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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-
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