Navy Bases
Headquartered in Basra, under Saddam the 5,000-man navy was the smallest branch of the armed forces in early 1988, and, in contrast to the Iranian navy, had played virtually no role in the war. The Iraqi Navy, never a match for Iran's, was virtually inactive since the war broke out.
At the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq had CSSC-3 Silkworm coastal defense missiles deployed to two sites, al-Faw in eastern iraq and Ras al-Qulayah naval base in Kuwait. These sites covered both the iraqi and Kuwaiti coastlines and are intended to defend against the approach of allied warships and a US amphibious assault.
On 02 February 1999 US jets dropped precision guided bombs on a battery of Iraqi CSSC-3 Silkworm coastal defense missiles which had been recently deployed to the al-Faw peninsula at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. From there they potentially threatened US naval vessels and commercial shipping off the coast of Kuwait, the justification given for the US attack, but they were also within range of downtown Kuwait City.
