Saddam: relations with the United States during the Iran-Iraq war. From cooperation to the scaffold
Why did the US support Iraq?
Much has been written about the last classic war of the last century, the Iran-Iraq war, although the confrontation has a number of blind spots, as does any of this kind of large-scale conflicts.
I, in turn, would like to touch in general terms on the impact the war had on the nature of relations between Baghdad and Washington.
In conce, story - this, as M. N. Pokrovsky correctly noted, politics thrown back into the past.
And the current situation in the Middle East is largely a direct consequence of the United States' policies towards Iraq since the late 1970s.
She had a dual character. On the one hand, after the fall of the Shah, Washington provoked Saddam into a conflict with Iran and supported him. For three reasons.
First: the maximum weakening of the state, which overnight from the main, along with Israel, ally of the United States in the Middle East turned into an existential enemy, moreover, giving the transatlantic society and its political establishment, which was just beginning to recover after Vietnam, a weighty slap in the face in the form of capture personnel Iranian students (by the way, who was there in terms of political and religious worldview) of the American embassy and photographs of the consequences of an unsuccessful operation Eagle Claw.
The second reason is to ensure uninterrupted oil supplies to Europe. And the quick victory of Iraq, which seemed possible due to repression among part of the Iranian officer corps sympathizing with the overthrown Shah, answered such a goal perfectly. For what would come into the Ayatollah’s head, the White House could only guess. He will decide, say, to close the Strait of Hormuz to American ships.
No, technically it was difficult, but if the Iranians try, it won’t be a hassle. But the United States did not want to get involved in a new military conflict at the end of the 1970s, after the aforementioned Vietnam. So it’s better that an honorary Detroiter—Saddam became one in the 1980s—work to curb Iran.
Third reason. The sharp break in relations between Iran and the United States occurred during the period when the latter was gradually establishing a dialogue with Iraq. Why, in fact, did the dialogue have to be restored? Let's take a step back to 1967.
That year, Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with the United States in protest of its support for Israel during the Six-Day War. However, it did not seem reasonable to the White House to quarrel with the second largest oil reserves country in the region, especially against the backdrop of a possible rapprochement between Baghdad and Moscow.
Such fears were not in vain: the process of normalization of relations with Iraq, which began at the initiative of the United States, was prevented by the coming to power of the Baath in 1972. At the same time, the Soviet-Iraqi agreement was signed Friendship and cooperation agreement, and Saddam, at that time the second person in the state, made a visit to the USSR.
The following year, the Iraqis, feeling the support of the Soviet Union, nationalized the property of the American companies Exxon and Mobil Oil. The United States, in essence, had nothing to respond to.
However, Washington played into the hands of Saddam himself, who became the absolute master of Iraq in 1979, to stabilize relations, that is, to receive American military assistance, reducing dependence on the USSR by diversifying arms suppliers.
On the way to leadership in the Arab world, or Saddam's double game
Playing on the contradictions between the two superpowers, Saddam wanted to bring his country to the leadership of the Arab world, where in the mid-1970s the dominant role belonged to the American allied Egypt, after the signing of the Camp David Accords.
Such ambitious and completely realizable goals of Baghdad did not correspond to the plans of the United States - also ambitious and charismatic, but more dependent on American assistance and controlled from Capitol Hill, inclined, as the agreement with Begin showed, to compromise, Sadat was rightly seen by Washington as a more preferable figure than Hussein in as the nominal leader of the Arab world.
And in 1982, Iraq was supposed to become the chairman of the non-aligned movement - a structure closer, due to its anti-colonial and anti-imperialist nature, to the USSR than the United States, which also could not but worry the White House.
And they reasoned correctly on Capitol Hill, if the Iran-Iraq war ends with Saddam’s victory, where are the guarantees that he will stop there and will not try to expand his sphere of influence, say, will not want to get even with Assad for Syria’s support of Iran, or initiate the creation of an anti-Israeli coalition?
Of the Arabs, Khomeini still supported Gaddafi, but he was beyond the reach of Iraqi troops. By the way, the head of the Jamahiriya also claimed leadership in the Arab world, but due to his involvement in the conflict with the countries of Black Africa - primarily with Chad - he did not pose the danger to the geopolitical interests of the United States that Saddam could have posed by realizing his ambitions. Although, as subsequent events showed, Gaddafi became a bone in the throat for the Americans in the Mediterranean.
Iranian knot
Regarding the aforementioned weakening of Iran, an important clarification: in the first year and a half of the war, on Capitol Hill they sought not so much for the defeat of the Islamic Republic, but for the transit of power in it to political forces loyal to the United States - in 1979–1981. it still seemed possible.
However, in 1981, after the defeat of the Khomeini supporters led K. Sanjabi National Front (a kind of analogue of the Russian cadets led by P. N. Milyukov at the beginning of the 20th century), the creation of a coalition government became almost impossible. No, there still remained an influential and hostile military-political force to Khomeini, based, by the way, on the territory of Iraq - Organization of the Mujahideen of the Iranian People, whose fighters killed, among other things, President Rajai and Prime Minister Bahonar in 1981.
But the Mujahideen (OMIN) adhered to left-radical views, which made them an ally of the USSR rather than the United States. The White House feared the introduction of Soviet troops into Iran, following Afghanistan, and the establishment of a Moscow-friendly regime based on the OMIN; if such a plan were implemented, the strategic situation in the Middle East would change not in favor of the United States.
It is interesting that at that time the Soviet Union also feared open American military intervention in the events that shook Iran.
“Opera” performed not only for Israel
The ambivalence of the US position regarding building relations with Saddam was clearly demonstrated in June 1981, when, as a result of a brilliantly executed operation "Opera" the nuclear reactor supplied by the French to Iraq was actually destroyed Osirak.
At the same time, Israeli F-15A and F-16A violated the airspace of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. However, Tel Aviv had reason to count on a restrained reaction from these states and, even if not advertised, satisfaction regarding the serious damage to the reactor, since both Amman and Riyadh, which was becoming increasingly closer to the Americans, feared that Saddam would initiate the overthrow of the Middle Eastern monarchies.
It is noteworthy that Iraq, unlike Israel, which probably carried out the corresponding tests back in 1979, signed a treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. weapons.
At the declarative level, Washington condemned the Israeli strike and even made a kind of curtsy towards Saddam. Yes, on the pages The New York Times On June 9, 1981, the following lines were published:
According to the Reagan administration, Iraq has been pursuing a more pro-Western course in recent months, and negotiations have begun to expand relations with the United States. There was also no certainty that Iraq was going to build a bomb, although officials said the possibility existed.
Presidential National Security Advisor Brzezinski made a similar statement:
We do not believe that the interests of the United States and Iraq are incompatible in principle. We understand Iraq's desire for independence. His desire is to see a Persian Gulf that is secure, and we do not believe that US-Iraqi relations should develop in a spirit of antagonism. We do not want this abnormal situation in our relations to continue, although we are aware that there is a long way to go to improve them.
At the same time, it is obvious that the Americans, like the Saudis and Jordanians, could not help but be pleased: the prospect of transforming Iraq, by giving it nuclear status, into a leading regional power has virtually come to naught.
And what’s important is that it was done by someone else’s hands. For the United States, within the framework of the still relevant Nixon Doctrine recognized parity with the USSR in the Middle East and, in general, did not seek to increase their military presence in the region: the shadow of Vietnam was still hovering in the Oval Office at that time, and the scene of helicopters being dropped into the ocean during the evacuation of American citizens from Saigon was fresh in memory.
For his part, Saddam perfectly understood the duality of American policy towards Iraq, but accepted the rules of the game, as he stated in an interview in 1981 - on the eve of the release of hostages captured in Tehran:
The United States is not radically correcting its policies, but only partially and in the form of small, temporary and fleeting tests. Small changes should not be mistaken for big radical changes, but positive changes should be encouraged.
This was said against the backdrop of continued rapprochement with Moscow: in response to the destruction Osiraka The USSR lifted the arms embargo on Iraq. Also in 1981, a Soviet delegation arrived in Baghdad to celebrate the country's independence day. And next year, Moscow already provided Iraq with 70% of military imports.
Not least of all, Soviet support was determined by Ayatollah Khomeini’s criticism (however, the Iraqi leader also criticized the introduction of a limited contingent) of the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan and the persecution of the Iranian Marxist Tudeh party.
But I will emphasize again: by moving towards rapprochement with the USSR, Saddam did not at all become a conductor of Moscow’s will in the region, like the Shah or Sadat who played the corresponding role in relation to Washington.
The Kremlin did not pretend to do more - there were enough worries in Eastern Europe: December 1981 was marked by the introduction of martial law in Poland, and in Afghanistan the situation was not developing as we would like.
Rђ RІRѕS, Nixon Doctrine by historical standards it turned out to be short-lived. In addition, it should be considered in the context of another that existed in parallel and had no correlation with it. doctrine - Schlesinger, which became the Pentagon’s veiled response to SALT I.
Reagan and Saddam - restoration of diplomatic relations
After the Reagan administration came to the White House, the arms race essentially resumed. Yes, in fact, no doctrine or declaration - say, Helsinki - could cancel the Soviet-American confrontation in general and in the Middle East in particular.
And Saddam tried to use the confrontation between the two superpowers to his advantage. Fortunately, the new US administration continued its course towards normalizing relations with Iraq, which gave the then Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Aziz a reason to note the American
efforts to understand the Arab situation and resolve problems in a fair, just and legal manner.
In other words:
Despite the lack of diplomatic relations, writes historian K. A. Belousova, there was an increase in trade and economic relations between the United States and Iraq. Imports from the United States to Iraq were $1970 million in 18, $1975 million in 370, $1980 million in 797, and $1982 million in 931.
In 1982, the White House removed Iraq from the list of countries that, from its point of view, support international terrorism. A couple of years later, Washington and Baghdad restored diplomatic relations; a year earlier, the Americans provided an impressive loan to Iraq, which was experiencing an acute economic crisis, to export wheat from the United States.
In addition, Saddam moved towards rapprochement with the United States also because of fears of normalization of American-Iranian relations and legal assistance to Tehran, which could lead to a turning point in the war not in favor of Baghdad.
One should also take into account the desire of the Islamic Republic - and Khomeini hardly forgave Saddam for his expulsion from Iraq in 1978 - to initiate anti-Baathist actions among Iraqi Shiites.
This contradicted not only the interests of Baghdad, but also the United States, because it created conditions for the victory of the Islamic Republic and its expansion into Lebanon and Syria. In general, at the end of the 1980s, American-Iranian relations deteriorated significantly, right up to military clashes in the Persian Gulf.
On Capitol Hill, they had no illusions about Saddam playing on the contradictions between the superpowers, and accordingly they were afraid of the possibility of the Iraqis closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The Saudis were especially nervous about this, asking the US for protection. And the White House did not fail to help, setting a course for increasing its military presence in the Gulf and the Middle East as a whole, not to mention the secret support for Iran that turned into a scandal, because one of the parties, from Washington’s point of view, was supposed to significantly weaken the other, but don't destroy it completely. Therefore, weapons were planted on both sides.
At the same time, the Saudis feared Iran more than Iraq and helped the latter by providing a loan of $16 billion, and generally supported it at the diplomatic level during the war.
Well, then Gorbachev’s new thinking collapsed out of the blue, and one of the superpowers began to rapidly and without external pressure lose its position in the world, including in the Middle East.
At first, the White House was stunned by the happiness that had befallen them, and then they began to reformat the state of affairs in their own way, including in the Gulf. And Saddam looked more like a hindrance here than a difficult, but still partner.
Why partner and conduct difficult negotiations when you can take everything for yourself?
Experiencing an economic crisis, exhausted by the war, deprived of Soviet support and allies, Iraq seemed an easy prey, and its oil reserves were ready to fall into the already spread American palms.
Saddam: Akello missed, or the path to the scaffold
All that was needed was a pretext, and it was easily found in the form of provoking the Iraqi leader to aggression against Kuwait, which, by the way, supported Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War.
The experienced politician Saddam made a mistake in this case by not taking into account the imbalance of power in the region, overestimating the capabilities of his own army and incorrectly calculating the US response steps on the eve of the invasion of the emirate. And he was simply fooled by the Americans.
The game, carried out competently by the White House, led American troops to Baghdad, Iraq to the collapse of statehood, and Saddam to the scaffold.
Использованная литература:
Belousova K. A. Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and US policy in Iraq
Abalyan A. I. Iran-Iraq armed conflict 1980–1988. And its influence on the system of international relations in the Middle East
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