Saddam Hussein’s paranoia over the possibility of an internal uprising combined with political and personal ambitions prevailed in the decision to launch an invasion of Iran. At the same time, after the 1979 revolution, Tehran took a stubborn stance on the Ba'ath regime, whose secularity and marginalization of the Shiite population was seen by Iranian clerics as "blasphemy." In the midst of high tensions on both sides, Iraq took the initiative and attacked first, however the Iraqi gambit turned into a bloody eight-year war that economically exhausted both nations and took hundreds of thousands of lives. With usage of war poisons, attacks on neutral ships and bloody (mostly) positional warfare, the Iran-Iraq conflict is irresistibly reminiscent of World War I, but in the case of Iran and Iraq, the relentless sacrifice of all national resources has not yielded clear "fruits of victory." The war without a winner, as the Iran-Iraq conflict is known led to a new Iraqi aggression as early as 1990, which destroyed all tolerance of the United States and allies for Saddam Hussein's regime. The United States, with its uncritical support for Iraq during the 1980s, directly led to Saddam's conviction that Washington was ready to support his every move in the region. The long - reaching echo of the Iran - Iraq war is still felt in the region and the world today, through the prism of the Iranian - Saudi geopolitical party in the Middle East and the role of the United States in it. The war without a winner had one definite loser, Saddam Hussein, who lost his life in 2003 as Iran becames a likely long-term winner of the war that caused the downfall of the Islamic Republic's main adversary in the region and the strengthening of pro-Iranian forces in the Middle East.