Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...timed charges, major events detonated through the week. Each seemed to end with a disquieting question mark, because each suggested powers beyond personal control: unhinged economic forces, irrational foreign crises, undetected illness. The stock market went into a panicked free fall. Iran launched a Chinese-made missile from Iraqi territory that hit a Kuwaiti tanker that was flying the U.S. flag in the Persian Gulf to protect, in part, Japanese oil supplies. Amid this babble of conflicting national interests, any American action, however justified, promised to inflame unfathomable hatreds. And the man with the responsibility for authorizing any retaliation...
...Silkworms were apparently launched from the Fao peninsula, a spit of Iraqi land north of Kuwait that is now occupied by Iran. An American air strike against the sites would seem the most logical countermeasure. But the nearest U.S. fighter-bombers are on the aircraft carrier Ranger, cruising in the Arabian Sea 1,200 miles from Fao. The jets would have to refuel in midair, since the gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are skittish about letting them land on their territory for fear of Iranian reprisal. And because the Silkworms are truck-mounted and mobile, there...
...first leg of a difficult mission: to negotiate a cease-fire in the seven- year war between Iran and Iraq. The two sides had been expected to stop fighting at least until the Secretary-General's visit ends this week. But after only a three-day lull, Iraqi warplanes attacked Iranian cities and industrial sites in what Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called a "day of revenge" for Iranian missile attacks on Kuwaiti targets the week before. Iran, meanwhile, said it could not "take the risk" of observing an unconditional cease-fire, as called for by a U.N. Security Council resolution...
...attacking Iran in 1980, and it was Iraq that expanded the fighting into the Persian Gulf in 1984 by initiating the tanker war, thus endangering international oil shipments. The U.S. became an inadvertent victim of the last phase of the tanker war when on May 17 an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the cruiser U.S.S. Stark, killing 37 American sailors. The incident increased Administration resolve to protect neutral shipping in the gulf by reflagging and escorting the Kuwaiti tankers. Said one U.S. official in Washington: "Iraq owes us in the gulf. It owes us the U.S.S. Stark...
Though Baghdad claims otherwise, the Iraqi sorties have only temporarily and sporadically impeded Iran's oil shipments and have not hampered its ability to finance the conflict. Moreover, by renewing the tanker war now, said Assistant Secretary Murphy, Iraq is giving up the moral high ground to the Iranians, who can claim that Iraq's actions threaten the U.N. peace effort...