Middle East Review of International Affairs

Volume 8, Number 3, September 2004

 

Saddam’s Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Iraq as a Case Study of a Middle Eastern Proliferant
by Ibrahim al-Mirashi ^*

 

Abstract

While the threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program has been diminished in the wake of the war in Iraq in 2003, studying the motivations behind Saddam’s acquisition of these weapons is necessary to understand how states in the Middle East may seek to acquire similar weapons in the future. This paper, based on captured documents from the Iraqi leadership and intelligence services that span the periods of the Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War, analyzes Iraq’s rationale for developing its WMD programs.

Full Text (PDF, 10 pages, 60.3 KB)

Note *: Ibrahim Al-Marashi (Ph.D. Oxford University) is a post-doctoral fellow at Sabanci University. He worked with the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ project on captured Iraqi state documents and was a researcher on Iran-Iraq affairs at the U.S. State Department, Congressional Research Service, and National Defense University. He was a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, as well as a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.Back