Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Iraqis claimed that 1,564 Iranians had been killed in the clash and 65 Iranian tanks had been destroyed. For their part, the Iranians claimed that 2,100 Iraqis had been killed or wounded, and that 372 Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers had been destroyed. Whatever the truth, casualties were heavy on both sides, and, as U.S. intelligence satellites confirmed, the Iraqi lines had held...
Late in the week, fighting continued a mile or two inside Iraqi territory to the east of Fish Lake, the site of an Iraqi victory a few days earlier (see box). The Iranians are still hoping to break through the Iraqi positions and advance quickly to Basra (est. pop. 500,000), an important oil center that lies 280 miles from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. But Iraqi officials suspected that the attacks in the vicinity of Basra might be a diversionary tactic aimed at distracting the Iraqis from a larger and more serious threat to the north. If the Iranians should...
...Iraqi officials were struck by the fact that the raid had involved only two Iranian planes, and that the pilot of the downed jet turned out to be Major Abbas Dowran, who was famous in the Iranian air force for his exploits in previous missions over Iraq. Baghdad officials suspected that Iran, in its preparation for an all-out assault along its central border with Iraq, had sent the Dowran mission not only to bomb the Iraqi capital but also to survey and test the city's air defenses...
...long will the war last? On that question at least, most Iraqis and Iranians agreed: a long time. When Khomeini ordered the invasion of Iraq, he assumed that Iraqi defenses would quickly crumble. He also assumed that Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, who form 55% of the country's population, would rise up against the Saddam Hussein government and welcome the Iranian liberators. After that, Khomeini believed, it would be an easy matter to overthrow Saddam and his ruling Baath Party and to establish an Islamic republic in Iraq. But so far, the Iraqis have fought bravely...
...went to some effort last week to persuade the gulf states that it had no designs on any Arab countries other than Iraq. Complained Majlis Speaker Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani: "The West is trying to depict us as an expansionist power." He noted that the gulf states had supported the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, but magnanimously said that his government considered their action "pardonable...