Word: waterway
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Meanwhile Iran and Iraq were slugging it out like determined but weary boxers, unable to land a knockout punch but also unwilling to call it quits. As it had for weeks, the struggle raged over control of the crucial Shatt al Arab waterway. After pummeling the ancient port city of Khorramshahr, the Iraqis laid siege to the Iranian refinery center of Abadan. The Iraqi advance was slowed by the fierce resistance of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, an Islamic militia passionately supportive of the ideals and fulminations of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Meanwhile, the surprisingly effective Iranian air force hit back...
Though a breakthrough continued to elude them, Iraqi forces were tightening a noose around the ports of Khorramshahr and Abadan on the bank of the Shatt al Arab waterway. Buttressed by batteries of 130-mm artillery, an estimated 9,000 Iraqi infantrymen, using three pontoon bridges, succeeded in crossing the Karun River. Their military command declared it "Iraq's largest amphibious assault ever." From that bridgehead Iraqi tanks fanned southward to surround both Khorramshahr and Abadan. The Iranians charged that the Iraqis bombarded both cities with artillery and with surface-to-surface missiles. Eyewitnesses said the carnage among civilians...
...trumpeted at every turn. Radio and television keep up a drumbeat of patriotic poems set to martial music. The propaganda has had some impact. Many Baghdadis feel that their country is not only waging a war against a traditional enemy that gained control of the Shatt al Arab waterway by exploiting Iraqi weakness, but spearheading a patriotic, nationalist cause for the entire Arab world...
Iraq also reported that 60 neutral ships trapped in the Shatt al-Arab waterway by the battle for Khorramshahr are now free to sail under the banner of the International Red Cross (IRC) into the Persian Gulf...
...objectives. Baghdad's battle plan apparently called for the seizure of key cities in Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan province, which has a large Arab minority. The cities would have been held for ransom against a settlement that would give Iraq control of the Shatt al Arab waterway, which it reluctantly agreed to share with the Shah of Iran in 1975. One of Baghdad's ultimate political goals is to overthrow the revolutionary government of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, who has urged Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims to oust Saddam Hussein...