Ask a random person on the street what year was the first iraq war and you’ll probably get a blank stare or a guess about 2003. It's weird. We remember the green-tinted night vision footage on CNN, but the actual dates have turned into a sort of historical soup in the collective memory.
The short answer is 1990. Well, mostly.
Actually, the shooting started in 1991. If you want to be a pedant about it—and history usually requires a bit of pedantry—the conflict known as the Persian Gulf War kicked off when Iraqi tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border on August 2, 1990. But for most Americans sitting at home watching Peter Arnett report from a hotel balcony in Baghdad, the "war" was 1991. That was Operation Desert Storm.
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It’s easy to confuse this with the 2003 invasion. Honestly, having the same last name for two different presidents (Bush) and the same primary antagonist (Saddam Hussein) makes the timeline feel like a repetitive movie franchise. But the 1990-1991 conflict was a completely different beast. It was fast. It was sanctioned by the UN. It had a massive international coalition.
And then it just... stopped.
The August Surprise: Why 1990 Changed Everything
Saddam Hussein was broke. That's the part people forget. After the grueling eight-year war with Iran—which, by the way, was basically a stalemate that left millions dead—Iraq was drowning in debt. Saddam looked at his neighbor, Kuwait, and saw a "bank" with a massive oil reserve and a very small army.
On August 2, 1990, the invasion began. It wasn't a long fight. Kuwait fell in about two days.
The world panicked. If Iraq held Kuwait, they controlled a massive chunk of the global oil supply. Plus, they were sitting right on the border of Saudi Arabia. If Saddam kept going, he’d have his hand on the throat of the global economy. This is why the response was so fast. President George H.W. Bush famously declared, "This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."
By the fall of 1990, the US was moving hundreds of thousands of troops into the Saudi desert. This phase was called Operation Desert Shield. It was a waiting game. A massive, expensive, tense waiting game. Diplomacy was failing, and the UN set a deadline for Iraq to get out: January 15, 1991.
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Saddam didn't budge. He called it the "Mother of All Battles."
1991: The Year the Sky Turned Black
When people ask what year was the first iraq war, they are usually thinking of the air campaign. That started on January 17, 1991.
It was the first "high-tech" war. We saw "smart bombs" for the first time. We saw Scud missiles hitting Israel and Saudi Arabia, and Patriot missiles trying to intercept them. It was a 24-hour news cycle spectacle. For about six weeks, the Coalition (which included 35 countries—even some Arab nations like Egypt and Syria) just pounded Iraqi positions from the sky.
The ground war? That was the crazy part. It lasted exactly 100 hours.
On February 24, 1991, the ground invasion started. The Iraqi army, which was supposedly the fourth largest in the world at the time, basically folded. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to news crews and even overhead drones. By February 28, a ceasefire was declared. Kuwait was liberated.
But it wasn't a clean ending.
As the Iraqi troops retreated, they set fire to over 600 oil wells. If you look at photos from 1991, the sky looks like midnight in the middle of the day. It was an environmental catastrophe on a scale we hadn't really seen before. Firefighters from all over the world, including legendary crews from Texas like Red Adair's team, had to fly in to cap the wells.
Why the Date Matters for E-E-A-T
Historians like Rick Atkinson (who wrote Crusade) emphasize that this war changed how the US military operates. It moved away from the "Vietnam syndrome." It proved that a massive, overwhelming force could win quickly with minimal casualties—or so we thought at the time.
The 1991 date is also crucial because of the "no-fly zones." Even though the shooting "stopped" in February 1991, the US and UK kept patrolling Iraqi skies for the next 12 years. Technically, the conflict never really ended; it just simmered until 2003.
Common Misconceptions About the 1990-1991 Timeline
You've probably heard people say the US "should have finished the job" in 1991. This is a huge point of contention.
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- The Goal wasn't Regime Change: Unlike the 2003 war, the UN mandate in 1991 was strictly to liberate Kuwait. Taking Baghdad wasn't part of the plan.
- The Coalition would have Broken: If Bush had pushed to Baghdad, countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt would have likely pulled out. They wanted Saddam out of Kuwait, not necessarily a US-occupied Iraq.
- The Highway of Death: This was a gruesome stretch of road where Coalition planes destroyed a retreating Iraqi convoy. The images were so horrific that it actually accelerated the ceasefire. It looked like a massacre, and the Bush administration didn't want the "clean" war to look like a slaughter.
The Long-Term Fallout
If you were born after 1990, the First Iraq War might seem like a small blip compared to the 20-year wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. But the 1991 conflict set the stage for everything.
It's the reason Al-Qaeda started targeting the US. Osama bin Laden was furious that "infidel" American troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia (the land of the two holy mosques) during and after the war. That grievance directly led to the 1998 embassy bombings and, eventually, 9/11.
It also led to the sanctions. Throughout the 1990s, Iraq was under a brutal embargo. This caused massive suffering for the Iraqi people while Saddam continued to live in palaces. It created the "unfinished business" vibe that the neoconservatives in the early 2000s used to justify the second invasion.
Actionable Steps for History Buffs and Students
If you're researching this for a project or just trying to win a bar trivia night, keep these specific markers in mind:
- August 2, 1990: The invasion of Kuwait (The "Why").
- January 17, 1991: The start of Operation Desert Storm (The "Air War").
- February 24, 1991: The start of the ground war (The "100 Hours").
- February 28, 1991: The Ceasefire.
To really understand the nuance, look up the "Schwarzkopf Briefing." General Norman Schwarzkopf gave a masterclass in military communication during his "Mother of All Briefings" in February 1991. It’s on YouTube. Watch it. It shows the sheer scale of the logistics involved.
Also, check out the Frontline documentary The Gulf War. It’s probably the most comprehensive deep dive into the political maneuvering between the Bush White House and the Iraqi regime. You’ll see that the war wasn't just about oil; it was a complex mess of post-Cold War power dynamics.
Understanding that what year was the first iraq war points to 1990-1991 is more than just a date check. It's about recognizing the moment the world shifted from the Cold War era into the messy, unipolar world we live in now.
Don't just memorize the year. Look at the "Highway of Death" photos and the oil fires. Read about the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that the US encouraged and then abandoned in 1991. That's where the real history is.
Next Steps for Deeper Research:
- Compare the UN Resolution 660 (1990) with the later 1441 (2002).
- Research the "Vietnam Syndrome" and how the 1991 victory temporarily "cured" it for the American public.
- Track the price of oil from July 1990 to March 1991 to see the economic volatility firsthand.