Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Israel, an Iraqi victory in the six-year-old war would be the worst possible outcome; Iraq has supplied frontline troops to three Arab-Israeli wars and provided shelter and support for terrorists such as Abu Nidal and Abul Abbas. A continued stalemate would be best of all: it simultaneously weakens the frontline Arab states, deflects Arab attention from Israel and checks the expansion of Iranian-inspired Islamic fanaticism. But an outright Iranian victory could prove a mixed blessing. Moreover, just as the Tehran arms deal has backfired on the Reagan Administration, it might also turn out to be detrimental...
Even as the tales of covert diplomacy continued to emanate from Washington, Tehran and elsewhere, the debilitating and indecisive six-year-old war between Iran and Iraq dragged on. Twice last week Iraqi warplanes struck deep into Iran, hitting first a petrochemical complex at the port of Bandar Khomeini and then an oil refinery and a power station in Isfahan. In response, Tehran Radio announced that Iranian artillery units would retaliate by shelling targets in southern Iraq. The station warned Iraqi civilians to evacuate Basra, Iraq's second largest city, as well as Umm Qasr, at the head...
Some diplomats theorize that the Iranians are stalling until their pilots have learned to fly the fighter jets that the Chinese agreed to sell Iran last summer. Others wonder whether the Iranian war effort may at last be faltering, a notion that is dismissed by many observers. Says an Iraqi official in Baghdad: "When Khomeini was in exile in Paris, he said he had three enemies: the Shah, Jimmy Carter and (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein. He brought down the Shah, he thinks he brought down Carter through the hostage crisis, and now he's intent on achieving his third...
...have about a million men under arms. That is a particularly heavy burden for Iraq, whose population is only 15 million, vs. Iran's 48 million. After a long stalemate, the military balance shifted somewhat last February, when the Iranians captured the Fao peninsula in southern Iraq and Iraqi forces failed to retake it despite massive bombardment and the alleged use of mustard gas. The Iraqis hit back by seizing the Iranian border town of Mehran in May, but were later forced to give...
...seizures came as speculation grew that the regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini was readying its long-awaited "final offensive." During the week, Iran launched a new ground attack across the Iraqi border in the north and used frogmen to sabotage an Iraqi offshore radar station...