Saddam's short regional rise of militaristic projection

Eight years of war with Iran had left Iraq as a clear victor even though it hadn't gained anything from the war but casualties, Iraq had been at war with Iran for 8 years since it launched it's first wave and invasion in September 1980, before being forced to accept the ceasefire on August of 1988 after being on the offensive against Iraq for six years Iran had lost 60km of ground past the Iraqi border by the Iraqi Army and suffered several aircraft sorties.

Saddam Hussein had been made an infamous after ordering killing 5,000 people in a single gas attack on Halabja.

But Iraq came out of that war a regional power.



There was a delicate balance of power between 1988 and 1991, Iraq lost it's slip on power after the western nations led by the United States led a major aerial bombardment following their liberation of Kuwait.

But for a time after the Iran Iraq War there was a lot of uncertainty in the Middle East over the balance of power, Iraq had been ordering a lot of new military hardware to modernize it's forces, and was also on the way to developing a nuclear bomb probably in only a few short years, it had stationed Scud missiles and modified al-Hussein missiles in the west of the country facing towards Israel.

The world was changing, the wall had come down and eastern Europe had several revolutions, during this time in history there was a brief moment where Iraq was taking the opportunity to be the dominant military power in all of the Middle East.

In February 1990, Saddam Hussein demanded US naval vessels leave the Persian Gulf, however passed almost unobserved in the West, as they were all too busy with the developments in Europe and dissolution of the USSR.



By March 1990, US intelligence learned about Iraq building permanent missile launching sites in the west of the country, facing Israel.

Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq was in possession of binary chemical weapons and that:

“By God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel, if it tries to do anything against Iraq.”

During the Arab Leage Summit, held in Baghdad, in late May 1990, the Iraqi President furthermore called for the liberation of Jerusalem, attacks on the USA and Israel, and demanded $27 billion from Kuwait, while blaming Kuwaiti and Saudi greed for oil, and equating them with an act of war against Iraq.

However there was a small emerald Saddam needed to ensure he had under his direct control to help the Iraqi economy recover from the war and ensure he stayed in his position of power for some more years to come.

The modern state of Kuwait was a country cut out of the old Ottoman empire of Basra back in 1961 for strategic purposes and for the lake of oil it sat on.

Control of Kuwait would be vital in helping Iraq completely recover economically and allow it to prosper following the long war with Iran.

So in August of 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait with over 100,000 troops, it only took a matter of hours.



Even though Iraq had a fair claim on Kuwait and had been mislead into believing the west would not intervene it was the resulting 1991 Persian Gulf War that would indefinitely shift the balance of power in the Middle East, as the US led and Saudi paid coalition used a massive amount of air power (including B-52's flying non stop from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana firing cruise missiles) to bombard Iraq destroying most of it's air defense, command centres and air defense centres and eventually a large amount of the countries infrastructure.



Iraq launched Scuds at Israel and Saudi Arabia with little effect (with the exception of the 28 US soldiers killed in the barracks at Dhahran) in undermining both states, the US ground offensive following the liberation of Kuwait lasted under 100 hours.

After being at war with the United States Saddam Hussein was left in power, he no longer had enough projection to use conventional power against his neighbours but still had some tanks and army and a marginally effective air force, the reason for leaving him in power was to ensure that neither Syria nor Iran could walk over Iraq with the brutal tyrant in power.

It was a drastic turning in the balance of power the aftermaths of them could be evident when the US led the invasion on the false provocation that Iraq actually mustered up the resources to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction.

if the majority had ruled

Cast your mind back to 1991, the Soviet Union was on verge of collapse, Germany was reunited after nearly half a century, Bush Senior announced a New World Order was coming upon us, also there was a war going on in the Gulf, in January 15th the infamous Operation Desert Storm begun, the power structure in the Middle East was about to change drastically.

By the time the ground offensive begun against Kuwait the Iraqi military had suffered major damage, the Iraqi fighter jets that weren't destroyed in their concrete bunkers had flown to Iran, Iraq's long time enemy, the Iraqi Army were bombed on its retreat, the highway was hit with everything they had from the air, F-15's, B-52's, AV-8B Harriers, A-6's and A-10's, with so many casualties inflicted it became known as the Highway of Death.



Iraq was virtually defeated, Kuwait was liberated, and in the south of Iraq the Shia majority that had been oppressed for Saddam for so long led an anti government uprising, this was led by the perception that the power of President Saddam Hussein was weak at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution disbanding the Iranian military led Saddam in one way in an attempt to launch a large scale invasion of Iran, in one way this solidified Khomeini's revolution and led to thousands joining the Iranian military and launching an offensive war by 1982 against Iraq, his main ideal was to export the revolution to Saddam's oppressed Shia majority.

Having the majority of people is one of the basic fundamentals of democracy, if the Americans had seen eye to eye with those attempting a rebellion history for both of the countries could have been drastically different.

Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives.

George HW. Bush later had this to say:

"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."

We all know the history of the Iraq war that started in 2003 twelve years after all of this, it had been admitted by Colin Powell that if they had taken out Saddam the Iraqi military in the aftermath may have been too weak and Iran and Syria would have had a good chance at gaining more power and dominance in the region.

If these rebellions had been successful Iran would have surely had some input around the holy city of Basra which they had made several unsuccessful attempts to capture in the 1980s in human wave attacks Iraq may have been split into two states, Basra to the south, and the region of Mosul to the north (which was mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims).

Regardless what these states would have done afterwords what was admitted by Colin Powell begs the question that even if one of the main roles in today's occupation of Iraq is really to promote democracy and the ideals of the majority.

On the other hand



The idea of bringing a war to a dramatic end by taking out the leader was in fact tested in the opening salvo of the 2003 invasion, known as the Dora Farms strike, it involved two F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping four enhanced, satellite-guided 2,000-pound Bunker Busters GBU-27 on the compound, complementing this attack was a further four Tomahawk missiles fired from destroyers in the the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. The attack killed one civilian and injured fourteen others, including nine women and one child.

It was later discovered that Saddam hadn't even visited the area since 1995!

Iraq's slip on power

Following an eight year war with Iran Saddam Hussein's Iraq was in deep debt, although he came out of the war claiming to be a winner the truth was the countries economy had taken a hard blow, the war had been a blow to his forces and he owed billions in war debts to his southern Emirate neighbors.

However following the war with Iran the Iraqis (or Saddam at least) was opting to make Iraq a regional military super power making plans to rebuild his military

It owed $65 billion in unforgiven debts to Kuwait, which in those years was depressing other oil states since it was overproducing oil selling it for under the price required by OPEC, this further devastated the Iraqi economy, that along with the fact that due to history Kuwait was technically part of Iraq and had been given statehood on ignorant strategic purposes by western powers.

During this postwar time (1988 to 1990) the Iraqi regime had big plans regarding their regional power in the future, especially regarding improving their air power as a potent weapon of terror and a tool for destruction of enemy economies. Aside from purchasing around 140 MiG-29s (137 were eventually ordered and built, but less than 40 delivered) and 36 Su-24 fighters from the USSR (intended to replace obsolete MiG-23MF/MLs, Tu-16s, TU-22Bs, and MiG-25RBs) the IrAF was also showing immense interest in obtaining Su-27 Flanker and Mirage 2000 fighters.

As well as this Iraq was financing the development of a conventionally armed version of the French ASMP supersonic cruise missile, and the development of the MAA-1 Piranha heat-seeking air-to-air missile in Brazil, both of which were eventually planned to enter production in Iraq too. The basic problem with all these projects was money: Iraq was so starved of finances that negotiations for Mirage 2000s were dropped in 1989, because the French insisted that Iraq had to first pay its debts. The collection of MiG-29 interceptors was also slow, Baghdad instead turning to Moscow and negotiating for Su-27s. Eventually, all the projects were stopped due to the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 which was Iraq's final attempt to stop the country going into economic collapse, after (in a view opposed to in the west) Iraq annexed Kuwait renaming it the 19th province of Iraq.



While in the west it was blown out of proportion, after launching Operation Desert Shield the US convinced the UN to veto Iraq, a coalition was built up in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of defending it and that Iraq was ready to attack (they were digging in around Kuwait City).

Starting on January 17th Iraq's economic and military problems were about to get much worse, the start of the stupid TV war Operation Desert Storm had begun, several units of the Iraqi air force flew to Iran to avoid destruction by the coalition onslaught of aircraft sorties and cruise missile strikes.



Iraq in retaliation only managed to fire 32 Scud missiles at the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa killing two civilians and a few at Saudi Arabia in one case killing 28 soldiers in a barracks in Dhahran.

After the first 100 hours of the ground war the American led coalition ground forces stopped at the Euphrates, Iraq had been blown to tatters and most of the world held economic sanctions against them, Saddam was left in power to stop Iran and Syria becoming too powerful over a weak Iraq, which is how they had left Iraq, a weak enemy that could come under threat from their biggest potential enemy in the neighboring region (Iran).

In 2003 the US went the extra mile and went in to personally overthrow Saddam, which led to a rather violent war which has only cooled down in the past year or so, the Iraqi people had a real street thug as their president for the latter half of the 20th century and paid heavily for it after only ever maintaining a brief grip of power that a nation of its size and wealth deserved!

the lethality of another Indo-Pakistan war

I actually (unlike nearly everything else) have no real opinion on the relationship between India and Pakistan, both sides are extremely biased towards the other and the decade old hatred doesn't seem to have thought neither side anything whatsoever!

Another Indo-Pakistani war in the near future would be particularly lethal and may be the first time to see nuclear weapons deployed on human beings in this century.

Many say that following the Kargil war (the last war fought between the two countries) that diplomatic relations are beginning to commence, but truth be told mutual suspicion of the other governs their relationship.



But the cost of a war if fought with no clear winner (and listening to both sides assessment it would be hard to determine just that), could result in the near annihilation of both.

Take the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980's as an example, Iran had an economic and arms embargo on it and when attacked by a massive Iraqi force it managed to push it back and fight a devastating war on the offensive against Iraq (which was being armed by 44 countries) resulting in well over 1,000,000 slaughtered and both countries heavily damaged economically.

But the military arsenals of both of those countries wasn't enough to fight a large scale precise war, for example the Iranian Air Force very seldom went on offensives since their jet fighters were such a high asset, the Iraqi Air Force at the time had to fight a very conventional war with older MiG's (with the exception of a few dozen Mirage F-1's).

The Pakistanis on the other hand sport a good few of the good old F-16's, while they have also ordered 250 JF-17 fighters, (an interesting development to watch), the Indians on the other hand have over one hundred Su-30's and 40 Mirage 2000's.

The Iraqi Scud missiles gave Iraq the ability to make the people of Tehran flock to the hills throughout the war with Iran, but as seen on their full long term use against Tel Aviv proved capable of "only" killing a small number of Israelis using conventional explosives.



The Pakistanis and the Indians however not only have over 60 nuclear warheads each but also nuclear missiles with a range of up to 2,500km to deliver them to each others cities, this gives them (unlike the Iraqis and the Iranians) the ability to instantly wipe out thousands of each others people.

What bugs me about this is the fact is that Iran doesn't have a single nuclear warhead and have been scrutinized by the same western governments that allowed and encouraged Pakistan to build up a hefty arsenal of its own only ten years ago!



This has ensured that if and when India and Pakistan finally clash once again over religious and ethnic tensions they will have the opportunity to reek hell on each other!

if the USSR had directly invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran

Relations with Iran and the US since Ayatollah Khomeini stepped off of his plane in Tehran in 1979 showed Iran breaking all rules of diplomacy especially after it seized American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran.

Before the seizure of hostages however one man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran's current president) opposed the idea stating that it would boost the influence of the Soviets and that the real threat to them was not the Americans but Russia and the Marxists.



Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an alley of the Soviets and when over 70,000 Iraqi troops along with several divisions of tanks crossed the border into the oil fields of southern Iran the Soviets didn't condemn or oppose it and the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire but made no demand for Iraqi forces to withdraw from Iran, yes it failed to condemn a country that invaded another!

Right to the north of Iran was the Soviet border, the Shah's Iran had been America's most powerful ally, for it's strategic location and it's borders, and during the 1970's the Shah was buying up a lot of modern military equipment from the United States such as the 80 ordered (and 79 delivered) F-14A Tomcats which designed and built to defend US aircraft carriers from long distances, along with that ordered were over 300 F-16's but none were delivered, along with that already present were several different SAM networks and some very mobile but highly advanced army units would delay Soviet ground movements towards the south of the country to give the Americans time to defend Iran.



In 1980 that had all changed, the US Navy helicopters failed to reach Tehran to rescue the American hostages in the ill-failed Operation Eagle Claw and the Soviets ally Iraq had begun an invasion, after acquiring information on US estimates that doubted the present Iranian military were probably unable to properly operate it's tanks, SAM networks and fighter jets.

They were in one sense right but the Iranian military quickly rebuilt itself and had sent Iraq on the defensive in 1982 and resulted in a further six years of Iran on the offensive in a bloody war that would cost 1,000,000 lives on both sides!

Apart from that fact both the United States and the Soviet Union supported Iraq, the Soviets keeping open usual business with Saddam's government supplying them mainly with tanks and fighter aircraft as usual, while the US supplied Iraq (remember an ally of the Soviet Union) with thousands of assault rifles, and a handful of UH-1 Huey's for the Iraqi army after 1982 defending their vital oil interests in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

However if the Soviet Union had invaded Iran in lets say the mid 1980's it would have been met with little opposition from the UN until they had crushed the Iranian regime and its accompanying military, it would have put them in a position with a massive eastern border to oil rich waters of the Persian Gulf and right in short striking distance of Saudi Arabia and the other smaller countries of the pro Western Emirates.

It would also have opened up the large strategic land that is Iran for use by the Soviet Army and Air Force as a base in their war against the rebels in Afghanistan which would further isolate Pakistan.



However a war with Iran with Iraq as an ally would have forced the Soviet Union into deeper economic turmoil as Khomeini had truly united the country together under religious ties, as proved by the amount of volunteers that fought off and demoralized the invading Iraqi forces.

However it would have been worth it in one sense in the long term considering that it would have given the Soviets a massive platform for military forces to influence and dictate how things work in the Persian Gulf, along with it's ally Iraq very evenly splitting both superpowers control over the oil rich region, and would have enabled the Soviets to close off America's oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz which could have crippled several western economies, it was here where US Navy warships had to protect their tanker convoys during the 'Tanker War' phase of the Iran Iraq War.



It's an interesting scenario and one which I'm sure was considered by the Soviets and feared by the Americans.

a reason Saddam may have claimed to have WMD's

In 2002 George W. Bush listed his axis of evil, in these included Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the next year a series of lies proposed that Iraq had WMD's including the material to build a nuclear bomb, this resulted in large scale coalition invasion led by the United States and Britain to overthrow Saddam Hussein constituting direct regime change.



A claim made by George W. Bush in recent years and up until he left office stated that he had to invade Iran since Saddam claimed he had WMD's "until the end."

Was Saddam threatening Iran with WMDs?

Iraq was a powerful nation up until 1991 when the US and Britain blew the shit out of it and then installed heavy economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of one million Iraqi's, Iraq was now a third world country broken backed country while Saddam clung on for power.

Now that Iraq was weak Iran might have a likely chance of militarily annexing the Shia population (most of the south of Iraq) into the Islamic Republic, this is what Saddam feared and the reason he launched the invasion of Iran in September of 1980.

So Iran in say the mid 1990's up until 2001 were at least prepared if not preparing to somehow take out Saddam and military annex the south of if not all of the broken backed Iran, a Tom Clancy book followed this scenario written in 1996.

Saddam had plans to develop nuclear weapons up until 1991 when his country was blown back to the stone age, his military from then on had little air power, his Republican Guard was still large and had several tanks but as the 2003 invasion proved very unorganized and dissolved very easily since they weren't coordinated to their full strength.

So to stop Iran from attempting an invasion if Saddam threatened the use of a nuclear bomb against an Iranian city in retaliation for any Iranian attack, there is no proof that the nuclear program was even continued since 1991 since there were no weapons found since the 2003 invasion when the United States took direct control of the country.

So was it a word game between Saddam and the current Iranian regime that led to George Bush repeating the smoking gun as a mushroom cloud that was an excuse for his stupid invasion to overthrow Saddam?

It is a weird scenario but is one that makes a lot of sense!

if only the US and Iran could get on!

It's been 30 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah, it would be an understatement to say that Iran and the US didn't get on, since then the Islamic Republic of Iran has sponsored groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and since the end of the Imposed War have been building long range ballistic missiles (Shahabs) and been trying to develop nuclear energy.

Now judging from Operation Opera in 1981 an operation in which the Israeli Air Force bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor they are neither

a.) worried that the Arabs are trying to build nuclear weapons or
b.) think its fair they're the only ones with nuclear weapons or
c.) don't want the Arabs to have nuclear energy to power the homes of millions of people!



I've written what I think of Iranian missile tests before, if they want to test missiles let them, who are we to judge!

The last eight years also saw Iran surrounded by potential enemies, even though for a brief moment they helped the US against the Taliban, the Iranian backed Northern Alliance allied with the USAF which bombed them a route to Kabul so they could seize the capital city, not long after that 250,000 American soldiers led the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Husseins government, Iran became the sand in their underpants when they helped make mines for the Iraqi insurgency which could pierce through the armour of US Humvees on patrol.



The Iranian backed S'hia militia caused more coalition deaths in Iraq around the time of 2005 than any of the present Iraqi insurgents, to be honest with you I never saw a problem with this, I mean when the present regime rose to power in Iran the Americans and Europeans gave Saddam Hussein's Iraq weapons, chemical warfare shells which killed hundreds of Iranians instantly at a time, maybe this to them was pay back since the west wasn't talking to them.

And apart from that heavy sanctions from the United States and any Europeans found trading with Iran punished by America shows Iran is almost self sufficient in everything, but they have problems, such as keeping their passenger planes from falling out of the sky.

Apart from that if Iran and the west actually did get on we would have nearly twice as much oil to import as we do today from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, some 40% of the worlds reserves flows through the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian controlled waters and they have threatened to close that vital strait off if the US or Israel attack them, the world economy would be then crippled overnight!

And the sad truth is that Iran has the right to be this hostile towards the US especially considering the fact the revolution was because the CIA helped the Shah have dictatorial powers over the 70 million or so Iranian people for nearly 30 years!

For relations to normalize between Iran and the west they make these fair demands:



* That the United States accept the legitimacy of the 1979 revolution,

* Not interfere in Iran's internal affairs,

* Deal with the Iranian regime on the basis of "respect and equality."

* Lifting U.S. economic sanctions,

* End to U.S. military presence in the neighboring countries of Iraq and Afghanistan

* An end to one-sided support for Israel

and a fair reparation for damages caused to the Islamic Republic from:

* The US supplied chemical weapons responsible for the death of many of the 1,000,000 Iranians that died in the Iran Iraq War

* Damage caused from the anti Iran terror group the MKO.

* Release of frozen Iranian assets in the United States

* The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by a US missile destroyer.

* US UAV overflights of Iranian air space

* An apology for the US backed 1953 coup.

* And reparation for the damage caused by US backed western economic sanctions.

The US demands border around the Iranians to stop trying to build WMD's, stop being a threat to its neighboring Arab countries (as if the US isn't a threat to world security and peace), to stop threatening to "wipe Israel off the map" (that lie is just getting old!) and to stop sponsoring terrorist organizations.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that one, I think they are referring to Hezbollah, the organization Iran set up in Lebanon in 1982 because Israel was invading their country, when people defend their country against aggressive foreign invaders the politically correct term is freedom fighters!

Obama's role in diplomacy isn't singing 'Bomb Iran' but rather talking without addressing any of the points Iran wants to and further wasting their time and slowing down any hope of good US Iranian relations.

Maybe a good role of diplomacy would be to, start talking about what they want!

21 years on: Iran Air Flight 655

This day (July 3rd 2009) twenty one years ago the American missile destroyer the USS Vincennes fired a missile murdering all 290 passengers on the Airbus A300, the captain later testified stating he had thought it was an Iranian F-14A going in to attack him.

Unless the F-14 was going to perform a kamikaze reminiscent to the war in the Pacific against Japan there was no way it could have caused any harm to the Vincennes, the model of F-14's given to Iran (under the Shah) were the A models not capable of engaging ground targets, it wouldn't have been able to carry say an Exocet ship missile like the one fired from an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F-1 (Iraq at the time working with the United States) which crippled the USS Stark the year before.



So what is really was was a horrible act of terror, an act of piracy, as a flotilla of Iranian boats went into the Gulf in the following days to retrieve the bodies the crew of the Vincennes were given medals for extraordinary achievements!

George HW. Bush then Vice President said this and I quote:

"I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are."

We know you don't George:

And what compensation did the families of the victims who ended up in a watery grave in the Persian Gulf get, well $61.8 million nearly ten years after the actual event, and to this day 21 years later the US still hasn't taken responsibility nor apologized for the tragedy they caused.

I'm sure if President Obama's diplomacy approach to Iran was worth a damn he would at least apologize and admit that they were in the wrong!

The Sultan Strike

The IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) isn't credited as much as it should have been for its victories in the Imposed War on Iran (otherwise known as the Iran Iraq War), under arms embargo the personnel in this organization managed to keep their F-4's, F-5's and F-14's in the air in (extreme cases) having to cannibalize other air frames and parts as spares to keep the others that were in better condition in the air.

When the war started on September 22nd 1980 when Saddam Hussein attempted to destroy the Iranian Air Force on the ground, at the time most of the Iraqi Air Force was made up of obsolete aircraft like MiG-21's, MiG-23's and Chengdu J-7's (example seen below).



Saddam's major air attack proved futile as Iran had built several concrete bunkers to store its aircraft (having learn the mistakes of the Arabs in the Six Day War), so the Iraqi Air Force was only successful in crating a few runways.

Iran responded the next day with Operation Kaman 99 was launched as were 146 Iranian F-4s and F-5s for a bombing raid on Iraq, 60 F-14 Tomcats where scrambled to defend Iranian airspace against a possible Iraqi retaliation, they managed to down five Iraqi MiG's, the bomb raids inflicted damage on the air bases but the Iraqis had flown most of their air forces to neighbouring countries (such as Saudi Arabia) before the Iranian attack, however they were then out of action for several weeks.

As the Iranians were putting up stiff resistance against the Iraqi invasion (Saddam vowed they'd reach Tehran in three days!), the IRIAF had total air supercity over them making it impossible for the present IrAF at the time to support ground units.

The Sultan strike was born after the Iranians had obtained very precise information about 47 French technicians having arrived at an air base near Mosul along with several of the new Dassault Mirage F-1's that the Iraqi's had ordered back in 1977 now ready for delivery giving the IrAF a newer fighter jet for their inventory.



However the Iranians weren't going to allow that happen and were eager to "welcome the French" to the war since they had obviously chosen the side of the aggressor, unlike the Israeli bombing of a nuclear reactor in 1981 (Operation Opera) in 1981 in which they attacked on a Sunday to avoid killing foreign workers on the plant the Iranians were readying to strike when there were several French workers in the area!

A total of six F-4's were put to the mission each carrying twelve Mark 12 bombs along with a KC 707 tanker along with two F-14's from the 81st TFS flying shotgun, they would be flying a total of 187 miles to strike their Iraqi targets.



Zig zagging past Iraqi radars and entering Turkish air space before re entering northern Iraq, refueling several times from the low flying tankers watched over the F-14's, they came across a patrol of four MiG-23's, covering the strike force both F-14's engaged one (with an AIM-54), and the other engaged two right away destroying one instantly and knocking the other out of control, engaging a third the fourth obviously returning to base being low on fuel.

The Tomcat's had protected the strike package that had broken 300km into Iraqi air space and bombed al-Hurriyah air base destroying two MiG-21's and three Mi-8 helicopters on the ground, a single French technician was killed, the rest of the French were ordered home.

It was a small tactical victory and proved to Saddam Hussein that the Iranians were a formidable foe!

Saddam inspired by Stalin?

Saddam, the dictator of Iraq from the late 1970's all the way up to 2003, during his time the Iraqi people suffered, but Saddam didn't care less, he loved war and thrived to be victorious, but we all know that story, his massive army and Republican Guard and his propaganda movies always making his army looking brilliant and him looking like the tough leader.



But this propaganda couldn't be further from the truth, when he attacked Iran he vowed to crush it and the Ayatollah in less than a year, the truth was his army suffered badly on the front line and he executed several army generals who tried to retreat, he did just that in 1982 and offered to make peace, but the Ayatollah refused and the Iranians pushed forward, what resulted was another six years of horrible trench fighting, the worse since World War I, Saddam even used chemicals daily on the Iranians and at one stage in 1988 killed 5,000 Kurds in a single gas attack.

Like Stalin Saddam didn't want an uprising and was suspicious of everyone, like Stalin he thought everybody was out to get them and killed close friends and even family members for the littlest of offences, people in Iraq under Saddam had to keep their head down and not question their government.

When he invaded Kuwait in August 1990 he achieved outstanding victory, having starting at 2 in the morning he had the country occupied by nightfall and would remain in his hands for nearly a year.
Speaking of Kuwait it is an interesting country because it used to be part of the Ottoman empire of Basra, when Iraq was unified into one country in the 1920's Kuwait was separated from the rest of Iraq because of the large quantity of oil that's there, so maybe Saddam was justified on this one.

However George HW. Bush continually called Saddam a Hitler and launched Operation Desert Shield to protect Saudi Arabia from an invasion from Iraq and then Operation Desert Storm, the war was a fireworks show for the American media showing their superior weapons as they flew thousands of sorties and bombarded Iraqi defences driving them out of Kuwait and back into Iraq and continually attacking them, Daddy Bush's ground war lasted a hundred hours before withdrawing and a cease fire put in place, but here's the thing, even though his "elite" Republican Guard was crippled, his air force destroyed Saddam was still in power.


Saddams worst enemies

Bush called for the Iraqi citizens to overthrow his leader when it was already established like Stalin he instantly murdered anyone who questioned him, I'm sure there were many unheard heroes who tried to take down Saddam Hussein after the Americans had blown their country to the stone age and left Saddam in power.

However George W. Bush had his own agenda regarding Saddam when he entered office in 2001, in 2003 he initiated his shock and awe invasion of Iraq, Saddam was found hiding in a hole, his fate had finally caught up with him after all those years of knowing it.

The fact it took two presidents of the United States to go to war with Saddam until finally taking him out shows how powerful and unwilling he was to stand down, even when it meant that thousands of his people had to die and continually suffer under his regime, today the Iraqi people like the Soviet Union after World War II would rather forget about the horrid dictator that ruined Iraq!

Rebuilding in Iraq after both the 1991 and 2003 war is going slowly today but after Hussein was hanged in 2006 it is now slowly starting the beginning of a new and better Iraq.

how powerful Ayatollah Khomeini was

So persuasive that he was exiled from Iran by the Shah who feared him, until his return in 1979 after the Shah was brought to the United States to get cancer treatment, almost overnight Khomeini had poured fuel on a fire that was ready to burn, the Iranian revolution caught the United States almost completely by surprise.

The Iranian Army joined Khomeini shortly after and there was a brief period of violence in Iran.

When students in Tehran took over the US embassy it led to a 444 day hostage crisis, the US were powerless to do anything, a rescue was attempted by the USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf using a bunch of RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters, but they never even reached Tehran!

Khomeini was a real threat to others in the Middle East, he had just taken over from the biggest autocrat in the entire Middle East and brought the Iranian people to his side, Saddam Hussein especially had something to fear, as a Sunni muslim the Ayatollah was a direct threat, since the majority of Iraq's population were oppressed Shia's, his a revolution would have him ousted as president.

After the revolution Saddam saw the Ayatollah was at his weakest, the Iranian military was disbanded, most of its top officers had been executed, so on September 22nd 1980 Saddam caught them off guard sending nine divisions of the Iraqi Army into the oil fields of southern Iran, he quickly made progress.



But when the Ayatollah called for volunteers to halt the invasion what resulted was hundreds of thousands flocking to the front line, halting Saddam's invasion by simple RPG armed revolutionary guards Saddams invasion was a failure, by 1982 Khomeini had the Iranians on the offensive, Saddam retreated his forces and offered peace, but Khomeini refused.

Seeing his opportunity to spread the revolution into Iraq he begun attacking and for another six long years several attempts were made to capture Basra, the US supported Saddam since Iran was seen as a hostile enemy, but also over the fear that the Iranians may actually have defeated the Iraqis, overthrown Saddam and went on from Iraq to take over Saudi Arabia and take down Israel, (remember Hezbollah was founded in 1982 after the Israeli's invaded and is to this day funded by the Iranians).



But Saddam deployed chemicals (not seen since World War I) to kill the advancing Iranian's in their masses, over 1,000,000 soldiers were lost from both sides before the end of the horrific war in 1988, shortly afterwords Khomeini died, Iran hasn't had a war since.

What the IRIAF consists of today

It seems that Bush has not attacked Iran, tensions have been rising since 2006 when it was even suggested that nukes be in such an attack since it was too big to invade!

What I always wanted to know was whether or not the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) would have posed a credible threat to USAF aircraft?

Back in the 1970's in the Shah's Iran the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) was spending millions on high technology from the United States, by 1979 the air force had over 450 modern aircraft even a match at the time for the Soviet Union, these aircraft included 120 F-4 Phantom II jets, 79 Grumman F-14 Tomcats (out of a scheduled 80) and even F-5's.

These were later transferred into the successor of that the IRIAF after the 1979 revolution, for the next year alot of these were grounded due to maintenance problems with several Tomcats, but on September 1980 after the Iraqi Air Force launched its invasion by using the IrAF to strike IRIAF aircraft on the ground they failed the main objective since most IRIAF were sheltered in concrete bunkers.

Iran launched the largest air operation in the whole Iran Iraq War and in the countries history, less than 24 hours later Operation Kaman 99 was launched, 60 F-14 Tomcats were launched to protect Iran some armed with the AIM-54 missile system, 30 F-4's then hit back at Iraqi air bases taking out 55% of it there and then.

For the rest of the war Iranian F-14's were used for protecting the Khark Island installation, over 300 air-to-air engagements against IrAF fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers, were fought in these areas alone between 1980 and 1988.

The IrAF had acquired some French Dassault Mirage F-1's which downed a total of three Tomcats.



In Operation Desert Storm in 1991 several Iraqi planes fled to Iran to avoid being destroyed by coalition craft, these included several Mirage F1s, MiG-25 Foxbats, MiG-21 Fishbeds, MiG-27s, Su-24MK Fencer-Ds, MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-20s, Su-22M Fitters, Su-25 Frogfoots, MiG-23s and a number of Il-76s.



Also in 1993 Russia sold Iran a number of MiG-29 Fulcrums, Iran only bought a handful of them and have not yet decommissioned the older US built F-4's and F-14's.