Word: waterways
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...though many concede that Baghdad was mightily provoked by persistent Iranian efforts to stir trouble within Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim minority. After fighting more than three years to recapture its enemy-held land, Iran invaded Iraqi territory in 1984. Eventually, it squeezed off the Shatt al Arab waterway in southern Iraq, the country's only entrance to the gulf. At one point in the conflict, Iran held large areas of territory, notably in southeastern Iraq, and tried to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq that would replace Hussein's government...
...weeks after the U.S.S. Vincennes downed an Iran Air Airbus, Baghdad began the last stages of a counteroffensive that promised to drive the remaining Iranian soldiers from Iraqi soil. By overrunning Iran's military headquarters on the southern front, Iraq gained control of the vital Shatt al Arab waterway, providing another sign that the eight-year-old gulf war was tilting in Iraq's favor...
...which had given its blessing to Hizballah's negotiators. Iran's cooperation may have been motivated in part by the battlefield losses it has suffered recently in the eight-year-old gulf war with Iraq. Last week Iraqi troops recaptured Iranian-occupied territory east of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, beyond the battered southern port city of Basra...
Iran's setback in the gulf was serious enough, but the loss of the Fao was devastating. The peninsula, gateway to the Shatt al-Arab waterway and the southeastern port city of Basra, had been captured by Iranian forces in 1986. In a surprise offensive code-named Blessed Ramadan, after the Islamic holy month that began last week, President Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi Seventh Army, supported by elite Presidential Guards, to attack the peninsula's Iranian defenders. Early last week, following a successful 36-hour armored blitzkrieg, the Iraqi victory was complete...
...legal option but to surrender the canal. In 1978, when the U.S. Senate approved the document, an amendment was passed that allows the U.S. to take action to ensure that the canal "remains open, neutral, secure and accessible." But what constitutes a threat to the waterway is not specified, and even if U.S. Marines were dispatched to protect the canal after 1999, it would still belong to Panama. The U.S., of course, could unilaterally abrogate the treaty, but at the cost of shredding Washington's reputation for trustworthiness around the world. Asks a foreign observer living in Panama: "What credibility...