ABSTRACT
The twentieth century’s last great war of the masses pitted Iraq’s oppressive, staunchly secular Sunni Arab-dominated regime against the fanatically religious Shia Persian regime of Iran. The culmination of centuries of Arab-Persian and Sunni-Shia mistrust and hostility, the war lasted for eight years and achieved no tangible gains for either side. It was an exercise in futility perpetuated by personal hostility between the two regime leaders, Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, that ended up costing hundreds of thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars. The fallout from the war contributed directly to the subsequent Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) of 1991.
