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: 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 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 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: 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: Ancient rock paintings in Somalia which date back to 5000 years have been found in the northern part of the country, depicting early life in the territory. The most famous of these is the Laas Geel complex, which contains some of the earliest known rock art on the African continent and features many elaborate pastoralist sketches of animal and human figures. In other places, such as the northern Dhambalin region, a depiction of a man on a horse is postulated as being one of the earliest known examples of a mounted huntsman.

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.

paragraph_text: Following the ceasefire agreement that suspended hostilities (but not officially ended) in the 1991 Gulf War, the United States and its allies instituted and began patrolling Iraqi no-fly zones, to protect Iraq's Kurdish and Shi'a Arab population—both of which suffered attacks from the Hussein regime before and after the Gulf War—in Iraq's northern and southern regions, respectively. U.S. forces continued in combat zone deployments through November 1995 and launched Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in 1998 after it failed to meet U.S. demands of "unconditional cooperation" in weapons inspections.

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: 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: The end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, especially Western ones. There is some disagreement as to the precise beginning and ending dates of the post-war baby boom, but it is most often agreed to have begun in the years immediately after the war, though some place it earlier at the increase of births in 1941 - 1943. The boom started to decline as birth rates in the United States started to decline in 1958, though the boom would only grind to a halt 3 years later in 1961, 20 years after it began.

paragraph_text: The M2 is a United States bounding anti-personnel mine used during World War II. A number of variants of the mine were produced and although the mine is no longer in US service, it can be found in Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Laos, Oman, Rwanda, Tunisia and the Western Sahara. Copies of the mine were produced by Belgium (as the PRB M966), Pakistan (P7), Portugal (M/966) and Taiwan.

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: 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: 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: Sergey Andreyevich Kruglov (also Sergei Kruglov, ; born March 27, 1985 in Khabarovsk) is a Russian sport shooter. In 2010, Kruglov had won a gold medal for the 10 m air rifle at the European Shooting Championships in Meråker, Norway, and eventually captured the bronze at the ISSF World Cup in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States. He is also a member of CSA Pomoriye and is coached and trained by Oleg Seleznev.

paragraph_text: Khabarovsk is served by the Khabarovsk Novy Airport with international flights to East Asia, Southeast Asia, European Russia, and Central Asia.

paragraph_text: In the Alleys of Love (, "Dar Koocheha-ye Eshgh") is an Iranian war film about the city of Khorramshahr shortly after the Iran–Iraq War. The film was shot in colour on 35 mm film.

Question: For the continent where Sergei Kruglov was born, how many countries are recognized by the institution that mediated the end of the Iran-Iraq War?
Answer: 53 member states