The first of these was a brief, conventionally fought war in March–April 2003, in which a combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. These actions prompted the allies to prohibit Iraqi aircraft from operating in designated “no-fly” zones over these areas. The Japanese sought to converge three naval forces on Leyte Gulf, and successfully diverted the U.S. Third Fleet with a decoy. Member states of the UN Security Council, however, differed in their opinion of the degree to which Iraq had cooperated with inspections.On March 17, 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom, which had begun to mass troops on Iraq’s border, dispensed with further negotiations, and U.S. Pres. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground, U.S. President George H.W. Estimates of the number of Iraqi troops in the Kuwait theatre range from 180,000 to 630,000, and estimates of Iraqi military deaths range from 8,000 to 50,000. Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by This World War II clash followed the Allied landing at the Philippine island of Leyte in October 1944. For nearly two years after the UN-brokered cease-fire in the Persian Gulf, the governments of Iraq and Iran failed to initiate conversations toward a permanent peace treaty. Though the long-running war between Iran and Iraq had ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in August 1988, by mid-1990 the two states had yet to begin negotiating a permanent peace treaty. Over the next few weeks, this sustained aerial bombardment, which had been named There are no official figures for the Iraqi military operation, leading to vastly differing figures of combatants and casualties. Iraq War, also called Second Persian Gulf War, (2003–11), conflict in Iraq that consisted of two phases. As the other allies gradually left the coalition, U.S. and British aircraft continued to patrol Iraqi skies, and UN inspectors sought to guarantee that all illicit weapons were destroyed. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Hussein’s forces brutally suppressed uprisings by Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi’ites in the south. Intended by coalition leaders to be a “limited” war fought at minimum cost, it would have lingering effects for years to come, both in the Persian Gulf region and around the world. Iraq’s failure to cooperate with inspectors led in 1998 to a brief resumption of hostilities (Operation Desert Fox). The nation’s deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, who escaped Baghdad when the capital fell.