The Persian Gulf War

        The origins of the Persian Gulf War began with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's invasion of neighboring country Kuwait in August 1990. Iraq, having just finished a long-running war with Iraq, accused Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of artificially lowering oil prices, accusing them of being under the control of Western oil-buying nations. Hussein started gathering troops on Kuwait's border, and much to the rest of the world's surprise, he declared Kuwait an "artificial state" that was carved out of Iraq by colonialists. After a failed attempt by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to negotiate peace between the two, on August 2, 1990, Hussein ordered the officially ordered the invasion of Kuwait.

        This move shocked Iraq's neighboring Middle Eastern countries, and, opposite to what Hussein thought would happen, they asked the United States and other Western powers to intervene and stop him. The United Nations Security Council responded by demanding Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, and the United States sent fighter planes to Saudi Arabia as a safeguard against any possible further Iraqi expansion under Operation Desert Shield. 

        Despite this, Iraq increased its troop count in Kuwait to 300,000. Hussein tried to garner support for his invasion from the rest of the Muslim world, but his efforts mostly failed. Thus, in order to maximize his troop count, he signed a hasty treaty with Iran, a longtime rival. 

        By January of 1990, the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of "all necessary means" to be used against Iraq in order to push it out of Kuwait, creating a coalition force of personnel most from the United States but as well as Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. On the other side, Iraq had the support of Jordan, Algeria, the Sudan, Yemen, Tunisia and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The United Nations coalition effort, known as Operation Desert Storm, used the latest military technology to quickly establish air superiority in the region.

        In February, the coalition shifted its focus to the ground, launching a massive allied ground offensive, called Operation Desert Sabre, on February 24. In the following days, the coalition troops were quickly encircled and defeated and were forced out of Kuwait and back into Iraq. Following this victory, President George H. W. Bush declared a ceasefire on February 29, officially ending the Persian Gulf War. The peace treaty signed forced Iraq to recognize Kuwait's sovereignty and to get rid of all its "weapons of mass destruction", which included nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. This vague terminology would later resurface in the Iraq War under George W. Bush, who would initiate a war with Iraq under the accusations that Hussein still harbored "weapons of mass destruction". The second Persian Gulf War, more often dubbed the Iraq War, began on March 20, 2003.

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/persian-gulf-war

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-us-history/period-9/apush-1990s-america/a/the-gulf-war