The West also supported Saddam, knowing that the war would preoccupy the Iranians from exporting their revolution elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia. Saddam had something else on its side: In , the U. It is widely believed that these were eventually used on Iraqi Kurds and Iranian border towns.
The new Iranian regime saw the war as a test to the government, which helped mobilize society. But here too there were miscalculations. Khomeini counted on Shiites, who constituted the bulk of Iraqi conscripts, to defect.
He was disappointed when it became clear that most Iraqi Shiites saw themselves as Iraqis and Arabs first.
The two countries agreed a truce in Iraq and Kuwait Saddam was not done with war, however, and in invaded and annexed Kuwait. This effort came to an end when U. While American troops did not occupy the country, Shiites saw an opportunity and rose up against Saddam at the end of the war.
The revolt was crushed by the government, which had stayed in power. What followed was over a decade of international sanctions and isolation, with the Kurdish north of the country given increasing autonomy. Iran and Iraq also resumed diplomatic ties in , although both remained in relative international isolation during the following decade given their alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
What now? While Iran may have been alarmed at the U. Iran has several reasons to be pleased with the government of Iraq: The government is dominated by a Shiite bloc, with a prime minister who is a member of the al-Dawa party, which has long been supported by Iran; the countries have conducted high-level security meetings, culminating in March of with an unprecedented visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq. During his visit, he called on foreign troops to leave and said his country wanted to help rebuild Iraq.
Iran is also assumed to be supporting Muqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand cleric who comes from a prominent line of religious leaders but whose militias have long battled the foreign forces. Tehran denies that it is training and arming militias in Iraq. Goodarzi says that by its actions in Iraq, Iran is telling the United States: "If you continue this way we can cause mischief here or there.
IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. And the winner had pledged to tear up the deal if elected. Second, we will place additional sanctions on the regime to block their financing of terror. The impact seems to be significant: A year and a half ago, Iran was exporting 2. That number is now down to half a million. But so far there are no signs that Iran will cave to American pressure.
Instead, it has responded with its own pressure campaign to force Trump to lift the sanctions, including bombing oil tankers in international waters and oil fields in Saudi Arabia, downing a US military drone, and attacking two US military sites in Iraq after the Soleimani killing. Which means that since Trump became president, his policies designed to back Iran into a corner have led to a massive backlash.
The militia denies having any involvement in the rocket attack. It was a significant escalation in the US-Iran standoff, which so far had seen damage done to ships, oil fields, and military equipment, but not people. Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many.
We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!
By January 2, Trump had decided it was time to send a message and chose the option to kill Soleimani to send a strong signal to Iran. Striking the Iranian general dead was something the president considered doing as early as , and he actually authorized an operation on him in June should Tehran ever be responsible for killing an American. According to Bloomberg News , the US military watched the general get on a plane in Beirut, Lebanon, and monitored his flight to Baghdad with drones — including one outfitted with air-to-surface missiles.
Once Soleimani landed, the Reaper drone watched him for about 10 minutes before firing its weapons on the two-car convoy leaving Baghdad International Airport. Trump also authorized an attack on a top Iranian military official in Yemen but failed to kill him. We did not take action to start a war.
The question was whether killing Soleimani now was a good idea. Experts differ wildly on the wisdom of killing the powerful Iranian leader, and each side has genuine merit. Vox conducted two interviews with experts, asking one to lay out the strongest case against killing Soleimani and one to lay out the strongest case for killing him. Instead, the US should find ways to compromise with Iran, since it has already shown it is willing to make deals to improve its situation when faced with a souring economy.
Bilal Saab, a Middle East security expert at the Middle East Institute and former Pentagon official in the Trump administration, disagrees with that reasoning. First, he said the US and Iran have been locked in a cycle of violence for decades, and especially since Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. So there was no guarantee Iran would refrain from an escalation even if the president chose not to kill Soleimani.
The Pentagon gave Trump the option to strike Iranian missile sites and ships, which would have meant bombing inside Iran or sinking vessels in the Iranian navy. Leaders in Tehran could see that as an even more direct attack on the Iranian military than simply targeting one general, and perhaps would be compelled to respond in a much more aggressive fashion.
Third, Saab argued there was never anything the US could do to stop Iran from smaller-scale attacks on Americans. However, killing the military leader could make the regime think twice about taking larger-scale actions, such as closing the vital Strait of Hormuz or launching a rocket attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad. Iran may not have killed US troops in its retaliatory strikes in Iraq on Tuesday night, but it did say it accidentally killed civilians: the passengers of Ukraine International Airlines Flight Just a few hours after Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two US military targets in Iraq Tuesday night , Flight , which was flying from Tehran to Kyiv, crashed minutes after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all people on board — half of whom were Iranian.
On January 11, after initially claiming the plane crashed due to mechanical problems, the Iranian government finally admitted it shot down the airliner. A junior officer made the error, said Brig. Amir Ali Hajizadeh. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking during a Thursday afternoon press conference in Ottawa, said his nation — which had at least 63 citizens on board the flight — had intelligence pointing to Iran as the culprit. Moments after Trudeau finished speaking, the New York Times published a video purportedly showing a surface-to-air missile hitting the jetliner in midair.
While the video is grainy and the camera is far from the scene, it shows an explosion at the point of impact. The video shows an object exploding in the air, near a location where PS 's stopped transmitting its signal. The plane didn't explode, managed to turn back towards the airport, but crashed quickly, the nytimes has determined. The mounting evidence likely compelled Tehran to admit culpability. It now means the death toll in the current US-Iran conflict has risen significantly, and horrifically.
While the US Congress never formally declared war on Iran, the killing of Soleimani was by any reasonable definition an act of war — direct and open hostilities between the armed forces of the two nations.
It was a clear escalation from the shadow war of December to direct conflict. None of that. As of right now, this looks like the end of the latest round of hostilities. However, the risk that a larger war could break out remains.
Several experts told Vox that Iran will almost certainly attack the US and its allies again at some point. In fact, it would commit the US to hitting Iran repeatedly if or, more likely, when it engages in anti-American military activities. So long as both sides are committed to using force in this fashion, the conditions that led to this latest flare-up in violence are still there. The nine Shiite provinces in Iraq are looking more and more like southern Lebanon , like some kind of Iranian protectorate.
For Kurdish people, at the grassroots level, the country with the most influence right now is the United States, says Zanko Ahmad, an editor with Kurdish current affairs magazine, Shar and the Sharpress website, based in the northern city of Sulaymaniyah. Perhaps because they are journalists, and possibly more liberal simply by dint of their profession, all of those interviewed for this story say they would prefer to see more tolerance in Iraq rather than external interference with sectarian motivation.
Because Iran is a neighbour and they know that whatever happens here, will influence them. What do Iraqis think of Iran?
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