United States involvement in regime change United States to Panama by the year 2000. The U.S. deposed "de facto" Panamanian leader, general, and dictator Manuel Noriega and brought him to the United States, president-elect Guillermo Endara was sworn into office, and the Panamanian Defense Force was dissolved. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the US government strenuously lobbied governments represented on the UN Security Council to support a resolution authorizing UN members states to use "all necessary means" for removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. UN Security Council Resolution 678, including such language, was passed and the US assembled a 34 state coalition force to invade.
United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War a series of "catastrophic" Iraqi defeats. They had been driven out of Iran, and the Iraqi army looked like it was falling apart." "The Reagan administration feared that Iran's army might slice through Iraq to the oilfields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia"; Veliotes, then "Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs," "outlined a nightmare scenario in which the Iranians invade Iraq, they defeat Iraq, and then head straight for Israel, which is distracted and debilitated by its ongoing adventure in Lebanon." As a result, the U.S. gradually abandoned its policy of neutrality. In February 1982, Iraq