ABSTRACT
The Baath coup of July 30, 1968, established a government led by an esteemed senior military officer, Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, a member of the Free Officers. But while Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr was the public face of the Baathist regime, his much younger cousin, Saddam Hussein, led the party. In reaction to suspected Iranian involvement in the 1968 antiregime plot, approximately 20,000 Iraqis, allegedly of Iranian descent, were expelled. The Baathists had learned a lesson from the Iranian Revolution. The substantial impact of the Iranian Revolution on Iraq set the stage for the Baath regime's enormous miscalculations leading to the eight-year Iran–Iraq War, the consequences of which motivated Iraq's disastrous invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Baath government nationalized oil resources, contributing to a rapid increase in the country's revenue. Health care, housing, educational opportunities, and the social welfare system were greatly improved and Iraq's economic base was diversified through new industries.
