Iran and Iraq fought a brutal, eight-year war between 1980 and 1988, with Baghdad invading the Islamic Republic to try to seize the oil-rich province of Khuzestan soon after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Up to 1.2 million people died in the conflict, which included Iraqi use of chemical weapons against both Iranian troops and civilians.
US President Donald Trump is even more of a threat to Iran than Saddam Hussein was, government spokesman Ali Rabiei has suggested.
“Some political elites at various levels do not believe that today Trump is more violent and brutal than Saddam, endangering the lives, health, and livelihoods of Iranians,” Rabiei said, his remarks being cited by the Iranian Student News Agency.
Though Saddam Hussein's government threatened to destroy Iranian villages and cities, today Trump is threatening to destroy the country's cultural and civilization centers, Rabiei suggested, recalling Trump's controversial threats earlier this year to attack “52 Iranian sites,” including “some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture” amid raging Iranian-US tensions in the aftermath of the US assassination of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani.
Rabiei recalled that, just as Saddam Hussein tore up the Algiers Accord of 1975 on the settlement of any border disputes between Iran and Iraq in September 1980 days before launching…
