Part of Japan's strategy to ensure oil supplies is to encourage investment in oil-supplying countries. However, such investment have never kept pace with Japan's investments in other regions. The country's expanding need for oil helped push direct investment in the Middle East to 9.3 percent of total direct investments abroad by Japanese companies in 1970, but this share had fallen to 6.2 percent by 1980 and to only 1.8 percent by 1988. The Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) was a major factor in the declining interest of Japanese investors, exemplified by the fate of a large US$3 billion petrochemical complex in Iran, which was almost complete when the Islamic revolution took place in Iran in 1979. Completion was delayed first by political concerns (when United States embassy personnel were held hostage) and then by repeated Iraqi bombing raids. The project was finally canceled in 1989, with losses for both Japanese companies and the Japanese government, which had provided insurance for the project.