LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Iran: Iran-Iraq War
built 650 days ago
As part of the US Atoms for Peace program, the US and Iran signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in 1957, which provided US technical assistance and the lease of several kilograms of enriched uranium. By the mid-1960s, Iran had begun conducting nuclear research and development under the auspices of the US. Following the Iranian Revolution and the toppling of the Shah's government, Iran suspended its civilian nuclear energy program. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq bombed the Bushehr nuclear reactor site in Iran six times (in March 1984, February 1985, March 1985, July 1986, and twice in November 1987), destroying the entire core area of both reactors. Iran effectively did not restart its civilian nuclear power program until 1995 when it signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to build lightweight water reactors at Bushehr, under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
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Iran's nuclear program began in the Shah's era, including a plan to build 20 nuclear power reactors. Two power reactors in Bushehr, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, were started but remained unfinished when they were bombed and damaged by the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war. Following the revolution in 1979, all nuclear activity was suspended, though subsequently work was resumed on a somewhat more modest scale. Current plans extend to the construction of 15 power reactors and two research reactors.
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On Sept. 22, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, commencing an eight-year war primarily over the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway (see Iran-Iraq War). The war rapidly escalated, leading to Iraqi and Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in 1984. Fighting crippled both nations, devastating Iran's military supply and oil industry, and led to an estimated 500,000 to one million casualties. Chemical weapons were used by both countries. Khomeini rejected diplomatic initiatives and called for the overthrow of Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein. In Nov., 1986, U.S. government officials secretly visited Iran to trade arms with the Iranians, in the hopes of securing the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon, because Iran had political connections with Shiite terrorists in Lebanon.
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The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says Iran possesses chemicals that can induce bleeding, blistering, and choking, as well as the bombs and artillery shells to deliver these agents. U.S. officials say Iran ... has an active biological weapons program, driven in part by its acquisition of “dual-use” technologies—supplies and machinery that can be put to either harmless or deadly uses. Weapons experts say the Iranian programs started after the country's forces were struck by Iraqi chemical attacks in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
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Many more of the social consequences of the mullahs’ rule date back to the destructive, meaningless Iran-Iraq war, dragged on by Khomeini’s regime for eight years. In this case, too, women and children suffered most. Since it was very difficult for a widow to provide for herself and raise a family in Iran’s highly patriarchal society, multitudes turned to prostitution as the only means of survival. According to the Associated Press of July 21, 1989, the arrest of a war widow for prostitution touched off a national scandal, because the woman had prostituted herself as a last resort to feed her family.
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Iran-Iraq War