Sanctions against Iraq Sanctions against Iraq The sanctions against Iraq were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Ba'athist Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 2003 (after Saddam Hussein's being forced from power), and persisted in part, including reparations to Kuwait, through the present. The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction. Initially the UN Security Council imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq
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