Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Iran halts the Iraqi advance and turns the war into a punishing stalemate...
Iraq's thrust into Iran came to a stuttering halt last week as both sides dug in and a rocking, punishing kind of stalemate set in. The enemies exchanged thundering barrages of artillery across the Shatt al Arab estuary. Iraqi infantrymen intent on consolidating their sliver of captured Iranian territory took heavy losses in hand-to-hand fighting for possession of three key towns and a vital port installation. Iranian Phantom fighter-bombers streaked low under the radar in deep penetration raids all the way to the enemy capital of Baghdad. Beneath the orange fireballs and black smoke gushing...
...series of well-meaning appeals for a cease-fire and parallel attempts at peacemaking-by the United Nations, by the fraternity of Islamic countries and by some of the frightened nations bordering on the war-got nowhere. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, declaring he had achieved his military goals and was ready to negotiate, announced a unilateral ceasefire. The aroused Iranians paid no attention. On Sunday, as the ceasefire went into effect, Tehran's jets attacked Baghdad and other cities in Iraq...
Iraq's initial blitz had clearly failed to produce anything like the swift and easy victory that Baghdad may have anticipated. Iraq evidently miscalculated Iran's military resilience. After an initial withdrawal in the face of the Iraqis' surprise invasion along a 500-mile front, Iran rebounded with a vengeance. Iraqi claims about the capture of four cities inside Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan province in the first week of fighting proved to be embarrassingly premature. While Iranian main forces, an amalgam of Islamic Revolutionary Guards, border guards and army troops, took on the Iraqi regulars...
...though in revenge for the Iraqi bombing of Kharg Island, Iran's main outlet for oil, the week before, the Iranians also launched repeated bombing raids against the refineries of Basra, the pumping stations around Kirkuk and Mosul, and the oil port of Fao at the mouth of Shatt al Arab. Tehran even sent a few of its sophisticated U.S.-made F-14s into the war; they were flown sparingly, but according to Iranian reports their Phoenix air-to-air missiles succeeded in downing more than a dozen Iraqi...