adviser to President Reagan. David Mack, a former State Department official who accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad, explained later that ‘we wanted to build a Cairo–Amman–Baghdad axis’. The warmer relationship thus established did not lead to the US supplying arms to Saddam (though in 1982 it did send sixty military helicopters designated as crop-sprayers, which Saddam peremptorily had adapted to fire anti-tank missiles), but Washington used its good offices to facilitate the construction of new pipelines to port outlets in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, thus easing Iraq’s financial difficulties, and it also began covertly to supply intelligence to Baghdad, derived from satellite overflights and surveillance by American AWACS aircraft operating from Saudi Arabia.
Despite Saddam’s success in attracting foreign support after 1984, he was not at first able to shift the balance of the war decisively his way. He began by using the advanced weaponry with which he had been supplied to intensify his attacks on Iranian cities. The Iranian air force responded in kind but its stock of warplanes had been so reduced by losses in combat that the contest proved unequal. Iraqi missile strikes actually provoked demonstrations against the war in the affected cities. Saddam had better success by using his French-supplied strike aircraft, Super Étendards equipped with Exocet sea-skimming missiles, to intensify attacks on Iranian tanker traffic and the terminals at which the tankers loaded; there were seventy missile strikes in 1984–85. Iran responded by shifting its attacks to Kuwaiti tankers, in retaliation for Kuwait’s financial support of the Iraqi war effort, a move which, as mentioned above, led to an extensive reflagging of the tankers as American ships. This strengthening of the American position against the ayatollah régime was set back in a bizarre fashion when evidence came to light that Washingtonwas simultaneously supplying Iran with weapons – the Iran–Contra affair – in an effort to secure the release of American hostages held by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon; the repercussions severely shook the Reagan administration. It did not assist Saddam’s position, in any case, when a damaging attack on the USS
Stark
in the Gulf, on 17 May 1987, was revealed to be the result of an Iraqi Exocet strike.
Nevertheless Saddam’s efforts to involve Western and other navies in the protection of Gulf tanker traffic against Iranian attack had become so comprehensive that even the
Stark
affair did not dent the defence they offered. His finances, despite the punishing costs of the war, also continued to hold up. Although by 1987 Iraq’s foreign debts amounted to $50.5 billion, or thrice its gross domestic product, with another $45–55 billion owed in loans from client Gulf states, sympathetic treatment by American, Saudi and even Soviet institutions allowed it to make interest payments and find purchasing power abroad. Iraq was effectively bankrupt but was able to continue fighting because no interested state, outside a small coterie of Islamic and anti-Israeli countries, wished to see it defeated.
Then in February 1988 the shift in advantage, for which Saddam had always worked, at last swung Iraq’s way. The terrible suffering brought by the war to Iran, which had sustained nearly a million military casualties, out of a population of 9 million males of military age, combined with the unremitting air attacks on its cities, which had caused a widespread flight of the civilian population, had so weakened the ayatollah régime’s power that it could no longer mount an effective defence. Saddam opened his decisive counter-offensive with renewed air and missile attacks on Iranian centres. In April, assisted by intelligence support, he unleashed a ground offensive on the Fao peninsula, lost to Iran in 1986; it was captured and by early July so was all Iraqi territory lost to the Iranians since 1980. The Iraqis also expelled the
Despite Saddam’s success in attracting foreign support after 1984, he was not at first able to shift the balance of the war decisively his way. He began by using the advanced weaponry with which he had been supplied to intensify his attacks on Iranian cities. The Iranian air force responded in kind but its stock of warplanes had been so reduced by losses in combat that the contest proved unequal. Iraqi missile strikes actually provoked demonstrations against the war in the affected cities. Saddam had better success by using his French-supplied strike aircraft, Super Étendards equipped with Exocet sea-skimming missiles, to intensify attacks on Iranian tanker traffic and the terminals at which the tankers loaded; there were seventy missile strikes in 1984–85. Iran responded by shifting its attacks to Kuwaiti tankers, in retaliation for Kuwait’s financial support of the Iraqi war effort, a move which, as mentioned above, led to an extensive reflagging of the tankers as American ships. This strengthening of the American position against the ayatollah régime was set back in a bizarre fashion when evidence came to light that Washingtonwas simultaneously supplying Iran with weapons – the Iran–Contra affair – in an effort to secure the release of American hostages held by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon; the repercussions severely shook the Reagan administration. It did not assist Saddam’s position, in any case, when a damaging attack on the USS
Stark
in the Gulf, on 17 May 1987, was revealed to be the result of an Iraqi Exocet strike.
Nevertheless Saddam’s efforts to involve Western and other navies in the protection of Gulf tanker traffic against Iranian attack had become so comprehensive that even the
Stark
affair did not dent the defence they offered. His finances, despite the punishing costs of the war, also continued to hold up. Although by 1987 Iraq’s foreign debts amounted to $50.5 billion, or thrice its gross domestic product, with another $45–55 billion owed in loans from client Gulf states, sympathetic treatment by American, Saudi and even Soviet institutions allowed it to make interest payments and find purchasing power abroad. Iraq was effectively bankrupt but was able to continue fighting because no interested state, outside a small coterie of Islamic and anti-Israeli countries, wished to see it defeated.
Then in February 1988 the shift in advantage, for which Saddam had always worked, at last swung Iraq’s way. The terrible suffering brought by the war to Iran, which had sustained nearly a million military casualties, out of a population of 9 million males of military age, combined with the unremitting air attacks on its cities, which had caused a widespread flight of the civilian population, had so weakened the ayatollah régime’s power that it could no longer mount an effective defence. Saddam opened his decisive counter-offensive with renewed air and missile attacks on Iranian centres. In April, assisted by intelligence support, he unleashed a ground offensive on the Fao peninsula, lost to Iran in 1986; it was captured and by early July so was all Iraqi territory lost to the Iranians since 1980. The Iraqis also expelled the
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