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JSOU Report 16-1
Kuwait’s role, including the fact that it kept France and Britain supplied with oil
during the Suez Crisis.
70. “Memorandum of Conversation Between President Eisenhower and Prime Minister
Macmillan, Washington, June 9, 1958,” DDEL, PPDDE, AWF, International
Series, Box 24, Section Three: 1-2. In a meeting with the U.S. Ambassador to
Iraq, Sa’id had demanded “money and Kuwait,” threatening to resign if he did
not get both. When Macmillan learned of the demand, he compared Sa’id to
Nasser, stating, “Nuri (has) been difficult for some time and was now attempting
a Nasser-type operation against Kuwait.” The Prime Minister found it a “great
shock … to learn that Nuri has ‘out and out threatened Kuwait.” In his meeting
with Eisenhower on 9 June 1958, Sir Patrick Dean, a Macmillan advisor, quickly
interjected himself to downplay Sa’id’s remarks, “Nuri wants money more than
he does Kuwait which he can’t really expect to have by this weekend.”
71. “Telegram from British Embassy Baghdad (Wright) to FO (Lloyd), February 11,
1958,” PRO, FO371/134222. Sir Michael Wright recommended the consideration
of a “crash” program to build a pipeline from Kirkuk to the Persian Gulf and a
deep water offloading facility on the Fao Peninsula near Basra. He recommended
that, as a stopgap measure, London issue a clear declaration stating that any move
against the pipeline in Syria or Lebanon would be considered “an aggressive act”
and be met by “available means.”
72. Robert McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East
1952-1967: From the Egyptian Revolution to the Six Day War (London: Frank
Cass, 2003), 128-130.
73. Geoffrey Warner, Iraq and Syria 1941 (Newark: The University of Delaware Press,
1974), 86. According to Warner, the key to the British ability to reestablish control
in Iraq lay in the precipitous nature of the 1941 coup and the poor planning
of the plotters. Because of the lack of solid military planning and in-place Axis
support, the regent, Abd-al-‘Ilah, Nuri Sa’id, and other key pro-British elements
escaped. In 1941, Churchill, despite Wavell’s advice to the contrary, set about
destroying Rashid Ali; in 1958, London hesitated. In 1958, Qasim would argue
that his “revolution” was merely the fulfillment of 1941.
74. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movement of Iraq:
A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists,
Ba’thists and Free Officers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 806. This
work is often referred to as the best work on any Middle Eastern revolutionary
movement because it is exhaustive. Batatu provides an outstanding analysis of
social and political movements in Iraq and how these movements and individuals
interacted to produce the July revolution of 1958. The author believes that this
class involvement is what made 14 July a true revolution and not just another
coup. Batatu talks of the coup and the class struggle as the product of almost
irresistible historical forces. It was still a big surprise, not only when it happened,
but also that it endured; it could have easily been another on the list of failed
Baghdad revolts.
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