Iran and Iraq at War by Shahram Chubin

Author:Shahram Chubin [Chubin, Shahram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle Eastern, Social Science, Political Science, World, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429718618
Google: yCqNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 44597932
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Furthermore, the declarations of the Arab League now grouped Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with Iraq as the beleaguered victims of Iranian aggression, encouraging Saddam Hussein to underline the selfless nature of Iraq’s war effort, as its forces dedicated themselves to the task of defending all three states:82

Iraq’s policy always considers Iraqi national security to be an indivisible part of pan-Arab security … Arab Gulf states are currently being exposed to certain circumstances and threats. In the light of this fact, Iraq considers its national security an integral part of the security of the brothers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. What threatens or harms them also threatens and harms Iraq.

At the beginning of September 1987, after the launching of an Iranian surface-to-surface missile against a target in Kuwait, Iraq went so far as to link its own strategy of attacks on Iranian economic targets direcdy with the fate of Kuwait, calling its own efforts ‘a day of revenge to underscore the bonds of blood, religion, history and destiny between Iraq and Kuwait and as a salute from Iraq’.83

Kuwait might well have preferred to have foregone such ‘salutes’, but the nature of the war and the logic of its own situation meant that its government had scarcely any choice in the matter. Much the same logic could be said to apply to Saudi Arabia. Because of the crucial role they have played in sustaining Iraq’s war effort, these two states are the ones which Iraq has been at most pains to cultivate. The vacillations and anxieties expressed periodically by the small states in the lower Gulf, and their occasional attempts to placate a wrathful Iran, have been of little importance to Iraq. However, they have provided Saddam Hussein with some good opportunities to talk reproachfully about the proper duties of Arab brothers, as if to remind others, with greater resources at their disposal, that they must not forsake Iraq.

In managing relations with the Arab states in the region, Saddam Hussein has succeeded in drawing upon their resources for Iraq’s benefit, whilst at the same time sustaining the impression that such aid has been given in the spirit of pan-Arab co-operation. This has been as useful for the rulers of the states concerned, as for Saddam Hussein himself. It has helped to reinforce the image, believed fundamental to the legitimacy of all the governments involved, that they are serving the greater cause of the Arab nation. At the same time, the help which they have given has enabled Iraq to withstand seven years of war without succumbing either to military or economic collapse. In averting such a catastrophe, they have also served their own particular interests. It is not only in Iraq that this ambiguity has been apparent, between dedication to a lofty ideal beyond the state and the requirements of maintaining the power of individual regimes within the given boundaries of the state. More than any of them, Saddam Hussein, during the war, has been forced to come to terms with the

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