On this day in 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad. Clinton orders attack on Iraq, June 26, 1993

On this day in 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. warships stationed in the Persian Gulf and in the Red Sea to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in downtown Baghdad.

In all, 23 Tomahawk missiles were fired from the USS Peterson in the Red Sea and from the cruiser USS Chancellorsville in the Persian Gulf, destroying the building and, according to Iraqi accounts, killing at least eight civilians.


The Sunday morning American missile attack was meant to retaliate for an Iraqi plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush during the former president’s visit to Kuwait, where he was to be honored for his role in leading the coalition that drove Iraqi invaders from that country during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

On April 13, the day before Bush was scheduled to arrive for a three-day visit, Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plan to assassinate him. They arrested 16 alleged perpetrators. The plot’s ringleaders, they said, were two Iraqi nationals. On the following day, they found a powerful car bomb hidden in a Toyota Land Cruiser, which had been driven across the Iraqi border into Kuwait City on the prior evening.

In ordering the missile strike, Clinton cited “compelling evidence” of direct involvement by Iraqi intelligence operatives in the thwarted assassination attempt. Two days later, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that the attack “was designed to damage the terrorist infrastructure of the Iraqi regime, reduce its ability to promote terrorism, and deter further acts of aggression against the United States. ...”

The regime, led by Saddam Hussein, organized a protest rally in Baghdad and vowed to retaliate against what it termed an unwarranted act of aggression — one that it said dashed any hope of reconciliation with Washington.

Source: “The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House,” By John F. Harris (2005)

