Algiers Agreement

This article deals with the agreement between Iraq and Iran. For the ceasefire agreement of the same name between Ethiopia and Eritrea, see the Algiers Agreement (2000) .

Saddam Hussein and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the Algiers Agreement

The Algiers Agreement was an agreement signed on March 6, 1975 between the then Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the mediation of the Algerian President Houari Boumedienne in the Algerian capital, in which the common border on the Shatt el Arab (Persian known as Arvand Rud ) in the middle of the river and the guarantee of safety along the common border. In addition, the treaty included mutual non-interference in internal affairs. On the basis of this treaty, several agreements on the common border were signed in the same year.

Although Iran also benefited from the agreement by moving the border from the eastern Iranian river bank to the center of the river, the main beneficiary of the agreement was Iraq, as Iran withdrew all military and financial support from the inner-Iraqi Kurdish opposition after the conclusion of the agreement. As a result of the agreement, the Kurds were forcibly resettled inland on both sides of the border. After the fall of the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, as well as the resignation of Iraqi President Marshal Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and the subsequent rise of Saddam Hussein from Vice President to Iraqi President on July 16, 1979, the ideological differences between Iran as Islamic theocracy and Iraq with its secular Ba'ath government is growing in size.

In the spring of 1980, the Iraqi-Iranian relations deteriorated dramatically as the Shiite organization "Party of Islamic call" (so-called. Dawa Party attacks on facilities of the Ba'ath Party and a failed assassination attempt on the then Iraqi Foreign Minister) Tariq Aziz undertook . The Iraqi Ba'ath government in Baghdad accused the Islamic government in Tehran of controlling these attacks and subsequently deported 40,000 followers of the Shiite Dawa party from inland to the Iranian border.

On September 17, 1980, the Algiers Agreement was terminated by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who had signed the agreement a good five and a half years earlier as Vice President at the time. In a speech to the Iraqi National Assembly, he tore up the treaty and declared it null and void. Five days later, on September 22, 1980, the attack by Iraq on Iran with nine divisions on a 600 km wide front began the First Gulf War .

Web links

Commons : Algiers Agreement  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Algiers Agreement - 1975

Individual evidence

1. ^ Treaty concerning the Frontier and Neighborly relations between Iran and Iraq ( Memento of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )