Were Iran involved in the first gulf war 1991?
Iraq had a number of grievances with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had lent Iraq some 26 billion dollars to prosecute its invasion of Iran, as they feared the influence of mainly Shia Iran’s Islamic revolution on its own Shia minority (most of the Saudi oil fields are in territory populated by Shias). The long desert border was also ill-defined. Soon after his conquest of Kuwait, President Hussein began verbally attacking the Saudi kingdom. He argued that the US-supported Saudi state was an illegitimate and unworthy guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. President Hussein combined the language of the Islamist groups that had recently fought in Afghanistan with the rhetoric Iran had long used to attack the Saudis. Basically Iran provided a place to conduct operations from Land/Water Bases and gave the Iraqies a place to run to when things went bad. The Iraqies fleeing the war landed many planes and boats in Iran. The Saudies never returned them.
