Iraq's decisions to go to war, 1980 and 1990
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The driving force behind Saddam Husayn's decisions to go to war in 1980 and 1990 was his belief that foreign forces were working to destabilize the Ba'th Party regime in Iraq. Saddam believed that Iraq had a good chance of winning those wars. However, the circumstances that encouraged that belief were not new or unique to the time in which those decisions were made. What changed in the period before those war decisions was Saddam's perception of foreign meddling against him in Iraq itself.