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From May 15th to May 18th, a series of air strikes were done by the Iraqi Air Force against Saudi positions in Hail, Buraydah, and Dammam. The strength of the Iraqi Air Force was limited to the extent that there wasn’t much damage done to the Saudi military in those areas. But that wasn’t the point, the point of the airstrikes was to mark the beginning of Operation Decisive Storm, and to show Saudi Arabia the three cities they planned on capturing.

Saudi Arabia could not afford to lose more than one of those three cities. If they lost two, it would cripple the Saudi military effort to the point where it would become entirely dependent on Coalition forces. If they lost all of them, even all of the Coalition’s strength could not stave off Saudi collapse. Troops from Yemen had to leave to join themselves with the Saudi military in Hail, Buraydah, and Dammam. At the height of desperation, Saudi Arabia requested that America attack Iraq, even when they knew that they won’t.

With the dire situation facing Saudi Arabia, it was clear that they had to put everything they - and their allies - had in order to defeat Iraq. It came to the point where Saudi Arabia armed civilians in those three cities in order to increase the size of forces fighting Iraq. These civilian defense militias were small in size, ill equipped, and led by people who were generally disinterested and just wanted a quick buck. In short, such militias would be destroyed quickly, not even putting a dent in the Iraqi military. This was true for most of those militias, except for the one in Dammam.

Following the initial invasion of Saudi Arabia by Iraq, most Kuwaiti refugees which lived around the Saudi-Iraq border fled to Dammam. They knew that Iraq was preparing to attack Dammam, and as such they were preparing themselves for when that would happen. After Saudi Arabia began to show an interest in arming civilians, it didn’t have to look for whatever opportunist who was willing to fight for some money in Dammam. There were people willing to fight and die against Iraq, and so Saudi Arabia decided to align themselves with them.

Because Saudi Arabia was willing to bunker down and defend those three cities instead of fighting the Iraqi onslaught, the Iraqi military began to cut through Saudi lines. Most resistance to the Iraqi invasion was from foreign soldiers - Pakistani, Egyptian etc. The lack of resistance coming from the Coalition in the initial Iraqi onslaught led to Iraq reaching its targets of Hail, Buraydah, and Dammam, within ten days. Now would come the hard part - taking those cities.


Most of the resources Iraq used in Operation Decisive Storm was directed to capturing Dammam. If Iraq could capture Dammam, then they would be able to capture much of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. The strategic importance of Dammam was noticed by Saudi Arabia, its allies, and international observers. Numerous troops from members of the Coalition, be it from Qatar, the UAE, Pakistan, and Egypt, defended Dammam. That, along with armed Kuwaiti refugees, had made it so that Saudi troops were actually the minority in defending Dammam.

The strength of the Coalition in Dammam was not something Iraq had expected. One could forgive Iraq for believing that Decisive Storm would be an easy victory for them. From the beginning of the war they had been victorious, and the level of resistance that they were facing was not one they had been expecting. This was the same situation in Hail and Buraydah, but Iraq saw Dammam as the most important city to capture.

In order to prevent any more supplies from reaching the Iraqi military in Dammam, the Saudi government asked the Pakistani military to use its air force to attack Iraqi supply routes. Pakistan’s Air Force was larger than most other Coalition air forces, and was also fairly powerful, at least when up against a country like Iraq. While some Pakistani generals were skeptical, they were brought on board when the Saudi government offered them monetary bribes. On July 1st, the Pakistani Air Force launched a series of airstrikes on Iraqi supply routes which were coming in from Saudi Arabia’s Highway 85. The airstrikes were successful in that it blocked Iraq from sending more supplies to its soldiers in Dammam, but it was only a temporary setback for Iraq. Supplies to Iraqi soldiers resumed after three weeks.

Around the end of August, the Battle of Dammam began to turn in Iraq’s favor. The resistance to Iraq had slowly been crumbling as Iraq began to put everything it had against them. Supplies and soldiers meant for helping Iraqi positions in Hail and Buraydah had been redirected to Dammam. Saudi Arabia tried to retaliate by using everything it had against Iraq in Dammam. But it could not do that without hurting their defenses in Hail, Buraydah, and around Yemen.

With victory in Dammam appearing to be near, Iraq tried to do everything it can to speed up victory. Iraq began to blockade Dammam to prevent aid from reaching Coalition fighters there. Not only that, but blockading Dammam could also demoralize the Coalition to the point where they had to surrender. There was one problem with this, and it is that the Iraqi navy, much like its Air Force, was in a poor shape. The poor state of the Iraqi navy was due to the fact that much of it had been destroyed during the Iran-Iraq War, and it was destroyed further during the American airstrikes in March. As such, a blockade could not do much damage to Coalition fighters in Dammam, but at this point any damage that could be done to the Coalition was worth it. The blockade continued because the navies of the Coalition were also in a bad shape.

But perhaps it would have been better for the Iraqi navy for the Coalition’s navies to be in better shape. A blockade in Dammam was seen as a step too far by the United States. A blockade further damaged the oil supply in Saudi Arabia, and increased oil prices in the West. The Saudi government saw this as a good chance at getting America to intervene in the war. If their ally losing battle after battle to a hostile power wasn’t enough to get them to intervene, then a disruption of the oil supply should be enough. Surprisingly to the Saudis (who believed that the entire American government was either hostile or apathetic towards them) there were many in the American government who saw the same way. These were mainly people who had ties with the oil industry and as such the events of the Middle East had a personal impact on them.They had been criticizing Dukakis for not having the United States help Saudi Arabia more than it has. They were aware of the detrimental effect an Iraqi victory would have on American influence in the Middle East. They played up the blockade of Dammam to make it sound worse than it actually was, that the Dammam blockade would starve thousands and lead to an Iraqi victory, which in turn would lead to a massacre of refugees (this prediction wasn’t too far off, considering that Iraq had planned an attack on refugee camps from the beginning of the war) and a massive increase in oil prices. This eventually convinced Dukakis, who decided that Iraq must be prevented from taking Dammam.

The United States had previously attacked the Iranian Navy during the Iran-Iraq War in order to prevent any attacks on shipping. The lesson taken from this was that if America could attack the Iranian Navy with impunity then they can do the same against Iraq.

On September 14th, American warships in the Gulf of Arabia attacked the Iraqi navy around the coast of Dammam, and in general around the Saudi Coast. Many of the warships America used were already used against Iran during the late 1980s and as such were more effective than the ships America had used which weren’t in the Gulf of Arabia before. Operation Wasp Sting, as it was called, lasted until September 27th. In that time, the Iraqi Navy was assaulted and anything left of it was destroyed. The blockade over Dammam ended because of this.

Iraqi intelligence did not predict that America would strike at them and as such its entire military was in disarray as it was expected that America would then strike at the Iraqi army following the Iraqi navy. This period of confusion and demoralization was seen especially in Dammam, where Iraqi troops were told to prepare for an American strike against them. This led to the forces of the Coalition reorganizing and striking at Iraqi positions on October 2nd. After a week, Iraq was pushed out of Dammam altogether. On October 11th, Coalition forces reached Safwa, a town Iraq had captured months prior. On the same day, both the Syrian and Pakistani air forces both launched a series of airstrikes targeted at Iraqi positions in Hail and Buraydah. The airstrikes lasted until the beginning of November, but were enough to force the Iraqi army out of those two cities. In an attempt to stifle Saudi advance, Yemen launched an offensive against Saudi positions in the south, but the offensive was poorly planned and as such failed.

Decisive Storm proved to be a failure for Iraq. It had been the first time Iraq had lost militarily in the Arab War. It was a morale boost for the Coalition, and marked the beginning of US intervention into the Arab War. America would begin to send arms to Saudi Arabia and their allies, along with military advisors and help with intelligence. Israel and the United Kingdom would begin to do the same. The Kuwaiti refugees which defended Dammam would soon form their own militia, known as the “Kuwaiti Liberation Army”. The KLA pledged allegiance to Prince Naser al-Sabah’s government-in-exile in Riyadh, and would aid the Coalition in future battles with Iraq and Yemen.

For Iraq, it proved one thing, and that was that the early military successes did not mean that Saudi Arabia was doomed to failure. Iraq also needed more allies in the conflict. Yemen could hold out against Saudi Arabia, but there was some discontent within Yemeni ranks about what they were fighting for, and if they were just being used by Iraq as a way to distract Saudi Arabia and prevent it from using all of its forces against them. Saddam’s rhetoric of a “pan-Arab war against Israeli and American puppets” rang hollow because of Iraq’s ties with Maronite anti-Syria militias in Lebanon, whose entire raison d’etre was opposition to pan-Arabism. There were a sizable amount of people in the Yemeni military and government who wanted to withdraw from the conflict and declare neutrality.

In order to bolster Saddam’s claims of a pan-Arab conflict against “Western puppets”, Iraq tried to improve relations with countries sympathetic to them. There were only two countries which were sympathetic towards them, and that was Sudan and Libya. Libya, while sympathetic, was unwilling to help Iraq because Gaddafi did not know what Libya had to gain from it. Sudan, however, was more open to helping Iraq because of two reasons - one, the Arab League had been consistently in favor of Egypt in the Hala’ib Triangle dispute, and Sudan wanted an ally, and two, Iraq had offered to help Sudan in its conflict in the south. While Sudan did not go to war with the Coalition, it allowed Iraq to use Sudan for intelligence against Egypt.

Just because Iraq had failed to capture Damman, Hail, and Buraydah the first time did not mean that they would give up on capturing it forever. Those three cities were too important to just be let go of. Everyone, be it in Iraq, Yemen, the Coalition, or a neutral observer, knew this, and the Coalition made plans to prepare for this. Question is, with Iraq now being more prepared for whatever may happen, could Iraq win this time?