| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes the U.S. foreign policy response to the 1958 Free Officers’ Revolution in Iraq. I look specifically at the question of the U.S. involvement in the 1963 coup d'état that first brought the Ba‘th party to power. Given the limits of available documentation, I leave the question of CIA involvement to one side and focus on the underlying logic of the U.S. foreign policy toward Iraq between 1958 and 1963. I show that while the American policymakers were deeply divided between a hard-line interventionist faction and a more accommodating anti-interventionist faction, by the middle of 1962, the Kennedy administration embraced regime change as the U.S. policy objective in Iraq. I further argue that it was the perceived threat to Iraqi oil installations, and not the fear of a Communist takeover, that pushed the American policy to embrace a policy of regime change.
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