Iran-Iraq

Iran-Iraq War The Iran-Iraq war started in the 1980s and continued till 1988 making it the longest conventional war after the second Sino-Japanese War(1). It officially began on Sept. 22, 1980, with an Iraqi land and air invasion of western Iran(1). The Iran-Iraq War was multifaceted and included religious schisms, border disputes, and political differences. The war broke hostilities ranging from conflicts between the religious pacts of Sunni-verses-Shia and Arab-verses-Persians, to a personal animosity between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iraqis launched the war to consolidate the rising power in the Arab world and replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf State. Iraq claimed the right over the Shatt el Arab and territories inhabited by Arabs. Iraq hoped to take advantage of Iran's revolutionary chaos and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and were quickly repelled; Iran regained virtually all lost territory by June 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive(2). The war finally came to an end on August 20,1988 with the Resolution 598, a U.N. Brokered ceasefire accepted from both the sides. The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003. Iran and Iraq are neighbors to each other sharing a river passing through both the countries. The one major factor which contributed to the hostility between both the countries was the dispute over thee full control of the Arvand Roud(called in Iran) or Shatt al-Arab( called in Iraq) waterway. This conflict dates back to the Ottoman-Persian wars. Historically this waterway and Khuzestan Provience were all under the Iran’s prior holdings, lost to the Turkey
Shah 2 centuries earlier(3). This waterway is considered an important channel for both states oil exports and so to settle the disputes ,in 1937a treaty was signed between both the countries. This gave Iraq control of most of the waterway and required Iran to pay tolls whenever its ships used