ABSTRACT
The recommendations of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) that Palestine be partitioned were published on 31 August 1947. Salih Jaber's government was formed in late March 1947 and remained in power until the end of January 1948. Jaber was one of the Shi'ite politicians who had reached senior government positions through Sunnite political patronage. Jaber feared the effects of British-Egyptian negotiations on the nationalists in Iraq and intended to exploit the dead end into which they had run in order to pressure Britain into making concessions to Iraq. As the summer of 1947 drew on, the Iraqi government's position worsened. The nationalist ferment in Baghdad made British diplomats suspect that Jaber might no longer be able to control the storm which he himself had helped to unleash. On 29 January, the Regent told Muhammad Sadr, a religious conservative Shi'ite politician, to form a new Cabinet.
