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| 1989, Feb. 14 |
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| Ayatollah Khomeini (See June 3) formally authorized the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, for allegedly defaming Islam. Khomeini called for a worldwide ban on the book's publication. Rushdie immediately went into hiding. The Iranian government later put a bounty of $1 million on the novelist's head. | 1 |
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| 1990, Jan. 13 |
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| Turkey began diverting water from the Euphrates River to a reservoir behind the Ataturk Dam in southeastern Anatolia. The flow of water beneath the dam dropped by 75 percent for nearly one month, angering the governments of Syria and Iraq. The Turkish action highlighted the scarcity of water throughout the wider region and the delicate diplomatic problems that it posed. As countries worked to raise agricultural output, squabbling intensified over rights to river water and underground aquifers (especially between Israel and Jordan). | 2 |
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| Aug. 2 |
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| IRAQI INVASION OF KUWAIT, which succumbed within hours after offering feeble resistance. The attack followed a Kuwaiti refusal to cancel billions of dollars in Iraqi war debt accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War. Iraq also charged Kuwait with stealing oil from the Rumayla oil field, shared by Iraq and Kuwait, and with illegally exceeding its OPEC-assigned production quota, thereby depressing world oil prices to the detriment of Iraq. After the invasion, Kuwait was annexed and converted into Iraq's 19th province. | 3 |
| Acting under the authority of the UN, the U.S. assembled an international military coalition during the late summer and autumn of 1990. Most of the troops and equipment were supplied by the U.S. and Britain, but the coalition also included token forces from many Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, the various Gulf states, Egypt, and Syria. As leader of the coalition, the U.S. insisted on an unconditional Iraqi pullout from Kuwait and refused to link Iraqi compliance with other regional disputes such as the Palestinian question. On Nov. 30, Iraq formally rejected UN Resolution 678, which demanded a complete withdrawal by Jan. 15, 1991. | 4 |
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