So, Iran fooled America to invade Iraq, then GCC and Kuwait particularly facilitates the invasion? Isn't that the most stupid thing to say? Kuwait hosted tens of thousands of U.S troop.
The idea that Iran has lured U.S to invade Iraq comes only out of one thing: They fucked up so bad that they are looking for an outsider to blame for, and it didn't work. And the article you posted is from 2004, no one even in U.S mentions that anymore. If it was true, it would have exploded in world media, but no one mentioned it again because it was so stupid that even U.S itself didn't buy it. But seems for you, it fits the agenda, to pull out every kind of garbage you find about Iran to spread propaganda against it.
And yes, 1991 war is on topic, because it led to massive inspections and sanction regimes against Iraq that finally left it weak and exposed, so they invaded in 2003 to finish the job, after they had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis indirectly from 1991 to 2003, by sanctions and blockades.
@revojam thanks for the nonsense, but what you said is proved to be bs, Iran didn't open its air apace for any country during invasion on Afghanistan and Iraq. Please tell me more about these stupid conspiracy theories.
Chalabi affair has not been discounted or disproved by anyone, it was just pushed out of limelight. Show me any article or source that Chalabi's Iranian connection or the idea that Iran has a role in influencing Neocons through Chalabi has been proven wrong. Your personal opinion has very little weight against well researched articles which has not been refuted to this day.
Governmental positions on the Iraq War prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Saudi Arabia
Pre-war, Saudi Arabia's public position had been one of neutrality in the conflict; worldwide media reported that, despite numerous American attempts, Saudi Arabia would not offer the American military any use of its land as a staging ground for the invasion of Iraq. In an interview, Prince Saud Alfaysal, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister when asked whether Saudi Arabia would allow more US troops to be placed on Saudi soil, the foreign minister replied, "under the present circumstances with no proof that there is a threat imminent from Iraq, I do not think Saudi Arabia will join in".
[17] This was later explained to have been a public front, as Saudi Arabia, as well as Turkey and Kuwait, was actually one of the most important allies in terms of offering coalition soldiers its land, including military bases. It was also eventually learned that a high-ranking Saudi prince had been at the
White House on the day that the Iraq war began, and Bush administration officials told the prince to alert his government that the initial phase of the war had begun, hours before missiles first landed in Baghdad. Officially, Saudi Arabia wished to see Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath regime go, but feared the aftermath.
[18] As the US invasion of Iraq became inevitable, the question of whether Saudi Arabia wanted the Baath regime replaced by a pro-Western government "pumping oil in greater quantities than Saudi Arabia" posed a dilemma for the Saudi government.
[19]Furthermore, Saudi Arabia worried about the possibility of an Iraqi Shia pro-Iranian government installed at its doorstep, following the demise of Saddam's Sunni regime. Saudi Arabia's response to the war had to be handled carefully so that the US-Saudi strategic alliance did not suffer, while at the same time maintaining the semblance of Arab solidarity against US aggression to appease its own indigenous population.
[20] In October 2002 Saudi Arabia declared that his country would allow US use of Saudi military facilities to attack Iraq, provided there was UN approval for it; but on 4 November 2002, Faysal told CNN that it would not . Moreover, in the same month, during a televised address on Saudi television, Crown Prince Abdullah insisted that "our armed forces will, under no circumstances, step one foot into Iraqi territory" . However, the contradiction and ambiguity of the Saudi position reflected the regime's desperation both to appease Washington and not be seen providing a territorial base for the US attack. It also reflected a lack of consensus among senior members of the royal family.
Arab League
The
Arab League unanimously condemned the war, with the exception of Kuwait.
[26] Saudi Foreign Minister
Prince Saud publicly claimed that the U.S. military would not be authorized to use Saudi Arabia's soil in any way to attack Iraq. However, this was later revealed to have been a front, as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and some other Arab states did, in fact, provide support to American troops, but they did not wish to risk offending Saddam pre-war by making those statements publicly.(
[27]) After ten years of U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, cited among reasons by Saudi-born
Osama bin Laden for his September 11, 2001
al-Qaeda attacks on America, most of U.S. forces were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia in 2003. (
[28]) For the duration of the war, the Saudi public remained strongly against the US action, even regardless of a UN mandate. Before the war, the government repeatedly attempted to find a diplomatic solution, generally agreeing with the US position on Saddam's menace, even going so far as to urge Saddam to go into voluntary exile—a suggestion that angered him a great deal.
Anti-war demonstrations took place in
Damascus, Syria;
Baghdad, Iraq;
Sana'a;
Maskat;
Amman, Jordan;
Widhat,
Maan,
Irbid,
Beirut,
Sidon, Lebanon;
Bethlehem,
Nablus,
Tulkarem,
Jenin,
Ramallah and
Gaza,
Palestinian cities in the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip;
Tel Aviv,
Israel, and in the nation of
Bahrain. As is the case in
Egypt, demonstrations are not common in many of these less-than-democratic countries and some regimes saw themselves in danger because of riots.
Other Asian states
Bangladesh,
Malaysia [24] and
Indonesia [25], all largest Muslim countries of world and
Vietnam condemned the war.
Bangladesh urged to solve the problem through discussion rather than war. Huge anti-war demonstrations took place in
Dhaka,
Bangladesh;
Kathmandu,
Nepal;
Colombo,
Sri Lanka;
Kelantan;
Jakarta and
Java,
Indonesia;
Surabaya; and
Bangkok, Thailand.
Iran
Iran's official view of US policy in Iraq since 2002 has been characterized by considerable ambivalence. On the one hand, lingering mistrust of Saddam Hussein (as a result of 1980-1988 war with Iraq) both created and reinforced an attitude that accepted the US containment of Iraq as being in Iran's interests. On the other hand, the US since 1993 had proclaimed the containment of Iran to be of equal importance to that of Iraq, and therefore, Iranian leaders felt encircled by the arrival of thousands of US troops in Iraq together with those in Afghanistan since the end of 2001. Indeed Bush's 2002 inclusion of Iran in his "axis of evil" meant a US military presence in Iraq could constitute an existential threat for the government of the Islamic Republic.
As circumstances in Iraq evolved from early 2003 to mid-2005, Iranian policy makers faced the challenge of crafting strategies to take advantage of new opportunities while simultaneously remaining out of the crosshairs of a triumphal and hostile United States.[27]"
The most interesting fact is that Iran to this day remains the biggest beneficiary of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Not only did it took control of Iraq through the Shia dominated govt., but it attempted to create a Shia crescent, which is now being challenged by the rebels in Syria and Iraq and which is at risk of unraveling. The US out of an odd sense of the ownership of the post invasion Iraq and out of their need to crush virulent anti-West extremist (read stupid) - is now yet again aiding Iran to keep their Shia crescent intact. The gist of the story is that despite Iran's Death to America chants, it was US firepower that helped Iran gain influence in these regional Arab countries and create this so called Shia crescent and it is the same US which is coming back with their air power to rescue Iranians when they are facing difficulty against local extremist rebels.
