Abstract
The Persian Gulf states, and indeed the entire Middle East, were profoundly affected by the Iran-Iraq War that raged from 1980 to 1988 and its sequels, the Gulf War of 1990–91 and the war against Iraq in 2003.1 The first war was immensely destructive in terms of lives and infrastructure. It set back the development of both Iran and Iraq for perhaps a generation, inflamed ethnic and religious tensions, and raised the level of distrust in the region to new levels. The wars together focused international attention on the Gulf and led the United States to an unprecedented level of involvement there, beginning with the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers in 1987, continuing in the dispatch of over half a million American troops to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991, and culminating in the campaign against Iraq.
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Notes
Sources on the Iran–Iraq War include Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991);
Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (New York: Routledge, 1991);
Efraim Karsh, “The Iran-Iraq War: Impacts and Implications,” Adelphi Papers No. 20 (London: IISS, 1997);
Efraim Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War 1980–1988, Essential Histories series (Botley, Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2002);
Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Shaheen Ayubi, eds., The Iran-Iraq War: Old Conflicts, New Weapons (New York: Praeger, 1983);
Farhang Rajaee, ed., The Iran-Iraq War: Politics of Aggression (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993);
Gary Sick, “Trial by Error: Reflections on the Iran-Iraq War,” in The Middle East Journal, vol. 43 no. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 230–44;
W. Thom Workman, The Social Origins of the Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994).
See also the web site of The Federation of American Scientists: <http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/iran-iraq.htm>. For a survey of events in Iran and Iraq in the decade following the war, see Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends: Iran and Iraq After the Gulf Wars (London: Routledge, 2001).
Cited in Lawrence Potter, “The Persian Gulf: Reassessing the U.S. Role,” in Great Decisions (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1989), p. 25.
On the role of the United Nations, see Cameron R. Hume, The United Nations, Iran, and Iraq: How Peacemaking Changed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). There are a number of issues concerning the end of the war that remain to be elucidated, according to former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Jafar Mahallati (personal communication, April 19, 2003). These cannot be resolved until many of the principal players are ready to speak for the record.
For an exploration of the mutual perceptions and stereotypes Arabs and Iranians hold about each other, see two complementary chapters, one by Abdullah K. Alshayji, “Mutual Realities, Perceptions, and Impediments Between the GCC States and Iran” Bijan Khajehpour-Khoei, “Mutual Perceptions in the Persian Gulf Region: An Iranian Perspective,” in Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick, eds., Security in the Persian Gulf Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
See for example Adeed Dawisha, “‘Identity’ and Political Survival in Saddam’s Iraq,” in The Middle East Journal, vol. 53, no. 4 (Autumn 1999), pp. 557–62.
Amatzia Baram, “Re-Inventing Nationalism in Ba‘thi Iraq, 1968–1994: Supra-Territorial and Territorial Identities and What Lies Below,” in Princeton Papers 5 (Fall 1996), p. 38.
This is brought out in Hadi Khosroshahi, “Mutual Awareness Between Arabs and Iranians,” in Arab-Iranian Relations, ed. Khairel-Din Haseeb (Beirut: Centre for Arab Unity Studies, 1998), p. 115.
On this see Ali Babakhan, “The Deportation of Shi‘is During the Iran-Iraq War: Causes and Consequences,” in Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq, ed. Faleh Abdul-Jabar (London: Saqi Books, 2002), pp. 183–210.
Also, Neil MacFarquhar, “Iraqis in Iran: Unwanted in Both Countries,” in The New York Times, June 12, 2003, p. A19.
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© 2004 Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick
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Potter, L.G., Sick, G.G. (2004). Introduction. In: Potter, L.G., Sick, G.G. (eds) Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980427_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980427_1
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