Proliferation Incentives, Supplies and Controls

Just as western states formerly regarded chemical weapons as a deterrent, developing states may consider them as a means of deterring an enemy from launching a chemical attack by possessing the capability to 

Once on the offensive in the spring of 1988, the Iraqi forces revealed that they had integrated chemical weapons much more fully into their firing plan and had improved their operational doctrine. The Chief of Medical Services of the Ahaz military region described an attack on Koushk and the Majnoon islands (25 June 1988), 

An Italian military correspondent described the chemical tactics in more detail, including a bombardment over 12 hours in which mustard gas was spread over a sector 30 kilometres broad by 20 kilometres deep. Only in the middle of the sector was nerve agent used, and, as the Iranian soldiers fled from the middle, they left a corridor through the sector behind them. After about five hours, the nerve agents had dissipated sufficiently to enable the Iraqi tanks to drive along the corridor.  

Quite apart from the battlefield successes, Iraq also demonstrated that a major chemical war could be waged in modern circumstances. In the first place, Iraq managed to sustain its chemical warfare capabilities from an 

The chemical trade, none the less, differs in several respects from the broader trade in military equipment and weaponry. Even at a time when the development, production, storage and transfer of chemical weapons 

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