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The Civil War Of Iran Essay

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Historical Background
Throughout the 1980’s, Lebanon was engulfed in a brutal civil war that was waged between the government and different rebel factions. Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shia militant group allied with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), was one of the major forces fighting against the Lebanese government. With Ronald Reagan as acting president of the United States, he made an effort toward stabilizing the Area by sending peacekeeping forces to Beirut. In retaliation to this involvement, a suicide bomber drove a truck into a military barracks, killing 241 peacekeepers on October 23, 1983. 21 suspects were detained in suspicion of being involved in the planning of the attack; Hezbollah, in retaliation, began to kidnap American and western individuals, demanding the release of these men along with other outrageous concessions. Meanwhile, only a few countries away, the newly formed Islamic Republic of Iran was at war against its secular neighbor, Iraq. Prior to the Iranian Revolution, America had close relations with Iran’s former leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and supplied the regime with American made military equipment. The new Iranians leaders, however, had begun to exhaust these munitions from its war with Iraq, requiring more weapons and spare parts in order to effectively thwart the advances by Saddam Hussein’s army. The United States however, had vowed neutrality, stating they would not sell arms to the belligerents of the war. In the

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