1991 Iraqi missile attacks against Israel

Significance

Iraq's Scud missile campaign against Israel, launched on the same day as the coalition's aerial bombardment of Kuwait, was a deliberate attempt to fracture the Gulf War coalition by provoking an Israeli military response. Iraqi planners calculated that Muslim-majority states contributing forces to the American-led coalition would withdraw if Israel entered the conflict by striking Iraq. The strategy was neutralized through coordinated diplomatic and material pressure: Jordanian King Hussein bin Talal had persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir weeks before the campaign began to avoid violating Jordanian airspace, and the Bush administration increased defense aid to Israel specifically to counter the missile barrages and discourage retaliation. Israel's restraint preserved coalition unity through both the air campaign and the ground offensive that began on 23 February 1991. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens later described the attacks as having caused extensive damage inside Israel, underscoring the domestic cost of that restraint. The episode demonstrated how non-belligerent states could become instruments of an adversary's coalition strategy, and how diplomatic management of a third party proved as operationally consequential as battlefield decisions.