1990 oil price shock and prices began to fall. On August 2, 1990, The Republic of Iraq invaded the State of Kuwait, leading to a 7-month occupation of Kuwait and an eventual U.S.-led military intervention. While Iraq officially claimed Kuwait was stealing its oil via slant drilling, its true motives were more complicated and less clear. At the time of the invasion, Iraq owed Kuwait $14 billion of outstanding debt that Kuwait had loaned it during the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War. In addition, Iraq felt Kuwait was overproducing oil, lowering prices and hurting Iraqi oil profits in a time of financial stress. In the buildup
Kuwait Airways will encounter difficulty in advancing, especially in fleet renewal, without the privatisation. Flights to Iraq were resumed in ; Kuwait Airways had discontinued services to the country in 1990 following the invasion of Kuwait. After a 17-year hiatus, the carrier resumed flying to Munich in . Also in July 2015, the airline restarted flights to Istanbul-Atatürk; the city had not been served for three years. Bangalore was added to the carrier network in . Kuwait Airways is wholly owned by the government of Kuwait, . Privatisation started being considered in the mid-1990s, in a period that followed the Gulf War