Shocked by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Realizing Iraq’s debt would not be forgiven and his ability to control and sell oil was in jeopardy, Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990.

He insisted that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cancel out $30 billion of Iraq’s foreign debt, and accused them of conspiring to keep oil prices low in an effort to pander to Western oil-buying nations. Two weeks later, however, Hussein delivered a speech in which he accused neighboring nation Kuwait of siphoning crude oil from the Ar-Rumaylah oil fields located along their common border.

When their foreign ministers met in Geneva that July, prospects for peace suddenly seemed bright, as it appeared that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was prepared to dissolve that conflict and return territory that his forces had long occupied. Though the long-running Iran-Iraq War had ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in August 1988, by mid-1990 the two states had yet to begin negotiating a permanent peace treaty. ZSU-23-4 SHILKA – IRAQ | ANTI-AIRCRAFT TANKĢS1 GVOZDIKA – IRAQ | SELF PROPELLED HOWITZER SS-1C Scud-B (R-17/R-300 Elbrus) & MAZ-543 – IRAQ | MISSILE & LAUNCHER

Tank battles of the second gulf war