Gulf War

The Gulf War of 1990-91 saw a US-led international Coalition expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait after Saddam Hussein's invasion, combining a five-week precision air campaign with a rapid hundred-hour ground offensive. It set the template that later Western air campaigns, and the doctrine now visible in the 2026 Iran conflict, have been built on: overwhelming precision strikes on air defences and command infrastructure before any wider engagement.

The war also established the modern pattern of Coalition-building around a Gulf conflict, with multinational naval and air forces operating from bases across the Gulf States, a structure directly echoed by the 2026 Hormuz Coalition and Project Freedom escort operations. Kuwait's role as both battleground and haven in 1990-91 similarly prefigures its recurring exposure in the current war, where Iranian strikes have repeatedly hit Kuwaiti energy and desalination infrastructure.

As a closed historical conflict, the Gulf War's relevance to 2026 coverage is comparative: analysts and military planners use it as the reference case for how quickly an air campaign against a Gulf state can escalate, and how differently the current war's targeting, reaching civilian infrastructure and inland cities that 1991's campaign largely avoided, has diverged from that template.