• PugJesus@lemmy.worldM
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    12 hours ago

    US, USSR, China, the UK, France, was there any major power not selling to both sides of that fucking conflict?

  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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    16 hours ago

    I feel like everyone did a partner swap during the Iran Iraq war at least once.

    Iran

    established positive ties with many countries including Syria (under Hafez al-Assad), Libya (under Gaddafi), North Korea (under Kim Il Sung), Bulgaria (under Todor Zhivkov), Poland, Yugoslavia, East Germany, China (under Deng Xiaoping) and eventually the Western Bloc (after Switzerland who indirectly sold Iran western ammunition, Argentina also reached out to Iran proposing arms sales and agreed to also train Iranians in TOW production) to purchase arms for the IRGC. Iran’s recovering army, however, had its own logistics support who reached out to Western Bloc countries including the United States and, indirectly, Israel to purchase ammunition and spare parts for their Western-made military equipment. Syria, Libya (who supplied Iran with approximately US$900 million dollars worth of free arms and 30 Scud-B missiles[5] and North Korea (who later supplied Iran with between 200 and 300 Soviet-built Scud-B and Scud-C missiles and transferred missile production technology to Iran)[6] were the first suppliers of arms to Iran. Eastern Bloc followed suit under financial pressures as the Soviet Union no longer had strict policies on sanctioning Iran. Rafighdoost maintains that the equipment Iran received from the United States following the Iran-Contra affair, were non-functional and broken, and were only made usable after repairs. He was also contacted by a third-party with ties to Switzerland who agreed to provide Iran with Western-made ammunition. Rafighdoost also claims that he was approached by an Israeli arms dealer in his hotel room while he was in Switzerland, and he rejected him.[citation needed]

    Iraq

    Iraq’s army was primarily equipped with weaponry it had previously purchased from the Soviet Union and its satellites in the preceding decade. During the war, it also purchased billions of dollars’ worth of advanced equipment from France, China, Egypt, Germany and other sources.[10][better source needed] Iraq’s three main suppliers of weaponry during the war were the Soviet Union followed by China and then France.[11] The United States sold Iraq over $200 million in helicopters, which were used by the Iraqi military in the war.