In the President's radio address today, Bush said the following:
We know from recent history that Saddam Hussein is a reckless dictator who has twice invaded his neighbors without provocation ...
He's referring to the move into Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. We agree that Hussein was out of line invading Kuwait - but what about the case involving Iran? One person who thinks Iraq was provoked in 1980 is Nita M. Renfrew, who wrote an article in Foreign Policy (no 66, Spring 1987) entitled Who Started The War?
Here are excerpts from that piece:
... although organized units of the Iraqi army were the first to cross the Iran-Iraq border on September 22, 1980, Iran started the war.
The long-term historical cause of the war was the progressive breakdown, after Khomeini took power, of the 1975 Algiers accord. Usually viewed as a treaty settling key border disputes between Iran and Iraq, the accord was more importantly an agreement between Iran and Iraq not to interfere in each other's internal affairs. The Shah invoked this provision of the accord in 1978 when he called on Hussein to expel Khomeini from Iraq ...
When Iraq signed the accord, it hoped to settle three issues: the disputed border territories of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad, both strategic heights overlooking the Iraqi plains and occupied by Iran; the question of sovereignty over the Shatt al Arab waterway ...; and most important, the Kurdish revolt in the north, heavily and covertly supported by the shah in concert with Israel and the United States.
Iraq agreed to give up sovereignty over half of the Shatt al Arab by moving its southeastern border away from the far shore of the waterway to the thalweg, the deepest part of the Shatt ...
Iraq's border with Iran had already been moved back twice in this century: once in 1913 by the Constantinople Protocol negotiated between the Persian and Ottoman empires and again in 1937 by a League of Nations settlement. The rationale for this third border adjustment was that a thalweg is the line of demarcation normally used between countries when the border is along a waterway.
In exchange for one-half of the Shatt al Arab, the Shah agreed to stop inciting the Kurds to rebellion and to return the occupied territories of Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad, which make up 210 square miles along the middle section of the border.
Four years later, when Khomeini returned to Qom, the religious center of Iran, Iran had still not returned Iraq's two territories, although Iran had taken official possession immediately of half of the Shatt al Arab.
[The Iraqis] made a serious effort to establish good relations with the new Iranian regime ... [But] the Algiers acord soon began to break down on two counts: Khomeini commenced a well-financed campaign to turn the Shiites in Iraq, who make up more than one-half of the population, against the Sunni-controlled government, and he stepped up violations of airspace and border clashes, which had largely ceased in 1975. By the summer preceding the Iraq's invasion, they were taking place almost daily.
By the fall of 1979, a year before the war broke out, border hostilities were escalating and demonstrations were being staged in front of the Iraqi embassy and consulates in Iran. Armed attacks took place along the border, and an assault on the Iraqi embassy in Tehran in injured Iraqi diplomats.
By spring 1980, top Iranian officials were proclaiming openly their intention to liberate Iraq from their Sunni oppressors. [...] A prominent Iranian military official stated that Iraq was an integral part of Iran. Meanwhile, inside Iraq there were Iranian-sponsored assassination attempts on Hussein and members of his cabinet. Bombs exploded in several ministries and at the Mustansiriyah University, killing and wounding hundreds.
Members of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council now differ on whether the decision to invade Iran should be traced to the precarious internal situation or to border tensions. At the time both factors played a role.
According to Iraqi sources, in summer 1980 Iran began to mass its army along the border in larger numbers and fired several times on Iraqi oil installations. On September 4 Iran shelled the Iraqi towns of Khanaqin, Mandali, Naft Kanch, and Zarbatiyah. In the minds of Iraqi leaders, the war began with that shelling. Iraq called on the Iranian government to review the terms of the Algiers accord, giving Iran a last chance to avoid war and still save face, and informed Iran that it was going to remove, by force if necessary, the occupying troops if they did not leave voluntarily. Again, Iran opened fire. It struck oil installations, attacked Mandali from the air, fired on Iraqi ships in the Shatt al Arab, and shelled Basra, Iraq's primary port.
On September 22, 1980, Hussein launched an invasion of Iran, within 6 days occupying a substantial belt along the border. He then called for a cease-fire and negotiations, both of which Khomeni unequivocally turned down.
