Post-Revolutionary Iraq and the Reassessment of American and British Strategy

The developments which, more than anything else, conditioned the reassessment of British and American strategy in the Middle East in the last months of 1958 took place in post-revolutionary Iraq. Ideologically, the officers who had led the coup were a heterogeneous collection of men, ranging from those with sympathy for the Communists, through Iraqi nationalists, to pan-Arab nationalists. The direction which Iraq was to take, therefore, was very much to be determined by who won the struggle for power between these men, and on which allies he chose to rely to achieve his victory.