In the previous program, we talked about the allegations made by Saddam to justify the invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the tearing of the Algiers Accord in front of TV cameras.

Of course, Saddam's goals and ambitions in the invasion of Iran were far beyond territorial claims and boundaries. He did not just seek to divide Iran into smaller parts; rather he wanted to replace the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the US gendarme in the region, with the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Approximately one year after the start of the imposed war, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said: "The war is not related to the 1975 agreement, or some hundreds of kilometers of soil and half of Arvand River, but the purpose of this war is to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran." The objective of the Iraqi Ba'athist regime was also disclosed in the Western media. Daily Christian Science Monitor quoted professor of Georgetown University, Edward Woodlake, as saying “Probably one of the goals of Iraq is to topple the Islamic regime of Iran."

Iraq, the regional regimes, and the big western regimes had a common view of overthrowing the Islamic Republic system; but to pressure Iran to change its behavior was a minimal goal agreed upon by these powers. Hence, the US and the western bloc along with Iraq and the Arab Sheikhdoms of the region intended to implement a new plan to curb the Islamic Revolution, forcing the Islamic Republic to converge with the dominant regimes of the West. They intended to at least restore the conditions of the region to the era before the victory of the Islamic Revolution through overthrowing the Islamic Republic as the survival of the Islamic Republic with its lofty anti-hegemonic values was totally contradictory to the interests of the west and the US.

Various measures were taken by the US with the support of European regimes against the Islamic Republic of Iran. These measures were implemented at both internal and external levels. At the internal level, chaos and civil war were instigated through different ethnicities and the currents affiliated to the monarchic regime and the so-called Left groups were provoked and activated by the West. At the international and regional level, psychological warfare and propaganda for political isolation of Iran, severance of diplomatic relations, freezing of Iran's property and assets, economic blockade and a military attack on Tabas were put on the agenda and carried out one after the other.

The attack on Tabas was a response to the conquest of the US den of espionage (Embassy) by Muslim students, but US military operations scandalously failed in the Tabas desert. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the heaviest blow on the US was the hostage-taking of the American spies by students. Muslim students, had realized that the US embassy in Tehran, instead of diplomatic activity, had been engaged in spying and hatching plots to topple the Islamic Republic. The accuracy of this claim of Iranian students was revealed to everybody by publishing the documents of US den of espionage. The American Embassy in Tehran was in fact a venue for designing a variety of measures from scheming coup to stirring insecurity in Iran.

The failure of Tabas operation (so-called Desert Storm) put new actions on the agenda of the US-led western bloc. Five months before the Iraqi invasion in April 1980, the New York Times revealed the plans of the US in this regard.

The newspaper wrote: "The US government, after the failure of the Tabas operation, will examine the possibility of implementing three very important military plans. The deployment of military forces in cities where American hostages were held, mine-planting in oil fields or bombing Iranian refineries were among their plans. The US hopes that economic and political sanctions of Iran will have more impact in severing Iran-Iraq relations. Some in the west believed that the prospect of a war with a mighty country might force Iran to reconsider its policies." Before the imposition of the war, another plan had to be implemented which, if successful, would finish off the Islamic Republic of Iran, and if not, the war would begin.

Consequently, on June 25, 1980, a coup called "Neqab" was executed in collaboration with mercenaries inside the Iranian Army under the leadership of the US. But this time, with the help of God and the wakefulness and vigilance of the revolutionary forces, the coup was nipped in the bud, and once again the US faced a major defeat. In such a situation, Zbigniew Brzezinski, security adviser to then US President Jimmy Carter, said: "The US strategy in confronting the Iranian revolution should consider strengthening the states that are capable of carrying out military operations against the Iranian regime." So Brzezinski had a secret meeting with Saddam on July 6, 1980 in Jordan.

According to Gary Sick, one of the White House advisers, Brzezinski, in a meeting with Saddam, revealed that Washington would show a green light to Baghdad for invasion of Iran. Regarding the importance of this meeting, French Magazine Le Figaro wrote: "The Iraq-Iran war actually began in June when Brzezinski traveled to Jordan and met with Saddam on the border between Jordan and Iraq, and promised to support him." Brzezinski informed Saddam the US would not oppose Iraqi claims concerning Arvand River and the possibility of establishment of an Arab republic in the region.

Following this visit, Carter issued permissions for the sale of five Boeing passenger planes to Iraq and a few days before invading Iran, he lifted the boycott of selling five General Electric vehicles to Baghdad. This US policy was very important for Iraq because at that time Iraq was in the Eastern Bloc and was supported politically and militarily by the Soviet Union. That is, any decision Saddam took for cooperation with the US was made with the Soviet green light. This coordination and cooperation of two superpowers against a revolution and popular government was an unprecedented event after the World War II. But the US, in hostility to the Islamic Revolution, was willing to cooperate with its rival and longtime enemy as Iraq was the only country that could fight Iran. Follow the next program to hear more about Saddam’s invasion of the Islamic Republic’s territory.

RM/SS