What were the causes of the Gulf War?

Here are input from different users:

Iraq, without justification or excuse, invaded and conquered Kuwait in order to gain control of its oil wealth and, quite possibly, as a prelude to doing the same thing to Saudi Arabia. The United States, with modest help from allies and other Arab states assembled a large army and forced Iraq out.

• The gulf war was caused in the most part by Saddam Hussein's need for oil. He had amassed a huge debt with western Europe during the Iran-Iraq war and needed some way of re-paying that money. Hussein had also caught Kuwait exceeding quota's set out by OPEC which drove the price of oil down and making Iraq lose money. Iraq did also not have direct access to the Persian Gulf which would help in the exporting and importing of goods.

• Saddam considered Kuwait as being a rogue providence. He also disliked Kuwait due to the fact it is mainly Shi'ite. From everything I have read, Saddam apparently brought it up to one of his closest allies, the French, and received little to no resistance on the thought of an invasion. During this period, the Iraq government was the top buyer of French military goods and the French had the majority of oil contracts in the country. Saddam was on the verge of canceling the Russian contracts and awarding them to the French. Saddam also accused the Kuwait government of stealing oil from the oil rich Basra area. Apparently their rigs were very close to the borders and Saddam felt that the oil was coming from Iraq's reserves.

• America's involvement in the war was started by Kuwait asking for help getting invaders out of their country.

The Gulf War, aka Desert Storm, was the result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Here's the truth

There were no innocent parties in that war.

The whole thing started when Kuwait used a "slant drill"--a machine that can drill an oil well at an angle--to tap the al-Rumaila oilfield.

There was historical enmity as well--Iraq had borrowed $14 billion from Kuwait to pay for the Iran-Iraq War. They were going to attempt to pay the debt by forcing the price of oil up, but Kuwait dumped a LOT of oil on the market, causing the price to go down.

On July 25, 1990, US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein, "we have no opinion on Arab-Arab issues, such as your border disagreement with Kuwait." Saddam translated that to mean, "we don't care what you do" and, on August 2, annexed Kuwait into Iraq.

First answer by Michael Montagne. Last edit by Jmowreader. Contributor trust: 137 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 343 [recommend question]