The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War, was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded the Iranian Revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq. There were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular and dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economic and military superiority as well as its close relationships with the United States and Israel.
The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary such system used by the United States Army and several allied states. It is manufactured by the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon and derives its name from the radar component of the weapon system. The AN/MPQ-53 at the heart of the system is known as the "Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target," which is a backronym for "Patriot". In 1984, the Patriot system began to replace the Nike Hercules system as the U.S. Army's primary high to medium air defense (HIMAD) system and the MIM-23 Hawk system as the U.S. Army's medium tactical air defense system. In addition to these roles, Patriot has been given a function in the U.S. Army's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system. As of 2016, the system is expected to stay fielded until at least 2040.
The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.
Operation Granby, commonly abbreviated Op Granby, was the code name given to the British military operations during the 1991 Gulf War. 53,462 members of the British Armed Forces were deployed during the conflict. Forty-seven British personnel were killed during Op Granby and many more were injured during the hostilities there. The total cost of operations was £2.434 billion (1992), of which at least £2.049 billion was paid for by other nations such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; £200 million of equipment was lost or written off.
King Khalid Military City (KKMC) is a cantonment in northeastern Saudi Arabia, approximately 60 km south of Hafar al-Batin city. Constructed during the 1970s and 1980s, the city was designed and built by the Middle East Division, a unit of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Consulting firms involved in its construction include Brown, Daltas, and Associates, as well as LeMessurier in Cambridge, Massachusetts. KKMC was established to accommodate several brigades of Saudi troops and a population of 65,000 individuals. It is named after the former Saudi King Khalid bin Abdul Aziz.
Operation Southern Watch was an air-centric military operation conducted by the United States Department of Defense from August 1992 to March 2003.
A Scud missile is one of a series of tactical ballistic missiles developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was exported widely to both Second and Third World countries. The term comes from the NATO reporting name attached to the missile by Western intelligence agencies. The Russian names for the missile are the R-11, and the R-17Elbrus. The name Scud has been widely used to refer to these missiles and the wide variety of derivative variants developed in other countries based on the Soviet design.
al-Husayn was a short-range ballistic missile developed in Ba'athist Iraq. An upgraded version of Scud missile, the al-Husayn was widely used by the Iraqi Army during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).
The Gulf War of 1990–1991 included an air campaign, as the air forces of the coalition carried out an extensive aerial bombing campaign from 17 January 1991 to 23 February 1991 against Iraq. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs, widely destroying military and civilian infrastructure. The air campaign was commanded by United States Air Force (USAF) lieutenant general Chuck Horner, who briefly served as Commander-in-Chief—Forward of U.S. Central Command while general Norman Schwarzkopf was still in the United States. The British air commanders were Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Wilson and Air Vice-Marshal Bill Wratten. The air campaign had largely finished by 23 February 1991 when the coalition invasion of Kuwait took place.
The Qiam 1 is a short-range ballistic missile designed and built by Iran. It was developed from the Iranian Shahab-2, a licensed copy of the North Korean Hwasong-6, all of which are versions of the Soviet Scud-C missile. The Qiam 1 entered service in 2010, with a range of 800 km (500 mi) and 100 m (330 ft) (CEP) accuracy.
On 26 March 2015, Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of nine countries from West Asia and North Africa, launched an intervention in Yemen at the request of Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who had been ousted from the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 by Houthi insurgents during the Yemeni Civil War. Efforts by the United Nations to facilitate a power sharing arrangement under a new transitional government collapsed, leading to escalating conflict between government forces, Houthi rebels, and other armed groups, which culminated in Hadi fleeing to Saudi Arabia shortly before it began military operations in the country.
The Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict is an ongoing armed conflict between the Royal Saudi Armed Forces and Iran-backed Yemeni Houthi forces that has been taking place in the Arabian Peninsula, including the southern Saudi regions of Asir, Jizan, and Najran, and northern Yemeni governorates of Saada, Al Jawf, and Hajjah, since the onset of the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen in 2015.
The timeline of the Gulf War details the dates of the major events of the 1990–1991 war. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and ended with the Liberation of Kuwait by Coalition forces. Iraq subsequently agreed to the United Nations' demands on 28 February 1991. The ground war officially concluded with the signing of the armistice on 11 April 1991. However, the official end to Operation Desert Storm did not occur until sometime between 1996 - 1998. Major events in the aftermath include anti-Saddam Hussein uprisings in Iraq, massacres against the Kurds by the regime, Iraq formally recognizing the sovereignty of Kuwait in 1994, and eventually ending its cooperation with the United Nations Special Commission in 1998.
The Burkan-2H, or Volcano-2H is a mobile short-range ballistic missile used by the Houthis militants in Yemen. The Volcano H-2 was first launched in July 2017. It is related to the Scud missile family.
The 2018 Riyadh missile strike was a series of seven missiles launched into Saudi Arabia by Shiite Houthi rebels on 26 March 2018, targeting the King Khalid International Airport and other sites. Saudi forces claimed to have destroyed all seven missiles, three of them targeting Riyadh, two targeting Jazan, and one targeting Najran. However, according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at CNS, the Saudis failed to intercept the missiles following a malfunction of the MIM-104 Patriot system. One video appeared to show a Patriot missile launch on Sunday night go rapidly wrong, with the missile changing course midair, crashing into a neighborhood in Riyadh and exploding. Another appeared to detonate shortly after being launched in the Saudi capital.
On 8 January 2020, in a military operation code named Operation Martyr Soleimani, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched over 12 ballistic missiles at the al-Asad Airbase in Al Anbar Governorate, western Iraq, as well as another airbase in Erbil, in response to the assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani by a United States drone strike.
The 2020 Riyadh drone and missile attack was a cruise missile and drone attack carried out by the Yemeni Houthi rebels which occurred on 23 June 2020. The attack, according to the Houthis, targeted the King Khalid Airport and the Defense Ministry headquarters in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh.
On 17 January 1991, Iraq initiated a missile campaign against Israel. Over the course of the next month, approximately 42 Scud missiles were fired into Israeli territory, primarily at the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. The missile attacks began on the same day as the Gulf War aerial bombardment campaign, which was targeting military infrastructure within Iraqi-occupied Kuwait. As many Muslim-majority and Arab countries were actively contributing to the American-led military coalition, the Iraqi government had expected them to rescind their support if Israel responded to the missile campaign by attacking Iraq. However, Israel did not retaliate. This is due first to King Hussein of Jordan meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir two weeks prior, where Shamir had been persuaded to consider Jordan's stability and demands that the Israelis not violate Jordanian airspace; and second, from the United States, the Bush administration had also urged Israel through pressure and defense aid not to retaliate, in the interests of holding together the coalition. The coalition began a ground offensive against Iraq on 23 February 1991.
Events in the year 2021 in Saudi Arabia.
The January2021 Baghdad bombings were a pair of terrorist attacks that occurred on 21 January 2021, carried out by two suicide bombers at an open-air market in central Baghdad, Iraq. They killed at least 32 people and injured another 110. This was the Iraqi capital’s first terrorist attack since 2019.
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