Word: gulf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...origins of the gulf war have grown somewhat obscure over the years. Most authorities blame Iraq for staging the first direct attack, in September 1980, though many concede that Baghdad was mightily provoked by persistent Iranian efforts to stir trouble within Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim minority. After fighting more than three years to recapture its enemy-held land, Iran invaded Iraqi territory in 1984. Eventually, it squeezed off the Shatt al Arab waterway in southern Iraq, the country's only entrance to the gulf. At one point in the conflict, Iran held large areas of territory, notably in southeastern...
...last July. For another, the shootdown gave relatively moderate political figures a chance to argue the futility of continuing a war that, they insisted, the U.S. would never permit Iraq to lose. That line of reasoning had emerged on previous occasions. Tehran has long complained about U.S. warships' protecting gulf shipping from Iranian attack. Iran has accused Washington, correctly, of providing military intelligence to Iraq and more recently charged, altogether incorrectly, that U.S. troops helped reclaim the Fao peninsula. Says a U.S. military analyst: "Iran needed a fall...
...country quietly restored diplomatic ties with Canada, severed in 1980, after dropping a demand that Ottawa apologize for hiding six American diplomats following the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Few steps would give this friendliness campaign greater impetus than a move by Iran to end the gulf...
...Aharon Levran, of Tel Aviv University's Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies. Even so, few Israeli strategists believe that after eight years of bloodletting, Baghdad wants another war right away. Said Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin: "It is very difficult to see how Iraq can extricate itself from the gulf so quickly and engage Israel...
Both Iraq and Iran will need a long period of recovery. To finance its arms purchases, Baghdad has run up $40 billion in debt to Western Europe alone, considerably more if loans that will probably not be repaid to rich gulf creditors are counted. But optimists among U.S. analysts, pointing out that Iraq was placing increasing reliance on Western markets and technology before the war, foresee what one calls an "opening to the West" and a move away from Soviet influence. Iraq is likely to challenge Syria for status among Arab states, probably successfully, but some experts believe that...