17 July Revolution

The 17 July Revolution was a bloodless coup in Iraq in 1968 led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif, and Abd ar-Rahman al-Dawud that ousted President Abdul Rahman Arif and Prime Minister Tahir Yahya and brought the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power. Ba'athists involved in the coup as well as the subsequent purge of the moderate faction led by Naif included Hardan al-Tikriti, Salih Mahdi Ammash, and Saddam Hussein, the future President of Iraq. The coup was primarily directed against Yahya, an outspoken Nasserist who exploited the political crisis created by the June 1967 Six-Day War to push Arif's moderate government to nationalize the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company in order to use Iraq's "oil as a weapon in the battle against Israel." Full nationalization of the IPC did not occur until 1972, under the Ba'athist administration. In the aftermath of the coup, the new Iraqi government consolidated power by denouncing alleged American and Israeli machinations, publicly executing 14 people including 9 Iraqi Jews on fabricated espionage charges amidst a broader purge, and working to expand Iraq's traditionally close relations with the Soviet Union.
The Ba'ath Party ruled from the 17 July Revolution until 2003, when it was removed from power by an invasion led by American and British forces. The 17 July Revolution is not to be confused with the 14 July Revolution, a coup on 14 July 1958, when King Faisal II was overthrown, ending the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq and establishing the Republic of Iraq, or the 8 February 1963 Ramadan Revolution that brought the Iraqi Ba'ath Party to power for the first time as part of a short-lived coalition government that held power for less than one year.

Background

Under the Presidency of Abdul Rahman Arif, who assumed power following the death of his brother Abdul Salam Arif in April 1966, the United States and Iraq developed closer ties than at any point since the 14 July Revolution of 1958. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration favorably perceived Salam Arif's willingness to partially reverse ousted Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim's expropriation of the United Kingdom -based Iraq Petroleum Company 's concessionary holding in July 1965, although the resignation of six Nasserist cabinet members and widespread disapproval among the Iraqi public forced him to abandon this plan, as well as pro-Western lawyer Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz's brief tenure as prime minister ; Bazzaz attempted to implement a peace agreement with Iraqi Kurdish rebels following a decisive Kurdish victory at the Battle of Mount Handren in May 1966. Having established a friendship with U.S. ambassador Robert C. Strong prior to assuming the presidency and making a number of friendly gestures to the U.S. between April 1966 and January 1967, Western analysts regarded Arif as an Iraqi moderate. At Arif's request, President Johnson met five Iraqi generals and Iraqi ambassador Nasir Hani in the White House on 25 January 1967, reiterating his "desire to build an ever closer relationship between two governments." According to Johnson's National Security Adviser, Walt Rostow, the United States National Security Council even contemplated welcoming Arif on a state visit to the U.S., although this proposal was ultimately rejected due to concerns about the stability of his government. Prior to the outbreak of the Six-Day War, Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi met with a number of U.S. officials to discuss the escalating Middle East crisis on 1 June, including U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene V. Rostow, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and President Johnson himself. The political atmosphere engendered by the costly Arab defeat prompted Iraq to break relations with the U.S. on 7 June, and ultimately ensured the collapse of Arif's relatively moderate government.
From at least mid-1965, the Shah's Iran, Israel, and the U.K.—motivated largely by the desire to contain Egyptian influence in the Persian Gulf—had sought to destabilize Iraq by supporting Kurdish rebels, which the U.S. refrained from doing at the time as the Kurdish war was considered unimportant to the broader Cold War with the Soviet Union. Senior Israeli official Uri Lubrani explained the strategy: "The Shah believed that his Israeli connection would provide a deterrent to Arab regimes because it would create the impression that if an Arab state were to attack Iran, Israel would take advantage of this pretext to strike Iraq's western flank." While Nasserist elements had attempted to overthrow Arif as far back as Arif Abd ar-Razzaq's failed coup attempt in June 1966, the Six-Day War compounded existing dissatisfaction within the Iraqi military and, combined with the stand-off with the Kurds, "had a profound impact on Iraq's political stability," in the words of Bryan R. Gibson. Similarly, Kanan Makiya writes that "The conjuncture around which Ba'thism took power was defined by the magnitude of the Arab defeat by Israel in June 1967. Political life was traumatized. ... All officer-led regimes discredited." Like his brother, Arif previously tried to balance radical and moderate elements in Iraq and turned against the Nasserists after the Razzaq plot was exposed, but this balancing act was upended by the war as Arif moved to placate the ascendant Iraqi nationalists, notably by reappointing Tahir Yahya to the position of prime minister. Yahya had announced his intention to create a national oil company during his first premiership in late 1963, laying the groundwork for the founding of the Iraq National Oil Company in February 1964. As described by Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Yahya's Law 11 "invested with the power to exploit the Law 80 territories, either on its own or in association with other international companies—so long as INOC held a majority interest in any joint venture agreement." During his second term as prime minister from July 1967 to July 1968, Yahya moved to revitalize the INOC and sought to work with France and the Soviet Union to develop the technical capacity to nationalize the IPC outright, pledging to use Iraq's "oil as a weapon in the battle against Israel." Yahya's government concluded deals with the French to develop fields near Amarah in October–November 1967 and the INOC commenced drilling in North Rumaila in May 1968, bringing Iraq to the brink of nationalization. Additionally, Law 97 "permanently barred the IPC from operating in North Rumaila," per Wolfe-Hunnicutt.
In May 1968, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency produced a report titled "The Stagnant Revolution," stating that Iraqi government radicals, such as Yahya and INOC chairman Adib al-Jadir, sought "to get Iraqi control of oil production," and noting that "there is a possibility of an effort to change the present government by violence. Some part of the army would of necessity be involved in such an attempt perhaps a group allied with a pan-Arab organization, e.g., the Baʽth or the Arab Nationalists Movement." The document concludes that "While such a government might be more radical than the present one, deterioration of political affairs... is improbable," thus historian Netanel Avneri comments that "it is likely that the desire to overthrow the Yahya government was seen in Washington as more important than the subsequent establishment of a more moderate regime." In June 1968, Belgian officials relayed a message from the U.S. State Department to Iraqi officials, offering to resume normal relations if Iraq agreed to provide compensation for damage to the U.S. embassy and consulate incurred during an earlier protest and met other conditions, including an end to the Iraqi boycott of U.S. goods and services imposed after the U.S. supported Israel during the Six-Day War; "There is no record of how the Iraqis responded to this information," although the Belgians "commented that the Iraqis would likely find the lifting of the boycott unacceptable."

The coup

Planning for a coup against Arif and Yahya was underway at least from March 1968, when the topic was discussed at an "officer's convention" held at the home of prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. The Ba'ath Party had previously organized a major demonstration against Arif in September 1967. On 17 July 1968 the Iraqi Ba'ath Party—led by al-Bakr as president, in collaboration with the non-Ba'athists Abd ar-Rahman al-Dawud as defence minister and Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif as prime minister—seized power in a bloodless coup, placing Arif on a plane to London. al-Bakr quickly ordered Naif and Dawud to be removed from their posts and exiled on 30 July, cementing the Ba'ath Party's control over Iraq until the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. al-Bakr was then named prime minister and commander-in-chief of the army. According to a semi-official biography, future Iraqi president Saddam Hussein personally led Naif at gunpoint to the plane that escorted him out of Iraq.
Many details of the coup remain unclear to historians. On the day of the coup, U.S. National Security Council member John Foster assessed that the new regime's "tendencies will be towards moving Iraq even closer to Fatah, the Syrians, and the Soviets," however the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon—"the principal source of political information on Iraq after the closure of the Baghdad Embassy during the June 1967"—indicated that the Iraqi Ba'athists were "from the right-wing of the party" and bitter rivals of their Syrian counterparts. Bakr and his foreign minister expressed an interest in closer cooperation with Turkey and Iran, and the U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait reported that the Kuwaitis "expected a more convenient administration in Iraq because the former Baʿth government had recognized Kuwait’s independence." The U.S. believed that Naif and Dawud—who were, respectively, in charge of President Arif's military intelligence and personal security—initiated the plot, and that Ba'athist conspirators including al-Bakr, Hardan al-Tikriti, and Salih Mahdi Ammash were only asked to participate in order to establish a broader coalition of support for a new government. However, Wolfe-Hunnicutt states: "Though executed by Nayef, the coup was organised by Bakr and his deputy Saddam Hussein." Both the Naif and Bakr factions were motivated by opposition to Yahya. After his ouster, Arif was exiled to the U.K., and even Yahya was not executed, possibly to avoid the negative international attention that had resulted from the bloodletting that accompanied other changes of government in Iraq's contemporaneous history. In the ensuing years, Wolfe-Hunnicutt states that Saddam "succeeded in consolidating a formidable political regime ... where so many others had failed," including co-opting Yahya's intention to nationalize the IPC with the help of the Soviet Union.