Also known as the First Persian Gulf War, the Iran-Iraq War was an open conflict fought between Iran and Iraq from 1980-1988. The war was initiated by Iraq with the intention of solving a territorial dispute between the two countries but quickly escalated into a dispute of who would guide the Middle East. In the context of the time, Iran had previously been the undisputed power of the region, but after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 Iran was on the decline and Iraq was on the rise. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel were as powerful in relation to their neighbors as they are today and thus it was believed that the winner of the Iran-Iraq War would be able to deeply influence their neighbors. This was extremely important due to Saddam Hussein's policy of pan-Arabism and that Iran was attempting to spread Shia Islam to other Middle Eastern countries. The war took place during the Cold War but cannot be called a proxy war like other conflicts in the era. The Soviet Union and the United States gave aid to both Iran and Iraq. Despite the War being fought in the late 20th century, it is in many ways similar to World War I in that the war was dominated by large infantry assaults against entrenched enemies and featured large scale use of chemical weapons.