Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...both areas of conflict, the latest developments caused alarm. Moderate Arab governments, particularly those of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, are deeply worried about the effects of a possible Iraqi defeat. They note that, according to the latest reports from Tehran, the Ayatullah Khomeini's goal is nothing less than the downfall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who launched the war partly in an effort to topple Khomeini. Saddam's fall, the moderate Arabs fear, would realign the balance of forces in the region in favor of Iran and its main Arab supporter, Syria. Any change...
Iran immediately blamed Iraq for the incident, calling it "a calculated plot" to sabotage Benyahia's mission. As evidence, Tehran cited recorded exchanges between the Iranian control tower at Tabriz and the plane's crew. Three times, according to the Iranians, Tabriz warned the Algerians that two Iraqi fighter jets were in the vicinity and told the pilot to turn back toward Ankara. Later Iranian officials also claimed that fragments of a Soviet-built Iraqi air-to-air missile had been retrieved from the wreckage, which was found in mountainous Iranian territory close to the Turkish border...
...incident occurred three days after heavy fighting had resumed between Iranian and Iraqi forces in a southern salient of Iran's oil-producing province of Khuzistan. Spurred on by a major military victory in late March in which they recovered a large chunk of the province, Iranian forces had launched a second offensive that they hoped would rout the Iraqis from Iranian territory, which had been invaded in September 1980. Hundreds of Iranian commandos were dropped by helicopter behind Iraqi artillery lines in an attempt to recapture the Iranian city of Khorramshahr on the strategic Shatt al Arab waterway...
...convergence of interests, Libya, Syria and Israel are aiding Iran with arms. Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, which fear Iranian efforts to foment revolution among their dissident minorities, staunchly support Iraq, and have poured $25 billion into the war effort. Egypt has sent 60 pilots to aid the Iraqi air force, and Iran said last week that 400 Egyptian troops were fighting alongside Iraqi forces. The assistance was supposedly intended to help ease Egypt back into the Arab fold, by which it has been ostracized since the Camp David agreement. But in spite of the losses incurred, neither side...
...Since then, says one disgruntled U.S. policymaker, the American attitude has been "Don't face anything until someone rubs our nose in it." It is a posture that has won no friends. A long series of mild and ineffectual rebukes to Israel-about the bombing of both the Iraqi nuclear reactor and Beirut last summer and the de facto annexation of the Golan Heights-has angered moderate Arabs far more than U.S. arms sales have soothed them. Even some American officials fear that Prime Minister Menachem Begin now believes the U.S. will do nothing to restrain Israeli actions...