MWHB
History of the Modern
Middle East
Instructions: The following timeline lists events that created the modern nations of Iran and Iraq and left unresolved a number of conflicts between them. The main issue is that of where the border between them exists. Underline any event that led to tensions between the two countries.
q In the 1890s, Shia clerics led a national boycott that made the Qajar shah in Iran rescind a decree awarding a tobacco monopoly to a foreign agent.
q In 1906, a coalition of bazaar merchants, clerics, intellectuals, and tribal leaders forced the shah to accept a constitution. This liberal initiative was frustrated, however, by the power of the British and Russians who controlled spheres of influence in the south and north of Iran.
q Border agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Iran is signed.
q World War I. Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers, and a British expeditionary force landed in Iraq and occupied Basra. The long campaign that followed ended in 1918, when the whole of Iraq fell under British military occupation. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire stimulated Iraqi hopes for freedom and independence.
q San Remo Conference 1920, Iraq (made up of three Ottoman provinces: Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, formerly including Kuwair) was declared a League of Nations mandate under UK administration. Riots and revolts led to the establishment of an Iraqi provisional government in October 1920.
q On 23 August 1921, Faisal I (Faysal), the son of Sharif Hussein (Husayn ibn-'Ali) of Mecca, became king of Iraq.
q 1922, British High Commissioner for Iraq, Sir Percy Cox, gave Kuwait 310 miles and Iraq 36 miles of coastline.
q After a period of chaos, the British arranged for a Persian Cossack officer, Reza Rhan, to come to power, first as minister of war in 1921, then prime minister, finally in 1925 as Reza Shah, the first sovereign of the Pahlavi dynasty. With ruthless authority, he sought to modernize Iran along the lines of Ataturk in Turkey.
q Iraq gained independence in 1932 and was admitted to membership in the League of Nations. 1932 A British mandate Iraq and the area called Transjordan set up a union governed under the Hashemite King Faisal II, who continued to maintain a strategic link with western powers.
q Iraq’s ruler, Faisal, died in 1933, and his son and successor, Ghazi, was killed in an accident in 1939. Until the accession to the throne of Faisal II, on attaining his majority in 1953, his uncle 'Abdul Ilah, Ghazi's cousin, acted as regent.
q 1940s and 1950s, with the help of the British, the Iraqi government carried out a program of modernization funded by its rich oil resources.
q In 1941, suspecting him of pro-German sympathies, the British forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favor of his 21-year-old son, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. British and Russian forces set up a supply line across Iran to the USSR.
q In April 1946, the British left, but the USSR refused to withdraw its forces. Under pressure from the UN and the US, Soviet troops eventually withdrew from Iran in December 1946.
q Oil, the source of nearly all Iran's national wealth, quickly came to dominate postwar politics. Muhammad Mossadeq, who as leader of the National Front in the National Assembly (Majlis) led the fight in 1947 to deny the USSR oil concessions in northern Iran, became chairman of the oil committee of the Majlis. On 15 March 1951, the Majlis voted to nationalize the oil industry, which was dominated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC), a prewar concession to the UK. When the government of Prime Minister Hosein Ala took no immediate action against the AIOC, the Majlis demanded his resignation and the appointment of Mossadeq, who became prime minister in April. The AIOC was nationalized, but its output rapidly declined when the UK imposed an embargo on Iranian oil, as well as other economic sanctions. As Iran's economic situation worsened, Mossadeq sought to rally the people through fervent nationalistic appeals. An attempt by the shah to replace him failed in the summer of 1952, but by August 1953, Mossadeq had lost his parliamentary majority, but not his popular support. With the backing of a referendum, Mossadeq dissolved the Majlis and then refused to resign when the shah again tried to oust him. The shah fled Iran for four days but returned on 22 August, with backing from the military, the US and the UK. A new conservative government issued an appeal for aid; in September, the US granted Iran $45 million. Mossadeq was convicted of treason in December.
q On 14 July 1958, the Iraqi army rose under the leadership of Gen. 'Abd al-Karim al-Qasim (Kassim). Faisal II, Crown Prince 'Abdul Ilah, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Sa'id (as-Sa'id) were killed. The monarchy was abolished, and a republic established. Iraq left the anti-communist Baghdad Pact which the monarchy had joined in 1955. An agrarian reform law broke up the great landholdings of feudal leaders, and a new economic development program emphasized industrialization. In spite of some opposition from original supporters and political opponents, tribal uprisings, and several attempts at assassination, Qasim managed to remain the head of Iraq for four and a half years.
q After 1953, the shah began to consolidate his power. New arrangements between the National Iranian Oil Co. and a consortium of US, UK, and Dutch oil companies were negotiated during April-September 1954 and ratified by the Majlis in October. The left-wing Tudeh (Masses) Party, which had been banned in 1949 but had resurfaced during the Mossadeq regime, was suppressed after a Tudeh organization was exposed in the armed forces.
q In 1957, the government sponsored two new pseudo-parties, which contested parliamentary elections in 1960 and 1961. Meanwhile, Iran became affiliated with the Western alliance through the Baghdad Pact in 1955, later the Central Treaty Organization. (CENTO was dissolved after Iran pulled out in 1979.) Frontier demarcation agreements were signed with the USSR in April 1957.
q US assistance and goodwill were plainly essential for the shah. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy urged him to undertake a more liberal program. Under the "white revolution" of 1962-63, the shah initiated land reform, electoral changes (including, for the first time, the right of women to hold and vote for public office), and broad economic development. Opposition to the reform program, the dictatorial regime, and the growing American influence was suppressed. Political dissent was not tolerated.
q 1961 Kuwaiti independence from Britian; General Qasim of Iraq threatened to annex Kuwait; British made it clear that they would defend Kuwai; Qasim backed down.
q On 9 February 1963, however, a military junta in Iraq, led by Col. 'Abd as-Salam Muhammad 'Arif, overthrew Qasim’s regime and executed him.
q The new regime in Iraq followed a policy based on neutralism and aimed to cooperate with Syria and Egypt and to improve relations with Turkey and Iran. These policies were continued after 'Arif was killed in an airplane crash in 1966 and was succeeded by his brother, 'Abd ar-Rahman 'Arif.
q During the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967, Iraqi forces were sent to fortify the Israeli-Jordan border. Iraq declared war on Israel, and subsequently severed all ties with the United States.
q This Iraqi regime, however, was overthrown in July 1968, when Gen. (later Marshal) Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, heading a section of the Ba'th Party, staged a coup and established a new government with himself as president.
q In the 1970s, the Ba'th regime focused increasingly on economic problems, nationalizing the petroleum industry in 1972-73 and allocating large sums for capital development.
q During the 1970s Iraq maintained a hostile attitude towards the United States--and the West in general--while sustaining a friendly relationship with the Soviet Union. Disagreements with Arab nations alienated Iraq from its neighboring countries. From 1972 to 1975 Iraq nationalized all foreign petroleum companies operating within its borders, and Iraq prospered as international oil prices skyrocketed. Historical mistreatment of the Kurds, a minority people residing in the northern territories of Iraq, peaked in the mid-1970s. Kurdish nationalists, with the support of Iran, frequently clashed with the Iraqi government.Since 1961, Iraq's Kurdish minority has frequently opposed with violence attempts by Baghdad to impose authority over its regions. In an attempt to cope with this opposition, the Bakr government passed a constitutional amendment in July 1970 granting limited political, economic, and cultural autonomy to the Kurdish regions. But in March 1974, Kurdish insurgents, known as the Pesh Merga, again mounted a revolt, with Iranian military support. The Iraqi army countered with a major offensive.
q Iraqi forces occupy Kuwaiti border post.
q On 6 March 1975, Iraq and Iran concluded an agreement by which Iran renounced support for the Kurds and Iraq agreed to share sovereignty over the Shatt al-'Arab estuary, a tidal river (120 miles long) formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in SE Iraq and flowing southeast along the Iran-Iraq border to the Persian Gulf. The Agreement is known as the Algiers Accord.
q 1970s and 1980s the Iraqi government maintained ties with the Soviet Union, which supplied Iraq with arms.
q Bakr resigned in July 1979 and was followed as president by his chosen successor, Saddam Hussein (Husayn) al-Takriti.
q The shah's autocratic methods, his repressive use of the secret police (known as SAVAK), his program of rapid westernization (at the expense of Islamic tradition), his emphasis on lavish display and costly arms imports, and his perceived tolerance of corruption and of US domination fed opposition in the late 1970s. The economic boom of the previous 15 years also came to an end. Joining in the revolt were Islamic militants, radical students, the bazaar and middle classes, until virtually the entire population turned against the shah. Following nine months of demonstrations and violent army reactions, martial law was declared in Iran's major cities in September 1978, but antigovernment strikes and massive marches could not be stopped. On 16 January 1979, the shah left Iran,appointing an old-line nationalist, Shahpur Bakhtiar, as Prime Minister. However, the leader of the Islamic opposition, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (the term ayatollah is the highest rank of the Shia clergy), who had spent 15 years in exile, first in Iraq and briefly in France, refused to deal with the Bakhtiar regime. Demonstrations continued, and on 1 February the ayatollah returned to a tumultuous welcome in Tehran. He quickly asserted control and appointed a provisional government, which took power after a military rebellion and the final collapse of the shah's regime on 11 February.
q After a referendum, Khomeini on 1 April declared Iran an Islamic Republic. The provisional government, led by Medhi Bazargan and other liberal civilians, could not exercise authority; revolutionary groups made indiscriminate arrests and summary executions of political opponents. Increasingly, radical clerics sought to take power for themselves. The crisis atmosphere was intensified by the seizure, on 4 November 1979, of 53 US hostages (50 of them in the US embassy compound in Tehran) by militant Iranian students who demanded the return of the shah from the US (where he was receiving medical treatment) to stand trial in Iran. Despite vigorous protests by the US government, which froze Iranian assets in the US, and by the UN over this violation of diplomatic immunity, the hostages were held for 444 days; in the intervening period, a US attempt to free the hostages by military force failed, and the shah died in Egypt on 27 July 1980. The crisis was finally resolved on 20 January 1981, in an agreement providing for release of the prisoners and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. A new constitution providing for an Islamic theocracy was ratified by popular referendum in December 1979. In presidential elections in January 1980, 'Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a moderate, who supported the revolution, was elected president. Later elections to the Majlis resulted in victory for the hard-line clerical Islamic Republican Party (IRP).
q In June 1981, President Bani-Sadr was ousted by Khomeini; later that month, a bomb explosion at IRP headquarters in Tehran killed Ayatollah Beheshti, who had been serving as chief justice, as well as 4 cabinet ministers, 20 paramilitary deputies, and dozens of others. Another bombing, on 30 August, killed the new president, Muhammad 'Ali Rajai, and his new prime minister, Muhammad Javad Bahonar. The bombings were ascribed by the government to leftist guerrillas. By 1982, at least 4,500 people had been killed in political violence, and some estimates placed the total much higher. In September 1982, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who had been foreign minister during the hostage crisis, was executed on charges of plotting to kill Khomeini and establish a secular government. The new government, led by the Shi'ite religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, turned Iran away from the West and toward Islam. Like the Shah, Khomeini did not tolerate any opposition; thousands of Iranians were imprisoned or executed. Iraq encouraged Kurdish revolt against new Iranian govt.
q May 1990, Baghdad Arab Summit, President Saddam Hussein accuses Kuwait of manipulating oil prices to hurt Iraq.