In the early hours of August 2, 1990, roughly 100,000 Iraqi troops and 700 tanks invaded Kuwait, overwhelming its small defense force within a day and prompting Kuwait's royal family to flee to Saudi Arabia. The invasion, driven by Saddam Hussein's territorial and financial ambitions, provoked immediate international condemnation and a UN-sanctioned coalition response that culminated in the 1991 Gulf War.
Saddam Hussein justified the invasion with claims that Kuwait was historically part of Iraq and accusations that it had stolen oil through slant drilling from the shared Rumaila field, but the deeper motive was financial: Iraq was drowning in debt from its eight-year war with Iran, and Kuwait's oil wealth offered an irresistible target.
Iraqi Republican Guard units crossed the border before dawn, and within hours had seized Kuwait City, forcing the Emir and his cabinet to escape by helicopter and car convoy into Saudi Arabia. Resistance fighters and a handful of Kuwaiti army units fought delaying actions, but the country's defenses, vastly outnumbered, collapsed within a day.
The invasion triggered the largest military buildup since Vietnam, as President George H.W. Bush assembled a 35-nation coalition under UN authority. Operation Desert Storm, launched in January 1991, expelled Iraqi forces in six weeks, but the crisis reshaped the Middle East for decades, entrenching a permanent American military presence in the Gulf and setting the stage for the 2003 Iraq War.