When the Middle East was on the verge of a second war, TIME's readers were among the first to know. "TIME has learned . .. that Iranian forces are massing for a full-scale invasion," the magazine reported two weeks ago. "Units from all over Iran .. . are moving rapidly into place." The exclusive story was the work of Time Inc. Senior Editor Murray J. Gart and TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis, who also spent five hours interviewing and touring Baghdad with the man who is the object of Iran's attack: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. What Saddam Hussein had to say in TIME ("The chances for peace appear slim") turned out to be all too prophetic. Last Tuesday the Middle East's second war began. Gart and Brelis had traveled to Amman to interview King Hussein of Jordan, a close ally of Iraq. "The King likes and respects TIME, and knew both of us from previous meetings," says Brelis. Says Gart: "He didn't show it, but the King was a busy, deeply disturbed leader. Fellow Arabs were taking a beating, and he could not do much about it." After the interview, Brelis returned to Iraq. He was the only Western correspondent in Baghdad when the invasion was launched. He was met there by TIME Photographer Peter Jordan, who had accompanied Brelis and Gart the week before and stayed in Iraq as the threat of invasion increased. When Iran attacked, Jordan was the only Western journalist at the scene of the fighting near Basra; he had been in the border area for two or three days. Says Jordan: "There was the odd shelling, and gradually it got closer and heavier. There was also shelling in the vicinity of Basra and the neighboring town of Abu al Khasib. It was amazing to see how people just carried on in the midst of it all." Meanwhile, Gart went to Jerusalem and then to Cairo, where, with TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Robert C. Wurmstedt, he interviewed high-level Egyptian officials before returning to Jordan to talk with government sources close to the King.

On the scene of the region's other conflict, Middle East Bureau Chief William Stewart notes a jarring contrast: "In East Beirut, there is scarcely a soldier to be seen. West Beirut is an armed camp." Inside that camp, Correspondent Roberto Suro reports, "Beirut has changed my perceptions of many things. After all the car bombs, parked automobiles will always seem menacing. After all the air raids, the sound of a jet passing overhead will never be the same."

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