In the lead-up to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 Saddam Hussein gave a series of speeches threatening to attack Israel. The conventional wisdom was that Saddam made these statements to rally the street and assert his leadership in the Arab world. Alex Roberto Hybel and Justin Matthew Kaufman in their book The Bush Administration and Saddam Hussein, Deciding on Conflict took another view that Saddam was actually trying to decipher Israel’s intentions to make sure his western flank was secure before he went to war with Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein made four major speeches
from February to July 1990 with a major focus upon Israel. These occurred on
February 24, April 1, May 28, and July 17. On April 1 for instance, Saddam
threatened to burn Israel with weapons of mass destruction if it attacked Iraq.
(1) On May 28 at an Arab League summit he said
that Iraq had the right to protect itself from Israeli aggression. He made
several other similar statements during this period. According to Hamadi
Hassan, from February 24 to August 8 he mentioned Israel and Zionism around 200
times.
There are two views on why Saddam took this track. The
conventional wisdom was that this was another attempt by Saddam to claim regional
leadership. By challenging Israel and proclaiming himself the protector of
Arabs he was trying to get the public on his side, a tried and true tactic of
Middle Eastern politicians. Hybel and Kaufman took a completely different tract.
They argued that Saddam wanted to find out Israel’s intentions before invading
Kuwait. In 1990, Iraq was increasingly concerned
of the threat from the west, even getting a warning from military intelligence
that Israel was planning an attack. As a result, Iraq put out a number of
feelers to various countries to decipher Israel’s stance. In April, Saddam met
with the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Amir Bandar bin Sultan telling him that Iraq
would not take on Israel, but that he needed a guarantee from the U.S. that
Israel would not be aggressive. That message was passed along to President Bush
who said he would talk to Israeli officials. Israel told the Americans it would
not attack Iraq as long as Saddam controlled himself. That was relayed to
Baghdad. Not satisfied, Saddam made two more addresses threatening Israel to
make sure it would not do anything. Finally satisfied that his flank was
secure, he went on to invade Kuwait in August. These two opinions are not
mutually exclusive. Saddam could have both been looking for popular support in
the Arab world with his statements against Israel, while also trying to
decipher what Tel Aviv was up to. In the west, Saddam is often discounted as a
reckless leader who made nothing but wrong foreign policy decisions. While he
did make massive mistakes, this showed he could be calculating and strategic in
some situations.
FOOTNOTE
1. Marr, Phebe, “Iraq’s Uncertain Future,” Current History,
January 1990
SOURCES
Brands, Hal and Palkki, David, “Saddam, Israel, and the
Bomb, Nuclear Alarmism Justified?” International Security, Summer 2011
Draper, Theodore, “The Gulf War Reconsidered,” The New York
Review of Books, 1/16/92
Hassan, Hamadi, the
Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, Religion, Identity and Otherness in the Analysis of
War and Conflict, London, Sterling: Pluto Press, 1999
Hybel, Alex Roberto and Kaufman, Justin Matthew, The Bush Administration and Saddam Hussein,
Deciding on Conflict, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006
Marr, Phebe, “Iraq’s Uncertain Future,” Current History,
January 1990
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