Do you know when the last forty years began? Obviously, the day forty years ago from today. But that is not what I am referring to. What I mean is the last forty years in world events. This is a very important side story to the Iranian Revolution, which has changed the world.
There was an event that took place nearly forty years ago from this writing. It didn't seem anything like a monumental event, at least not on a global scale. But now I realize that the world missed how important it was.
The Iranian Revolution was underway, and American hostages were being held at the former U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran. We have already seen how important this revolution was in the posting on this blog, "The Great Revolution Of Our Time".
On April 30, 1980, six armed men walked into the Iranian Embassy in London and took 26 people hostage. The gunmen were ethnic Arabs from Iran's Khuzestan Province. This is the province along the border with Iraq in the southwest of Iran. Sugar cane has long been grown in the area and my understanding is that "Khuzestan" means "Land of Sugar".
We tend to forget today but Iran's revolution started out as very multi-faceted, including ethnic and political movements, even though we think of it today as being strictly religious in nature. All wanted their place in the new social order that was emerging. Khuzestan Province has a significant Arab population, perhaps it was even a majority. Part of Khuzestan used to be known as Arabestan.
The dispute over whether Khuzestan rightfully belongs to Arabs or Persians goes back to the boundary between Persia and the Ottoman Empire. There was an uprising the year before by Khuzestan Arabs against perceived discrimination by the ruling Persians. Iranian security forces had put down the rebellion, and some of it's leaders had been jailed.
The six men who took hostages at the Iranian Embassy were representing an organization called "The Democratic Revolutionary Front For The Liberation Of Arabestan" and were demanding the release of their leaders from prison. The siege ended on May 5 when the gunmen killed one of the hostages and threw his body outside. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher felt that there was no choice but to assault the embassy.
One of the gunmen survived, served his sentence in a British prison, was granted asylum because he would likely face the death penalty if deported to Iran, and today lives in Peckham. His name is Fowzi Badavi Nejad.
This siege was in the news for a week, and then the world moved on to other things. But this is just so important. It changed the course of the world. The reason that it was so important was not whether the attack on the embassy was a success or failure. It was a failure. It didn't matter which country it took place in, it could have been at the Iranian Embassy in any country. It just happened to take place in Britain.
The reason that it is so very important is simply that it happened, regardless of how it turned out. It was not as if it seemed to be of lasting importance to the world. It's importance lay in the effect that it had on one person. That person was Saddam Hussein.
THE IRANIAN EMBASSY SIEGE WAS NOT AN IRAQI OPERATION
The gunmen had rented an apartment in London before attacking the embassy. They told the landlord that some of their possessions were being sent back to Iraq. But none of them were actually Iraqis, they were all Iranians.
The one surviving gunman had chatted with one of the hostages, during the siege, and said that they had been sent on the mission by the Mukhabarat, which was the security and intelligence service of Iraq. He said that he did not know what they were getting into, and once he realized he couldn't back out now because his family had fled to Iraq, meaning that retribution could be taken against them.
Based on these statements, some consider this to be an Iraqi operation. But I just cannot see that this is correct.
At the time of this siege, there had been border incidents between Iran and Iraq but the two were not at war. British-Iraqi relations were fairly good and, when Iraq and Iran did go to war Iraq was greatly bolstered by outside aid from countries that didn't want Iran to win. The Reagan Administration, in the U.S. would announce a "tilt" toward Iraq in the upcoming conflict with Iran, and would provide Iraq with satellite reconnaissance of Iranian forces. The Reagan Administration also launched "Operation Staunch", which was to keep weapons away from Iran, but did not target Iraq in the same way,
Saddam Hussein saw himself and his country as providing a "shield" against the insidious revolution going on in neighboring Iran. So why would he jeopardize his position as the "good guy" in his rivalry with Iran, by attempting something like this siege? The world's view of Saddam is very different today than it was in 1980, when he was little-known to the outside world, except as a possible barrier against the hostile revolution going on in neighboring Iran. If conflict came with Iran, Saddam would naturally want the world on his side.
For a team that had supposedly been put up to this by the Mukhabarat, it seems that none of the gunmen spoke Arabic. They communicated in Farsi and used one of the hostages as an Arabic translator, if necessary, according to the hostage. Only the leader of the six could speak English. Upon arrival in London, and renting an apartment, they regularly made a spectacle of themselves by getting drunk.
Stop and think. Why would a professional intelligence agency like Saddam's Mukhabarat send a team like this on such a sensitive mission? Look at the hijackers of 9/11 and those who attacked the Munich Olympics. They were clearly chosen very carefully, and were disciplined, capable and, dedicated. The siege of the Iranian Embassy, in contrast, was considered as amateurish from the beginning.
If Iraq was behind this, what would Saddam possibly have to gain? It would just make him look like a bandit, instead of the "good guy" and promote sympathy for his rival, Iran. While there was a movement of ethnic Arabs in Khuzestan to be free of Persian domination, they showed no sign that they wanted to join Iraq. Khuzestan was large enough, and certainly wealthy enough, to be an independent country. If independent, the average person in Khuzestan would certainly be wealthier then the average Iraqi. If the socialist Saddam took over, he would just redistribute their wealth among his own population.
The surviving attacker just said about the Iraqi connection and that "he couldn't back out once he realized how serious it was" to gain some sympathy at trial, in case they were captured. I see in newspaper reports from after his release from prison that his family is still in Iran, not in Iraq.
Upon reading a history of the operations of Saddam's intelligence service, there is no mention or reference to this at all. This siege of the Iranian Embassy had nothing to do with Iraq, although the gunmen might have been hoping for their fellow Arabs in neighboring Iraq to sympathize with them.
THE EFFECT OF THE LONDON EMBASSY SIEGE ON SADDAM HUSSEIN
After this embassy siege, the border clashes between Iraq and Iran continued. But it came as a real surprise to most of the world when Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran on September 22, 1980,. Americans following the hostage crisis, of the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran being held, now had a new concern. The hostages might soon be in a war zone.
But it was this invasion that got the U.S. hostages released. With Iran actually being invaded, there was no more need for the hostages as a rallying point for the revolution. Those guarding the hostages were now needed at the battlefront, and soon the U.S. hostages were released.
At the time it seemed utterly unimaginable that, within 25 years, America would go to war twice not with Iran but with Iraq.
What is interesting is that, although the two countries have a long border, the Iraqi offensive was heavily concentrated in the south, toward Khuzestan Province. Saddam was clearly hoping that the ethnic Arabs in Khuzestan would rise up and join him.
Here is my conclusion. Iran is three times as big as Iraq. Why would the leader of Iraq invade Iran unless he was certain that a significant portion of the population would welcome him and join him? Ayatollah Khomeini, emerging as the leader of revolutionary Iran, had called for the revolution to spread to Iraq, where he had spent years in exile, but there was no sign that was going to happen or that Iran was going to invade Iraq.
It is generally accepted that Saddam invaded Iran to take advantage of the chaos of the revolution, and seeing Iran cut off from it's main ally which had been the U.S., in order to gain oil-rich Khuzestan province. While that may be true, by the time of Saddam's invasion, the Iranian Revolution was two years old, and much closer to being consolidated that it was earlier.
Saddam would have had even more chaos in Iran to take advantage of if he had invaded earlier, but we see that he did not begin preparations for full-scale invasion until the embassy siege in London. Saddam had the authority to have launched an invasion earlier. He became President of Iraq in 1979 but had been the effective leader of the country for several years prior to that.
Put simply, Saddam Hussein would not have invaded Iran if the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London by ethnic Arabs from Khuzestan had not convinced him that the Arabs in oil-rich Khuzestan Province would rise up with him and support the province being annexed to Iraq. The uprising in Khuzestan the year before seems to have gotten lost in the chaos of the revolution, but this siege left no doubt of the sympathies of Saddam's fellow Arabs. After the siege had taken place, Saddam launched his invasion of Iran within five months, heavily concentrating on Khuzestan.
The ensuing war went on for eight years, becoming one of the deadliest wars ever aside from the world wars. Up to half a million Iraqis died, and the country was buried in debt by the end of the war. After all of that, the border had not moved at all. The terrible war was all for nothing.
Saddam Hussein was hoping that the ethnic Arabs in neighboring Khuzestan would rise up and join him against the Persians. Ayatollah Khomeini, meanwhile, was hoping that his fellow Shiite Moslems in Iraq would rise up and join him against Saddam. Neither got what they wanted.
AFTER THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR
But Saddam came up with a "Plan B". He did not succeed in taking oil-rich Khuzestan Province from Iran. But there was a small, and very rich, country not far from the border along Khuzestan where the war had started. The name of that country was Kuwait.
Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war by loaning money, but had declined to get directly involved. Kuwait reportedly refused a request by Saddam to let the Iraqi Army use Kuwaiti territory. Kuwait had been targeted by Iran, or at least by groups sympathetic to Iran's revolution. There were bombings in Kuwait in 1983, and the hijacking of Kuwaiti airliners during the war. Iran had targeted Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
After the war, Kuwait angered Saddam by refusing to cancel his debt to them. He saw himself as being the guardian of the Arab countries, as well as the west and certainly including Kuwait, against Persian hegemony. Aside from the "Plan B" approach, after failing to gain Khuzestan, a reason that Saddam invaded Kuwait is that his country could not pay the massive war debt owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, depending on oil exports, was hampered by the same global oil glut of the late 1980s that hastened the end of the Soviet Union, which was also dependent on oil revenues.
Saddam, and others in Iraq, also did not see why Kuwait should even be a separate country, rather than a part of Iraq. Kuwait was only a separate country because of long-ago dealings between the Ottoman and British Empires. Kuwait had tremendous oil wealth and Saddam accused it of drilling in such a way as to steal oil from Iraqi territory, since the border crossed an oil field.
In reference to the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, the U.S. Government of George H.W. Bush issued a statement of not taking a position on a dispute between two Arab countries. That, along with a meeting with the U.S. ambassador led Saddam to interpret that there would be no adverse reaction if he simply took control of Kuwait, and added it to Iraq, instead of Khuzestan.
That is just what Saddam Hussein did. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces moved into Kuwait and soon had control of the much-smaller country, declaring it as a province of Iraq. There were many Indians working in Kuwait and there was a great airlift of close to 200,000 people out of the country, mainly by Air India. The Iraqi occupation force did not interfere with the evacuation.
But, once again, Saddam Hussein had miscalculated. There was a massive reaction against him seizing Kuwait which led to what is known as Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait by an Arab and western military coalition.
It was encouraging how so many of the world's major powers had worked together toward the objective of liberating Kuwait. But there was one drawback. Having these foreign forces in the Holy Land of Islam had upset many Moslems, even if they were not fond of Saddam Hussein. The boasting of General Norman Schwarzkopf to the global press afterward didn't help any.
One Saudi Moslem who was very upset about it was named Osama bin Laden, whose family was part of a large Saudi construction conglomerate that had refurbished the Grand Mosque in Mecca and done the re-cladding on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Osama bin Laden had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the Soviet invasion there. A group called Al Qaeda (The Base) had been founded, but it seems to have been thought that it's mission was complete with the end of the war in Afghanistan.
After Desert Storm, the operation to liberate Kuwait, Al Qaeda began operations in the west. It became known for attacks such as the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in two African countries, Tanzania and Kenya. In 2000, a U.S. Navy warship, the U.S.S. Cole was approached by a small boat while refueling in Yemen. The boat was loaded with explosives and detonated, severely damaging the Cole.
But nothing that Al Qaeda had done previously compares with the following year. On September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four passenger jets. Two were piloted into the two towers of the World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan. One was flown into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. military. The other crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when the passengers learned what was happening by phone, and stormed the cockpit of their hijacked jet that I believe was on the way to the Capitol Building in Washington.
This ultimately resulted in a second invasion of Iraq, with the goal of "regime change". This was achieved but the disbanding of the Iraqi Army left thousands of men with combat experience and who knew where weapons were stored with no way to earn a living, and soon a roiling insurgency was underway. After that was finally brought under control, a new threat emerged, that of Islamic State. The battle against Islamic State (IS) became a major part not only of Iraq, but also of neighboring Syria where there had been a revolution against Bashar Assad.
The father of Bashar Assad, Hafez, used to be an arch-rival of Saddam Hussein. Even though they were members of different branches of the Baath Party, which promoted a mix of pan-Arabism and socialism. During the Iran-Iraq War King Hussein of Jordan, who is no relation to Saddam, arranged a meeting in Jordan between the two but not much was accomplished. Hafez Assad was a Shiite Moslem who supported Iran during the war, and we can see today that Iran was instrumental in making sure that his son didn't get overthrown in the Syrian Civil War.
The September 22, 2018, attack on an Iranian military parade in Ahvaz, which is in Khuzestan Province and was right in the line of the 1980 Iraqi invasion and the parade was marking the anniversary of it, was very reminiscent of the assassination of Anwar Sadat of Egypt the year after the Iraqi invasion of Iran.
This actually parallels what we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Great Revolution Of Our Time". how the Iranian Revolution marked a major change in the world, back to religion from secularism. The series of events that we have discussed here, initiated by the 1980 siege of the Iranian Embassy in London, can be considered as a branch of "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", and how it has permanently changed the world.
Put simply, Saddam Hussein would not have invaded Iran if the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London by ethnic Arabs from Khuzestan had not convinced him that the Arabs in oil-rich Khuzestan Province would rise up with him and support the province being annexed to Iraq. The uprising in Khuzestan the year before seems to have gotten lost in the chaos of the revolution, but this siege left no doubt of the sympathies of Saddam's fellow Arabs. After the siege had taken place, Saddam launched his invasion of Iran within five months, heavily concentrating on Khuzestan.
The ensuing war went on for eight years, becoming one of the deadliest wars ever aside from the world wars. Up to half a million Iraqis died, and the country was buried in debt by the end of the war. After all of that, the border had not moved at all. The terrible war was all for nothing.
Saddam Hussein was hoping that the ethnic Arabs in neighboring Khuzestan would rise up and join him against the Persians. Ayatollah Khomeini, meanwhile, was hoping that his fellow Shiite Moslems in Iraq would rise up and join him against Saddam. Neither got what they wanted.
AFTER THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR
But Saddam came up with a "Plan B". He did not succeed in taking oil-rich Khuzestan Province from Iran. But there was a small, and very rich, country not far from the border along Khuzestan where the war had started. The name of that country was Kuwait.
Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war by loaning money, but had declined to get directly involved. Kuwait reportedly refused a request by Saddam to let the Iraqi Army use Kuwaiti territory. Kuwait had been targeted by Iran, or at least by groups sympathetic to Iran's revolution. There were bombings in Kuwait in 1983, and the hijacking of Kuwaiti airliners during the war. Iran had targeted Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
After the war, Kuwait angered Saddam by refusing to cancel his debt to them. He saw himself as being the guardian of the Arab countries, as well as the west and certainly including Kuwait, against Persian hegemony. Aside from the "Plan B" approach, after failing to gain Khuzestan, a reason that Saddam invaded Kuwait is that his country could not pay the massive war debt owed to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, depending on oil exports, was hampered by the same global oil glut of the late 1980s that hastened the end of the Soviet Union, which was also dependent on oil revenues.
Saddam, and others in Iraq, also did not see why Kuwait should even be a separate country, rather than a part of Iraq. Kuwait was only a separate country because of long-ago dealings between the Ottoman and British Empires. Kuwait had tremendous oil wealth and Saddam accused it of drilling in such a way as to steal oil from Iraqi territory, since the border crossed an oil field.
In reference to the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait, the U.S. Government of George H.W. Bush issued a statement of not taking a position on a dispute between two Arab countries. That, along with a meeting with the U.S. ambassador led Saddam to interpret that there would be no adverse reaction if he simply took control of Kuwait, and added it to Iraq, instead of Khuzestan.
That is just what Saddam Hussein did. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces moved into Kuwait and soon had control of the much-smaller country, declaring it as a province of Iraq. There were many Indians working in Kuwait and there was a great airlift of close to 200,000 people out of the country, mainly by Air India. The Iraqi occupation force did not interfere with the evacuation.
But, once again, Saddam Hussein had miscalculated. There was a massive reaction against him seizing Kuwait which led to what is known as Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait by an Arab and western military coalition.
It was encouraging how so many of the world's major powers had worked together toward the objective of liberating Kuwait. But there was one drawback. Having these foreign forces in the Holy Land of Islam had upset many Moslems, even if they were not fond of Saddam Hussein. The boasting of General Norman Schwarzkopf to the global press afterward didn't help any.
One Saudi Moslem who was very upset about it was named Osama bin Laden, whose family was part of a large Saudi construction conglomerate that had refurbished the Grand Mosque in Mecca and done the re-cladding on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Osama bin Laden had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the Soviet invasion there. A group called Al Qaeda (The Base) had been founded, but it seems to have been thought that it's mission was complete with the end of the war in Afghanistan.
After Desert Storm, the operation to liberate Kuwait, Al Qaeda began operations in the west. It became known for attacks such as the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in two African countries, Tanzania and Kenya. In 2000, a U.S. Navy warship, the U.S.S. Cole was approached by a small boat while refueling in Yemen. The boat was loaded with explosives and detonated, severely damaging the Cole.
But nothing that Al Qaeda had done previously compares with the following year. On September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four passenger jets. Two were piloted into the two towers of the World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan. One was flown into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. military. The other crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when the passengers learned what was happening by phone, and stormed the cockpit of their hijacked jet that I believe was on the way to the Capitol Building in Washington.
This ultimately resulted in a second invasion of Iraq, with the goal of "regime change". This was achieved but the disbanding of the Iraqi Army left thousands of men with combat experience and who knew where weapons were stored with no way to earn a living, and soon a roiling insurgency was underway. After that was finally brought under control, a new threat emerged, that of Islamic State. The battle against Islamic State (IS) became a major part not only of Iraq, but also of neighboring Syria where there had been a revolution against Bashar Assad.
The father of Bashar Assad, Hafez, used to be an arch-rival of Saddam Hussein. Even though they were members of different branches of the Baath Party, which promoted a mix of pan-Arabism and socialism. During the Iran-Iraq War King Hussein of Jordan, who is no relation to Saddam, arranged a meeting in Jordan between the two but not much was accomplished. Hafez Assad was a Shiite Moslem who supported Iran during the war, and we can see today that Iran was instrumental in making sure that his son didn't get overthrown in the Syrian Civil War.
The September 22, 2018, attack on an Iranian military parade in Ahvaz, which is in Khuzestan Province and was right in the line of the 1980 Iraqi invasion and the parade was marking the anniversary of it, was very reminiscent of the assassination of Anwar Sadat of Egypt the year after the Iraqi invasion of Iran.
This actually parallels what we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Great Revolution Of Our Time". how the Iranian Revolution marked a major change in the world, back to religion from secularism. The series of events that we have discussed here, initiated by the 1980 siege of the Iranian Embassy in London, can be considered as a branch of "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", and how it has permanently changed the world.
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