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During the 1990s, the governments of Iran and Iraq publicly
pledged to improve relations. However, some problems have never
been completely resolved, such as ownership of the Shatt al Arab.
And in June 2002, Iraq protested to the United Nations about what
it called breaches of the 1988 U.N. cease-fire, including attacks on
Iraqi civilians by Iranian forces.
After Saddam Hussein’s government was overthrown in 2003,
reports began to circulate that Iranians had secretly entered south-
ern Iraq and were organizing Shiite protests against the U.S. pres-
ence in Iraq. This raised fears that the new Iraqi government might
become a strict Shiite theocracy like Iran’s, rather than the democ-
racy the United States had envisioned.
In response, U.S. president George W. Bush sent a message to
Iranian leaders that outside interference by Iran during the recon-
struction of Iraq would not be tolerated. At the same time, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, “We will not allow the
Iraqi people’s democratic transition to be hijacked by those who
might wish to install another form of dictatorship.”
The government of Turkey was also intensely interested in
developments within Iraq. Both Iraq and Turkey have Kurdish
minorities, and Turkish officials have long sought to prevent the
two groups from joining together to create a separate Kurdish
state. For decades, the Turks have struggled to suppress Kurdish
nationalism, and during the 1990s Turkish troops occasionally
entered northern Iraq, hunting for Kurdish rebels fighting against
the Turkish government.
During the 1990s, Turkey’s close ties to the United States and
Europe meant that the country’s relations with Iraq were adver-
sarial. Turkish airfields and other military facilities were used by
U.S. warplanes patrolling the northern no-fly zone. And in 1991,
during the Gulf War, Turkey closed an important oil pipeline that
ran from Kirkuk to the Mediterranean Sea. That pipeline was
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