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Main article: US support of Iraq in the war between Iraq-Iran
When your finished reading this copy the link below.
History of Iran: Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement
The United States had been wary of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the Iranian Revolution, not least because of the kidnapping of its Tehran embassy staff in the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis. According to former Iranian president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, shortly after the 1979 revolution Americans, Israelis, Iranian royalists at a secret meeting in Paris drew up a plan to invade Iran. Soviets then obtained a copy of the plan and sold it to Iran through intermediaries for $200,000. According to Robert Parry there was a secret encouragement by the US administration (President Jimmy Carter, conveyed through Saudi Arabia) which was embroiled in a dispute with the new Islamic Republic of Iran. In the words of Alexander Haig, secretary of state from 1981, "It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Fahd."
Starting in 1981, both Iran and Iraq attacked oil tankers and merchant ships, including those of neutral nations, in an effort to deprive the opponent of trade. After repeated Iraqi attacks on Iran's main exporting facility on Khark Island, Iran attacked a Kuwaiti tanker near Bahrain on May 13, 1984, and a Saudi tanker in Saudi waters on May 16. Attacks on ships of noncombatant nations in the Persian Gulf sharply increased thereafter, and this phase of the war was dubbed the "Tanker War."
In 1982 with Iranian success on the battlefield, the U.S. made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, supplying it with intelligence, economic aid, normalizing relations with the government (broken during the 1967 Six-Day War), and also supplying weapons. President Ronald Reagan decided that the United States "could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran", and that the United States "would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran." President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to this effect in June, 1982.
Lloyd's of London, a British insurance market, estimated that the Tanker War damaged 546 commercial vessels and killed about 430 civilian mariners. The largest of attacks were directed by Iran against Kuwaiti vessels, and on November 1, 1986, Kuwait formally petitioned foreign powers to protect its shipping. The Soviet Union agreed to charter tankers starting in 1987, and the United States offered to provide protection for tankers flying the U.S. flag on March 7, 1987 (Operation Earnest Will and Operation Prime Chance). Under international law, an attack on such ships would be treated as an attack on the U.S., allowing the U.S. to retaliate militarily. This support would protect ships headed to Iraqi ports, effectively guaranteeing Iraq's revenue stream for the duration of the war.
An Iraqi plane attacked the USS Stark (FFG 31), a Perry class frigate on May 17, killing 37 and injuring 21. However, U.S. attention was focused on isolating Iran; it criticized Iran's mining of international waters, and sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 598, which passed unanimously on July 20, under which it skirmished with Iranian forces. In Operation Nimble Archer in October 1987, the U.S. attacked Iranian oil platforms in retaliation for an Iranian attack on the U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City.
On April 14, 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts was badly damaged by an Iranian mine. U.S. forces responded with Operation Praying Mantis on April 18, the United States Navy's largest engagement of surface warships since World War II. Two Iranian ships were destroyed, and an American helicopter crashed, killing the two pilots.
In the course of these escorts by the U.S. Navy, the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with the loss of all 290 passengers and crew on July 3, 1988. The American government claimed that the airliner had been mistaken for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat, and that the Vincennes was operating in international waters at the time and feared that it was under attack. The Iranians, however, maintain that the Vincennes was in fact in Iranian territorial waters, and that the Iranian passenger jet was turning away and increasing altitude after take-off. U.S. Admiral William J. Crowe also admitted on Nightline that the Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters (as defined by Iran) when it launched the missiles. The U.S. eventually paid compensation for the incident ($131,800,000), but never apologized.
According to an investigation conducted by ABC News' Nightline, decoys were set during the war by the US Navy inside the Persian Gulf to lure out the Iranian gunboats and destroy them, and at the time USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian airline, it was performing such an operation.
The proof is there Pino... see the photo of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands in the pictures forum
