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I RAQ

The United States also provided crucial support to Iraq throughout the war. Under Khomeini’s leadership Iran had become the mortal enemy of the United States, and President Ronald Reagan feared that if Iran defeated Iraq, the Islamic Revolution would spread into the Arab world. This might cut off access to the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf, which the Western economies needed. As a result, the U.S. government provided financial aid and training to the Iraqis, as well as information on Iranian mili- tary positions. (However, during the later years of the war, the Reagan administration arranged secret shipments of weapons to Iran, in exchange for Tehran’s cooperation in freeing Western hostages being held in Lebanon by Iranian-supported groups.) The Iran-Iraq War was an uncommonly merciless conflict, pro- ducing casualties estimated at more than a million people—and the two countries’ combined population was under 80 million. But beyond the massive casualties, there was another disturbing devel- opment: the use of chemical weapons. In violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol on the Use of Chemical Weapons—to which Iraq was a signatory—Saddam’s forces on various occasions resorted to chemical warfare against their Iranian enemies. A 1986 report from the United Nations documented Iraq’s use of the banned weapons, such as mustard gas and nerve gas; a separate British report released later that year estimated that at least 10,000 Iranian soldiers had been killed in Iraqi chemical attacks. But Iraq’s use of chemical warfare was not limited to attacks on enemy soldiers. In March 1988, a chemical attack by Saddam’s forces killed some 5,000 Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja. At the time, the Iraqis were recapturing Kurdish territory in north- eastern Iraq that had been occupied by Iranian troops. The Halabja massacre was only the most famous chemical attack on the Kurds; there were many others. The Kurds, who had always resisted the government of Iraq, had supported Iran’s inva-