UNMOVIC Report on Iraq

Date: February 14, 2003 • Location: Washington, United States

Iraq disarmament crisis: UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix reports to the United Nations Security Council that disarmament inspectors have found no weapons of mass destruction in Ba'athist Iraq.

In the Iraq disarmament crisis of the early 2000s, Iraq, led by president Saddam Hussein, was pressured by the United States and its other adversaries to destroy alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—biological, chemical, and nuclear. In the 1980s, Iraq had programs to produce all three, but in the 1990s, the programs were ended, and the WMD were destroyed. The U.S.' rationale for its 2003 invasion of Iraq was that the country still had WMD, and would use them.