IndexOrigins and causes of the warNature of the warEffects and resultsThis area of ​​the world, the Persian Gulf, has a very turbulent history. We tend to call the 1991 conflict the Gulf War, however this was not the first war in this region. From 1980 to 1988 Iraq was involved in a war against neighboring Iran. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran due to a dispute over ownership of the Shatt Al Arab waterway that bordered the two countries. For years, Iraq steadily lost ground to Iran, which was numerically superior but technologically inferior. In 1988 the Iraqis changed tactics and began using chemical weapons, massive artillery bombardments and the Republican Guard. Iraq made rapid advances that pushed the Iranians back so much that by the end of the war they had gained 500 miles of territory. By this point, the waterway was so clogged with silt and debris that it became unusable. The conflict ended with a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in August 1988. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The war left Iraq with debts of more than $14 billion, mostly to Kuwait. Iraq tried to convince Kuwait to forget about the debt as Iraq had done Kuwait a favor by being at war with Iran, Kuwait refused and this caused a rift between the two countries. For a year they tried to resolve the financial situation, but the situation was resolved. It was chemical and artillery bombing tactics and mounting debts that were the seeds of future conflict. As of mid-1990, the two countries had not yet begun to negotiate a post-conflict peace treaty. Their foreign ministers met in Geneva in July 1990 and the prospects for peace seemed viable, as it seemed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein wanted to resolve that conflict and return to Kuwait the territory that his forces had long occupied. However, just two weeks later, Hussein delivered a speech in which Kuwait was accused of stealing oil from the Rumaila oil fields located along their common border. Origins and Causes of the War One of the major short-term causes of the war was the financial problems Iraq was experiencing. In 1990 Iraq was going through a serious financial crisis, as the price of oil was low and Iraq relied on this as its main source of income. For this reason, Iran accused Kuwait of overproducing and flooding the market with cheap oil to please Western oil-buying countries. Kuwait agreed to reduce production, but this did not appease Saddam Hussein as he had a second problem with Kuwait: the Rumaila oil field. This land also contributed to the cause of the war. The Iraqis owned half of this oil field and wanted the rest, so they accused Kuwait of stealing oil from the Iraqi half of the field. One of the long-term causes were political reasons. Iraq has long been an unstable country in the Middle East, causing problems with other surrounding nations. In the 1960s, a coup, or takeover, occurred in Iraq and the Baathist political party took power. In the late 1970s a Baathist politician, General Saddam Hussein, became the official president of Iraq. Hussein strengthened the Iraqi army and started a war with Iran in 1980. The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives on each side, including soldiers and civilians. Two years after the end of the war with Iran, SaddamHussein was looking for other places for new territories. This ended up being Kuwait. Saddam Hussein decided he had no choice but military power, so he stationed 100,000 troops on the border and invaded Kuwait in early August. When Iraqi forces invaded and took control of Kuwait, they set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil fields along the way. Nature of the War In the Persian Gulf War, there were many advances in technology and strategy, many of them coming from the United States which had joined the war in opposition to Iraq. This included aerial bombing, strategic supply lines, precision guided munitions (PGM), Tomahawk cruise missiles, and F-117 Stealth fighter-bombers. The PGMs relied on laser guidance systems and were directed at their targets, far more advanced than similar munitions used in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The Tomahawk missiles were capable of launching from great distances, and the fighter-bomber design made them nearly invisible to Iraqi radars. Once the bombing had degraded Iraq's capabilities, a coalition army swung into action: forces that were among the best equipped and trained in US history. The equipment that included the M-1 Abrams battle tank, the M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, the AH-64A Apache attack helicopter; the UH60A Blackhawk transport helicopter; and a new air defense system called Patriot, and a missile capable of shooting down incoming missiles. Each of these new weapons took advantage of the microcomputer revolution, with the M-1 tank using a laser rangefinder and fire guidance system. Finding the target and aiming the weapon, which was previously possible after years of training and the expert eye of a tank commander, was now the job of the laser and computer. This was more than just a fight against the Iraqi threat. Iraqi forces used methods similar to those used in the Iran-Iraq War. This included chemical weapons and artillery bombardment. Another strategy implemented by Saddam Hussein was to keep Iran neutral. To do this, Iraq re-established the pre-war Iran-Iraq border along the Shatt al-Arab River at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. This plan was successful: Iran was never involved in the conflict. One mistake Iraq made in its strategy was to anticipate that they would be attacked head-on, and therefore they heavily fortified these positions and not the others. During the war, Iraq's home front was not secure. Since the war was partially taking place in Iraq, there were evacuations of some areas, many civilian deaths, and considerable destruction of cities and the country. In the United States, the impact on the home front was much more minimal than it was in Iraq. the Middle East. 230,000 American soldiers were sent to the Persian Gulf War, which in itself had a major impact on the home front. Because so many troops were fighting in a war that wasn't ours, there were several protests against fighting in the Gulf War. Propaganda was used to combat this, to get people to support the war instead. In October 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah appeared before the House of Representatives Human Rights Caucus in Washington. He testified that Iraqi soldiers who invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2 snatched hundreds of babies from hospital incubators and killed them. His testimony went around the world, arousing consensus against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who was now considered not only "the.