Invasion of Kuwait their retreat. In early 1990 Iraq was accusing Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum through slant drilling, although some Iraqi sources indicated Saddam Hussein's decision to attack Kuwait was made a few months before the actual invasion. Some feel there were several reasons for the Iraqi move, including Iraq's inability to pay the more than US$14 billion that it had borrowed to finance the Iran–Iraq War, and Kuwaiti high petroleum production levels which kept revenues down for Iraq. The invasion started on 2 August 1990, and within two days most of the Kuwait Armed Forces were either overrun by the Iraqi
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