1982: The Mighty Iraqi Army marches to Tehran

Cook

Banned
I'd say the US did well out of the Iran-Iraq war strategically. It significantly weakened both the anti US Iran and a belligerent Iraq ahead of the Gulf War. It also helped strengthen the alliance with the Saudis.

It did nothing of the sort.

Going into the Iran-Iraq war the Iraqi army consisted of only a few divisions with very limited Armour and Artillery and a small air force. At the End of the war Iraq had one of the largest and best equipped Armies in the world. A force that required 35 days of sustained high intensity air attack to degrade before the attack by half a million mechanised troops to defeat.

Iran went into the war with armed forces whose morale was at rock bottom, whose Officer Corps had been decimated by purges and whose equipment was rapidly failing because of inability to obtain spare parts and indifference on the part of the Regime to spend money re-equipping. They came out with a large, battle experienced conventional army and a large cadre of forces skilled in unconventional warfare.

The defence forces of Saudi and the other Gulf states were at the end of the war in much the same state they went into the war; militarily insignificant simply because they were so small. Even Saudi Arabia’s forces, while relatively well equipped, simple didn’t have the numbers to present any sort of obstacle to invasion.

Having spent the war protecting convoys of shipping in and out of The Gulf, the United States was left with two large threats to the region and the nightmare of having to defend globally vital oil reserves without having any ground forces in the region nor having any strong allies either.

The situation did not change until Saudi’s desperate request for assistance several days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had been completed.
 
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