The story
In the early hours of July 14, 1958, army units led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif seized Baghdad. At the Rihab palace, King Faisal II, his uncle Crown Prince Abd al-Ilah and others were shot, and the long-serving prime minister Nuri al-Said was found and killed the next day. The Hashemite monarchy, set up under British influence in 1921, was over. Iraq became a republic.
The coup was carried out by a group of junior officers who called themselves the Free Officers, modeled on Egypt's 1952 revolution. Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism was hugely popular, and many Iraqis resented the monarchy's close ties to Britain and the Baghdad Pact, a Western-backed defense alliance. After the Suez Crisis of 1956, in which Britain and France attacked Egypt, those ties looked even more humiliating. The new government left the Baghdad Pact in 1959, but Qasim and Arif soon quarreled. Qasim was overthrown and shot in February 1963, and a series of coups followed, including the Baath coup of 1968 that, in time, brought Saddam Hussein to power.
Why it mattered
- The coup removed a pro-Western monarchy and moved Iraq toward the Soviet bloc and Arab nationalism.
- It started a cycle of military coups that lasted until the Baath consolidated power in 1968.
- It shook Western alliances in the region and led Britain and the U.S. to send troops to Jordan and Lebanon.
Sources
- Iraq: The Republic of Iraq Britannica
- Faisal II Britannica
- Nuri al-Said Britannica
- The Iraqi Revolution of 1958 ADST
- Iraq's Revolution: Bastille Day in Baghdad History Today
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