Iran fought Iraq between 1980 and 1988. It was unable to defeat Saddam Hussein, but it exhausted his regime economically. Iraq emerged from the war it fought with the Islamic Republic bankrupt. Saddam Hussein did not know what to do with a massive army that had fought a long war. He decided to take this army into Kuwait after failing to understand that he had to work on finding other types of solutions, including working with neighboring countries to reach understandings that would lead to internal solutions in Iraq. These solutions would begin with reducing the size of the Iraqi army, which had become closer to being an Iraqi problem.
