Although the United States and Britain maintained a public stance of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war, Mark Phythian demonstrates that the governments encouraged and facilitated the illegal supply of weapons to Iraq, and to a lesser extent Iran, in order to tilt the war in Baghdad's favor.

The objectives of the covert policy agenda were: to keep Iran and Iraq at war so neither country could dominate oil supply or threaten the lower Gulf states, to promote domestic industries and trade, and to secure intelligence information.

While the United States and other countries believed they were exploiting Iraq for their own purposes, the strategy backfired and the policy instead fueled the very conflict it was intended to contain, fortified Saddam Hussein's power, and led to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War.

This disquieting look at the duplicity of the American and British governments and their covert role in arming Iraq provides important lessons for reshaping both foreign policy and arms export policy to control the dangerous proliferation of weapons in regions throughout the world.