paragraph_text: On September 22, 1980, the Iraqi army invaded the Iranian Khuzestan, and the Iran–Iraq War began. Although the forces of Saddam Hussein made several early advances, by mid 1982, the Iranian forces successfully managed to drive the Iraqi army back into Iraq. In July 1982, with Iraq thrown on the defensive, Iran took the decision to invade Iraq and conducted countless offensives in a bid to conquer Iraqi territory and capture cities, such as Basra. The war continued until 1988, when the Iraqi army defeated the Iranian forces inside Iraq and pushed the remaining Iranian troops back across the border. Subsequently, Khomeini accepted a truce mediated by the UN. The total Iranian casualties in the war were estimated to be 123,220–160,000 KIA, 60,711 MIA, and 11,000–16,000 civilians killed.

paragraph_text: After the end of World War I, Renault FTs were exported to many countries (Belgium, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, Iran, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and Yugoslavia). Renault FT tanks were used by most nations having armoured forces, generally as their prominent tank type.

paragraph_text: The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran, northeastern Syria and Kuwait), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran (Elam, Media, Parthia and Persia), Anatolia / Asia Minor and Armenian Highlands (Turkey's Eastern Anatolia Region, Armenia, northwestern Iran, southern Georgia, and western Azerbaijan), the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan), Cyprus and the Arabian Peninsula. The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history.

paragraph_text: Mesopotamia is a historical region in West Asia situated within the Tigris -- Euphrates river system, in modern days roughly corresponding to most of Iraq plus Kuwait, the eastern parts of Syria, Southeastern Turkey, and regions along the Turkish -- Syrian and Iran -- Iraq borders.

paragraph_text: Bertie Felstead (28 October 1894 – 22 July 2001) was a British soldier, World War I veteran and centenarian who gained fame at the end of his life as (or was believed so at the time to be) the last surviving soldier to have taken part in the Christmas truce of 1914.

paragraph_text: The Forty Years' War (; 1385 – 1424; also Ava-Pegu War or the Mon-Burmese War) was a military conflict fought between the Burmese-speaking Kingdom of Ava and the Mon-speaking Kingdom of Hanthawaddy Pegu. The war was fought during two separate periods: 1385 to 1391, and 1401 to 1424, interrupted by two truces of 1391–1401 and 1403–1408. It was fought primarily in today's Lower Burma and also in Upper Burma, Shan State and Rakhine State. It ended in a stalemate, preserving the independence of Hanthawaddy, and effectively ending Ava's efforts to rebuild the erstwhile Pagan Kingdom.

paragraph_text: Masoud Barzani succeeded his father, the Kurdish nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani, as the leader of the KDP in 1979. Working closely with his brother Idris Barzani until Idris's death, Barzani and various other Kurdish groups fought the forces of the Iraqi government in Baghdad during the Iran–Iraq War. For much of this time, the Kurdish leadership was exiled to Iran.

paragraph_text: The term middle east as a noun and adjective was common in the 19th century in nearly every context except diplomacy and archaeology. An uncountable number of places appear to have had their middle easts from gardens to regions, including the United States. The innovation of the term "Near East" to mean the holdings of the Ottoman Empire as early as the Crimean War had left a geographical gap. The East Indies, or "Far East," derived ultimately from Ptolemy's "India Beyond the Ganges." The Ottoman Empire ended at the eastern border of Iraq. "India This Side of the Ganges" and Iran had been omitted. The archaeologists counted Iran as "the Near East" because Old Persian cuneiform had been found there. This usage did not sit well with the diplomats; India was left in an equivocal state. They needed a regional term.

paragraph_text: The Gulf War (2 August 199028 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Shield (2 August 199017 January 1991) for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm (17 January 199128 February 1991) in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. The war is also known under other names, such as the Persian Gulf War, First Gulf War, Gulf War I, Kuwait War, First Iraq War or Iraq War, before the term "Iraq War" became identified instead with the post-2003 Iraq War.

paragraph_text: The Karabakh war ended after a Russian-brokered cease-fire was put in place in 1994. The war was a success for the Karabakh Armenian forces who managed to capture 16% of Azerbaijan's internationally recognised territory including Nagorno-Karabakh itself. Since then, Armenia and Azerbaijan have held peace talks, mediated by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The status of Karabakh has yet to be determined. The economies of both countries have been hurt in the absence of a complete resolution and Armenia's borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan remain closed. By the time both Azerbaijan and Armenia had finally agreed to a ceasefire in 1994, an estimated 30,000 people had been killed and over a million had been displaced.

paragraph_text: Gender influences the pattern of child labor. Girls tend to be asked by their families to perform more domestic work in their parental home than boys are, and often at younger ages than boys. Employment as a paid domestic worker is the most common form of child labor for girls. In some places, such as East and Southeast Asia, parents often see work as a domestic servant as a good preparation for marriage. Domestic service, however, is among the least regulated of all professions, and exposes workers to serious risks, such as violence, exploitation and abuse by the employers, because the workers are often isolated from the outside world. Child labor has a very negative effect on education. Girls either stop their education, or, when they continue it, they are often subjected to a double burden, or a triple burden of work outside the home, housework in the parental home, and schoolwork. This situation is common in places such as parts of Asia and Latin America.

paragraph_text: The Shahid Dastgerdi Stadium (also known as PAS Tehran Stadium) () is a football stadium located in the Ekbatan area of Tehran, Iran. It was named after a casualty of the Iran–Iraq War. It is the former home of PAS Tehran F.C. and now hosts the Iran national under-20 football team.

paragraph_text: In 2010 after sanctions were imposed on Iraq, she arrived in Baghdad with a delegation of 69 officials. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, she met with Saddam Hussein. In 2011, she strongly denounced the policies of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. President Barack Obama, calling for a mediation of the Libyan Civil War through an international organization which would exclude them.Ayesha has served as a mediator on behalf of the government with European Union corporations.

paragraph_text: The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the first stage of the Iraq War (also called Operation Iraqi Freedom). The invasion phase began on 20 March 2003 and lasted just over one month, including 21 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the ``end of major combat operations '', after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.

paragraph_text: United States support for Ba'athist Iraq during the Iran -- Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual - use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, and special operations training. At no point, however, did the U.S. directly supply arms to Iraq. Of particular interest for contemporary Iran -- United States relations are the repeated accusations that the U.S. government actively encouraged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invade Iran (proponents of this theory frequently describe the U.S. as having given Saddam a ``green light ''), supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence, but the U.S. government officially denies that any such collusion occurred, and no conclusive proof of it has been found by scholars that have studied the issue.

paragraph_text: Other non-governmental estimations regarding the groups other than the Persians and Azerbaijanis roughly congruate with the World Factbook and the Library of Congress. However, many scholarly and organisational estimations regarding the number of these two groups differ significantly from the mentioned census. According to many of them, the number of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Iran comprises between 21.6–30% of the total population, with the majority holding it on 25%.cd In any case, the largest population of Azerbaijanis in the world live in Iran.

paragraph_text: In March 2007, the U.S. Navy reached its smallest fleet size, with 274 ships, since World War I. Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has shifted its focus from preparations for large - scale war with the Soviet Union to special operations and strike missions in regional conflicts. The Navy participated in the Iraq War and is a major participant in the ongoing War on Terror, largely in this capacity. Development continues on new ships and weapons, including the Gerald R. Ford - class aircraft carrier and the Littoral combat ship. One hundred and three U.S. Navy personnel died in the Iraq War. U.S. Navy warships launched cruise missiles into military targets in Libya during Operation Odyssey Dawn to enforce a UN resolution.

paragraph_text: Operation Praying Mantis was an attack on 18 April 1988, by U.S. forces within Iranian territorial waters in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq War and the subsequent damage to an American warship.

paragraph_text: the African Group, with 54 member states the Asia - Pacific Group, with 53 member states the Eastern European Group, with 23 member states the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC), with 33 member states the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), with 28 member states, plus 1 member state (the United States) as an observer state.

paragraph_text: The next targets were command and communication facilities. Saddam Hussein had closely micromanaged Iraqi forces in the Iran–Iraq War, and initiative at lower levels was discouraged. Coalition planners hoped that Iraqi resistance would quickly collapse if deprived of command and control.

Question: How many member states in the continent that is mentioned are recognized by the organization that mediated the truce which ended the Iran-Iraq War?
Answer: 53 member states