In and , the US intervened to protect shipping from Iranian attacks. T he war between Iran and Iraq that lasted for most of the s was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the late 20th century. Casualties for both armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands. At times the combat zones bore more than a passing resemblance to the battlefields of the First World War, with opposing trench systems arrayed along miles of front, massed infantry attacks pushed forward over the top and chemical weapon attacks an increasing method of both attack and defence.
It was in the main a large-scale ground-war, with naval operations a decidedly subordinate field of operations. Nevertheless, it is the naval aspect of the war β in particular the decision by both sides to attack enemy merchant shipping β which most resonates today as tensions between Iran and the US and its allies in the region once again begin to escalate. It represented the most sustained attack on merchant shipping since the Second World War and resulted in over civilian seaman killed, hundreds of merchant ships damaged and substantial economic losses.
Its broader significance lay in the danger such attacks posed to an international economy critically dependent on Gulf oil exports traversing the Straits of Hormuz chokepoint. From the outset of hostilities in until , Iraqi anti-shipping strikes were intermittent and primarily targeted Iranian ships in the northern Gulf. In these operations the Iraqi air force employed Mig 23s, Mirage F-1s and Super Frelon helicopters armed with Exocet anti-ship cruise missiles.
To the extent that anti-shipping operations reflected broader Iraqi strategic thinking, the operations sought to support land operations in the wider theatre. Internationally flagged vessels nevertheless also found themselves embroiled in the conflict and, in May , Atlas 1 , a Turkish oil tanker loading Iranian oil at Kharg Island, became the first tanker to be hit in the war.
The Iraqi anti-shipping escalation coincided with the fading of their hopes of an easy victory against the revolutionary regime in Tehran. Emerging stalemate and attrition on land against a potentially more powerful enemy meant that the Iraqis were forced to try a more indirect set of operations. In February a Liberian tanker, Neptunia , was hit by an Iraqi Exocet and became the first tanker to sink as a result of a missile strike.
