Lion of Babylon
Lion of Babylon (Arabic: أسد بابل, romanized: Asad Bābil) is the name of a project undertaken by the Iraqi military in the late 1980s, under which Ba'athist Iraq attempted to locally produce the T-72, a Soviet-made main battle tank. The tanks were to be assembled at a factory near Taji in the Baghdad Governorate. The Lion of Babylon project of Saddam Hussein's regime was triggered in part by the American embargo against the sale of military vehicles to Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War. However, it is disputed if any tanks outlined in the project were ever finished, and likewise whether the Iraqi tanks reported to be "Lions of Babylon" during the Gulf War and Iraq War were merely imported T-72s. The project draws its name from the Lion of Babylon, an ancient Babylonian symbol that was based on the Asiatic lion and represented the king of Babylon as well as the goddess Ishtar. The name is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to T-72s in Iraqi service, which were imported from the Soviet Union and Poland.
80s era iraqi project to produce tanks locally
main battle tank