![]() In 1988, not for a moment did any rational observer foresee what came next. Another war would surely be the very last thing that Saddam would contemplate after the carnage of the past eight years, and yet he invaded his small southern neighbor, Kuwait, triggering the First Gulf War and the calamitous chain of events that would follow it. By some estimates, as many as 500,000 on both sides had died in the fighting, and Iraq, formerly an oil-rich country, had been transformed into a nation on its financial knees. ![]() It was certainly shorter than the Iraq-Iran War, a brutal eight-year conflict that finally came to an end on Aug. 28, 1991, after a 42-day aerial bombardment followed by a ground assault by a US-led coalition that lasted just 100 hours.Īs wars go, it was a short one - Saddam’s aggression was met by an overwhelming display of force by a US-led coalition of nations, including the Gulf states, outraged by the dictator’s murderous adventurism. 2, 1990, when Saddam invaded and occupied his small southern neighbor, Kuwait. Perhaps most traumatic for Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states threatened by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was the sundering of the brotherly bonds that, until that moment, had meant that the prospect of one Arab state turning on another was unthinkable.
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