pletely.
For dual containment to be effective, the US had to be willing to support large US military forces in the Persian Gulf, and to have the will to use them if either Iran or Iraq got out of line รป rather than use the one to check the other, as the US had done in the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, Iran and Iraq had to be kept isolated from countries in their immediate region and be prevented from receiving support from the outside world.
Iraq, which had long been a pariah in most of the Arab world because of its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, had, by 1997, acquired increased support from Arab countries, such as Egypt and Syria, while enjoying support from Russia, as far back as 1993.
During his first term, Saddam Hussein had challenged Clinton on a number of occasions. In June 1993, following an abortive Iraqi attempt to assassinate former US President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait, the US bombed an intelligence center in Baghdad, In October 1994, Saddam moved his army toward Kuwait, and the US responded by airlifting military forces to Kuwait and warning Iraq not to invade, a threat that achieved its purpose. The US was less successful in August 1996, however, when Iraqi troops, in cooperation with the KDP (the Masud Barzani faction of the Kurdish opposition), attacked the rival PUK faction of Jallal Talabani, which had been aided by Iran, and drove it from Irbil, thus severely damaging US efforts to force a united opposition against the Iraqi regime. The US responded by expanding its "no-fly" zone in southern Iraq to the 33rd parallel, and by bombarding Iraqi air defense installations. France, which had hitherto cooperated with the US in maintaining the "no-fly" zone, did not cooperate in the newly extended part of the zone. Furthermore, the Arab world viewed the limited US cruise missile attacks as worse than useless, stirring up Arab popular anger while not threatening the bases of Saddam's power.
Russian...