The desperate battle for the once thriving port of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, has become the longest and most crucial campaign in the 6 1/2- year Iran-Iraq war. More than 20,000 Iranian troops and 10,000 Iraqis have died since Jan. 9, when Iranian Revolutionary Guards attacked Iraqi defenses along the Shatt al Arab, a broad waterway that forms the southern frontier of the warring nations, and advanced on Basra some ten miles away. The stakes in the fighting, which has settled into a ferocious standoff a few miles outside the city, could not be higher: an Iranian victory would demoralize...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
