CIA activities in Iraq

The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in covert actions and contingency planning in Iraq ever since the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, although the historiography of Iraq–United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s.^[1]

The CIA is alleged to have sponsored an unsuccessful Ba'athist assassination plot against Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, although several scholars have disputed this. The CIA is documented to have planned to "incapacitate" a high-ranking member of Qasim's government with a poisoned handkerchief in 1960, and began plotting to remove Qasim from power since mid-1962, cultivating supportive relationships with Iraqi opposition groups including the Ba'ath Party.

It has long been suspected that the CIA collaborated with the Ba'ath Party in planning and carrying out its 1963 coup against Qasim, supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence and testimony from both contemporary Ba'athists and some U.S. government officials. Scholars have only begun to understand the extent of the CIA's role in the 1963 coup, however they remain divided in their interpretations of U.S. foreign policy, specifically regarding the extent of direct CIA involvement. After the 1968 Ba'athist coup appeared to draw Iraq into the Soviet sphere of influence, the CIA colluded with the then-monarchial government of Iran to destabilize Iraq by arming Kurdish rebels, who suffered a total defeat after Iran and Iraq resolved their border dispute. Beginning in 1982, the CIA began providing Iraq intelligence during the Iran–Iraq War. The CIA was also involved in the failed 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein.

Intelligence played an important and generally effective role in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, but was much more controversial with respect to justifying and planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003. See the appropriate chronological entries below.

^ Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Brandon (Winter 2016). "Sold Out? US Foreign Policy, Iraq, the Kurds, and the Cold War by Bryan R. Gibson (review)". The Middle East Journal. 70 (1). Middle East Institute. While the United States has been deeply involved in Iraq since the 1980s, the historiography of US-Iraqi relations remains woefully underdeveloped. Until very recently, historians interested in the origins of the US-Iraqi relationship have had very few scholarly resources to consult. In recent years, articles on various aspects of US policy toward Iraq during the 1950s and early 1960s have begun to appear in scholarly journals, but Bryan Gibson's Sold Out? represents the first monograph based on recently declassified American archival sources.

[1] Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Brandon (Winter 2016). "Sold Out? US Foreign Policy, Iraq, the Kurds, and the Cold War by Bryan R. Gibson (review)". The Middle East Journal. 70 (1). Middle East Institute. While the United States has been deeply involved in Iraq since the 1980s, the historiography of US-Iraqi relations remains woefully underdeveloped. Until very recently, historians interested in the origins of the US-Iraqi relationship have had very few scholarly resources to consult. In recent years, articles on various aspects of US policy toward Iraq during the 1950s and early 1960s have begun to appear in scholarly journals, but Bryan Gibson's Sold Out? represents the first monograph based on recently declassified American archival sources.

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