Why did the USA attack iraq if they supported them during the iran-iraq war?
Because my enemy’s enemy is my friend. The US in the late 1970s and early 1980s wanted a stable Middle East, so that the oil would keep flowing and stay cheap. Same thing the British used to try and acheive, with even less success, back when we thought we could run the world. Basically in the Iranian revolution, a US friendly dictator (the Shah) was overthown by an Islamic theocracy which was very unfriendly to the US. For religious reasons, the new Iranian regime was also seen as a threat to Iraq (Sunni vs Shia, no space here to go into it). The US was worried that if Iran overrun Iraq, they would also take Saudi Arabia (which had, and still has, a crap military), and then control the vast majority of Middle East Oil. There was also the usual Cold War politics involved whereby the Iranians were seen as pro-Soviet. So they armed Iraq to make sure that Saddam didn’t lose. Doesn’t mean that the US ever liked the guy, they just preferred him to the Iranian Ayatollahs. Once the Iran-Iraq w
