Jeremy Bowen: Trump has called for an Iran uprising but the lessons from Iraq in 1991 loom large

I know what can happen when an American president calls for an uprising and then doesn’t get involved when it starts. That’s because I’ve seen it before.

In 1991, on 15 February to be precise, the first President George Bush made a speech that he probably regretted until the end of his days.

It was at the factory in Massachusetts where they built Patriot interceptors, which were making their debut as the most advanced weapon of that first Gulf war.

Patriots, which shoot down incoming missiles, still have a vital role in Ukraine and in the war with Iran.

When Bush went to the Patriot factory, Desert Storm, the massive military operation to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait was under way.

The combined air forces of the US, the UK and their allies were hammering them -and Iraq’s cities.

Tens of thousands of allied troops were massed on Iraq and Kuwait’s borders for the ground war, which was still nine days away.

I was in Baghdad, my hands full reporting the war.

A few days earlier the Americans had killed more than 400 civilians in an airstrike on a shelter in the suburb of Amiriyah.

The Americans and British claimed, wrongly, that it was a command centre, but I’d seen the bodies, almost all children, women and old men, and seen the still smouldering shelter, so I knew that wasn’t true.

Back then, I didn’t notice Bush’s speech.

But 35 years later I think about it every time I hear Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu telling the people of Iran that they’re being given a once in a generation chance to overthrow the Islamic Republic, without promising them direct military support.

Bush was at the Patriot factory to praise the workers who made what was seen as a miracle weapon.

In a couple of quick paragraphs, he said Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein should comply with the United Nations resolutions to pull out of Kuwait.

Unlike the current war with Iran, the first Gulf war had the legal authorisation of the UN Security Council.

Bush then uttered a couple of lines that had immense consequences.

“There’s another way for the bloodshed to stop…and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside…”

The workers whooped and applauded, and the president went back to rallying Americans who were in their first major war since the disaster of Vietnam.