Ba'athist Iraq

Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the one-party rule of the Iraqi regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The regime emerged as a result of the 17 July Revolution which brought the Ba'athists to power, and lasted until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. This period has been described as Iraq's longest period of internal stability since independence in 1932.

The Ba'ath Party, led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, came to power in Iraq through the bloodless 17 July 1968 Revolution, which overthrew president Abdul Rahman Arif and prime minister Tahir Yahya. By the mid-1970s, Saddam Hussein became the country's de facto leader, despite al-Bakr's de jure presidency. Saddam's new policies boosted the Iraqi economy, improved living standards, and elevated Iraq's standing within the Arab world. Land reforms aimed at wealth redistribution were introduced. However, several internal factors were imminently threatening Iraq's stability; the Sunni-dominated Ba'athist government faced Shia religious separatism and Kurdish ethnic separatism. The Second Iraqi–Kurdish War was of great concern to the government as Kurdish rebels received extensive support from Iran, Israel, and the United States. Following the 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab clashes, Saddam met with Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and signed the 1975 Algiers Agreement, ceding territory to Iran in exchange for an end to Kurdish support. With the Kurdish rebellion subsequently disadvantaged, the Iraqi military reasserted the federal government's control over Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1979, Saddam succeeded the ailing al-Bakr as president and publicly purged the Ba'ath Party of his opponents. Alarmed by Iranian attempts to export the revolution in Iraq, Saddam adopted an aggressive stance against Iran and its new theocratic leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, after his rejections of Iraqi goodwill offers. In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, triggering the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War that ended in a stalemate in 1988. The conflict left Iraq economically devastated and dependent on foreign loans.

Kuwait, which had loaned money to Iraq, demanded repayment and increased oil production, lowering international oil prices and worsening the Iraqi economy, while pressuring the Iraqi leadership to repay the loans. Iraq demanded that the Kuwaitis reduce their oil output, as did OPEC. In 1989, Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing Iraqi petroleum, and failed negotiations resulted in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, triggering the Gulf War. Iraq occupied Kuwait until February 1991, when a 42-country UNSC military coalition expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Subsequent international sanctions cut Iraq off from all global markets and crippled the Iraqi economy throughout the 1990s, though it began recovering by the early 2000s as sanctions enforcement waned. The sanctions were widely criticized for its negative impact on quality of life in Iraq, prompting the establishment of the Oil-for-Food Programme.

Following the September 11 attacks, the United States' Bush administration began building a case for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam's regime, falsely claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links with al-Qaeda. On 20 March 2003, Iraq was invaded by a U.S.-led coalition, which overthrew Saddam and captured much of Iraq by May. In December 2003, American troops captured Saddam and turned him over to Iraq's new Shia-led government. From 2005 to 2006, Saddam was put on trial for crimes against humanity concerning the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which the Iraqi government killed Shi'ite rebels. After sentencing Saddam to death, the Iraqi Special Tribunal executed him for crimes against humanity on 30 December 2006.