Chemical weapons employed against the Iranians during Sacred Defense

TEHRAN (Defapress) - Although there have been extensive developments in international laws and regulations regarding the prohibition of the use of weapons of mass destruction in the world, these laws and regulations still lack sufficient executive guarantees, and mere reliance on public opinion and conscience cannot prevent the use of such weapons in wars.

During the 8 years of war of Sacred Defense, the Baath regime used chemical weapons against their people and Iranian forces. Saddam, the leader of the Baath regime of Iraq, to prevent defeat in the first months of the war, since December 1980, started sporadically using deadly chemical weapons against Iranian forces from the fourth month of this military invasion of Iran.

The countries exporting munitions, weapons, and chemical bombs, which themselves were members of the international organizations of the United Nations and the Security Council, including the UNICEF, finally announced in their reports and declarations that the Baath regime of Iraq during the years 1983 to 1988, through 19,500 air bombs, 54,000 cannonballs, and 27,000 short-range rockets poured more than 1800 tons of mustard gas, 140 tons of tabun nerve gas and 600 tons of sarin nerve gas over Iranian forces. 

In only 378 chemical bombings of Iran's border provinces and cities, the Iraqi Baath army caused the lives of more than 100,000 people and tens of thousands of Iranian families, and all kinds of permanent human and environmental pollution that had a direct impact on their future generations.

The intensity and volume of using chemical weapons against Iranian citizens and fighters during the Sacred Defense was so great that Iran has the second rank in the world for suffering from chemical bombs over its citizens 

Japan during WWII lost around 250,000 of its people from the nuclear bombing of its cities. Based on the intensity and volume of chemical weapons that the Baath regime army used against Iranians, after Japan, Iran stands in the second rank of many martyrs because of chemical bombings. 

Years after the overthrow of the Baath regime, the Iraqi authorities, in a report that they published in 1991, stated that during the years of the chemical bombing of the southern and western provinces of Iran and the brutal killing of the Kurdish areas of Iraq, more than 17,602 tons of weapons and raw materials for the production of chemical bombs was received from hundreds of companies from the United States, Soviet Union, China, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg, Egypt, India, Brazil, and Singapore.

From the summer of 1982 until the end of the war in July 1988, the Baath army continuously chemically bombed the border cities of Iran. Saddam's Baath army bombarded the operational area of the Ramadan operation, the operational areas of the Khaybar operation in Iran and the Halabja region of Iraq, the operational areas of Walfajr 2 in the northwest of Iran, and the operational areas of the Walfajr 4 operation continuously. In addition to these operations, the Baath regime used various biological and chemical bombs against Iranian fighters and Iraqi Kurdish citizens extensively and continuously in Walfajr 8 and liberation of Faw operations, Karbala 8 operations, Badr operation, 2nd Faw battle.

However, throughout the use of chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqi citizens, this human crime was accompanied by the silence of the international community.