Member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Iranian Parliament Hishmat Allah Faht Bisha told Iranian news agency ISNA on Saturday that compensation is an open file and Baghdad will need to pay.Iranian demands for reimbursements over damage caused by the Iran-Iraq war provoked Iraqi resentment. Stretching for eight years, from 1980 until 1988, the war ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire.
“It is unreasonable that after 30 years, the file on reparation to be reopened today with the survival of the Iranian regime and the demise of the former Iraqi regime,” said Iraqi MP Ahmed Abdullah al-Jubouri.
Former Iraqi government spokesman Ali Aldabbagh told Asharq Al-Awsat that “It works against Iranians interests to provoke hostility among Iraqis.”
“Iraqis cannot continue to bear responsibility for crimes committed by the former regime, whether they are made against Iran or Kuwait,” Aldabbagh said.
He went on to say that Iraqi people should not pay for the crimes of a regime they did not play a part in, saying that the Saddam regime’s decisions were autocratic in nature and did not represent the will of Iraqis.
“Iranians know this, especially that Iraqi factions were fighting with them against Saddam's regime during the war,” he added.
On the other hand, winning political blocs in the May 12 elections remain unable to come together for forming the largest parliamentary bloc.
“It is still very difficult because of the Shiite-Shiite divide, it is not about the larger bloc and how it should be formed, but about who is prime minister,” said former parliamentarian Rahim al-Darraji.
Deputy Head of the Iraqi Center for Strategic Studies Dr. Basil Hussein told Asharq Al-Awsat that “there is no justification for Iranian demands for war compensation.”
“This issue is political and not based on international law or on UN Security Council resolutions, such demands have no real value,” he added.
Under the acres of Italian marble at the Iraqi-Iranian War Memorial in Baghdad (peanut memorial) lies scores of stone tablets with the names of the Iraqis maytyred. When I asked "how many names there were" the guide replied "you must count them."