This covert war almost became hot. Through Iran, Israel supplied the Kurdish Peshmerga with portable anti-air and anti-tank missiles, captured Soviet-made 9K32 Strela-2s and 9M14 Malyutkas, to give them an edge over the Iraqi Army. Iranian artillery units deployed inside Kurdistan killed several Iraqi troops and destroyed a vast amount of Iraqi military equipment. This support from the Iranian military, which at that time was twice as large as Iraq’s, proved key to the continued success of the Kurdish revolt. However, the Shah ultimately used the Kurdish revolt to make a deal with Iraq over the Shatt-al-Arab, avoiding a potential Iran-Iraq War from breaking out in the 1970s.
