What's the big deal about Iran teaming up with Iraq?

Question

I have to answer that for school and I have no idea. My teacher said it had something to do with history and the 1970's or something.

PLEASE HELP!!!!

Answer 1

Iran and Iraq have been enemies since 4,000 years ago- They fought bitterly throughout the 1970s and 80s. We supported Iraq during the Reagan administration to fight against Iran.

Answer 2

Saddam's regime was Sunni Muslim. Iran is Shi'ite. They are two factions of Islam bitterly opposed to each other. The majority ruling Iraq is now Shi'ite and the inter-governmental antipathy no longer exists. There was a long and bloody war between Iran and Iraq, as others have said.

If Iraq does descend into all out civil war it is likely that the Iranians will support the Shi'ite faction in Iraq. Other regimes, such as Syria, will support the Sunnis. Then there are the Kurds.

Answer 3

iran and iraq have a history of hating each other and making war. much of it due to the splits in islam in the area. we actually used to support saddam (in the 70's) specifically because he fought with iran (who we always have been a little shakey with.)

there are three reasons irans current involvement in iraq could develop into a problem.

first, a goverment supported by iran would likely resemble it, giving us another nation in the area likely to be at odds with us.

second, it would replace iran's border with a previously hostile country with one that would be freindly and secure. given the boldness of iran's history, this would put them in prime tactical position for making war in the area... specifically like the war using syria, that many have called a "war by proxy" with isreal. remember, like i said, the whole reason we used to finance saddam was to keep iran in check.

third, and possibly most important to us here at home, if iran is sucessful in getting us out of iraq and establishing a goverment of thier choice, it will prove the viability of fighting wars without acctually declaring them (using terrorism) and war as we know it will be permenantly changed.... and not for the better.

Answer 4

you tell your teacher it will upset the balance of power.

Answer 5

Iran-Iraq

In 1971, Iraq broke diplomatic relations with Iran after claiming sovereignty rights over the islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb in the Persian Gulf, following the withdrawal of the British. Iraq then expropriated the properties of 70,000 Iranians and expelled them from its territory, after complaining to the Arab League and the UN without success.

In 1975, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had sanctioned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to attack Iraq over the waterway, then under Iraqi control; soon afterward, both nations signed the Algiers Accord, where Iraq made territorial concessions — including the waterway — in exchange for normalized relations.In 1982 with Iranian success on the battlefield, the U.S. made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, supplying it with intelligence, economic aid, normalizing relations with the government (broken during the 1967 Six-Day War), and also supplying weapons.[12]

President Ronald Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran", and that the United States "would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran."[13] President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to this effect in

The U.S. sold Iraq $200 million in helicopters, which were used by the Iraqi military in the war. These were the only direct U.S.-Iraqi military sales and were valued to be about 0.6% of Iraq's conventional weapons imports during the war.[30] Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline reported the following, however, on June 9, 1992: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]" and “Reagan/Bush administrations permitted — and frequently encouraged — the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq.” The Reagan Administration secretly began to allow Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt to transfer to Iraq American howitzers, helicopters, bombs and other weapons. These shipments were done without the approval of the U.S. Congress and were in clear violation of the Arms Export Control Act as well as international law.[31] Reagan personally asked Italy’s Prime Minister Guilio Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.[32]
The United States, United Kingdom, and Germany also provided "dual use" technology (computers, engines, etc.) that allowed Iraq to expand its missile program and radar defenses. The U.S. Commerce Department, in violation of procedure, gave out licenses to companies for $1.5 billion in dual-use items to be sent to Iraq. The State Department was not informed of this. Over 1 billion of these authorized items were trucks that were never delivered. The rest consisted of advanced technology. Iraq's Soviet-made Scuds had their ranges expanded as a result.[33]
Yugoslavia sold weapons to both countries for the entire duration of the conflict. Portugal helped both countries: it was not unusual seeing Iranian- and Iraqi-flagged ships side-by-side in Sines (a town with a deep-sea port).[citation needed]

[edit] Chemical weapons

Iranian soldiers with gas masks posing in front of a sign reading: "Hey brother, smile".
According to Iraq's report to the UN, the know-how and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained from firms in such countries as: the United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the People's Republic of China.[35]


According to the Washington Post, the CIA began in 1984 secretly to give Iraq intelligence that Iraq used to "calibrate" its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. In August, the CIA establishes a direct Washington-Baghdad intelligence link, and for 18 months, starting in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with "data from sensitive U.S. satellite reconnaissance photography...to assist Iraqi bombing raids." The Post’s source said that this data was essential to Iraq’s war effort.[37]The U.S. firm Alcolac International supplied one mustard-gas precursor, thiodiglycol, to both Iraq and Iran in violation of U.S. export laws for which it was forced to pay a fine in 1989. Overall between 300-400 tons were sent to Iraq

In May 2003, an extended list of international companies involvements in Iraq was provided by The Independent (UK).[38] Official Howard Teicher and Radley Gayle, stated that Bell helicopters that were given to Iraq by U.S. later were used to spray chemical weapons.[39]

On 25 May 1994, The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released a report in which it was stated that pathogenic (meaning disease producing), toxigenic (meaning poisonous) and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq, pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It added: "These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction."[42] The report then detailed 70 shipments (including Anthrax Bacillus) from the United States to Iraqi government agencies over three years, concluding that "these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."[43]

A report by Berlin's die tageszeitung in 2002 reported that Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council listed 150 foreign companies that supported Saddam Hussein's WMD program. Twenty-four U.S. firms were involved in exporting arms and materials to Baghdad[44] Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that made the report, said, "UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs." He added, "the executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 agents "with biological warfare significance," including West Nile virus, according to Riegle's investigators.[45]

1989. In August 1989, when FBI agents finally raided the Atlanta branch of BNL, the branch manager, Christopher Drogoul, was charged with making unauthorized, clandestine, and illegal loans to Iraq—some of which, according to his indictment, were used to purchase arms and weapons technology.
Aside from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and ABC's Ted Koppel, the Iraq-gate story never picked up much steam, even though the U.S. Congress became involved with the scandal.[47] This scandal is covered in Alan Friedman's book "The Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq."
Beginning in September 1989, the Financial Times laid out the first charges that BNL, relying heavily on U.S. government-guaranteed loans, was funding Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons work. For the next two and a half years, the Financial Times provided the only continuous newspaper reportage (over 300 articles) on the subject. Among the companies shipping militarily useful technology to Iraq under the eye of the U.S. government, according to the Financial Times, were Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, and Matrix Churchill, through its Ohio branch[48]
In all, Iraq received $35 billion in loans from the West and between $30 and $40 billion from the Gulf States during the 1980s. [[13]

Weapons of mass destruction
With more than 100,000 Iranian victims[49] of Iraq's chemical weapons during the eight-year war, Iran is one of countries of the world most severely afflicted by weapons of mass destruction.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust, released a list of U.S. companies and their exports to Iraq.
The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans of Iran. According to a 2002 article in the Star-Ledger:
"Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were hit by mustard gas..."[50]
Iraq also used chemical weapons on Iranian civilians, killing many in villages and hospitals. Many civilians suffered severe burns and health problems, and still suffer from them. Furthermore, 308 Iraqi missiles were launched at population centers inside Iranian cities between 1980 and 1988 resulting in 12,931 casualties.[49]
On 21 March 1986, the United Nations Security Council made a declaration stating that "members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops and the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons." The United States was the only member who voted against the issuance of this statement.[51]
According to retired Colonel Walter Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." He claimed that the Defense Intelligence Agency "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival",[52] however, despite this allegation, Reagan’s administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports affirming the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.[53][54][55]

References
^ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
^ http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/iran-iraq.htm
^ Speech made by Saddam Hussein. Baghdad, Voice of the Masses in Arabic, 1200 GMT 02 April 1980. FBIS-MEA-80-066. 03 April 1980, E2-3. E3
^ See:
R.K. Ramazani, "Who started the Iran-Iraq war?"
The Virginia Journal of International Law 33, Fall 1992, pp. 69–89
Link: http://www.student.virginia.edu/~vjil
^ Nojeh Nevis, The Iranian, Anatomy of a coup, July 23, 2004. Retrieved 1/1/2007.
^ SNIE 34/36.2-82 link: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB167
^ National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82
^ Saddam's 'Green Light' By Robert Parry [1]
^ Iraq & geopolitics, by Henry C K Liu [2]
^ The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (1991), pp. 71-72
^ Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1983). Power and Principle, Memoirs of the National Security Advisor 1977-1981. Farrar Straus Giroux, 451-454, 504. ISBN 0-374-23663-1
^ See: http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
^ See statement by former NSC official Howard Teicher, dated 1/31/95, to the US District Court, Southern District of Florida: UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. Case No. 93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH, CARLOS CARDOEN, FRANCO SAFTA, JORGE BURR, INDUSTRIAS CARDOEN LIMITADA, DECLARATION OF a/k/a INCAR, HOWARD TEICHER, SWISSCO MANAGEMENT GROUP, INC. EDWARD A. JOHNSON, RONALD W. GRIFFIN, and TELEDYNE INDUSTRIES, INC., d/b/a, TELEDYNE WAH CHANG ALBANY. 1/31 and so on......