A report on Halabja massacre, United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War and Iran–Iraq War

The Halabja massacre (Kêmyabarana Helebce کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە), also known as the Halabja chemical attack, was a massacre of Kurdish people that took place on 16 March 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War in Halabja, Iraq.

American support for Ba'athist Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, in which it fought against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, military intelligence, and special operations training.

The dual-use exports from U.S. companies to Iraq was enabled by a Reagan administration policy that removed Iraq from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

Hiltermann says that when the Iraqi military turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds during the war, killing approximately 5,000 people in the town of Halabja and injuring thousands more, the Reagan administration sought to obscure Iraqi leadership culpability by suggesting, inaccurately, that the Iranians were partially responsible for the attack.

While little known outside of Iran (unlike the later Halabja massacre), the Sardasht bombing (and future similar attacks) had a tremendous effect on the Iranian people's psyche.

The Iraqgate scandal revealed that a branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), in Atlanta, Georgia, relied partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans to funnel $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989.