This is a list of wars involving the Republic of Iraq and its predecessor states.
This is a list of wars involving the Republic of Iraq and its predecessor states.
| History of Iraq |
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 Iraqportal |
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 nearly 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 Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. Most of the fighting occurred in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Some combat also took place in Egypt and northern Israel. Egypt aimed to secure a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and use it to negotiate the return of the Sinai Peninsula.
The 1975 Algiers Agreement, also known as the Algiers Accord and the Algiers Declaration, was signed between Iran and Iraq to settle any outstanding territorial disputes along the Iran–Iraq border. Mediated by Algeria, it served as the basis for additional bilateral treaties signed on 13 June 1975 and 26 December 1975. The territorial disputes in question concerned Iraq's Shatt al-Arab and Iran's Khuzestan Province, and Iraq had wished to negotiate to end Iran's support for the then-ongoing Iraqi Kurdish rebellion after suffering a military defeat in the 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab conflict. On 17 September 1980, shortly after the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi government abrogated the treaty in light of another series of cross-border clashes between the two countries. On 22 September 1980, the treaty was completely voided with the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which triggered the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War.
The Iraqi Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of Iraq. They consist of the Ground forces, the Army Aviation Command, the Iraqi Air Force, the Air Defence Command and the Iraqi Navy. The armed forces are administered by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Effective control of the MOD armed forces rests with the Prime Minister of Iraq.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
Diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States began when the U.S. first recognized Iraq on January 9, 1930, with the signing of the Anglo-American-Iraqi Convention in London by Charles G. Dawes, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The historiography of Iraq—United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s. Today, the United States and Iraq both consider themselves as strategic partners, given the American political and military involvement after the invasion of Iraq and their mutual, deep-rooted relationship that followed. The United States provides the Iraqi security forces hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid and training annually as well as uses its military bases.
The First Iraqi–Kurdish War, also known as the September Revolution, was a major event of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, lasting from 1961 until 1970. The struggle was led by Mustafa Barzani, in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdistan. Throughout the 1960s, the uprising escalated into a long war, which failed to resolve despite internal power changes in Iraq. During the war, 80% of the Iraqi army was engaged in combat with the Kurds. The war ended with a stalemate in 1970, resulting in between 75,000 to 105,000 casualties. A series of Iraqi–Kurdish negotiations followed the war in an attempt to resolve the conflict. The negotiations led to the Iraqi–Kurdish Autonomy Agreement of 1970.
The Second Iraqi–Kurdish War was the second chapter of the Barzani rebellion, initiated by the collapse of the Kurdish autonomy talks and the consequent Iraqi offensive against rebel KDP troops of Mustafa Barzani during 1974–1975. The war came in the aftermath of the First Iraqi–Kurdish War (1961–1970), as the 1970 peace plan for Kurdish autonomy had failed to be implemented by 1974. Unlike the previous guerrilla campaign in 1961–1970, waged by Barzani, the 1974 war was a Kurdish attempt at symmetric warfare against the Iraqi Army, which eventually led to the quick collapse of the Kurds, who were lacking advanced and heavy weaponry. The war ended with the exile of the Iraqi KDP party and between 7,000–20,000 deaths from both sides combined.
Uri Bar-Joseph is professor emeritus in the Department for International Relations of The School for Political Science at Haifa University. He specializes in national security, intelligence studies, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Abu Tahsin al-Salihi was an Iraqi veteran sniper. A volunteer in the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, he is credited with killing over 384 ISIS members during the War in Iraq (2013–2017), receiving the nicknames "The Sheikh of Snipers" and "Hawk Eye."
The 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab conflict consisted of armed cross-border clashes between Iran and Iraq. It was a major escalation of the Shatt al-Arab dispute, which had begun in 1936 due to opposing territorial claims by both countries over the Shatt al-Arab, a transboundary river that runs partly along the Iran–Iraq border. The conflict took place between April 1974 and March 1975, and resulted in over 1,000 total casualties for both sides combined, though the Iranians eventually came to hold a strategic advantage over the Iraqis. Open hostilities formally came to an end with the 1975 Algiers Agreement, in which Iraq ceded around half of the border area containing the waterway in exchange for Iran's cessation of support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels.
Lists of wars involving Middle Eastern countries | ||
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