Gulf War they set fire to nearly 700 oil wells and placed land mines around the wells to make extinguishing the fires more difficult. The war's ground phase was officially designated Operation Desert Saber. The first units to move into Iraq were three patrols of the British Special Air Service's B squadron, call signs Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero, and Bravo Three Zero, in late January. These eight-man patrols landed behind Iraqi lines to gather intelligence on the movements of Scud mobile missile launchers, which could not be detected from the air, as they were hidden under bridges and camouflage netting
Military operations of the Iran–Iraq War Gulf states saved Iraq from bankruptcy by providing it with an average of $60 billion in subsidies per year. Though Iraq had previously been hostile towards other Gulf states, "the threat of Persian fundamentalism was far more feared." They were especially inclined to fear Iranian victory after Ayatollah Khomeini declared monarchies to be illegitimate and an un-Islamic form of government. Khomeini's statement was widely received as a call to overthrow the Gulf monarchies. Journalists John Bulloch and Harvey Morris wrote: The virulent Iranian campaign, which at its peak seemed to be making the overthrow of the Saudi regime a war