Persian Gulf War

Persian Gulf War, (1990–91), international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt Iraq owed Kuwait, and expanding Iraqi power in the region. It was the first major international crisis of the post-Cold War era, and the U.S.-led response would set important precedents for the use of military force over subsequent decades.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

1 of 2

2 of 2

Tensions in the Persian Gulf began to build during the summer of 1990, with Iraq adopting an increasingly belligerent tone toward both Kuwait and members of its ruling Ṣabāḥ dynasty. On July 17 Saddam launched a televised verbal attack on Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates for exceeding the oil export quotas that had been set for them by OPEC. A day later Kuwait was accused of stealing oil from the Al-Rumaylah oil field, which straddles the border between Iraq and Kuwait. As criticism mounted, talks between the two countries in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, broke down on August 1. Hours later, early on August 2, Iraqi armoured divisions invaded Kuwait despite personal assurances from Saddam to Egyptian Pres. Hosni Mubarak that Iraq would avoid using force to press its claims against Kuwait.

Active resistance to the invasion lasted about 14 hours, during which time an estimated 4,200 Kuwaitis were killed in combat. Although remnants of Kuwait’s 20,000-man army maintained a spirited defense over the next 36 hours, the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait city was completed with little difficulty. The fiercest opposition came at Dasman Palace, the royal residence of emir Sheikh Jābir al-Aḥmad al-Jābir al-Ṣabāḥ, which only yielded to the Iraqis after hours of bitter hand-to-hand fighting in which the emir’s younger brother, Sheikh Fahad, was killed. At 11:11 am on August 3 Kuwait Radio fell silent with these words: “Arabs, brothers, beloved brothers, Muslims. Hurry to our aid.” Sheikh Jābir, his cabinet, and senior members of the Ṣabāḥ family fled to Saudi Arabia to establish a government-in-exile. Crown prince Saʿd al-ʿAbd Allāh al-Sālim al-Ṣabāḥ quickly emerged as the dominant personality within this group, and finance minister Sheikh Ali al-Khalifah al-Ṣabāḥ took control of most of Kuwait’s overseas assets, which amounted to some $100 billion. As many as 350,000 Kuwaiti refugees also fled south into Saudi Arabia.

Britannica Quiz

That ’90s Quiz

On August 4 Iraqi occupation forces appointed Col. Alaa Hussain Ali as head of state of Kuwait; he was backed by a nine-member cabinet of “revolutionaries” who, Iraq said, were responsible for ousting remnants of the previous regime. On August 8 the Iraqis installed the Provisional Free Government of Kuwait, a body that was established to give credence to Iraq’s dubious claim that the invasion was conducted at the request of Kuwaitis opposed to the Ṣabāḥ dynasty. On August 10 foreign diplomats were given a two-week deadline to close their embassies in Kuwait and move to Baghdad. On August 28 Saddam declared that Kuwait was now the 19th province of Iraq. Place-names were “Iraqized,” and the southern Iraqi province of Al-Baṣrah was extended to include the Kuwait side of the Al-Rumaylah oil field as well as the islands of Būbiyān and Al-Warbah at the head of the Shaṭṭ Al-ʿArab waterway.

During the occupation of Kuwait, Iraqi troops began a systematic campaign of pillage, rape, torture, murder, and theft of Kuwait’s economic assets. The Iraqi occupation government announced the death penalty for looters but condoned the removal to Baghdad of medical equipment from hospitals, the assets of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, treasures of Islamic art from the Kuwait National Museum, and $1.6 billion in gold and cash from the Central Bank of Kuwait. Amnesty International reported that Iraqi soldiers had carried out hundreds of extrajudicial killings and taken several thousand Kuwaiti civilians prisoner. One widely circulated story about Iraqi soldiers removing newborn infants from hospital incubators was eventually debunked as a fabrication, but the truth did not emerge until long after the conflict had been settled.

The international response to the invasion of Kuwait

1 of 2

2 of 2

The diplomatic response to the invasion was swift. On August 6 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 661, which imposed a ban on all trade with Iraq and called on UN member countries to protect the assets of the legitimate government of Kuwait. A day later the first U.S. troops were sent to Saudi Arabia, while Mubarak invited Arab leaders to Cairo for an emergency summit. On August 10, 12 of the 21 Arab League countries passed a resolution condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and endorsing the UN resolution. Among those Arab states sympathetic to Iraq were Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia, and Algeria as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The key supporters of Kuwait, apart from Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, were Egypt and Syria, whose leaders had improved mutual relations in the months preceding the invasion. Saddam countered the Arab League resolution on August 12 by declaring that “all occupation problems, and those portrayed as occupation problems in the Middle East, can be resolved simultaneously and on the same principles and bases as should be set out by the UN Security Council.” Saddam also used the crisis as an unlikely opportunity to conclude peace with Iran. On August 15 he announced that Iraq was ready to accept Iranian terms for the settlement of the Iran-Iraq War: the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from occupied Iranian territory, resolution of the Shaṭṭ Al-ʿArab waterway dispute, and a prisoner-of-war exchange. The Soviet Union, at first guarded in its response to the invasion, on September 3 expressed its support for the U.S. military presence in the Gulf.

More than 600,000 expatriates, including some 7,000 Western nationals, remained in Kuwait after the invasion, having been barred from leaving the country by Iraqi occupation authorities. The Iraqi regime began rounding up hundreds of Westerners and holding some of them at strategic military and industrial sites as “human shields” in the event of attack. On August 28, the same day that Iraq declared that it had annexed Kuwait, Saddam said that women and children would be allowed to leave. The plight of the remaining hostages resulted in a procession of Western politicians and celebrities to Baghdad. Among those appealing for the release of the hostages were former British prime minister Edward Heath, Labour politician Tony Benn, American heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali, and British singer-songwriter Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens). In a sudden and dramatic move, on December 6 Saddam announced that all remaining hostages would be released. Although this put the Iraqi government in compliance with Security Council Resolution 674—which demanded that “Iraqi authorities and occupying forces immediately cease and desist from taking third State nationals hostage”—there remained the matter of Iraq’s continued occupation of Kuwait and the potential threat to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and exporter.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Operation Desert Shield

Saddam’s conquest of Kuwait had been achieved in short order, and he seemed poised to continue his military push into Saudi Arabia. Conquering Saudi Arabia would give Saddam control of more than 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves as well as two of the holiest sites in the Islamic world, Mecca and Medina. With Iraqi troops on the Saudi border, King Fahd, in an unprecedented move, invited Western and Arab forces to deploy in the kingdom in support of the Saudi defense forces. The U.S. immediately dispatched elements of its Rapid Deployment Force. This included the “ready brigade” of the 82nd Airborne Division, the U.S. Marine Corps First Expeditionary Force, and two squadrons of U.S. Air Force F-15s. Two U.S. Navy carrier battle groups were also deployed to the Persian Gulf. The U.S. ground contingent was a relatively lightly equipped “trip wire” force; even if Saudi Arabian and other Arab armies had rushed to the area, it is unlikely that the hastily assembled defenders could have repelled a concerted Iraqi attack. Nevertheless, this initial U.S. deployment deterred Saddam from attacking Saudi Arabia and initiating a war with the U.S. and its allies.

On paper, the Iraqi military looked formidable. Its army was the fifth largest in the world, with some 950,000 personnel, 5,500 main battle tanks, 10,000 additional armoured vehicles, and nearly 4,000 artillery pieces. The Iraqi air force consisted of some 40,000 personnel and 689 combat aircraft. Both the army and air force had extensive combat experience from the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), including the large-scale use of chemical weapons. Iraq was believed to also have a significant stockpile of biological agents, most notably weaponized botulinum toxin and anthrax. In addition, Iraq had a force of modified Soviet-made Scud surface-to-surface missiles mounted on mobile launchers. These missiles had an effective range of 185 miles (300 km) and were capable of carrying a payload of conventional explosives as well as chemical or biological weapons.

1 of 2

2 of 2

Over the following months the U.S. military carried out its largest overseas deployment since World War II. By mid-November the U.S. had more than 240,000 troops in the Gulf and another 200,000 on the way, and the United Kingdom had sent more than 25,000, Egypt 20,000, and France 5,500. Some 25 other countries, including Canada, Syria, Bangladesh, and Morocco, had committed troops and weapons to the military buildup that was designated Operation Desert Shield. On November 29, 1990, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 678 by a vote of 12 to 2, sanctioning the use of force if the Iraqis had not left Kuwait by January 15, 1991. Only Cuba and Yemen voted against the resolution, with China abstaining. This was the first UN authorization of the use of force since 1950, when the Security Council approved military action against North Korea after its unprovoked attack on South Korea. With this resolution in place, the U.S. offered to engage in a dialogue with Saddam to extend the possibility of a peaceful settlement based on a timely Iraqi withdrawal.

1 of 2

2 of 2

Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had advised Bush that if the U.S. wished to use its military to liberate Kuwait, several conditions needed to be fulfilled. The force employed must be overwhelming and utilized as a last resort, the goals must be clear and accompanied by a coherent exit strategy, and the operation must have broad domestic and international support. In time these criteria would come to be known as the Powell Doctrine. Powell had served as a field-grade officer in Vietnam, the last major U.S. conflict, and had witnessed the dangers of “mission creep”—that is, the growth of a military operation beyond its original stated goals without a clear end. The Powell Doctrine was intended to prevent a repeat of the Vietnam War, and, as it was implemented in the Persian Gulf War, it was wholly successful.

1 of 2

2 of 2

Another legacy of Vietnam was a debate over the war-making powers of the president of the United States. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives only Congress the power “to declare war” and “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” Yet Article II says that the president is “commander in chief of the Army and Navy” and has the power, with the consent of the Senate, to make treaties with other nations. That ambiguity came to a head in 1973 during the Vietnam War, when Congress—over Pres. Richard Nixon’s veto—passed the War Powers Act. That legislation required the executive branch to consult with Congress prior to major deployments of U.S. forces, but it was generally resisted or outright ignored by subsequent presidents. Bush, for his part, eventually sought congressional approval for the U.S. military operation in the Persian Gulf. On January 12, 1991, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution was passed by the House (250–183) and the Senate (52–47). It cited UN Security Council Resolution 678 as its casus belli, and Bush signed the measure into law on January 14. The UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was the following day.

Operation Desert Storm

The coalition air offensive and Iraqi Scud attacks

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command(CENTCOM), directed the coalition military campaign, and his staff had devised a two-part operation that was designed to wear down Iraqi defenses before rapidly enveloping and destroying them. The two phases of Operation Desert Storm were a coalition air operation (January 17–February 24, 1991) and a ground offensive dubbed Operation Desert Sabre (February 24–28). Allied forces had three main objectives during the air campaign: to establish air supremacy, to destroy strategic targets, and to degrade Iraqi ground forces. Coalition pilots had gained air supremacy by January 28. The Iraqi air defense system of aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, antiaircraft guns, and ground-controlled interception radars was rendered ineffective. Iraqi losses included some 35 aircraft downed in air-to-air combat, at least 100 destroyed on the ground, and 115 flown to Iran to avoid destruction. Allied losses totaled 39 aircraft; none were lost in air combat. Once coalition air forces had established control of the skies, they began destroying targets vital to the Iraqi war effort. These included command, control, and communications facilities; ammunition (including chemical and biological stores); petroleum, oil, and lubricant stockpiles; and manufacturing plants. Allied aircraft also engaged in a protracted cat-and-mouse pursuit of Iraq’s mobile Scud missile launchers. It was estimated that the air campaign neutralized some 30 percent of the Iraqi ground forces in the combat theatre.

While the air offensive was ongoing, coalition naval operations began in the Persian Gulf. The main objectives of the allied naval campaign were: to maintain a defensive screen around the six U.S. Navy aircraft carriers that were conducting operations in the gulf; to destroy the small but potentially effective Iraqi coastal defense navy; to clear Iraqi submarine mines from the combat theatre; and to threaten a major amphibious assault on Iraqi forces in Kuwait. All of these objectives were fully achieved. By February 11 coalition forces had sunk the last Iraqi (and captured Kuwaiti) naval units. It was believed that coalition minesweepers had largely neutralized the threat of Iraqi sea mines, but on February 18 a pair of U.S. ships—the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton—struck mines and suffered significant damage. On February 25 Iraqi ground forces launched a pair of Silkworm antiship missiles at the U.S. battleship Missouri. One of the missiles splashed harmlessly into the sea, and the other was intercepted by Sea Dart missiles fired from the British destroyer HMS Gloucester. The threat of an amphibious assault by the 4th and 5th Marine Expeditionary brigades (17,000 personnel) tied down six Iraqi divisions defending Kuwait’s coastline.

On January 18 Iraq responded to the Allied air offensive by launching Scud missiles at the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa in an effort to draw Israel into the conflict and splinter the Arab coalition. Two days later Scuds were fired at targets in Saudi Arabia. Between January 18 and February 25 Iraq fired 39 missiles at Israel, killing at least 3 Israeli civilians and injuring as many as 200. The U.S. exerted tremendous diplomatic pressure on Israel to refrain from retaliating directly against Iraq; Israel agreed but in exchange requested the immediate deployment of U.S. Patriot antiballistic missile defense systems from Europe to supplement existing Israeli Patriot batteries. The effectiveness of the Patriots remained an open question decades after the war concluded. The U.S. had initially boasted of a near perfect performance, but the Patriots’ interception rate was soon downgraded by the U.S. Army to just 40 percent. Israeli military officials and the U.S. Government Accountability Office disputed even this modest estimate, stating that fewer than 10 percent of Patriots had successfully engaged and destroyed targeted Scuds.

Operation Desert Sabre

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

CENTCOM took every opportunity to convince Saddam that a seaborne assault on the Kuwaiti coast would be a major part of the inevitable allied offensive, and Schwarzkopf himself made a highly publicized visit to marine amphibious units in the Persian Gulf to enhance that deception. In fact, the actual attack would be a two-pronged flanking maneuver that was designed to quickly envelop Iraqi forces and neutralize their offensive capability. One wing of the attack would move deep into the Iraqi desert, far to the west of Kuwait. It would then execute a “left hook,” advancing to the Euphrates River before swinging east along the river toward Basra, thus cutting off the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. The other wing would concentrate allied armour against the Iraqi armoured reserves, destroy them, and push ahead to the coast.

1 of 4

2 of 4

3 of 4

4 of 4

Operation Desert Sabre, the coalition ground offensive, began on February 24, 1991, with an advance to the Euphrates by the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps (82nd and 101st Airborne and 24th Infantry divisions, plus the French Daguet Division). Meanwhile, the 1st and 2nd Marine divisions, along with Egyptian, Saudi, and other allied units, attacked Kuwait to tie down Iraqi forces. The main coalition attack was launched on February 25 by the U.S. VII Corps (1st and 3rd Armored, 1st Cavalry, and 1st Infantry divisions, as well as the 1st British Armoured Division). The 1st and 3rd Armored, 1st (Mechanized) Infantry, and British Armoured divisions broke through the defenses on the Saudi-Iraqi border, while the U.S. 24th (Mechanized) Infantry Division drove north to link up with the 101st Airborne Division, which was holding a blocking position on the Euphrates between Al-Samāwah and Al-Nāṣiriyyah. That same day the 1st and 2nd Marine divisions, having cleared extensive Iraqi minefields on the Kuwaiti frontier, sharply rebuffed a series of Iraqi armoured counterattacks and broke through to capture the airport in Kuwait city. On February 26–27 the VII Corps, along with the 1st British Armoured and 24th U.S. Infantry divisions, engaged and destroyed the Iraqi armoured reserves, including Saddam’s elite Republican Guard divisions, near Basra. The remaining Iraqi forces in Kuwait collapsed and fled to Basra, suffering heavy casualties and forcing Saddam to accept a cease-fire on February 28.

1 of 2

2 of 2

Operation Desert Sabre lasted just 100 hours. Large numbers of Iraqi troops surrendered without fighting, collapsing under the cumulative effects of the prolonged coalition air campaign and the concentrated firepower and speed of the ground advance. Some 41 Iraqi divisions—30 infantry, 4 mechanized, and 7 armoured—were effectively wiped out, and the material losses suffered by the Iraqi military were staggering. Iraqi equipment captured or destroyed included 3,008 tanks, 1,856 armoured vehicles, and 2,140 artillery pieces.

The Iraqi military performed poorly for several reasons. First, Iraqi forces were wholly outclassed by the armies that opposed them. Many Iraqi troops were war-weary conscripts, ordered to fight in a war that they did not support, and trained in static defense. Their weapons included some modern Western, Chinese, and Soviet systems but were mostly older Soviet models. In contrast, the all-volunteer armies of the United States and Britain were equipped with a variety of cutting-edge weapons systems. The F-117A Nighthawk “stealth fighter” went into combat for just the second time (its debut was in December 1989 during the campaign to oust Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega). Representing just over 2 percent of the allied attack aircraft in the Persian Gulf, F-117s hit more than 30 percent of the assigned targets on the first day of the air war. The Royal Air Force Tornado made its combat debut in the Persian Gulf War, and the U.S. Marine Corps Harrier saw its first major action. With the retirement of the U.S. SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft just months before the outbreak of the war, coalition forces faced a critical shortage of tactical battlefield intelligence. This gap was filled with experimental unmanned aerial vehicles), which saw their first military use by U.S. forces during the war. Drones, such as the RQ-2 Pioneer, provided real-time surveillance and battle damage assessment and heralded a new era in aerial reconnaissance.

Another factor in the Iraqi defeat was the overall ineffectiveness of Iraq’s arsenal of Scud missiles and chemical weapons. Although the U.S. Patriot systems could claim a mixed interception record at best, many Scuds failed to hit their targets because of modifications that the Iraqis had made to the missiles. By increasing the Scuds’ fuel load and reducing the size of their warheads, the Iraqis had greatly enhanced the range of the missiles at the expense of flight stability and any semblance of accuracy. The Scuds were armed only with conventional explosives because Iraq had not yet developed an effective chemical warhead. Iraq’s failure to use its stockpile of battlefield chemical weapons was at least in part due to coalition air strikes, which destroyed chemical stocks as well as aircraft and artillery delivery systems. Another likely consideration for Saddam and Iraqi commanders was the very real possibility that Israel would respond to any chemical attack on its cities by utilizing its nuclear arsenal.

A final element in the outcome of the war was Iraq’s strategic isolation. Saddam effectively had no allies, and he faced a strong U.S.-led coalition that included most major Arab powers. U.S. diplomats managed to restrain Israel from retaliating in the face of Iraqi provocation, thus preserving the existing coalition and negating the possibility of the war expanding into a broader Arab-Israeli conflict. Saddam also had to retain a significant portion of his military forces, most notably some veteran Republican Guard units, near Baghdad to defend against any domestic challenges to his rule.

Casualties, Kuwaiti oil fires, and Gulf War syndrome

There are no official figures for the Iraqi military operation, leading to vastly differing figures of combatants and casualties. Estimates of the number of Iraqi troops in the Kuwait theatre range from 180,000 to 630,000, and estimates of Iraqi military deaths range from 8,000 to 50,000. Allied casualties, by contrast, were remarkably light. Just 147 U.S. personnel and 47 British troops were killed in action; for the duration of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, U.S. noncombat deaths actually exceeded combat fatalities in the Kuwaiti theatre. Approximately 1,000 coalition troops were wounded.

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

During their retreat from Kuwait, Iraqi troops set fire to oil storage installations and more than 700 of Kuwait’s 950 oil wells, creating an environmental disaster that affected the entire region. A pall of dense smoke covered Kuwait, causing a slight fall in temperature and blotting out sunlight in Kuwait city. The fires emitted a toxic mixture of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide. Below the smoke, pollution was severe, with the number of soot particles about 1,000 times higher than normal. In nearby Bahrain May temperatures were 7 °F (4 °C) cooler than normal. Particles from the fires were detected more than 600 miles (965 km) away, and the massive injection of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere caused acid rain to fall as far away as the Black Sea and Pakistan. By November the fires, which had consumed about six million barrels of oil per day, had been extinguished, and temperatures and air quality in the area returned to normal values.

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

Exposure to the fires was proposed as one possible cause of Gulf War syndrome, a cluster of illnesses that were reported by some veterans of the conflict. As many as 300,000 of the 700,000 troops who served in the Middle East during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm complained of a variety of symptoms that included fatigue, anxiety, muscle and joint pain, headaches, memory loss, and post-traumatic stress reactions. While these claims were initially dismissed as psychological in nature, Gulf War veterans continued to insist that they were experiencing an array of chronic and debilitating maladies. Researchers eventually concluded that Gulf War syndrome was likely caused by exposure to a class of extremely toxic chemicals known as anticholinesterases. Anticholinesterases to which Gulf War veterans could have been exposed include nerve toxins such as sarin, the prophylactic anti-nerve-toxin drug carbamate pyridostigmine bromide, and organophosphate- or carbamate-containing insecticides. A 2016 study by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found that veterans of the Persian Gulf War continued to report poorer health than those who had served in the military at the same time but had not deployed.

Aftermath and Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction

1 of 2

2 of 2

The terms of the peace were, inter alia, that Iraq recognize Kuwait’s sovereignty and that it divest itself of all weapons of mass destruction—i.e., nuclear, biological, and chemical—and all missiles with ranges exceeding 90 miles (150 km). Pending complete compliance, economic sanctions would continue.

In the aftermath of Iraq’s defeat, Kurds in the north of the country and Shiʿis in the south rose in a rebellion that was suppressed by Saddam with great brutality. These actions prompted the allies to prohibit Iraqi aircraft from operating in designated “no-fly” zones over these areas. As the other allies gradually left the coalition, U.S. and British aircraft continued to patrol Iraqi skies, and UN inspectors sought to guarantee that all illicit weapons were destroyed. Iraq’s failure to cooperate with inspectors led in 1998 to a brief resumption of hostilities (Operation Desert Fox). Iraq thereafter refused to readmit inspectors into the country, and regular exchanges of fire between Iraqi forces and U.S. and British aircraft over the no-fly zones continued into the 21st century. In 2002 the United States sponsored a new UN resolution calling for the return of weapons inspectors, who then reentered Iraq in November. Member states of the UN Security Council, however, differed in their opinion of the degree to which Iraq had cooperated with inspections.

On March 17, 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom, which had begun to mass troops on Iraq’s border, dispensed with further negotiations, and U.S. Pres. George W. Bush—seeking no further UN endorsement—issued an ultimatum demanding that Saddam step down from power and leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war; he even suggested that if Saddam did leave Iraq, U.S. forces might still be necessary to stabilize the region and to hunt for weapons of mass destruction. When Saddam refused to leave, U.S. and allied forces launched an attack on Iraq on March 20 and thus began what became known as the Iraq War.