Episode 1 - Old Newscast: The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, 1991 (Part 1)

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the 17th January 1991, a US led coalition began its air offensive into neighbouring Kuwait, which had been invaded the year before by the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. Codenamed operation ‘Desert Storm’, it marked the defining chapter of the first Gulf War - a conflict which has since been held up as an exemplar of Western military and diplomatic dominance.

Adam is joined by three BBC reporters who were in the region at the time - Kate Adie, Justin Webb, and Jeremy Bowen.

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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenter was Adam Fleming. It was made by Rufus Gray and Chris Flynn. The technical producers were Mike Regaard, Rohan Madison and Dafydd Evans . The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.9	Hello, this is the first in the three-part series of old newscasts that we're doing on the First Gulf War.
0:10.1	The date we're looking at in particular, our jumping off point is the 17th of January, 1991,
0:15.9	the start of the air offensive phase of what was known as Operation Desert Storm.
0:20.4	The reason for Operation Desert Storm
0:22.6	was because of the actions of the oppressive dictator Saddam Hussein, who had led Iraq since
0:28.0	1979. At times, the US had actually supported his regime, but in 1990, Iraq invaded its
0:35.0	neighbor Kuwait, because of disputes over territory, oil and debt,
0:39.6	something that had been condemned by a whole load of countries all across the world.
0:43.8	The West was also concerned by the threat that Iraq posed to other countries in the region,
0:48.9	like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
0:51.3	And the US had assembled a large coalition of countries to defend Saudi Arabia.
0:56.8	Western troops were joined by a number of Arab nations in an unprecedented display of global unity
1:03.0	against Saddam Hussein. In November 1990, the UN Security Council gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum
1:10.1	that Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait by the 15th of January 1991.
1:15.7	He didn't.
1:16.5	So we're looking at the 17th of January, two days later, when those allied countries have gathered troops mostly in Saudi Arabia, where Kate Adi and Justin Webb started the war.
1:27.1	Jeremy Bowen would eventually end up in Iraq,
1:29.5	and we've gathered them to go through events. And something that features quite often in the
1:33.7	conversation is the fear of Saddam Hussein's so-called Scud missiles. Now, these weren't the most
1:40.0	accurate weapons, but they could carry biological and chemical weapons. So they were really scary
1:46.0	and people were really worried about them. So let's catch up with the three legendary reporters
	...

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