had a religious war at their hands and was not ready to let this end so easily. Iran then saw much success until 1988. By this time they had captured the Fao Peninsula which gave them control over much of the trading in the Persian Gulf. Then, fearing an attack from Iran, Kuwait sought aid from other countries. The US and the Soviet Union allowed Kuwaiti ships to fly their flags and American, French, and British troops were sent in to police the Gulf. Despite never officially declaring war on Iran, the US destroyed much of Irans fleet. Iran was now on the other side. They were facing defeat. Finally in July of 1988, Iran agreed to the United Nations cease-fire act. The eight-year war was finally over. Each side lost several hundred thousand troops during the war, and this war had changed nothing. The only thing that had resulted from the war was that Iraq was in immense debt.Iraq now owed $80 billion for all the aid given to it by other countries during the war. They had an army of 500,000 men that now had no job to return to in their country and the economy was devastated. Saddams biggest concern, however, was not the economy, or those 500,000 without jobs; his concern was in the public. They had become impatient after the long war that had failed to produce anything and were looking for economic prosperity and changes in their way of life (Scales).Saddam mulled about what he could possibly do to remove his peoples attention from their downtrodden situation to something else. The publics attention shifted when Saddam stirred up trouble with Kuwait. Saddam was looking for ways to reduce the war debt that had been accumulated in the previous years. One way he sought to do this was by first refusing to pay the $10 million war debt his country owed to Kuwait, and later demanding that Kuwait cancel Iraqs debt of billions of dollars. Saddam eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to clear up this problem was to invade and take ov...
