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Records show that the United States of America acted as incendiary to inflame the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. These records clearly indicate how the US incited Iraq into a war with Iran. The book “Iran and US Challenges after the Islamic Revolution” published by the Islamic Revolution Documents Center reveals parts of the US attempts to make Iraq enter war with Iran.
Publish Date : 16:08 - 2016 December 05

One of the things the US did before the Iraqi war with Iran was to broaden its ties with Iraq, as a prerequisite to lure the country into attacking Iran. The US-Iraq relations which had been severed in 1967 started to grow more intimate gradually. The level of trade transactions between the two countries in 1980 outdid the total trade turnover they had in the previous 13 years. Also, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor of the United States during Carter administration in May 1979 when Iran- US relations had been severed, welcomed the development of relations between the US and Iraq. He said: We do not see any disagreement in the interests of the two countries of Iraq and the United States. Therefore, there is no need to hold the two countries’ relations as hostile.


Therefore, as the head of the council on nations defense and using the experiences from the CIA, Brzezinski started a new set of activities to boost the covert cooperation of the US and the Iraqi Ba’ath party. He made several journeys, covertly, to Iraq in order to investigate how ready the country was to enter war with Iraq. The Wall Street Journal on June 17, 1980 exposed one of these covert missions. After that, the Times pointed to Brzezinski’s meeting with Saddam Hussein: The aforementioned after one of his secret trips to Iraq said in a televised interview: We do not perceive any noticeable disagreement between the US and Iraq. We believe that Iraq is seeking independence and hopes for the security of the Persian Gulf. We do not believe that Iraq- US relations would grow cold.


Thus, although one can say that the improvement of ties between the US and Iraq has other reasons as well, what is sure is that the US was trying to improve relations with Iraq in order to pave the ground for an attack on Iran, hoping to strike a hard blow to the country which was only beginning to rise out of a revolution. The sale of advanced airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) to Saudi Arabia in order for it to send Iraq military reports from the US is another evidence that shows the US had a hand in arranging situations for an attack on Iran. According to agreements between the US and Saudi Arabia, it had been arranged that between 1985 and 19867 the airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) be delivered to Saudi Arabia, but due to the Islamic revolution in Iran and at the hustle and bustle of the early days of the war, four of the aircraft had been delivered in advance. Thus, the dispatching of military data on Iran to Iraq, as so followed by the US, paved the ground for Iraq’s attack on Iran.





On the other side, as the head of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran was high, there was a lot of contacts and talks between the runaway former commanders of the Iranian Army, the Pahlavi regime, and US officials as well as the Iraqi government. This shows some sort of arrangement for the developments that were expected to follow the Iraqi attack on Iran. Also, due to the influence that the US surely held over conservative Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the other Sheikhs around the Persian Gulf, there is no doubt if the US had not desired these countries’ aids to Iraq, it could have prevented them.


Looking back into the situations of Iran and the United States at that time, Iran and the US were at loggerheads when the Iraqi imposed war broke out. The tense relations were due especially to the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, which the Islamic Revolution called the spy den, by the student followers of the line of imam group. This was followed by the hostage crisis which lasted 444 days.

It can be said that the war of Iraq on Iran was a means by the US to pressurize the Islamic Republic. Testifying this, a US newspaper at that time wrote: Washington is hopeful that the economic and political restrictions on Iran can come out more effective under the Iraqi war with Iran. Some believe that the prospect of war with a powerful country (Iraq) may force Iran into making adjustments to its policy.


Thus, with regard to the special situations that Iraq was facing, the US was using enticing options to lure Iraq into war. Also, the US would encourage Persian Gulf littoral states to create a coalition in line with the preservation of the regional peace and security. This was covered as the Iraqi war with Iran broke out, by Saudi Arabia as the economic pillar of the Persian Gulf. It formed a council of six members, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, with the written objective to create economic cohesion and work toward cultural and social goals, but with underlying political and security agenda.


In compliance with the interests of the US, the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council defended the positions of Iraq in the war in the form of financial, spiritual amity. It turned its attack target from the Zionist regime of Israel to their new common enemy Iran.


Thus, as the Islamic revolution took place in Iran which ended the life of America’s ally and gendarme in the region, creating a power vacuum, the US turned to Iraq in order to contain Iran and strike a hard blow to it. Iraq had the necessary military power it took for carrying out such a role. On the political ground, Iraq was one of Egypt’s rivals in attempts to lead the Arab world.

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