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1968 Ba’athist Coup (July 17th Revolution)
After power fluctuations for almost a decade, the Ba'athist party with prime figures including former Prime Minister Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr, and future infamous leader Saddam Hussein, overthrow the Abdul Rahman Arif presidency in a organised coup. Specific disillusioned military units executed the operation, gaining control critical government buildings before Arif duly yielded his authority. The coup itself was bloodless, and set the basis of a Iraqi Ba'athist regime for the next 38 years. -
Saddam Hussein assumes Presidency
Saddam Hussein, after being the de facto leader of Iraq for several years, formally assumes Presidency in the face of the ailing Al-Bakr regime. Saddam specifically threatened Al-Bakr with force, after deliberation between Al-Bakr and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad began in regards towards a possible unification, which would subsequently endangering Saddam's authority. The ruthless leader began an administration that would last the next 25 years, before its dismantling in the Iraq War. -
The Iraq-Iran War
After a multitude of political and territorial disputes and subsequent rising tensions between Saddam's Baathist Iraq and Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iraqi ground forces invaded Iran and in turn commenced the Iraq-Iran war. Iranian forces virtually regained all lost ground from the initial invasion by March 1982, and were fundamentally on the offensive for the next six year before the establishment of UN Security Council ceasefire in August of 1988. -
Iraq- United States Envoy
Iraq-US relations improve immensely as result of efforts for diplomacy from both sides in the early 1980s. The culmination of these efforts came into the form of the 1983 envoy between Saddam Hussein and US official Donald Rumsfeld, which headlined as US support for Iraq against the conflict with Iran. To the embarrassment of Rumsfeld 19 years later, the envoy helped Saddam freely acquire more supplies for chemical weaponry, even amidst the public US criticism Iraq's weapons program. -
Annexation of Kuwait- The First Gulf War
Iraq, on the basis of economic struggle, hegemonic claims, and its distributed allegations of Kuwaiti slant oil drilling on Iraqi oil fields, invaded and annexed the State of Kuwait in August of 1991. Immediate international condemnation consequently followed, before US led coalition intervention began at the beginning of 1991. Iraqi forces after two months of fighting finally yielded and agreed to a ceasefire as Saddam's militants were expelled from Kuwait, and pushed into Iraqi territory. -
United Nations Security Council Resolution 687
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 was specifically a summary of the sanctions and regulation adopted by the UN against Iraq, as result of the Gulf. It imposed strict weapon and economic sanctions on Iraq, the latter of which severely and critically damaged the Iraqi fiscally throughout the 1990s. The US claimed justification for military intervention vitally because of allegations of lacking Iraqi compliance in regards to these settlements. -
Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 was policy accepted and instituted by the US congregation in August of 1998. As said in its title, the act sought to make it national legislature, in the interest US government to support in a "regime change" in Iraq, through the dismantling of Saddam Hussein. This was later cited by President George Bush as evidence for the rationale of eventual campaign against Iraq in 2003. -
UNMOVIC
UNMOVIC, otherwise know as the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, was instituted in 1999 in an effort to investigate and subsequently disarm the Iraqi nation of a suspected arsenal of WMDs. After extensive negotiations, during late 2002, UN officials were accepted full access by Iraqi officials in executing their evaluations. Subsequent investigations by UNMOVIC and discoveries through the Iraq War concluded no evidence of Iraqi WMD weaponry. -
September 11 Attacks
The United States are unprecedentedly devastated in a coordinated suicide terrorist attack involving the hijacking of several aircraft, by a team of 19 Al-Qaeda affiliated passengers. The hijackers subsequently crashed their planes in various locations of significance on the west coast of the continent. The event was used by the Bush administration as rationale to establishing military action in Iraq, stipulating in fact unsubstantiated links between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al-Qaeda. -
Invasion of Iraq- The Beginning Operation Iraqi Freedom
President George W Bush announces the beginning of US military intervention in Iraq, citing objectives to overthrow the potent regime of Saddam Hussein. The rationale and justification behind the act of war included accusations of Iraqi possession of WMDs, affiliations with terrorism, and the human rights abuses of the Saddam administration, also overlapping with the pledged restoration of Iraqi diplomacy. The invasion of Iraq received worldwide criticism, especially from global liberals.
