Many anti-war Americans look at the 1953 coup as the beginning of the U.S.-Iranian conflict.

They should also look at Saddam Hussein's invasion in 1980, which also played a huge hole in making Iranian leaders paranoid about us.

[Thread, inspired by https://twitter.com/JohnAllenGay/status/1308850313277865984]

September 1980: after months of tensions, Iraq invades Iran.

The United Nations calls for a ceasefire one week into the invasion. Iran perceives this as taking Iraq's side, since the UN is calling on both sides to stop while Iraqi soldiers occupy Iranian soil.

U.S. policy was to prevent a decisive victory. "It's a pity they both can't lose," Kissinger famously said.

The Reagan administration's CIA helped armed both sides, later revealed during the Iran-Contra scandal and the Sarkis Soghanalian case.

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/soghanalian.html

Two years into the war, the tide turned in Iran's favor, and the U.S. began openly siding with Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq in 1983. The two countries soon opened diplomatic relations.

The U.S. also supplied intelligence and "dual use" technology to Iraq.

Around the same time, Iraq began to engage in a vicious chemical weapons campaign against Iran and the Kurds.

The U.S. had evidence of this as early as 1983, but continued to provide Iraq with targeting data...and blocked the UN from criticizing Iraq.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

The U.S. State Department's position on Iraqi chemical weapons attacks is the most tortured example of "both sides" victim-blaming I have ever seen from U.S. officials.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq47.pdf

In fact, during the Halabja massacre of 1988 — in which Saddam Hussein's army gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians — the U.S. position was "maybe Iran did it."

Remember, the U.S. had known about Iraq's chemical weapons attacks since 1983.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/opinion/IHT-halabja-america-didnt-seem-to-mind-poison-gas.html

In fact, the Reagan administration lobbied Congress to defeat a law that would have punished Iraq for the genocide of Kurds.

http://historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=us_iraq_80s_796#us_iraq_80s_796

Then there was the Tanker War.

Iran and Iraq had been attacking oil shipping, so U.S. naval forces entered the Persian Gulf to protect it.

From the Iranian perspective, the United States was only there to help Iraq. And to some extent, that was true.

In May 1987, an *Iraqi* fighter jet fired on the USS Stark, killing 37 sailors.

President Reagan did not retaliate. In fact, gave a speech declaring that "the villain in the piece is Iran."

Iraq finally paid compensation to the victims' families in 2011.

Then, in April 1988, an Iranian naval mine blew a hole in the USS Samuel B. Roberts. The ship was saved with no loss of life.

Reagan responded by sinking half the Iranian navy.

Finally, there was the case of Iran Air Flight 655. In July 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 aboard.

The U.S. said it was a case of mistaken identity, but Iran took it as a message to back down against Iraq.

America never accepted responsibility, although it did agree to pay $61.8 million to the victims' families.

Iran Air Flight 655 still looms large in the Iranian memory. The regime uses it all the time to emphasize how dastardly America is.

A real tragic irony is that Iranian forces shot down a civilian jet of their own — Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 — and tried to cover it up during the January 2020 war scare.

(Image: A Flight 752 memorial/protest at Amirkabir University of Technology.)