Gulf War

Overview

The Gulf War, also called the First Gulf War and sometimes Operation Desert Storm, was the 1990–1991 conflict triggered by Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, forces commanded by Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein crossed the border and seized Kuwait within two days. Saddam subsequently proclaimed it Iraq’s nineteenth province. A coalition led by the United States deployed to defend Saudi Arabia, then fought under United Nations authorization to expel Iraqi forces. Kuwait’s liberation in February 1991 ended the military campaign, although Saddam remained in power.

The war took place in Kuwait, Iraq and the wider Persian Gulf region. It brought together states with different political interests around the immediate objective of reversing Iraq’s conquest. United States leaders also sought to protect longstanding American interests in Gulf security and oil supplies. Israel did not ask American troops to fight its battles. Although Iraq attacked Israeli cities with Scud missiles, Israel remained outside coalition combat at Washington’s request while supplying equipment and facilities to United States forces. The war thus combined a decisive campaign to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty with unresolved questions about Iraq’s government and regional security.

Background

Before the invasion, Iraq possessed one of the world’s largest armies. Kuwait had acquired approximately $5 billion in arms but could not stop the Iraqi advance. Many members of the House of Sabah fled; Sheikh Faud al-Ahmad al-Sabah stayed to defend the family’s royal home and was shot and killed. Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait for roughly seven months. During that occupation, soldiers tortured and killed hundreds of civilians, took thousands hostage and removed property from the country. Iraq’s seizure also exposed the Gulf states’ inability to confront its army without direct United States intervention.

President George H. W. Bush condemned Iraq’s aggression on August 2, 1990, identifying longstanding United States interests in the Persian Gulf and concern for Americans in the region. The invasion threatened Gulf oil supplies and the security of neighboring states, especially Saudi Arabia. Saddam defied United Nations directives to withdraw. The resulting United Nations resolutions provided the authority under which the United States assembled a coalition to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The objective was Kuwait’s liberation, rather than an Israeli military campaign.

Coalition membership reflected varied Arab and regional interests. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak committed about 38,500 troops. President Turgut Özal brought Turkey into the United States–led effort; Turkey shut an Iraqi oil pipeline crossing its territory and permitted American fighter aircraft to use Incirlik Air Force Base. The Peninsula Shield Force participated during Kuwait’s liberation. Hafez al-Assad’s Syria also supported the coalition. King Hussein of Jordan, by contrast, declined to join the 1991 campaign. Governments and political organizations across the Arab world did not respond uniformly to Saddam’s invasion.

Yasser Arafat backed Saddam during the Kuwait crisis. At the August 1990 Arab League meeting in Cairo, he moved among delegations alongside Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz and worked to weaken a resolution against Iraq. Gulf states subsequently suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in support for the PLO. These divisions shaped coalition diplomacy: United States leaders sought broad support for Kuwait’s liberation while preventing Iraq from shifting attention away from its occupation.

Course of the war

Operation Desert Shield began with the deployment of American forces to Saudi Arabia after Iraq seized Kuwait. Maritime Pre-positioning Ships, developed alongside the precursor of United States Central Command, formed a backbone of the initial deployment. The American military entered the crisis shaped by its experience in Vietnam and decades of preparation for a large war against the Soviet Union. Its technology and operational capacity substantially surpassed Iraq’s by the time fighting began. Coalition forces assembled to protect Saudi Arabia, enforce the demand for Iraqi withdrawal and prepare an offensive if Saddam refused to leave Kuwait.

Bush announced Operation Desert Storm on January 16, 1991. Coalition combat opened with a sustained air campaign that lasted 42 days. Precision weapons, including laser-guided munitions, struck Iraqi command and control targets and weakened forces before the ground offensive. Space and cyber capabilities supported coalition air operations. The campaign demonstrated how coordinated air, missile and information systems could prepare the way for decisive action on the ground. Soviet military and security officials later studied and debated Desert Storm’s methods and results.

Air strikes were followed by a rapid coalition ground offensive that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Iraqi military losses were severe, and the war ended in February 1991. As Iraqi forces retreated, they set fire to approximately 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, leaving extensive damage after Kuwait’s liberation. The coalition achieved its central military objective: Iraq’s occupation ended and the House of Sabah returned to power. The result also left a distinction between defeating Iraq’s forces in Kuwait and removing Saddam’s government in Baghdad; the latter did not occur in 1991.

Public support in the United States changed during the crisis. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted on January 16, 1991, found 76 percent of Americans approved of war with Iraq and 22 percent disapproved. American leaders presented the campaign as a response to Iraq’s conquest of a neighboring state and a defense of United States interests in the Gulf. The coalition’s breadth, the United Nations mandate and the speed of the military victory became defining features of the war.

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel during the war, striking its home front and targeting Tel Aviv. During the first month of fighting, Saddam launched 38 Scuds at Israel. Two people were killed directly; 11 more died from heart attacks or asphyxiation associated with the attacks. Israeli forces were prepared to enter the war, but Israel refrained from retaliating after United States appeals. Washington sought to preserve the coalition, including its Arab members, and coalition forces pursued Iraqi Scud launchers. The United States also sent personnel and at least one Patriot missile defense system to Israel.

Israel’s absence from combat did not mean an absence of material support. United States Navy ships received maintenance and support at Haifa’s port shipyard while traveling to the Gulf. Israel offered military and hospital facilities to American forces. United States ships used Israeli Pioneer drones for reconnaissance, and American B-52 bombers used Israeli-made Have Nap air-launched missiles. Conformal fuel tanks developed by Israel Aircraft Industries extended the range of F-15 aircraft used in the war. Israel thus supplied equipment and logistical capacity while its civilians absorbed Iraqi missile attacks without an Israeli counterstrike.

The attacks imposed costs that remained under review after the fighting. In 1999, a United Nations committee approved more than $31 million in Gulf War reparations for Israeli businesses and individuals. In 2001, the United Nations Compensation Commission awarded Israel $74 million for costs caused by Iraqi Scud attacks, while rejecting most of Israel’s approximately $1 billion request. The awards recognized part of the damage associated with Iraq’s bombardment. They did not change the central fact of Israel’s wartime conduct: it supported United States forces and kept its own military outside the campaign at Washington’s request.

The war also renewed attention to Israel’s 1981 Operation Opera strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Israel’s action had hampered Baghdad’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons. During the Gulf War, United States defense secretary Dick Cheney thanked former Israeli Air Force commander David Ivry for the strike and said it had made Desert Storm easier. The later assessment contrasted with the international condemnation that followed the 1981 operation.

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

Saddam’s Scud attacks brought the war to Israeli population centers even though Israel was not a coalition combatant. They created civilian danger and placed pressure on Israel to respond. A retaliatory Israeli strike could have strained cooperation among coalition members, particularly Arab governments whose support was directed at ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Israel’s restraint denied Saddam that opening. Iraq’s missile campaign did not alter the cause of the war: Iraqi forces had invaded and annexed Kuwait, and the coalition’s stated objective remained their removal.

Political claims that the United States fought the Gulf War for Israel obscured the sequence of events and the decisions of the governments involved. Bush identified American interests in the Persian Gulf on the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, months before Desert Storm began. Iraq’s conquest threatened Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Gulf oil supplies. Israel neither requested an American war on its behalf nor joined coalition combat. Its support in equipment, facilities and logistics occurred alongside Iraqi attacks on Israeli civilians. Arafat’s backing for Saddam and efforts at the Arab League meeting formed another part of the crisis’s political contest, but neither changed the coalition’s United Nations–authorized objective of liberating Kuwait.

Outcome

The coalition liberated Kuwait and defeated Iraqi forces, but Saddam Hussein survived politically and rebuilt his power base, beginning with his secret police. The postwar ceasefire barred Iraq’s military from flying fixed-wing aircraft while initially permitting helicopters. Saddam’s forces used those helicopters against uprisings that broke out after the war, including Kurdish resistance in the north and Shiite resistance in southern Iraq. The initial flight restrictions therefore did not protect the 1991 Iraqi uprisings from Iraqi aircraft.

After the war, Saddam lost administrative control over the coalition-protected north of Iraq. An initial Kurdish safe haven centered on Zakho. In 1992, the United States, Britain and France established a northern no-fly zone to protect Kurds after Saddam’s genocidal campaign, which had included the Halabja massacre and the Anfal campaign. The Gulf War preceded the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government, three years after Anfal devastated rural Kurdistan. Central Iraqi authority remained weak in the north through the period surrounding the 2003 invasion.

The end of occupation did not settle Kuwait’s claims against Iraq. By February 1996, Saddam’s government had not returned goods stolen during the occupation or sufficiently compensated Kuwait for damage. It had also failed to account for more than 600 prisoners of war from the occupation. A 1992 United Nations Security Council decision called on Iraq to compensate victims of the war. Saddam’s seizure of Kuwait and its aftermath continued to shape how the House of Sabah and other Kuwaiti leaders approached regional security.

Aftermath and legacy

The war changed the regional balance without ending Saddam’s rule. Following the conflict, his government expelled approximately 120,000 Turkmens, Kurds and Christians from government-controlled northern Iraq, chiefly from Kirkuk and nearby villages. Saddam’s Ba’athist regime moved away from its earlier secular posture and brought religious messaging into state politics. It also increased cooperation with armed groups pursuing pan-Arab and political Islam causes. These developments occurred after a battlefield defeat that had destroyed much of Iraq’s military capacity but left its authoritarian government intact.

For the United States, the war led to a sustained regional presence. After the campaign, American forces maintained more than 200 aircraft, 20 ships and nearly 20,000 personnel in the region. The intervention also influenced military thinking well beyond the Gulf: its air campaign, precision strikes and rapid ground operation drew close study by Soviet officials before the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991. Later planners examined both the campaign’s operational success and its limits, including the survival of Iraq’s ruler and the need to manage postwar security.

The Gulf War and the end of the Cold War altered diplomacy involving Israel and its neighbors. Assad’s Syria had joined the coalition against Iraq; following Iraq’s defeat and the Soviet collapse, Assad brought Syria into the 1991 Madrid peace talks. Turkey’s coalition role also carried a distinct concern about northern Iraq: President Özal requested a military plan to prevent Kurdish control of Mosul and Kirkuk if Iraq broke apart. The war’s consequences were therefore wider than Kuwait’s restoration, affecting negotiations, minority security and the calculations of neighboring states.

Saddam remained in power until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, part of the later Iraq War. Jordan’s support for United States aircraft in 2003 differed from King Hussein’s refusal to join the 1991 coalition campaign. The distinction between the two wars remains fundamental: the Gulf War was launched to reverse Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and ended with Saddam still governing Iraq; the 2003 invasion removed his government. The 1991 victory liberated Kuwait, established a larger American security presence in the Gulf and left unresolved Iraqi and regional problems that continued into the next decade.