ITN Exclusive: Saddam Hussein Interviewed on the Eve of the Gulf War (1990)

In November 1990, ITN’s Trevor McDonald travelled to Baghdad for an hour-long interview with Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein. Months earlier, on 2 August 1990, Saddam had sent Iraqi tanks across the border into Kuwait, subjected the country to a brutal military occupation, and declared Kuwait to be the 19th province of Iraq. The invasion of Kuwait was immediately met with international condemnation. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, neighbouring Iraq and Kuwait, invited the US to station troops in the kingdom to protect against an Iraqi invasion. US President George HW Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded by deploying troops to Saudi Arabia and urging other countries to follow suit. Within weeks, a US-led coalition of 35 countries was amassing military forces in the region in an operation named Desert Shield, while the United Nations was issuing resolutions calling for Iraq’s withdrawal. At the time of Trevor McDonald’s interview with Saddam, the Arabian peninsular was witness