The reduction of iodate by iodide, known as the Dushman reaction, is one of the components of the oscillating Bray–Liebhafsky reaction. The large body of work devoted to the kinetics of the Dushman reaction gives seemingly contradictory results. This work analyses and summarizes them and shows that they are special cases of a complicated kinetics and that they can be explained by a common mechanism. This mechanism can be generalized to all the XO₃^-+Y^- reactions (X, Y=I, Br or Cl). They all involve an asymmetric intermediate YXO₂.