The Iran–Iraq War, from 1980 to 1988, killed nearly half a million people and earned the unhappy honour of being the twentieth century's longest conventional war. This vicious conflict was further distinguished by the use of chemical weapons, a crime that devastated soldiers and civilians alike. One author has described how chemical weapons, the blight of battlefields during the First World War, came to occupy a ‘special niche’ beyond the bounds of acceptable behaviour even in war. For instance, as a UN report on an incident in Iran noted, exposure to a mustard gas attack brought survivors a variety of horrors: tremors of the limbs, tongue and mouth, extreme swelling and ulcers in the eyes, ‘coal black’ lesions around the armpits and genitals, and pressure blisters which filled with yellow pus that could reach ‘enormous proportions’.

Iran complained to the United Nations in late 1983, alleging that Iraq had violated the 1925 Geneva protocol banning the use of chemical weapons in war. Adherence to this protocol had mercifully limited the use of chemical warfare over the next sixty years, but Iraq appeared to have flaunted the international prohibition. To draw further attention to these accusations, the Iranian government dispatched wounded soldiers to hospitals throughout Europe and Japan in an effort to pressure the international community to condemn these illegal attacks. The UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, wanted to assemble a group of specialists to investigate Iran's claims on his behalf, and he asked Australia for assistance.