When the news of the end of the war was announced, people in Baghdad were dancing in the streets and celebrating wildly.
After nearly eight years of conflict, the Iran-Iraq war ended on August 20, 1988. The war was started by the Iraqi side, with the invasion of Iran in 1980. Iraq claimed it wanted to prevent Iranian Shiite influence in the region, while Iran accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of wanting to conquer Iranian oil fields. The West has openly sided with the Iraqi side under the pretext of preventing the spread of Iranian influence in the region. Israel, on the other hand, fearing Iraq’s nuclear program, helped Iran.
Already at the beginning of the conflict, Iraq had a significant advantage in the number of tanks (2700 versus the Iranian 1740), and later this advantage increased even more, so that in 1987 Iraq had over 4500 tanks and Iran only 1000. In artillery, Iraq was also too powerful , as well as in the number of aircraft, although Iran initially had an advantage in this. Iraq has also used chemical weapons on several occasions.
The death toll from the Iran-Iraq war is in the hundreds of thousands. The exact number is difficult to determine, and estimates range for Iran from 320,000 to as much as 720,000 (some say a million). Between 150,000 and 375,000 Iraqis were killed (some say up to half a million). Financial losses amounted to about $ 600 billion for each party, for a total of about $ 1,200 billion.
Although the war did not significantly change the border between the two countries, the Iraqis considered themselves the winners. When the news of the end of the war was announced, people in Baghdad were dancing in the streets and celebrating wildly. On the contrary, in Tehran, the capital of Iran, the end of the war was greeted with sad silence.
