiles so they could reach Iranian cities. Between February and April, in the so-called war of the cities, Iraq launched...
More recently Iraq has been on an offensive in which its forces have reclaimed virtually all Iraqi territory still in Iranian hands, including the Fao peninsula, staging areas east of Basra, and the oil-rich Majnoun islands at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Khomeini desperately searched for ways to turn the tide, handing over command of the country's armed forces in June to Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and relatively pragmatic speaker of parliament...
Cracks in Tehran's confidence became visible late last February, after the Iranians revived the so-called war of the cities by firing two missiles into Baghdad, the capital, and Basra, the key port city in the south. The Iraqis reacted in kind. Rockets fell on Tehran, on the holy city of Qum and other Iranian towns, and sent civilians fleeing. Between Feb. 29 and April 19, when the missile war was halted, Iraq fired 160 Soviet-made Scud-B missiles, which had been modified to increase their range beyond the normal 175 miles. The bombs killed and wounded hundreds...
Finally, on May 25, Iraqi forces threw Iranian troops out of an important salient: territory east of the port of Basra that had been a staging area for Iranian artillery bombardments of the city. The operation reportedly took just five hours, with the Iranians putting up only token resistance...