This conflict has been brewing for centuries. Today's Iraq and Iran have conflicting interests and disputes over borders and control that date back to the Ottoman Turkish Empire as well as the Persian Empire under the Safavids (Hiro, 1991). The majority of this war was fought by Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. Both political leaders are fighting to protect what they thought was theirs and what they wanted to take from the other side. Iran's main arguments in favor of the conflict were either to seize Iraq's oil fields, thus giving them trading chips to secure the heavy firepower that Iraq had and which the Iran desperately needed it. , or to attack the Iraqi artillery which had deployed a continuous barrage on the Iranian civilian zone since the start of the war (Hiro, 1991). The second option became the main strategy due to the great emotion of the Iranian leaders, the fear that national unity would disintegrate if a ceasefire were to be adopted and the fact that oil was now a commodity and that incomes began to increase rapidly. . Iran showed its true colors by displaying its contempt for the international community's demand for a ceasefire and, at the start of Ramadan, launched its offensive on the southern border, changing its status from invaded to invader ( Hiro, 1991). Saddam Hussein chose the war strategy that the Germans made famous, blitzkrieg. The Iraqi army ravaged the regions of Iran it had conquered. They left a trail of destruction behind them. An example is that of the 356 villages inhabited by Arabs in the province of Khuzestan transformed into piles of ashes completely eviscerated from the map (McCuen, 1987). Despite all the efforts made by the Iraqi army, the Iranian military ...... middle of paper ...... feed themselves or their families. The resources used could have helped gain political allies, stop the war assuming people could actually talk about their problems, and even possibly stop Iran and Iraq from tearing each other apart and leaving nothing of each side of the barrier. Shazly, N.E. (1998). The Gulf Tanker War: Iran and Iraq's maritime swordplay. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hiro, D. (2002). Iraq: in the eye of the storm. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press. Hiro, D. (1991). The longest war: the Iran-Iraq military conflict. Routledge. Hunt, C. (2005). The history of Iraq. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. McCuen, G.E. (1987). Iran-Iraq War. Hudson, WI: Gary E. McCuen.Reuters. (2003). Saddam Iraq. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.Roskin, M.G. (2010). Political science: an introduction (11th ed.). Pearson Education.