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This chapter analyzes the disarmament of Iraq following the First Gulf War. Disarmament controlled by inspections and monitoring was the cornerstone of the vision set out for Iraq by SCR 687 in 1991. Weapons inspections were the administrative mechanism for the verification of Iraqi disarmament, with sanctions and the threat of force providing the incentive for Iraq to disarm. But for over a decade, Saddam Hussein successfully obscured the degree to which actual disarmament had been achieved, an uncertainty assessed very differently by Paris and Washington. The establishment of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is discussed.

This chapter contains a statement made by Tony Blair in the House of Commons. It became clear after the Gulf War that the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) ambitions of Iraq were far more extensive than hitherto thought. UNSCOM, the weapons inspection team, was set up. Saddam had used the weapons against Iran, against his own people, causing thousands of deaths. His son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, revealed Iraq's crash program to produce a nuclear weapon in 1990. In 1999, a new inspections team, UNMOVIC, was set up. But Saddam refused to allow them to enter Iraq. So there they stayed, in limbo, until after Resolution 1441 when last November they were allowed to return. 1441 is a very clear Resolution. The UN should be the focus, both of diplomacy and of action.

This chapter deals with Iraq’s struggle between the years 1991-2003, against the international supervision by the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that were trying to expose Saddam’s unconventional weapons. It describes their efforts to dismantle Iraq from its non conventional weapons and production capabilities. Saddam’s cousin defection and its repercussions for the commissions’ activities, and the continuing Coalition attacks on various targets in Iraq in order to convince Saddam to cooperate with those organizations. The struggle between the sides surrounding this issue brought the Coalition countries headed by the US to decide to go to another war against Iraq (in 2003), thus ultimately bringing to the collapse of Saddam’s regime and the armed.

The chapter deals with the Iraqi efforts to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological and nuclear. It describes the various projects in each field, their history, the foreign assistance they got, the infrastructure the Iraqis built for them, their achievements and types of weapons the Iraqis produces and their arsenals, especially of the Chemical and Biological weapons. The efforts of the U. N. supervisory commissions (UNSCOM) and the international Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to disarm Iraq from those weapons and capabilities to renew the development and production of them by Iraq after 1991. The use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis against the Kurds and the Iranian forces during the war between the two countries, and the possibility of using them against coalition forces during the wars in 1991 and 2003. The Iraqi efforts to achieve a nuclear device in a crash program before the war in 1991.