Persian Gulf War, military struggle fought principally in Kuwait and Iraq during January and February 1991. The crisis began in August 1990, when Iraq, led by President Saddam Hussein, invaded and annexed Kuwait. Between August and November the United Nations Security Council passed a series of resolutions that culminated in the demand that Iraq withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. By that time, some 500,000 allied ground, air, and naval forces—chiefly from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, Egypt, Syria, and France—were arrayed against an Iraqi army estimated at that time to number 540,000.

Under the command of U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the multinational coalition began intensive aerial bombardment of military targets in Iraq and Kuwait within 24 hours after the UN deadline expired, using advanced weaponry such as laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles, as well as less sophisticated conventional weapons. After establishing air superiority, coalition forces disabled Iraq's command and control centers, especially in Baghdad and Al Basrah of transport and communication between Baghdad and the troops in the field; and relentlessly attacked Iraq's infantry, which was dug in along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, and the 125,000-man Republican Guard in southeastern Iraq and northern Kuwait. Some Iraqi aircraft were shot down; many more were bombed in shelters or fled to Iran. Iraq retaliated by using mobile launchers to fire Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel, a noncombatant; the U.S. countered this threat with Patriot antimissile missiles.

In mid-February, with its military and civilian casualties rapidly mounting, Iraq signaled its willingness to withdraw from Kuwait. A series of conditional Iraqi offers, mediated by the Soviet Union, were rejected by the coalition. Instead, allied forces began a coordinated air-land offensive, breaching Iraq's main line of defense at the Saudi-Kuwaiti border and swiftly advancing through southern Iraq to outflank the main Iraqi force and cut off the Republican Guard's principal avenue of retreat. Within 100 hours, the city of Kuwait had been liberated, and ten of thousands of Iraqi troops had deserted, surrendered, or been captured or killed. Coalition combat losses were astonishingly light: as of February 28, when offensive operations were suspended, only 149 allied troops had been killed and 513 wounded. Damage to Kuwait was extensive, however, as retreating Iraqi forces looted the capital and set fire to most of Kuwait's oil wells.

Iraqi representatives accepted allied terms for a provisional truce on March 3 and a permanent cease-fire on April 6. Iraq agreed to pay reparations to Kuwait, reveal the location and extent of its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. Subsequently, however, UN inspectors complained that the Baghdad government was frustrating their attempts to monitor Iraqi compliance.