Guerrilla History - Coups, Oil, the CIA, and Arab Nationalism in Iraq w/ Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

In this fascinating episode, we talk with Professor Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt about the numerous coups of Iraq from 1953-1968 (and the CIA/State Department role in these) amidst the background of rising Arab nationalist politics and pushes by several groups for nationalization of Iraqi oil.  A fantastic discussion based off of Brandon's equally fabulous book The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq! Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt is a historian at California State University, Stanislas.  You can (and should!) get The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq from Stanford University Press https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26330  Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. The podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing really well. It's good to be with you, Henry. Yeah, absolutely. Always nice seeing you. Also joined by our other co-host, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio, and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett.

How are you today? How is Omaha going right now? Hello, yeah, I'm doing good. Omaha's okay, but I'm leaving it tomorrow. And I'm going to France. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, absolutely. Didn't know if we wanted to bring that up or not,

but we certainly will be talking about that later. I'm quite sure. So hope that you enjoy that trip. But today, listeners, we have a really fascinating episode coming up for you, which, thinking off the top of my head, we're probably going to title something along the lines of coups, the CIA, oil and Arab nationalism, because we're tying a lot of threads together in this episode.

We have a really fantastic guest coming up. The book is the paranoid style in American diplomacy, oil and Arab nationalism in Iraq. And our guest will be Brandon Wolf Honeycutt. And I personally loved the book, loved the history behind it. And I think that it's a really fascinating history that a lot of people in the West aren't aware of. When we think of Iraq in the United States, most people's historical knowledge probably dates back to 2003, if they're particularly young or maybe 1991, if they're a little bit older. But very few people think back to the 1950s, but that's really where this story in some ways begins. But in fact, we can actually go farther back than that.

And so for that part, why don't I turn it over to you, Adnan, can you talk a little bit about what Iraq was like in the lead-up? to the 1950s because we're going to pick up in the 1950s with Brandon when he comes on to join us for the interview. Well, yes, just to give listeners a little bit of context who, you know, have obviously heard about modern Iraq and engaged the, you know, late 20th and 21st century history of Iraq because of U.S. involvement in two wars, two major wars on the country. But they might be unfamiliar with some of the backstory that we're going to. to be getting during this era and also how did modern iraq even become a country since it was formerly part of the ottoman empire in fact actually there was no iraq there were three different

ottoman provinces that were governed separately as part of ottoman uh imperial uh dominions within the arab middle east uh so you know if we want to go really far back basically 15 16 so Aleem I defeats the Safavid emperor or Safavid Shah, Shah Ismail, who was ruling in greater Persia, and they were contesting this part of the Middle East. Salim I defeats, you know, this rival empire and establishes in most of what we think of the Arab Middle East, that is from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and what is today Lebanon. Israel, Palestine, and Iraq, they all become part of the Ottoman Empire. And they're governed, you know, according to, you know, the administrative logic of the Ottoman Empire during that

time. So there wasn't a unified Iraqi province within the Ottomans. But as people will remember, if they go back to earlier episodes when we talked with Professor Elizabeth Thompson about her wonderful book, how the West stole democracy from the Arabs that there was an Arab uprising. Ideas of Arab nationalism begin to develop first as a kind of literary movement of reviving the Arabic language in a kind of modern form, writing novels and treatises and works like this short stories in Arabic and then developing more and more of an ethno-national kind of identity that we see happening all across these, you know, areas of southeastern Europe and the Middle East, you know, where we had other empires with other national groups that start to militate for

their own homeland, governed under their own governments, according to this idea of kind of linguistic and ethnic nationalism. The same thing is happening in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Arab lands. And it precipitates during World War I an Arab uprising that has both got indigenous roots in the sense that Arabs wanted to, you know, throw off Ottoman governance, but also was part of the imperial game and supported by British forces. if people remember T.E. Lawrence, right? Lawrence of Arabia. So this Arab revolt and Arab uprising tries to create an Arab nation in a new country. But in the aftermath of World War I and because of the machinations of the Paris Peace Conference and the interests of France and Britain, this area becomes divided into different territories. What happens to the area that we think of as Iraq, the three Ottoman provinces together, are formed as a kingdom for one part of the Hashemite family, the Sharif of Mecca, right, who is the leader of the Arab revolt. His sons basically take over in different parts of the British Middle East.

So you have, you know, these Hashemite kings as being established in new kingdoms. And Iraq is one of these kingdoms. And so it's governed with British support, you know, in the interwar period where there is a king and it's under the mandate. But they sort of then have a period where they establish a kind of independent kingdom. But again, it's still very much sponsored by and protected by. and under British tutelage. And around, and during this period after World War II, it becomes an independent country and one that the U.S. is very interested in supporting and recruiting into its policy, Cold War policy in the Middle East, which we'll be talking about much more. But it enters,

for example, in the Baghdad pact, you know, this is like basically 1954. 55, where they create the central, so-called central treaty organization. And it's the period where the U.S. is trying to deal with post-colonial countries in a particular way by bringing them into new military and political alliances. So Seattle is founded in this period, the Southeast Asian treaty organization. And of course, these are all modeled on something like NATO. So Iraq kind of enters into the pro-Western part of the geopolitical post-World War II alliance. And, you know, I think the story really kind of begins there. But the thing to understand is that there was a kind of royalist elite and there are, you know, elites.

The nationalism brought out new intelligentsias and cadres, right, of kind of educated, professional classes of people who wanted to establish a modern state and govern themselves independently. And this kind of idea and political ideology conflicted with or could sometimes be compatible with emerging leftist and worker sorts of movements that are also happening during this period. New ideas coming from the Russian Revolution and so on about socialism. These are kind of competing ideas. And then there is the kind of conservative monarchical, which we see still reflected in much of the Gulf area, right? You know, where there are these corrupt sort of monarchies that have sort of survived in the area. But there were, you know, sort of were called

Ayan, traditional notables from the like Ottoman era that adapted themselves to the new, you know, the new Iraqi kingdom. And the last thing that I think also should be mentioned, that is, of course, as people know, that although there was this kind of idea of Arab nationalism that was uniting people from across what we think of as the Arab Middle East, there are a lot of ethnic minorities in this, you know, region. So, of course, in the north, under the, you know, most northernmost Ottoman-governate sort of the which was governed really from Mosul, major city in the north of Iraq, it was largely

Kurdish. And there were some Turkic tribes people as well, but also a plural, you know, minority possibly or plurality of Arabs, but they're very large, you know, ethnic Kurdish population that was connected with Kurdish peoples in what is today, you know, south, eastern part Turkey and little part of the north, you know, eastern part of Syria and, of course, the northwestern part of Iran. So you have a kind of what ends up being a transnational minority and that affects the politics of each of the neighboring countries, how they're going to deal with in this era of nationalism. How are they going to deal with these other ethnic communities? And then in the south, you know, you also have Iraq was also quite religiously.

pluralistic as well. It had, you know, very large Jewish population, the largest Jewish community really in the Middle East and at points, you know, one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Morocco and Spain in the Middle East. And, you know, in the probably, and it is an ancient community. Let's also remember, I mean, since the time of the Babylonian, you know, captivity and biblical events you have in Iraqi Jewish community that has been there well established where the Talmudic academies for training rabbis were situated. So it was not only a large and long-standing community, but one that had great prestige religiously. So that's very significant. You know, Baghdad at certain points was, you know, a quarter or more, you know, Jewish in terms of its number

of inhabitants. And then lastly, I would say also in terms of religiously is that there is a kind of Sunni core that is supportive of this monarchy because it was a Sunni Hashemite ruler, but there was, you know, potential problems and divisions with a very large Shi'i religious community of Arab Shi'is. We tend to think of Shi'ism as an Iranian, you know, phenomenon. But it's not actually, and in fact actually the holiest places for Shi'e's sites of so many shrines of the former religious leaders and imams who were memorialized and remembered in all of the great events, you might say, of the early history of the formation of Shiism take place in Iraq, in Kufa, Najaf, Karbala.

So these are very important both culturally and religiously for those communities. So that's maybe just a broad kind of sense of what, Iraq is and how it comes into being as a modern nation before we get into the very exciting contestations that are the subject of this book when oil is discovered and, you know, all kinds of new kinds of issues in history emerge. Yeah, absolutely. I thank you for that history, Adnan. And of course, it was very important that you brought up the ethnic question as well as the religious question here. And I also appreciated the fact that you mentioned that ideas from the Russian Revolution were being brought in, because as we'll find out when we talk with Brandon,

I'm sure, the Iraqi Communist Party was a major force in the events that were going on, especially in the early events of about 1958 until 1963 and maybe 62. They started to be purged by the government in about late 61, early 62. And frankly, if the Iraqi Communist Party was as strong in 1963 as it was in 1961, the events could have played out dramatically differently. And I'm sure that we'll get to that during the interview. But the only thing I want to say right now before I turn it over to you, Brett, for your thoughts on this upcoming interview. And before we get to the interview with Brandon, is that we're going to be focusing from 1958 until about 1968 or so with a little bit of discussion on either side of that, I'm sure. But it's important to

understand that there is a lot of, as Adnan said, contestations that had been taking place already. So even during the monarchic period, there was military coups that were carried out in 1936 and in 1941, which changed the civilian branch of the government, not the monarchy, but the president prime minister side of things. So military coups that took place in 36 and 41. And then in the period that we will be talking about, we had. almost continuous coups for a period of about 15 years. We had Free Officers Revolution in 1958, which is where this story picks up, the overthrow of the monarchy in the country.

There was an attempted uprising in 1959 that, again, the Iraqi Communist Party had a huge role in subduing. We had two coups that took place in 1963. We had two coups that took place in 1968, a coup inside a coup, essentially. we had a big purge of the bath party in 1979. So this entire period is almost continuous coups and uprisings that were taking place. And it is critical that we understand. And this is something that at least I'm going to hope to try to get out of this conversation

that we're going to have with Brandon, that this was not just internal factors at play. There, of course, were many internal factors at play. ethnicity, religion, Arab nationalism, communism, Nazarism. These things were all coming to a head within the country, as well as the monarchic strain of Iraqi politics that were particularly prevalent up until 1958. These things were all going on within the country at the same time and were leading to a very volatile situation, as well as the discovery of oil, which you mentioned did none. But there were also a lot of external factors. not least of which the CIA and the Dulles brothers, and they have a huge role to play in this story. They have a huge role, the CIA and the Dulles brothers personally, a huge role to play in the push against nationalization of Iraqi oil, as well as the fomentation of the coups that were carried out over this course of about, again, 15 years. So that is what I want to highlight before. I turn it over to you, Brett, for your thoughts on this book as well as what you're looking forward to. getting out of this conversation with Brandon.

Sure, yeah. I mean, just for brevity's sake, I won't take up too much time. I really appreciated Adnan's breakdown of that, of that history. Just the things that I'm genuinely interested in personally coming into this episode are, I'm really interested in know very little about the Communist Party in Iraq. So I'm very interested to see, you know, how they were forming, how they were jostling with other interest groups and formations in Iraq leading up and during this time. And then also the Bathurst Party, right?

obviously as an American, I hear about Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Party in relation to, you know, the war in Iraq. But to understand how they came to power and how they outmaneuvered competing formations is just something I'm really looking forward to learning more about in this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. It's certain to be a fascinating conversation. I've talked with Brandon before. He's something of a friend of mine. And I know that he's a regular listener of the show. So I'm really looking forward to you guys getting having a, having the chance to meet him and getting the chance to speak with him once again myself. So without further ado, let's bring Brandon in and we'll be right back with our interview with Brandon Wolf Honeycutt about the paranoid style in American diplomacy, oil and Arab nationalism in Iraq. We'll be right back.

guerrilla history, and we're joined by our guest, Professor Brandon Wolf Honeycutt, who is a historian at California State University Stanislaus and author of the paranoid style in American diplomacy, oil and Arab nationalism in Iraq, which I have to say, I really love the book. It's fantastic book. So welcome to the show, Brandon. It's a pleasure to have you here. Well, it's a great pleasure to be here, as I told you in the pre-show, you know, a longtime listener, first-time caller.

So it's a great pleasure to be on with you all and have a great pleasure. to be on with you all and have a chance to talk about the book. Yeah, absolutely. I know that we've been looking forward to having you on the show for well over a year at this point. And I'm glad that it's finally come together because I'm really looking forward to the conversation. So why don't we open by having you give your very short sketch of the paranoid style in American diplomacy, the book that we're going to be talking about for the rest of the episode. So can you just give the listeners who, most of whom haven't read the book yet. What is the thrust of the work that we're going to be talking about here and then we'll

dive a little bit deeper into it after that? Okay, sounds good. I think the main thrust of the book can be summarized fairly simply that in 1958, the Iraqis had a revolution. And my book traces the history of the Iraqi revolution from 1958 through the 1972 nationalization of the Iraqi Iraq Petroleum Company. So it's pretty much a straightforward study of how the Iraq, Iraqis were able to nationalize some of the world's largest and most powerful corporations. We're talking about Exxon, Mobile, you know, BP, Shell. So the story is the struggle, the trials and tribulations of these, what I call the Iraqi state building class, the modernizing class as it's trying to take over control of the oil industry. And it situates U.S. foreign policy

in response to or in relation to that struggle within Iraq, how the United States tried to at various times protect the capital investments or the interests of the oil companies operating within Iraq. And so there's a series of steps forward and two steps forward, one step back, where Iraqis move towards nationalizing the oil. And then there's a coup or a revolution or there's some disruption. And then the effort is pushed back. And then the next generation and the next iteration will arise to try to push the ball forward. And it culminates with the 1972 nationalization. And there's a bit of a caveat there.

There was a portion of the company that remained unnationalized until 1975. And so the story does go a little past 1972. But it really covers the period, 1958, 1975, charts the rise of the Boff Party, the efforts of the Boff Party to what was really ultimately co-operative. the struggle of the Communist Party to nationalize the oil. And it reflects on how Iraq was able to succeed where, say, you know, Muhammad Mossadegh in Iran tried the same thing in 1953 or 1951 and was overthrown by the CIA. So it sort of takes that as the basic problematic. How was Iraq able to accomplish something that other oil producing states had tried to do and run into the grim

meet-hook realities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Oh, yeah, that's, thanks so much for that broad summary of the outline of the book, and I'm sure we're going to enjoy getting into the details of the different periods and the internal politics of Iraq. But what's fascinating is that you're using it as an example. You just made a comparison with, you know, Mossadegh and Iran. you're using it as an example within a broader set of changes, developments, historical events and paradigms that are taking place globally and in the U.S. relationship to the rest of the world. So I wonder if you could tell us about the major contributions that your book is making to, you know, different fields and areas of study, what you're using, this story of Iraq.

to make arguments about that contribute to debates and discussions that are taking place in, you know, understanding U.S. empire and diplomatic history, history of Iraq, and oil resources. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you situate this book and your arguments to some of these wider kinds of questions of history and an analysis of the 20th century. Yeah. So let's see. Good questions. So as we're talking a little bit in the, in the, you know, the pre-interview session, I really like the value of thinking in three. And so there are indeed these sort of these three scholarly communities or these three, you know, fields within the historiography that I, that I want to address. But even beyond that, I hoped that the book might be of interest to a broader audience than just academic specialists.

Right. So I had written the book with the, especially the final. drafts with the aspiration that I wanted to be a scholarly monograph. I wanted to make an original contribution to the store of human knowledge, you know, in this particular field. But I also wanted it to be read, and I don't know, I'm curious if it came off this way to you, but I wanted it to be read. I wanted it to be read as a kind of almost like a spy thriller, like a spy novel. I wanted to play up the drama and the sensationalism and really sort of draw people. in with a kind of a spy mystery, make it kind of something kind of more fun than a traditional

academic monograph. And then I think if you read between the lines, I think there is an effort to try to work out a kind of a philosophy of history that I might call following some of the shows that you've all been doing, maybe climate existentialism, about where resource extraction and where capitalism fits within the history of humanity and where we are on this planet and where we're all going. So there's kind of, there's the academic side of it, which I'll go into in just a moment, but there's also the effort to try to make it a kind of a fun and engaging read, right, playing attention to the dramatic arc and the sort of literary aspects. And then I think there's a submerged kind of philosophical statement in there as well. Well, I'll just interrupt you

to say that I think you really do achieve that. It's a gripping read very well put together. In fact, actually, it reminded me of Elizabeth Thompson's book. We've, listeners, you can go back and listen to an earlier guerrilla history episode, one of our first with Elizabeth Thompson, how the West stole democracy from the Arabs, said in a different period, but with some of the actors you speak about in your first chapter on the Hashemite monarchy. But again, it was very vividly told, an excellent story. and that also was a little bit like a kind of diplomatic spy thriller.

So I think you're really on to something good here and that it should be really amenable to a larger audience. They'll enjoy reading it for sure. Yeah, there's some jokes in there. I think if you read closely, hopefully there are some jokes, there's some satire, there's some irony, hopefully the things that are thrown into, you know, we read so much turgid prose and so much, you know,

heavy academic stuff that I'd hope to make it, hope it make it worth your while or make it fun to read. I enjoyed writing it. Worst thing in the world was actually finishing the thing and saying I couldn't work on it anymore. I very much enjoyed writing the book. And so I hope that readers find some enjoyment in the actual process of reading.

And I did put a lot of work, more work than I needed to in terms of me. I could have finished this book a long time ago, but I really wanted to kind of weave the story together and kind of tease out some, you know, speculations and go down some, some interesting kind of asides and sort of make it an interesting, interesting read. So I put more effort if I was in more of a hurry, I probably could have finished the book more quickly without worrying so much about how to craft the

narrative, without thinking so much about what the sort of scheme of implotment is going to be and how the major characters are going to, trying to think of it as like a play, a drama that plays out on a stage, trying to kind of think in more like Shakespearean terms about what are the moral arcs and what's the psychology of my actors. And I tried to get into some of that in ways that I think are not really traditional. A lot of times in history, we say, well, I can't get inside the minds of my historical subjects. And well, what are you doing that? Like, why are you writing history if you're not getting inside historical motive? What are we doing if we're not exploring motive? And how do you get to motive if you don't understand psychology? So we are obligated to, you know,

I think my philosophy history is that we have to engage the sources and put ourselves in the mind of the actors. And, you know, I'm talking about some crazy crusader right wingers who don't share my perspective, but I'm trying to like get inside their kind of paranoid. I'm trying to psychically inhabit the paranoid mindset as I, as I one point put it, right, trying to put myself in the, in the shoes of those paranoid actors and see the world the way that they see things. Yeah, I guess I'll follow up on this then. As you said, we were talking about the power of thinking in threes. And I think that a good place for us to continue to lay a groundwork for the conversation to come is to talk about the stakeholders within this

story. So within the story, there's three main stakeholders. We have the oil companies. We have Iraqi state building class, which you've already briefly mentioned. And we also have American diplomats that you say we're mediating. And I'm going to put air quotes around mediating because they did a little bit more than just mediate, as I'm sure we'll get into during the conversation. But also, there are roughly three distinct groups within Iraq as well that have interest within this story. So we have the Nosirists, we have the Baothists, and we have the communists, who particularly early on in the story did have quite a large role to play.

So I'm just hoping that you can lay out for the listeners that way, as we go deeper, some of these names and some of these different stakeholders will begin to make sense as we go through them. Who are the oil companies that are at play here? What are their interests within Iraq? Who constitutes the Iraqi state building class? Who are these three groups within the country? The nocerists, the Baoth the communists, and who are the American diplomats that were really having an outsized role within the events that were unfolding? And I know, you know, this is a huge question. So you can try to be brief because, of course, we're going to talk about each of these things later on as well, but just to kind of give us some

groundwork. Yeah, okay, good way to start. So as I mentioned, I'm trying these as actor sets, right? There are three major actor sets that are interacting on the stage, if you will. So the first one is the international petroleum companies, the multinational corporations. So in our context here, we're talking about the Iraq Petroleum Company, which is made up of four of the major international oil company. So Exxon, Mobile, we're talking about BP, Shell, and the French CFP, right, French national oil company. So one major actor is the International Petroleum cartel, if you will, the seven sisters, right? So we're only talking about four of the seven sisters are involved here, but basically the oligopoly that controlled 90 percent of the world's

oil supply and production at the at the end of World War II. So you have the majors, as they're called. And what happens in a lot of the discussion of oil is to assume that the majors are the ones pulling the strings. The majors are the major actors on the stage, if you will. And what oftentimes gets overlooked when we talk about the international political economy of oil is, and that I tried to emphasize, is the really intense competition between the international majors and, again, thinking in threes, the international majors, and then they have their own independent competitors, right? These international companies, small companies that grew up in the 1950s and 1960s

and tried to challenge the global dominance of the majors. So you have the majors on the one side, these seven corporations that control everything. Then you have the independence that are challenging the market dominance of, the majors. And then you have a third factor, right, that way overlooked, way overlooked, which is the domestic American oil and gas industry, which is in direct competition with the majors, because the majors want free trade. They want to import cheap oil from the Middle East. Oil is much cheaper and easier to produce and more profitable in the Middle East. And so the Texas-based companies, or the American-based companies, they don't want to face competition

from this cheap low-cost oil that from their perspective is being dumped on American markets. And so you actually have supposedly in the era when people are worried about, you know, the security of oil, you have import quotas. You have the state actually imposing in 1957, 1958, the Eisenhower administration limiting imports of Middle Eastern oil to no more than 10% of the U.S. market, right? Protecting domestic American oil and gas producers. And so already right off the bat, you have a conflict between. you have a conflict between the majors on the one side and the domestic American oil and gas companies on the other.

And then you have this other third category of firms, the international independence, that are trying to break in. So the sector, right, the oil sector itself has to be broken down. And when you do it that way, you find that this question of the United States as a mediator becomes relevant. because the United States has to mediate between the demands of the majors on the one side and the domestics on the other. And most of the time, what happens in the literature is to assume that the state is most responsive to the needs of the majors. And what I'm finding is that's true, especially the Republicans in the Eisner era, right? Dulles, they work for the oil companies. They're all about international free trade and oil. But the Democrats, the New Deal Democrats, they are beholden

to the domestic American oil companies, right? So Kennedy and Johnson, they're way more sympathetic to the interests of domestic American oil companies than they are to the majors. And so already there's this kind of tension in the United States government, you know, the foreign policy and the various agencies have to kind of satisfy these two different constituencies. And then, of course, they're the independents that also kind of work in there in awkward ways. And so as I say that the U.S. state is trying to serve several master's

at once, you know, even in its own domestic constituency, right? It's got its international independence that actually want to do business with the Iraqi nationalist. It's got the majors that want to shut down the Iraqi nationalists. It's got the domestic American oil companies that want to have nothing to do with the Middle East. They just want to, you know, frack oil and gas from here until forever. And that's a story that didn't begin in the 2000s, right? They were calling for a massive Manhattan Project in the 1940s to convert all this oil, all this natural gas and shale and sludge and all these other non-conventional kinds of oil so that they could exploit oil resources in the in the American West and in Canada, where some of you are from, I know.

So there's this, that's the one side, right? The international oil story. And I guess we can come back and go in any more detail if necessary. The second one, I guess we'll talk about the Iraqi act. sets, if you will. And you identified it, I'm borrowing from, you know, the great historian Honabatatu here, right, the old social classes, right? The free officers, the communists, and the Bothas. Those are the three major actors. Now, the free officers, by the time we get to the 60s, they basically become the Nosserans, right? That's sort of where that tendency comes

from. Okay, so the three major groups, you have, you have the communists, which are the largest, best, most well-organized, right? The party organizes in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression trying to organize peasants and oil workers and port workers. And it is, along with the today in Iran, it's the best organized, most populous, most well-led, most charismatic. It's the, you know, it's the best. It's the Iran of the mass politics in the Middle East in these years, in the 30s, 40s, and coming into the 50s. Mind you doing all this. under a highly repressive Hashemite state that is like, you know, the party's illegal. It's leaders are being hanged.

And, you know, it's doing this through this kind of underground cellular structure. And it's doing it by appealing to a kind of Iraqi nationalist conception that is drawing upon the very sort of diverse cultural landscape that is Iraq, right? That it's not rooted in Sunni doctrines. It's not rooted in Arabism, right? it's open to Shiites, to Kurds, to Yazidis, to, it's a non-sectarian party that wants to bring all Iraqis together towards trying to, you know, assert public control over the means production, right, enact the basic communist plan. So you have the communists who have, I think,

the most well thought out the best sort of strategic plan, the best organization. They kind of have, they have the plan, right? Coming up a little after the, after the communists in the 40s, you get the Pan-Arabathist party, right, the Renaissance party, which sees itself as doing the same thing, opposing Zionism, opposing imperialism, calling for something called Arab socialism, right? So where do like Kurds or where do non-Arabs fit within that becomes a kind of issue? But really, the communists and the Bothis are competing parties. They have competing models of what Arab revolution looks like or what revolution looks like in general. And the easiest way to think to summarize this distinction is the Ba'ath is a elitist party. It's a vanguardist party,

right? They're what are called modern educated. They're lawyers, their doctors, their scientists, their engineers. And they see themselves as an elite that doesn't really need mass-based or a mass support or mass legitimacy. What they want, to do is cultivate good ties within the military, and then they want to sort of revolution society from top down. And so there's not a grassroots mobilization of society. So we call this in Arabic the model of the inculab, of the coup, right? Their ideas as inculab, whereas the communists have the idea of a bottom-up transformation of society, mobilizing workers and peasants into associations and doing Fowra, revolution, right?

So the two models are the Baathist, you know, vanguardist and Qilab versus the communist kind of bottom-up, grassroots, broad front, kind of a mass front idea of Faura, of revolution, right? So you have these two competing sort of tendencies. And then you have what become, what are originally just the free officers, eventually become more ideologically inclined,

closer towards the communists, But originally, you know, the free officers, they're not real ideological. They're very pragmatic. They sort of gravitate between the communists and the nationalist. They don't really have a, you know, they just want to use technology to, you know, root out the corruption of the British kind of parliamentary order, but don't really have a clear ideological program of their own. But over time, and especially as I document in the book, you know, basically over the 1960s, the free officers, the Nosser, grow closer to the communist side of things. And so a lot of the struggle that plays it on the book is these three groups

sort of jockeying for power and one's up, one's down. And I was to try to explain why one faction rises and another suffers. And the ultimate irony is that the boff, you know, to spoiler alert, the boath come out on the end. And it's the old, you know, William Morris quote, right, men fight and lose the battle, but then the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then other men have to come and fight under a different name. So it's kind of that same, I probably ruined the quote there, but something like that. Right, the communists came up with the idea,

the both has come in, chop cut down the communists, steal their good idea, and then use their good idea to cement their legitimacy in Iraqi society. And so the both come off as the heroes that actually carried out the historical task, even though they basically stole, stole the march, if you will, from the communists who did all the hard work and actually did the work. Or really, it's like the communists eventually influenced the Nosiris, the Nosris did the good work, and then the Bothas come in and sort of steal the march, if you will. So I guess that's the Iraqi side of things, right? And, you know, we can come back to anything that's unclear any of that. The third part of the third leg of the stool, if you will, is the American foreign policy, right?

And one thing that when I analyze American foreign policy, a lot of what I'm doing is similar to a kind of, you know, it's in the tradition maybe of realism, except that I am, especially, you know, looking at the way that, you know, states compete for power and whatnot. But what's different about, but what I'm doing from a lot of realist analysis is I don't accept the idea of the state as a unitary and coherent actor. I don't see the state as a unified personality that knows exactly what it wants and how it wants to get there, right? The state is, as I put it, a kind of like an arena of competition in which different socially rooted sort of interest groups compete and vie for power, right?

So the CIA wants one thing, Treasury wants something else, Department of Defense wants something else, State Department wants something else, domestic oil companies want something, you know, Exxon wants something, Chase Manhattan wants something, and there's this sort of, you know, relative autonomy of the state as these, you know, competing elite groups fight amongst one another. And so the state is this kind of, you know, this sort of, this raucous kind of arena in which all these different interest groups compete for influence. But the general pattern that I see, I don't have a nifty rule of thirds here, but there's really kind of two major tendencies that I, that I'm engaging with. One is what I'm calling is the Arabist tendency

or the developmentalist or the progressive tendency that I see kind of rooted in a in a New Deal ethos, the idea that capitalism left to its own devices will destroy capitalism itself. And so it needs the sort of guiding hand of the state to sort of save capitalism from its own, right, save capitalism from and for capitalists, right, to preserve capitalism from its own sort of, you know, self-destructive tendency. So you have the kind of the New Deal tendency that is manifested in terms of the Arabist kind of sensibility, which thinks that that economic development is key to stability, right, and that you need to allow a certain kind of new deal to unfold in the Middle East, right? That if you don't have a new deal,

you're going to have communist revolution, and so it's better to accommodate, you know, you know, a reasonable Arab demands for sovereignty and economic self-determination and whatnot, and that this is the preferred tendency. So against the kind of Arabist tendency is what I'm calling the kind of more paranoid tendency that wants to see communists under every bed, right, that sees, you know, the Soviet Union as the kind of unmoved mover of world history, right? It's always, right, the kind of McCarthyite tendency applied to foreign policy. And this is, mind you, very performative, historic, right? The idea, I don't think they really believe that, you know, there are communists under every

bed or that the communist, you know, the Soviet Union pulled the levers to bring about the 1958 revolution, but it's a very useful in a kind of domestic political sense to denounce your enemies as soft on communism or to castigate any expression of economic nationalism as somehow part of a kind of a Soviet plot. And so you have this really hardline, cold warrior perspective that has no tolerance for, you know, Arab sensibilities or popular aspirations and just wants to impose this really kind of harsh sort of authoritarian, you know, bipolar imposition on the world, right? To divide the world between the communist bloc and the free world and seize the world through

that kind of globalist lens versus the more regional Arabist lens. And it's always the Arabists who have a much better understanding. They understand the language. They know the culture. There are flaws. And I sort of point to some of the problems of the Arabist imagination towards the end, or at least a hint towards them. But basically my theory is the more you know, the less influence you have, right?

So the very fact that these people know the language means that they're suspect. If you've spent so much time learning a difficult language, that means you can't be objective. That means you can't keep the big picture, the global balance of power between the Soviet Union and communism and capitalism and capitalism that you have become, you've gone native, right? And so the Arabists are always fighting and losing an uphill battle, trying to be the good angel on the, on the, on the, the shoulder of the American state saying, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this, that, the other thing, this is not going to work out well, but the reward for being right is not getting any influence, right? So they get slapped down, they get ridiculed, they get humiliated, and always it's the side that is going for the more belligerent or the more kind

of paranoid sensibility is always the one that that sort of gets its preferred outcomes. You know, Brett, I'll let you hop in with your question, but you mentioned that more that people knew or the less belligerent that they were, the more that they were pushed aside. This extended even to the Dulles brothers because both of the Dulles brothers were working on the issue of Iraq. And it's something that I'd like to talk more about later. But Alan Dulles saw Nazarism as a third force, which you point out in the book. He thought that it was something that would tread the line somewhere in between, you know, they were opposed to both the Soviets and also to Western European colonialism. And I mean, he was a Dulles brother for

God's sake, but they still completely shut out his opinion in favor of John Foster's much more paranoid view of the situation in Iraq until his health completely declined and they really had no choice but to, you know, revert to the other Dela's brother, which, you know, was much less paranoid. But anyway, Brett, I'll turn it over to you now. I just wanted to make that point to underscore that. Sure. Well, really quickly, that just reminds me. I just recorded an episode. It's going to be out, it'll be out by the time this comes out on Yugoslavia and the socialist construction attempt in Yugoslavia and then how Tito was the spearheader of this non-aligned movement of which Nasir was a part. So just kind of interesting little detour into that history,

but you can go on Rev. Left to find that. What I want to talk about here, and that was a fascinating breakdown, very well articulated on your part, but just moving into more of this context, you mentioned the Hashemite monarchy. And in your first chapter, you cover the origins of the monarchy, as well as the Iraq Petroleum Company. So I was hoping that you could kind of lay those cards on the table and flesh that out a little bit for us before we move, you know, more robustly in the direction of the Free Officers Revolution. Okay. Yeah. So the Hashemite monarchy, for just a general introduction for those that are unfamiliar, right? The Hashemites are a kind of a royal family that had, were the custodians or the guardians of the holy places of Mecca and Medina

of the Hijazz under the Ottoman system. Now, as the Ottoman system was coming into crisis, before World War I, Sharif Hussein, the custodian, starts putting in interest in an independent Arab kingdom, right, wanting to declare some sort of autonomy from the Ottoman Empire before World War I. And so this becomes the origin of a kind of collaboration between the Hashemites, the descendants of, you know, the family of Sharif Hussein in Mecca, and T.E. Lawrence, right, famous Lawrence of Arabia, where the Hashemites joined a rebellion against the Ottomans during World War I in some vague promise that there's going to be an independent Arab kingdom after the war, right? This is probably familiar to most listeners, right, that the Hashemites

collaborated, you know, Prince Faisal is the son of Shari Fussein, collaborates with T.E. Lawrence to defeat the Ottomans in World War I. And then obviously the Arabs are betrayed after the war, the independent Arab kingdom is not proclaimed. There is no, uh, um, independent state that's a, that's a, uh, proclaimed where it was, um, uh, promised or vaguely promised. And instead of an independent Arab kingdom, the French and the British infamously, you know, opposed their mandates on, on the region, right? Um, and in, in, uh, in Iraq, the British, you know, take control of the country, right? The Ottoman surrender in 1918, October of 1918. The British immediately, you know, seize the country and try to integrate it into their empire on the model of the Indian, you know, direct colonial rule on the model of India.

And immediately, the Iraqis reject this. Iraqis have a long history of regional sort of autonomy under the Ottoman system, a long history of civil administration going back before, you know, while, you know, before they even had, you know, indoor plumbing or bathing or. whatever. In Europe, there's a long history of civil service and administration in Iraq. And so Iraqis rebelled against British control immediately. And this is the Thaoer of Ishrin or the revolution of 1920. The Iraqis rebel against the British authority. The British respond by, well, you know, harsh counterinsurgency methods, but then they respond by taking this ally, right? Prince Faisal who had fought with them during World War I and putting him on the throne of Iraq,

putting an Arab head of state to try to mollify Arab or Iraqi public opinion. And so in a word, the Hashemites are rewarded for their service in World War I by one brother, Faisal, becoming the king of Iraq and the other brother Abdullah becoming the king of Jordan. And so the Hashemites are in a word, they're installed by the British after World War one to maintain their new mandate or their new claim to sovereign to your authority in Iraq. And so the Hashemites are in this awkward position of having a rest of Iraqi civil society under them that wants independence and having to sort of answer to the British who had ultimately

installed them. And so they're in this kind of liminal position where they have the British above them, they have a rest of Iraqi society below them and try to maintain that balance for as long as they can until obviously they can't when they're overthrown in the 50s. Yeah, well, I mean, this is a very interesting period after that background with the free officers revolt. It's a very interesting period in the 1950s, I think. So much is going on in the Middle East. I'm wondering maybe you can unpack a little bit who the free officers. You mentioned briefly in the outline that they're

kind of in between the more radical left Communist Party from working and organizing from below up on a mass political basis and this kind of nationalist elite vanguardist movement of the Ba'ath Renaissance Party. There's, I guess, junior officers or officers in the Iraqi army. Why is it that they decide to throw off the Hashemite monarchy? How was that associated during this period, the discontent associated with the corruption of that Hashemite monarchy and the way it was implicated in kind of the late British kind of control of Iraq's oil resources, and the way in which the U.S. also ended up kind of supporting that by joining in with the so-called Baghdad Pact, you know,

and maybe you can sketch out a little bit that era of the 1950s and how Nasserism emerged as this other opportunity. So we can understand a little bit more how and why the free officers are successful in this, you know, in this revolution. 1958, which is sort of the start, real start of your story about the attempt to nationalize the IPC. Yeah, good question. So the 1950s, yeah, I agree. There is just so much going on there and there's a lot to unpack. A lot happened. Decades happened within that one decade, right? A lot happened in the 1950s. And a lot of this revolves, you know, reading the book, you know that a lot of the story revolves around Egypt and Nasser, right? Nosser is kind of the major actor. And so I don't think it's possible to understand, you know, U.S. foreign policy in

Iraq is really, it goes through the filter of their larger policy in relation to Nasser. Right. So basically, the United States, its policy is responding to the Nassar's revolution in Egypt. And everything that happens in Iraq has to go through that lens, right? It's read through the lens of how it affects U.S. Egyptian relations. And U.S. foreign policy in 1950s, as Henry just pointed out, you know, is divided. They call it kind of schizophrenic. Even within the Dulles family, there's a split personality between, you know, Henry just mentioned the third force concept, right?

And that comes directly out of, you know, Graham Green, quiet American, you know, 1954 or 55, whatever, this idea of the modernizers, the American modernizers looking for a quote, unquote, third force that is going to be, you know, obviously colonialism doesn't work, right? Colonialism is collapsed after World War, you know, this is in Vietnam. So after, you know, World War II, the French colonial empire is defunct. That's not going to work. But obviously, they don't want communism. And so the idea is that nationalism can be the new third force, right? So there are these people who are on board with this new concept, that nationalism is a third force that is going to be independent, right? It's not, it's not colonialism because that's bankrupt.

that game is over. And so now the contest is between, the contest is between nationalism and communism. And so one side of the American state says, well, we should, we should basically, you know, kind of hitch our wagon to nationalism, because if we don't, we don't identify with nationalism, the communists are going to take over. So that's the kind of Alan Dullis, more sophisticated viewpoint. His brother, John Foster, is more in the kind of, no colonialism is still valid. We can prop up the British Empire forever. We can maintain. maintain neocolonialism. Nationalism is basically just one step away from colonialism, from communism. And so nationalism and communism, there's no functional and meaningful difference. They both want

to nationalize the oil. And so they're both, you know, they're both enemies. And so the American state is divided between these two tendencies. The one side is what I call pro-British and anti-Nosser, right? The John Foster Dulles side says, you know, Nosser is either a witting or an unwitting tool of the communists, right? He is, he is, uh, he's basically being controlled or manipulated by the communists and he cannot be trusted. We cannot do business with this guy. That's the John Foster Dolis tendency. It's dominant through most of the, uh, the Eisenhower administration. Um, but his brother Alan and who, you know, runs the CIA and is nominally is, you know, beneath him outranked by his older brother who is, you know, senior and got him his job at the CIA. So the younger brother,

Alan is saying, no, no, no, no, come on. You got to be more. sophisticated, you've got to recognize that the British are just ruining things. They're pissing off local sensibilities, and they're going to get us all thrown out of the Middle East. And so we should usher the British off the stage, and we should welcome the nationalists, the Nassarist in, that Nosser is the sort of harbinger of this new era. And we should work with Nosser. We should get him to buy weapons from us and crack down on the communists and see if we can kind of work with Nosser. And so you have the American are divided, and you can see them going back and forth in both policies operating at once.

This is why I don't accept the realist conception of the state as a unified actor, because you can have one agency of government that's actively helping Nasser and promoting him in another element of government, actively fighting against him. And so you can have the policy proceeding in two contradictory directions at once. And so, say, for example, in 1956, you know, the Israelis, the French, and the British invade Egypt and try to overthrow Nott. officer, and the United States basically, you know, cuts off oil and financial aid to the British, says, no, you can't do that. Like, why can't you, you can't do that? You can't do that. Right. And so there are interesting reasons to why, but in a word, right, Eisenhower supposedly said

to John Foster Dulles, hey, we're going to lose the entire Arab world if we stand with French, British, and Israeli colonialism against the popular aspirations of the, you know, of the Arab peoples. And so in 1956, you know, in November of 1956, you have the United States adopting a basically relatively pro-Arab position. And then in January of 1957, you have the United States passing or promulgating, you know, John Foster Dulles' idea, which is the Eisenhower doctrine of containing an isolating Nosser by building up the conservative Arab states in the region, by, you know, funneling money to Jordan and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and providing them with arms. And so you have one side of the government, so you have this kind of back and forth and these kind of wild and violent swings between the relatively pro and anti-Nosser positions. And so there's two things. You mentioned, so 195 is kind of like the anti-Nosser Baghdad Pact. They build this big, you know, NATO type alliance against Nosser.

And then that sort of backfires. And they sort of get into trouble with the Suez War and they have to moderate back and say, okay, you know, now we're going to be relatively pro. Nosser. And then, you know, Nosser becomes so popular after 1956, right? There are United Arab Republic, you know, Egypt and Syria joining there are Nostris movements all over. So after 1956, the United States is worried that Nosser is becoming too powerful or too influential and they work to check him. But again, Alan Dullis and the CIA doesn't like this idea because they're like, actually, you know, there are communists in Syria and there are communists in Egypt. And Nosser is cracking down on those, right? That the alternative to Nosser is the communist. And so Nosser is our best

bet here. So two things. The Baghdad Pact and the Eisenhower doctrine just totally alienated everybody with two brain cells in the region, right? It was completely antithetical to the sentiments, right? Everybody in the region is saying, no, our problem is the British imperialism, is Zionism, is economic underdevelopment, is multinational corporations. And here the United States is saying, here, join our grand cause against our grandiose plan to counter communism. And it's just totally, it doesn't resonate, right? And so in Iraq, you get the three major groups come together after the Baghdad pack, but especially cementing after the Eisenhower doctrine, where the United Front, a national front, they called it, where the boss, the free

officers, and the communists all come together and say, okay, we have different strategies. and different ideological tendencies and different philosophies, but we all basically disagree with the Baghdad Pact, and we all disagree with the Eisenhower Doctrine, right? Those two things are basically, you know, the same policy. We're against the, you know, being incorporated, drafted into this global crusade against communism. And so it's American foreign policy of anti-communism

that fuses these three disparate groups together, right? These three groups come together, right? The Iraqi Free Officers organizationally take shape in 1956 shortly after the Suez, after Nasserb withstands the triple aggression from Israel and its backers. So this group comes together, and then they're basically just looking for an opportune time. And actually in July of 1958, on Bastille Day, right? There's some question about whether Kossum was offering a compliment to the French revolution there. At least that's the way he put it in some context. There's an opportunity

where the king sends a column of tanks to pass through Baghdad on their way to Jordan to put down or to provide support to Jordan as Jordan's trying to put down or a noxrist uprising there. And rather than following orders on to Jordan, this really important unit, right, second infantry division, right? A really important unit within the military, led by Qasem, who becomes the who becomes the leader of the new regime, dispatches is forced to Baghdad. They arrest and detain and decapitate the hashmite monarchy, proclaim a republic and set iraq on a on a new course so i guess to really come back to your question

it's really the what fuses the opposition groups together and creates a unified opposition to the hashmite monarchy is that the way the hashamites position themselves as the linchpin of the bagdad pact as the main rival right the geopolitical alternative to nosrest egypt and nosir was very popular right and so the so so basically there was a kind of a popular enthusiasm for a kind of nosterous sentiment, you know, a tendency that the United States was brooking. And so those three groups came together on a kind of nostrils agenda to carry out the coup in 1958. Yeah. So at the very beginning of this interview, you said that the book is a straightforward study. And I want to mention that it's as straightforward as possible given the situations that were

unfolding here because you mentioned the Free Officers Revolution in 1958. This was the first of many coups that happened over the next few years. So now that we have an idea of the groups that were at play within Iraq, I think that it would be useful for us to help us understand how eventually we got from this point, the fall of the Hashmite monarchy, to the point of oil nationalization, which, as you mentioned, is something that they hadn't been able to achieve within Iran, but Iraq, based on its different circumstances, somehow managed to achieve, maybe even with a group that perhaps we wouldn't have thought would have been able to achieve it. So I think that the way that we should proceed from here is to maybe sketch out some of these

coups that happened over the next few years and to hopefully understand the ebbs and flows of competing strains of Arab nationalism at play here as these different coups take place, as, you know, Nassarist factions come into power, the Bothists come into power, as well as the tendencies towards oil nationalization through these varying coups. So, you know, of course, we just mentioned 1958, but then we had another one in the beginning of 1963, where the Bophist came into power. And then another one in 1963, where the Nassarists replaced the Bothists. And then we have in 1968, the Bophists come back. And then there's a coup within a coup in 1968, or a different faction within the Ba'athis party, displaced the existing, you know, power structure within

the Baathis powder party. So, you know, you said it's a straightforward study, but obviously, as I just laid out, there's like, you know, five distinct coups that are going on here. So it is a little bit of a web to understand how the conceptions of Arab nationalism within the governing structure of Iraq changed throughout this period of time. And that is really useful to understand, to understand how eventually we get to the point of oil. nationalization through the lens of Arab nationalism. Yeah, it's kind of a kachina doll of coups, right? Cooze nesting within, Cus, nesting within coups.

Right, we've talked about how West Africa is like that in recent episodes, but this is definitely much in the same, in the same lane in the 1960s version. Yeah, the coups seem to come in series, right? Come in, coups, and they come in, they come in series. So, so the first thing to say is that the oil, nationalization agenda precedes the 1958 revolution, right? Going back to the 1920s or before you have, you know, Iraqi, what I would call Iraqi oil nationalists that want to assert public control over their natural resources as part of the program of national sovereignty and

modernity. So this goes back. Even, you know, it proceeds, it transcends political parties and tendencies. So even the monarchy wanted more revenue and wanted more control. And so, you know, the monarchy is not really going to push that. They're not going to alienate the people that are giving them money and guns, obviously. So they're not going to step on anybody's toes. But they do have within the ministries, right? There were people who were within the Iraqi, you know, oil ministries, whatnot, that participated in Bandung, right?

And that we're thinking about how to cooperate, even, even, you know, as all this stuff with the Baghdad pact is going on, there are levels of collaboration among Iraqi, you know, ministries who are working with Nosser and trying to think about how they can share technology, share ideas, share markets, how they can try to overcome, you know, economic underdevelopment, independence on the capital and technology of the multinational corporations. So there's an oil nationalization agenda that precedes 1958, right? And then the other thing to note is that Nosser, I'm sorry, that Kossum looked at what happened to Mossadegh and said, okay, right, we need to learn from that.

We can't do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to get overthrown, right? That's not going to work. You know, Mossadegh that. He thought the Americans would buy the oil. And the Americans were like, no, we're not going to buy your oil. We're going to overthrow you. So he knows that a direct confrontation with the companies as he comes into power is not going to work. And he issues a statement immediately. One of the first radio communicates is, hey, BP, you know, hey, oil companies, we were executing a revolution against corrupt Iraqis. Has nothing to do with the international corporations. We have no desire to disrupt your operations. This is a time of a massive glut

in global oil production. And so the idea of disrupting Iraqi oil production was, you know, would have only hurt Iraq. And so Kossum goes out of his way to say, hey, we're not going to, this revolution has nothing to do with the oil. We're not going to hurt your oil interests whatsoever. Right. And that is the predominant kind of tendency. When, When Nosser, I'm sorry, when Kossum comes to power, is first he has to stabilize his own domestic regime, right? The three parties came together to execute the coup or execute the revolution against the Hashemites. But obviously, once that's accomplished, then you're going to sort of, you know, decompose the coalition. And so he's worried about any rides, he kind of rides a popular appeal of Nosser to power in 1958, but immediately, like,

Like, you know, the coup is, you know, July 1958, by August, there's already basically, you know, plots and plans for an attempted coup or there's already a split between within the free officer camp, right? So, Kossum, as he comes to power, some people in Iraq want to join with the United Arab Republic, which is the unification of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, right? this effort to build a pan-Arab state. And so some Iraqis, or some three officers at some Iraqis, want to join the pan-Arab Nasra state. This is particularly popular among the kind of the Sunni Arab sector of the population. But a lot of Shiites and a lot of Kurds and a lot of ethnic and religious minorities are worried about being subsumed within a Sunni Arab state that they think is going to privilege

or that might, you know, not respect or represent their interests well. And so there's another faction within the Iraq, right? The communists do not want to join. They like Nosser. They got no problem with Nosser. They like the national association of Suez Canal. Like, you know, they see him as a comrade and whatnot. They don't like what he's doing to some of the communists in Syria in Egypt or whatnot,

but relatively speaking. But they don't want to join, they don't want to join the United Arab Republic. And so immediately a split breaks out between. the Boethys who want to join the United Arab Republic immediately and the communists to say, no, we're better off defending our national sovereignty around these borders that, you know, that we're saddled with. And so quite immediately, there's a split between the Nosser, between Kossum, who's just a free officer, right? He's not a Nosserist and he's not a communist. He's pretty sympathetic to communism, right? I think he actually is, you know, he leans in the communist direction.

His mother was a Fahili or a Kurdish Shiite. He grew up poor. He has natural sympathies for the downtrodden and whatnot. And so Kossum has to navigate between the communists that don't want to join the UAR, don't want to join Nosser, and the Bothis that do want to join with UAR. And the vice president, the guy, you know, Salim Araf, who goes on to kind of become the next president and lead the 1963 coup,

he wants to join Nasser immediately. So the basic split that emerges in the 19, in, in, in 1950s is between, you know, the communists that don't want to join the UAR and the Bothas that do want to join the UAR. And so Nasser, so Kossum is basically navigating between these two polls. and basically leans and forms an alliance with the communists against the Bothus, right? Because he doesn't want to join the UAR. And so you get a split that develops really easily.

And while Kossum is trying to consolidate his own domestic position, he goes out of his way to not alienate or offend or, you know, aggravate the oil companies, right? This all changes. basically the communists. They form it like they get a massive popular revolutionary force. They build this big militia. They build all these peasant associations, women's associations. They do a lot of progressive stuff. They land reform gender rights. Like all, you know, they're doing good stuff. And so once the, the communists basically essentially defeat the Bothas by early 1961, it looks like the communists have prevailed in that domestic, the sort of that point, once Kossum feels like he has kind of a stable hold on power and can risk kind of alienating the companies, that's when he starts over the course of 1961. So we're talking, you know, two, three years into the revolution.

Then he starts, you know, gradually, incrementally demanding higher shipping and port dues, demanding adjustments of tax rates, demanding more control over the company. and he gets in this very long, you know, 1961 over the whole course of 1961, he's arguing with the oil companies and he's pushing up his demands. And ultimately in December of 19, December of 1961, he issues this landmark decree, law 80, which nationalizes 99.5% of the IPC's concessionary area, right? And so to unpack that, when the IPC came in there in 1920s, they asserted monopoly control. They said, here are the sovereign boundaries of Iraq. No company has the right to, this is not free trade, right? This is not free market or whatever. This is a monopoly. This is the

idea that the IPC has the exclusive right to explore for produce market oil within the sovereign boundaries of Iraq. But Iraq is, but IPC is only producing oil at two points at a oil field near Bostar in the south and an oil field near Kirkuk in the north. And there are all these other massive oil finds all over the country that they're not developing because the world is oversupplied of oil in the 19, you know, through the 1950s. And so, so what the 1961 law does is it nationalizes all of the unused, all the undeveloped portions of Iraq. So it says the company can still operate at Kerk and at Basra. But these other territories, we're going, are going to revert to Iraqi state control. And this is where one of our,

our actor sets comes in. He says, we're going to cooperate with French or Italian or American independent companies that might want to compete with the majors. We're going to lease out these blocks of reclaimed oil fields to the international competitors of the IPC. And so that December of 1961 begins the long kind of controversy over Iraq's nationalization of these fields. So it's not like, speaking of learning from speaking of learning from from from from from iran it's not like iran there was no actual nationalization of property right there is no uh you know no no no facilities no infrastructure no you know according to international law all the subsoil resources are iraqis it's just the equipment on top the drilling rigs and the

pipelines and all that stuff is is foreign own property and so there's uh there's no nationalization of property the oil companies can continue to operate it's just that iraq in a much more sort of moderate it moved than, you know, most of it nationalized the whole thing, the refineries, the pipelines, the, you know, the whole thing. And so there becomes a long legal dispute between Iraq and the IPC. And the Americans have to kind of defend the IPC against nationalization. But the Americans have, you know, Conoco Phillips and Sinclair and all these other union and Phillips oil, all these other oil companies that want to compete and say, hey, Iraq's action was totally legitimate, right? It's totally, you know, Britain is nationalizing coal and medicine and hospitals.

Like, you can nationalize industries. There's nothing against international losses. You can't do that. And so the United States has to navigate between, you know, the, between these different tendencies. And so how does that get us to the coups, right? It's easy to draw a straight line and says, okay, Iraq nationalizes in December of 1961. The CIA gets involved in a coups, right? coup in February of 1963. And so clearly there's a clear line of causation there, right? That would

kind of be intuitively satisfying. But, you know, the book is full of ironies. And one of the ironies is that the oil companies really didn't, the major companies didn't really have that much invested in the idea of a 1963 coup against Qossum. They looked at the Boff who the CIA wanted to put in power. And they're like, the Boff are the same as Qossum. They want to nationalize the oil. Like, why do we want to support the boss? They're socialist, costume socialists. We don't want any of these people to, you know, from the oil company standpoint, the longer Iraq is embroiled in domestic controversy and political instability to the better, because then it's not producing oil and you can concentrate production in Iran or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or other other places

where they might have had had more interests. And so in 1962, in the summer of 1962, this kind of dispute about the oil is going on for, you know, a better part of a year, the United States, for its own reasons, comes to the conclusion that Kossum is, or at least one faction within the government comes to the conclusion that Kossum is a communist, and that the nationalization of the oil indicated that he was a communist and he needed to be overthrown. So you have the Cold War tendency going, you know, this guy's a communist, right? And then you have the Arabist saying, no, he's not a communist. He's not going to give the oil to the Soviet Union. He's kind of stop selling to the, right? So you have this debate within the

government. You have the Arabis saying, you know what? We can do business with this guy. This is basically okay. And then you have the Cold War paranoid tendency saying, no, we've got to overthrow this guy. And it's not, and again, the irony here, the wrinkle is that the Cold War tendency isn't really directly mired in or directly rooted in the interest of the oil companies because I said the oil companies are pretty much indifferent to what's going on. And so So actually, the CIA is going to the oil companies and saying, hey, the boss, these are the guys, right? These guys are they going to modernize. They're going to, you know, they're the future of the region.

They're going to bring modernity to the Middle East. And the oil companies are like, we don't want modernity in the Middle East. Modernity means like state control over the oil industry. We want to keep these people backward and poor. We have no interest in modernizing the Middle East. And Kennedy and the new frontiers were like, yes, this is going to be great. Third way, this is the future. and the oil companies are saying, no, we like the 19th century. That was nice. We want to preserve that for as long as we possibly can. We're not trying to come to the 20th century. No, thank you. Right. And so you have the CIA trying to sell the Booth party to the oil companies, the oil company saying, no thanks. And then to skip radically forward, the irony is that it switched to 1968. In 1968, now it's the opposite. It's the opposite. Now the oil companies are on the back foot. They're going to go.

going, oh shit, we're about to get nationalized. And they're calling the CIA saying, hey, come get our banking out of the fire here. Come rescue us. And in 1968, the CIA and the State Department and the Lyndon Johnson administration is like, hey, fuck you guys, you're on your own. You're like, wait. In

1963, the CIA is trying to sell the boss to the oil companies and the oil companies won't do it. And then it's reversed in 1968, where in 1968, the oil companies are trying to tell the CIA and the U.S. government that the is the bee's knees, and the state is like, no, they don't like Israel. We don't like them.

So there's a lot of kind of, you know, sort of weird reversals of position going on here. Do you want me to talk a little about what happened at the end of 63, how the Nossars came and how to link those two? I've got one quick interjection that I'd like to make that might also be germane to this point. So you mentioned that this is something that might interest the listen. you mentioned that the Communist Party had a militia at this point. This was a militia that was allowed by Qasem. He said, you know, go ahead, make your people's resistance force, which was the name of this militia. And the people's resistance force of the Communist Party actually did aid Qasem in some of those tensions and some uprisings that were taking place

in different parts of Iraq before the coup in 63. But closer to the coup in 63, So 61, 62, Kossum disbands the people's resistance force. He has some reprisals against the communists, which, you know, the motivations there you go into a little bit in the book. And it might be interesting just to briefly mention to the audience. But the interesting thing, what I think is the most interesting thing, is what might have happened if he hadn't disbanded the people's resistance force. Because this was one of the most organized militias that was present within Iraqi society.

it's highly, I mean, I don't want to say highly likely, but it's possible that had that not been disbanded, had there not been these repisals against the Communist Party, that the existence of a people's resistance force in 1963 might have actually saved Qasem's skin because, you know, it's not as if he was unpopular. He was very popular, especially among the poor people in the country, which you lay out in the book. There was when the coup was starting, there was people flooding the streets of Iraq in support of Qasem. but there was no organized militia. You know, having a people's resistance force might have actually changed history and who knows how things would have went after that. But yeah, just an interesting point in case there's anything you want to add on that

before we continue forward. Yeah, I'd even go farther and say, not just highly likely, but absolutely certain, right? You would have saved the revolution had you maintain that popular resistance force, right? It's the same story as, you know, Arbenz in Guatemala or repeated for all these other places, right? The state leader is afraid to arm the communists or afraid to arm the peasants for fear of what?

Usually for fear of CIA intervention, right? That if you do maintain, you know, if you do allow the communists to remain under arms, then you're going to have to answer to the CIA, right? But alas. So there's that part of it. And so I do think, right, the people that poured into the streets to defend Kossom's regime, that you're right. They were like trying to beat back the boss with like, you know, canes and pistols and stool.

Like they were unarmed, right? They were, they were disarmed, right? And the disarming of the communists was we can look back and say, hey, Kossam messed up. He should have actually, you know, not really kind of like distance from the communists. He should have maintained that alliance and that he should have, you know, that he should have kept allowed the resistance force, the militia to remain. under arms, that that was the ultimate, you know, guarantor of his regime. And once you do that, then, you know, the reason that he did that, that he allowed that militia to form is because the military is basically full of right-wingers as all militaries are, right? Like the

Balthus and the conservatives within the military, especially the higher upper echelons. And so the popular revolutionary force is a counterbalance to the, basically, the domination of the armed forces by the kind of more conservative and, you know, Arab nationalist and, um, uh, uh, kind of, um, Balthus were really well represented within the military, especially as the, as the, as it goes on. Uh, so, so he forms, so like, what did he do that? Why would he like basically disarm himself? And it seems, um, it seems, it seems, you know, strategically blundrous, right? Um, to, to do that. But I almost, I didn't use the, in the um i didn't use this in the book but i almost called i ended up going with the metaphor of chess

of like trying to but i was kind of thinking of a judo metaphor right you push left if you want to pull right if you want to push left right you kind of keep your opponents off balance right and so kind of the way i think of what he was doing in 1961 62 is that as he moved to take on the oil companies he needed to send a loud signal to washington that he was not a communist right because there's a there's a you know the kind of what I think is the kind of interesting story of the poisoned handkerchief that I start this off with, right? As Kossom was in his moment of closest affiliation with the communist, this guy, Sidney Gottlieb, right? The guy that Stephen Kinzer writes about is the CIA mind control assassin dude. He seems to have been in Africa trying to assassinate

Lumumba, right? This is in that period. And he seems to have taken a kind of detour and sent a poisoned handkerchief or tried to assassinate or otherwise incapacitate an Iraqi colonel that's unnamed in the sources, but we think is this guy Madawi, basically someone really close to Qasem. Right. So basically, Qasem gets the word. I think the Arabists in the embassy basically tell Qasem says, hey, if you keep, you know, hugging the communists and bring them into your cabinet and, right, arming their militia, like, these people are crazy. Trust me, we know them. These paranoid types like they are they got a hard on for a coup like they just like overthrowing countries not because they think it serves some rational end but it isn't ended in of itself like

they love the gamesmanship of it they love just fucking up people's countries they love going in with suitcases full of money and and pistols and just arming one faction against the other and creating disorder like they think it's a it's a it's not video game but they think it's a they think it's a game they enjoy this shit right and so i think the arabist went to kosum and said if you don't moderate right? If you don't establish some distance from the communists, like they're coming for you. They got your number. And so he kind of sends out these feelers to the State Department and says, okay, hey, we don't, we're not communists, we're nationalists. You know, we've disbanded, we've outlawed the official Communist Party. We've disbanded their, we've disbanded their militia.

I've forced some communists to resign from my administration, right? He takes these very loud, invisible moves on the one hand to say, hey, I'm not a communist. And I believe what he was trying to do was buy himself some space so that he could go, so that he could actually open up the next front on the, on the oil, you know, oil side of things. And so there was a kind of a strategic compromise that he made. I think that ultimately, I think his sympathy was with the communist, but he knew that if he didn't kind of, you know, be careful, then his whole thing was going to get, you know, overthrown really quickly.

And so he bought himself some time, he bought himself some space by making these moves against the communists, believing the Bothists were destroyed. So he believed that he could, he believed that he was safe, that he could get rid of the militia

and that he had enough control. But in reality, the Both was regrouping under the surface and they're collaborating with the CIA and they're, you know, and so when the Both actually, you know, come around to strike in February of 1963,

there's no backup, right? There's nothing there to defend him against the boff, you know, which is in alliance with the CIA by that point. And I just want to remind the listeners, since you mentioned Sidney Gottlieb, and this is in my notes. But listeners, if you're interested, we have an episode on M.K. Ultra.

It was one of the first episodes that we did. So we've mentioned the Elizabeth Thompson episode already. And, you know, a lot of what we're talking about in the early Hashim days is relevant to the Elizabeth Thompson episode that we did. So check out that episode. But we also have an MK Ultra episode for you to check out. Now, before we get to 1968, I know both of the guys have follow-ups in this period between 63 and 68. So Brett, take it away. Sure. Yeah, I'm really, really interested in this part of the history after, you know, Qasem is overthrown and the Bathurst's sort of rise to power. And the U.S. is allying the Kennedy administration. You

talk about the embassy in Baghdad and how it's sort of overwatching events. And this actually turns into pretty much genocidal campaigns against the communists. And that actually forms the origins of what became known as the Jakarta method. And I know many listeners are probably familiar with, I think, Vincent Bevin's relatively new book in last several years, on exactly that subject. But they might not know that the origins are actually in this part of the story. So I was hoping you could talk about just all of that. You can take that big question in whatever direction you want. but the complicity of the U.S. and their Cold War alliance with the Bathist and the sort of slaughter that ensued.

Yeah, a good one. And I'm very fortunate in that Vincent Bevin's book came out like within the closing months when I was finishing my book, right? And so I got to hitchhiker draft on his, you know, a really important, wonderful work. And I got to, you know, say, oh, actually, you know, now there's this phrase, the Jakarta method, right? And so I was able to situate what happened in Iraq after the 1963 coup, within. in this broader, you know, this wasn't a one-off, right? This was part of a pattern. And Vincent Bevin's, you know, documents that, you know, brilliantly, right? And so I try to situate, and I don't want to overstate my claim. I'm not saying that the Jakarta method, I think I mentioned as an early place where this idea of communist lists and extermination and kill lists, but this is, you know, I'm sure you could go back to like Philippines insurrection or, you know, coming up with, you know, lists of kill, you know, names to be eliminated, right? So it's not a root, totally. original thought, but yes, you know, the, what happened in Iraq after the coup definitely

sort of plays out similar, you know, similar pattern as Bevin demonstrates, right, the Jakarta method. So, so I should also maybe take a moment here and say that part of what I'm doing on the kind of a philosophy of history side of things is trying to step back from methodological positivism and empiricism, right? This idea that we can have absolute certainty about what happened in the past and that, you know, all we have to do is consult the documents and the documents will reveal the past as it really happened, right? I'm trying to step back and do something I call more speculative, right? We don't know, we can't know. Our access to the past is imperfect. The documents are imperfect. The documents are fragmentary

and they're episodic and we have to read them against the grain. And so there's just a lot that isn't known here. And so I want to just sort of cover my six and say, you know, know, right. So a lot of this is kind of, and I say in the book, I think at one point I did a word count, a control, find how many times it say seems apparently, plausibly, possibly, potentially, like all of these qualifiers, like this is what might have happened. You know, I wrote an early article where I said, we don't know that the CIA overthrew the, the Kossum, but if it did, this is why, right? Like, I'm exploring the logic of why they're doing what they're doing, because we have access to why they do what they do. We have access to their

motives more than we do have access to what they actually did, right? The very nature of document classification means we can only know that which the state wants us to know, right? The state gets to decide what it releases and what it doesn't release. And it's not going to release something that says, hey, you know, we, we ordered the boss to execute all these people, right? They're not going to, they're not going to do that, right? And so it's very naive, epistemologically and philosophically to assume that the full story is going to be, you know, included in the documents, right? It's the peruvial iceberg. If 10% is above the surface, then we can kind of imagine or speculate what's going on beneath the surface. And so I just want to, you know, qualify there and say, you know, some of this

is me trying to do some detective work and put the story together as best we can. Right. So the Jakarta method part is, is that after the coup, right, February of, of 1963, in the days and mainly the weeks and then extending into the, the months, somewhere between 1,000, 5,000, 6,000 Iraqi communists or fellow travelers were systematically rounded up and summarily executed in their homes or wherever they could be found. And so it's on a smaller scale, certainly, than what happened in Indonesia or a lot of places in Latin America. But, you know, five is nothing to sneeze. And it was all like the best well-organized caught, like they destroyed the organizational backbone of the party, right?

They really sort of smashed and the Communist Party never really recover and, you know, their shadow of their former selves. They never really fully recover. Some of their most like progressive elements get absorbed within the nostrils, but essentially that 1963 coup in operation really destroys the Communist Party to a large extent. So essentially, and I, you know, really track down the documents as best I can. And it looks like basically, you know, the CIA was compiling lists of quote unquote known communists in Iraq in 19, you know, in the period before the coup. And a lot of the speculation revolves around the idea about whether the United States provided lists of communists and home addresses and, you know, intelligence files, right, what we call intelligence sharing with the bot, so that the boss could carry out this systematic roundup purge. Right. And I find plenty of documents in the, you know, in the archive of the American embassy and the CIA people seeing what's going on and be like, yeah, this is great. We like what's going. They don't say exactly what's going on, but you can, you know, read between the lines that they are very supportive of what's going on. A lot of the question revolves on, well, did the United States give them these lists? I found, you know, I have two separate lists from 1962. One has like something like 200 names on it. The other one has, I think, 100 something something names on. it, right? They're like lists of, quote, unquote, who's who in Iraq. But the reality is that the

Baoth had far better intelligence on who their enemies were than the CIA did. Right. So the CIA made it said, we really don't like these people. Make sure you take these people out. But the Baoth have been engaged in this contest for decades now. They know who their enemies are. They know, you know, so the Baoth is not really reliant on the CIA for, you know, quote unquote, who the communists are. But the money, the guns, and the encouragement, right, is significant to the both as it goes through. Basically, you know, the poor districts, what they call the serifah districts, right? The slums, the urban slums where the, you know, recently displaced peasants are clumped into. This is what Kossam was doing.

Why he was so popular was building housing for people that are displaced by, you know, by, you know, peasants being forced into the cities and he's building housing for them. but the urban um the urban slum dwellers right are the the the bath go through they sweep everybody up they they summarily execute everyone and kind of leave a lasting scar on iraqi civil society you know one that um um really kind of did lasting damage um so there's that part right and a lot of times people think want to think about the CIA's role in 1963 they want to focus on night on the day of February and what happened there and that is a I think, but more important is after the fact, right? Going immediately to the oil companies on February 9th and saying, hey, congratulations. There's been a triumphant, you know, liberation or a

revolution in Iraq and everything is great now. You should give them a huge loan, right? The Kennedy administration, the CA, going to the oil company and saying, please give them a loan to get off the ground. Please increase Iraqi oil production. Please adjust your, you know, your tax rates and please accommodate the Iraqi Ba'ath party because these are our friends. The world is made up of friends and enemies, and these are our friends. Let's work with them. And the oil company is saying, fuck you. We don't want to work with these people.

No, we want, our interests are totally different. And there's no way we are going. And the Baoth are like, wait, we overthrew thinking that you would like, you know, help us out with the oil companies. Now the oil companies are like, F you. And so the Baoth are like, this was supposed to be our Trump card. This was going to be like how we sold ourselves to the public. is that we got an immediately, you know, an immediate agreement out of the oil companies.

We got more revenue coming in. We got some money, right? This was going to be their big thing. And they didn't get, they didn't get that. The oil companies, the Kennedy administration is pissed off that the oil companies won't help the boss get established. The boss starts floundering. It has no base of support. It's brutality, right? The sheer scale, like this is before a lot of, you know, subsequent cycles or reprisals. and just the scale and the grotesqueness and the sort of wanton and almost like sadistic, like, pleasure that a lot of these botus, you know, torture agents were operating with really just shocked the sensibilities of Iraqis. And so Iraqis really rejected, just tissue rejection. And they saw the Baoth as basically instruments of the CIA, you know, imposed by the CIA. And so the Baoth had no popular support. It has no economic support.

its program is not working. And then it gets mired in this very ugly and a sort of genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the north. And where the United States really comes in there is providing napal weapons to the boss, right? There's a big controversy within the agency, within the bureaucracy about whether U.S. provision of napalm to the Both is going to help the Both put down the Kurdish insurgency in the north or whether, or whether, or whether, it's just going to stiffen resistance and make more Kurds go into rebellion, right? So a lot of what the, what the, what the U.S. does in the Kennedy years, in the Kennedy period, months, I guess, is really provide military and economic support and try to push on the oil companies to accommodate the regime.

But none of this works. The war in the north doesn't go well. The oil situation doesn't go well. and the the nocerus, right, start to sort of absorb some of the progressive ethos of the communists and start to come into opposition to the Both over the course of the summer and fall of 1963. So after nine months in power, the nocestrus, who come out to be the real protagonist in my story after the communists get sort of, you know, liquidated, the nocest execute a coup d'etat, a counter coup in November of 1963, which the way I put it,

restores the Kossum oil agenda, right? So the Kassum made tremendous strides towards nationalizing oil. Then the Baoth interrupted that. And then the Nasseras come in to rejoin that historical struggle. And they kind of set the Iraqis on the course towards nationalizing the oil. But again, drawing the lessons from Iran to not do this in an immediate, you know, one fell swoop move, but to do it. a series of like technical and marketing sharing agreements with France and with with West

Germany and with Italy. They want to kind of stay away from the Soviet Union because that's danger zone. But they're reaching out to American independence. They're reforming their own internal like oil ministries and working with other with OPEC and with other oil producing states. They're trying to play what I call it. They're playing a game of chess, trying to get all their their pieces in order so that they're in a position to actually defend the oil. nationalization when it's time, right? And so it takes many years of what I call institution building, building up the state capacity and the international marketing capacity to take over the oil before in like spring of 68, they're fired up, they're ready to go. They've got like they're done.

All they got to do is push the button and take the oil. Like they've done it all. They worked out agreements with France, with Italy, with Germany, with the Soviet Union, with America, like they're ready. They just push the button and it's done. So they're about to do it in May. you know, in April, May of 1968, and then, lo and behold, there's another Batha's coup in July of 1968 that, again, short circuits what now the communist, you know, the nostrils are trying to carry through what Kossum had tried to do. And they're on the verge of success. And then, you know, lo and behold, you know, one more coup d'etat happens in, you know, in June 17th, 1968. And then, of course, in our Russian nesting ball imagery, obviously,

there's another coup that happens July 30th against the July 17 coup. And so, and for our intents and purposes, once you get to the July 30 coup, now the regime is stable. It becomes what the CIA calls coup proof, right? They harden their security apparatus. They have an internal police force to root out dissent and whatnot. So the 1960, by the time you get to the 1968 group, the July 30 coup, it takes 2003 to take that one out, right? That one, you don't have to worry so much about the coups anymore after July 30, 1968. Now you have a permanent regime that it's going to take the full, you know, weight of the U.S. Army and it's 39 other countries or whatever it was to overthrow that, that Bothas regime that gets established at the end of July, 1968.

So obviously there's a bit of a wrinkle there between July 7th and July 17th and July 30th, 1968, two coups that have, you know, slightly different motives. But maybe I don't know if that, if we need to parse that or... Oh, no, I think that's very helpful. I mean, during this period, something very major takes place as well that has some consequences in new dedicated chapter to it, which is, of course, the 1967 war. Now, one thing I found interesting about your analysis because you're looking at unfolding developments in the struggle for nationalization of Iraqi oil from these different vantage points is that you do look at what is some of the thinking of this paranoid and some of the other views within the U.S. foreign policy establishment and so on. And so, you know, when you were discussing, you know, the Kennedy administration's kind of ending up support for the, you know, fall of the bath.

And even before that, the overthrow of Qasim, how certain kinds of ideas about race and, you know, private property and, you know, what's the proper course for human civilization is informing some of their attitudes and it has consequences and who they support. when it comes to the Arab-Israeli war, 1967, you helpfully, I think, bring in also this understanding of the symbolic investments that various interest groups have in Israel's success in the symbolics of Jerusalem and so on. And so I wondered if you could go in a little bit more about what were the consequences for this story of Iraqi nationalization of oil of the events that we would think are disconnected because they're happening in another's part of the Middle East. How did the war that doesn't actually directly involve Iraq so much in the fighting, but that 1967 war, it's really seen as a turning point, it's a huge victory for Israel, it undermines a whole Nassarist project in the Middle East. It's a collapse of this UAR project of Arab nationalism. So where does this fit in then, you know, its consequence,

for Iraq's politics and the nationalization of oil? Yeah, well, I will steal a page from the Arabists themselves here, where the Arabs really see the Arabis, unresolved Arab-Sraeli conflict and the Palestinian refugee problem in itself as kind of like the root cause of instability in the region. It's the great tension, right? And so the Arabists are like, we've got to solve this thing because, right, the longer, you know, it festers and the more we lose, quote, unquote, the Arab street.

So, right, we've got to solve. solve this thing. And so you have that same split, that cold warrior kind of paranoid mindset, Arabist mindset is split on the Arabisraeli conflict. You have the one side that says that really we need to, you know, especially as the war is going on, but after it, but especially after it, that we have to resolve the Arabisraeli conflict. And they like the idea of UN Resolution 242 of a two state solution, land for peace. So you have one side that is kind of, and then that is, wants to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and the U.S. to get involved there. The other side sees things through the kind of Cold War lens that Israel is a strategic ally in the Cold War,

and it's just basic game theory. They're our friends. The other guys are the enemies. So the Arabs really do see that Arabs really conflict as the driver of political instability in the region. It's an unresolved tension that goes right to the heart of conflict, you know, It's the overarching sort of dividing line that sort of structures so much in the region, right? Whether it's the Iranian, the Egyptian revolution or Syria, like it's, it's the big, you know, it really is a big deal. So the thing to say is that the thing to say is that there's an Iraqi, there's a pendulum in Iraqi politics, right?

So 1963, 64, when the Nosseris take over, they make their big push towards nationalization. And then by like the by the mid-1960s, 65-66, they're, they're sort of running out of gas a little bit. The Iraqi conservatives are starting to rally to kind of a check their advances, if you will. And so they're kind of running out of gas a little bit. And so Iraqi policy moderates in 1966, 67, the spring of 60, you know, so it's kind of getting less radical. The nostrils are growing a little bit less. confrontational, if you will. And so one of the big, I guess you say heroes, Tahrir Yaya, who was the prime minister

that kind of advanced the oil nationalization agenda, like he steps down in 65 and a more moderate figure comes in and they're a little less aggressive towards the oil issue. And the Americans are like, okay, this is great. Iraq is becoming more moderate. They're moving in the correct direction. they kind of relax a little bit. That all changes when the Arab-Israeli, when the 1967 war breaks out. Iraq does have some contingents in there, like they do have some units that are actually fighting on the ground. They don't feel, and they're not well-supported, or at least that's the

argument, you know, among, like, Arab nationalists is that the state didn't support the Iraqi forces that are fighting in Palestine sufficiently. So I guess the bottom line here, is that as the Arab-Israeli war breaks out, it freaks out the Iraqi public opinion. They get really mad. And they're really mad that, you know, that, you know, it's this key symbolic issue. It's symbolic to the Americans because the Americans see the world through a crusader lens where they think you have that, you know, the Jews have to recapture Jerusalem for the second coming of Jesus.

And they have all this kind of like symbolism of the crusades that informs their worldview. from the Arab nationalist perspective, right? The humiliation of Zionism is a major sort of source of sensitivity. So it's this really intensely sensitive issue. And as the fighting breaks out, Tahr Yahya comes back into government. He assumes the powers first unofficially and then he just sort of asserts them a prime minister. He brings in the oil radicals, the people, the sort of technocrats that had been pushing for

this. He brings them back into positions of power during the war, right? During 1967, it leads to a kind of internal change of government within Iraq where the more radical forces come to the fore. And they demand an oil embargo, right? They demand that Iraq use all of its resources, including its oil resources, and it embargoes oil sales to the West, especially any direct sales to any state that has diplomatic relations or any sort of support for Israel. So the Iraq becomes radicalized by the 1967 war, by the outbreak of the war, and then even more, excuse me, even more so by the outcome of the war. And so in the aftermath of the war, in 19, you know, in the fall of 1967, these radicals come to the fore and they just start passing a, you know, kind of like a rapid succession of oil reorganization laws, reorganizing the ministry.

building up the Iraq National Oil Company, its own state-owned company, so that it could take over from the, from the majors. And so in the period between the war in 1967, they really go on a terror as far as like really kind of organizing to execute the oil nationalization. They're about to execute it in the spring of 1968 when the Baoth come in and sort of short-circuit that and put the kibosh on the oil nationalization effort and really sort of delay oil nationalization for several years. So that's kind of the Iraqi side of the story. An interesting story I can relate here is kind of one place that this began was in graduate

school early. One of the first research trips that I made was trying to look at the influence of oil companies on American foreign policy, right? And I went to the archives, the private papers of John J. McCloy, this, you know, this oil, you know, kind of oil lawyer international banker figure. And I was looking at his private papers. And he was an oil company representative, right? Or he was a lawyer representing the oil company that sort of interface between the oil companies and the state department. And what I have in his documents are a whole series of letters from the oil companies saying, will you deliver these to the State Department, telling the State Department that their policy is absolutely batshit crazy, that what the U.S. government is doing with

regard to the, this is like 1967, 1968, saying that the United States continues to adhere closely to an alliance with Israel, it's going to piss off the Arabs, and we're going to get kicked out of the region. They're going to nationalize our properties. And then, of course, they're going to do this whole, like, you know, resource scarcity thing. Oh, the sky will fall. if we get kicked out, if our property gets nationalized, you know, we won't be able to run our cars. Our lights will fail. Our civilization will collapse. And, you know, they're really kind of doing the chicken little dance as far as everything's going to, you know, go to hell. But the oil companies were pushing so, so, so hard on the Johnson administration saying, hey, your policy is going

to get oil companies nationalized. We're going to get thrown out of the region. You need to restrain Israel. You need to get Israel to withdraw to the the green line, right? You need to get Israel to withdraw from the territories that occupied. You need to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. You need to resolve tensions in the region so that it's not so fraught and we're not in danger of getting nationalized. And so when Exxon comes to LBJ and says, hey, get our bacon out of the fire, LBJ says, go fuck yourself. Like, I'm not going to help you.

And so that was like the riddle. Like, why does the Johnson administration rebuff the oil companies and tell them, I don't care. I don't care what you're, I don't care if you get nationalized. I don't care. Get nationalized. It's not my problem. And that was a real kind of a kind of a historical problem for me to resolve. It's like, why is the Lyndon Johnson administration so hostile to ExxonMobil?

That's not my, my ideology, my, like, my, you know, I guess we call them prior. Now, my priors were not that the, that the American state would tell ExxonMobil to go fuck itself. That's not the way I, you know, so it's like, why, what's going on here? If only. Right. You know, and so I had to unravel that mystery. And then so I think if you do like LBJ's hierarchy of needs, like what does he care about? He cares about Halliburton making money, right?

That's what he cares about. He cares about Kellogg Brown and Root. Texas-based oil companies, that's what he cares about. Is there, like, this LBJ rose to prominence by bundling in this, like in the, in the 40s. Like, he was a nobody. And then all of a sudden in like 44, I think it was, the congressional elections of 44, all of a sudden he became the power broker in the, still in the house at that point? Or is he in the Senate? Like, I think he's still in the house.

But he becomes the power broker because he coordinates all this Western oil money, right? and bundles it and sends it to congressional candidates, right? Like, LBJ is the servant of Texas oil and gas. That's what he believes in, right? That is making, and so those are the people that are in competition with the majors. And so from the Texas-based oil and gas perspective, if the majors get kicked out of the Middle East, wonderful, great. That just means that all of a sudden they're not going to face competition from Middle

Eastern oil. They want to frack all the oil and gas in the American world. West. They want to, right, so they don't care if the United States gets thrown out of the Middle East. Right. So there's, so what in LBJ's hierarchy of needs, obviously, you know, Texas base, Brown and Root, all these companies making a lot of money, that's what he cares most about. The second thing he cares most about is I make this kind of comparison to, you know, the desert preachers of Saudi Arabia, that he grows up in this kind of Western, you know, West Texas tradition of kind of religious fundamentalism and Christian Zionists.

So the second thing he really cares about is Israel, and Israel basically having control over Jerusalem. He grew up in some, you know, backwards kind of, you know, West Texas kind of Christ Delphian sect, right, that believes all this Christian Zionist stuff about, you know, the second coming of Jesus and the precursors for all of this. And so Lyndon Johnson has no sympathy for the Arabs and doesn't have any sympathy for the oil companies that like the Arabs. He likes Israel, and he likes Texas oil and gas. And so the kind of coalition interests break very, very differently. And so I think the oil companies, right, especially the Texas ones, they can kind of play on that Christian fundamentalism, that Christian Zionism, and like, oh, you know, right, to spin a kind of anti-Arab, anti-major kind of narrative or story.

But that was, you know, that was one of the last riddles that I tried to put together. did not expect that chapter to come together the way that it did. I was not expecting to find the depth of LBJ's opposition. And then the way that I try to explain it, that was not how I thought that was going to turn out as far as this investment in. You know, they really thought of Israel as what they called the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. And they have internal policy documents, basically analyzing this in the language of the Crusades that were in the same clash of civilizations that, you know, Richard the Lionheart was in. And we're fighting against Saladin, right? Nassar's sell it, like they have this whole like crusades mindset, right?

Which is why your conversation with Nick Estes, I think, is so relevant here, is that they have this crusader mindset that really informs the way they think about, you know, economic interest, the way they think about national security, the way they think about everything else goes to this lens of civilizational conflict and the, you know, Christianity. And so they think of Israel, right? You know, a Jewish state as the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. and it's American obligation to defend this Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. It's like, it's not a Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, but that's the symbolic universe.

So that's the symbolic language that they're using to kind of think about it. And so this puts the oil companies, they're trying to make rational economic arguments. Oh, oil contributes, you know, X to our GDP and foreign direct investment and, you know, economic development stability. Like they're making all these rational economic arguments. And then the other side says, well, we have to preserve the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. like we're not kind of operating on the same level here. And I try to explain like why the sort of really weird ideas about the second coming of Jesus seem to win out over the more rational economic arguments.

Well, we need to protect U.S. private investment overseas, which is a very strange outcome. I didn't expect that to turn out the way. Yeah, I guess you could say it's another dimension of that paranoid style. I mean, you've got the Cold War ideological. hard right figures who see a communist under every bed. And then you also have this other ideological and cultural matrix that is informing U.S. impressions of and positions on what's taking place in the Middle East. And that Nasir Saladin, I mean, that is also big in the imagery on some level within the Middle East as well,

of reviving the kind of historic resistance against, Western Crusader imperialism in the area. And of course, if you recall the Crusades many times invaded Egypt, okay, specifically, you know, for two reasons. One was, you know, to have access into the Red Sea shipping and, you know, they wanted to short circuit these trade routes, you know, and also, of course, you know, in order to buttress and hold territories in the Levant, they felt they needed the resource base. and geostrategic position and wealth of Egypt. So even though they're supposed to be like, you know, capturing Jerusalem, they're constantly invading Egypt. So somebody like Nasser could really inhabit that position.

And in fact, actually, what was Saladin's first major triumph was that he ended the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt and united the Levant and Egypt together and one larger polity. So that's exactly also what was Nassar doing in uniting the Levant of Syria, you know, Syria and Egypt together. So there's all these historical parallels on both sides that go back to this, you know, even it's not exactly a replay of it, but there are these images that can be drawn upon ideologically that are informing the geostrategic thinking. In contrast, as you're pointing out, with some of the material interests, that's just

absolutely, you know, so fascinating. And also why I think, you know, your work in that chapter and in this book in general is so important And in enlarging the perspective, you know, from what has become a kind of new historiographical position like Andrew Bacevich's oil wars, you know, war for the greater Middle East. And actually a friend of mine made this documentary based on his book, David Schiskel, called Oil War. And what's missing in it, and I had an interview with him on my other podcast, The Mudgellis, where we talked about this, you know, his. his, the thesis and the film that he made on the base of it. What's missing constantly is, you know, the way Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. kind of ideas about the significance and importance that comes religiously

and culturally of Israel, you know, changes U.S. policy, they're constantly trying to say, oh, that's not important. It's just this oil war, you know, kind of situation. I think what you've shown is it is an oil war, but there are wars with, within wars here. Like, it's a much more complex field in the same way that those like Gibson who want to see U.S. policy in the Middle East as just anti-S. containment, that's too simplistic. So is this idea that is only about, you know, the material dimensions. That's one competing set of interests, but it has to come up against this other ideological formation.

And you have to look in each case, it seems, you know, what's winning out, why these decisions are being made. Yeah, and I think, you know, conceptually, I think that's the most kind of ambitious chapter because at one level, at least if you read between the lines a little bit, I'm wrestling with a kind of base in superstructure are, you know, issues, right? Materialism, idealism, because there's one way to want to see this. My traditional way is to see, you know, economic causation as primary, right? The economic motives as the engine of history, if you will, right?

or to see, you know, the classical realist tradition of kind of seeing material interest as driving state behavior, right? And then I'm kind of, but I'm saying, wait a minute, the material interest, well, how do we define that? Because the material interest of the majors are different than the material interest of the domestic American oil companies, right? Or so is it, you know, American economic interests are the primary, you know, if we're to, you know, create some sort of a hierarchy that the American economic interest drive policymaking or, or even behavior, because I think there's some behavior or actions that aren't necessarily driven by policy or logic. But, you know, right?

So is the state motivated primarily by economic concerns or ideological concerns and the symbolism of Jerusalem? And I tried to kind of square that circle, if you will, with what I'm calling, you know, I'm making fun of, if you will. Maybe I'm making fun of. It's a little bit facetious of Jill Capel's idea of Petro Dollar Islam, right? The idea that if you want to think about, you know, the kind of religious fundamentalism or political Islamism of the late 20th century, he has his chapter in the trial of political Islam where he wants to root all this in the political economy of oil

and the rise of Saudi Arabia as a kind of a global and regional actor with the ability to sort of export, it's kind of like Wahhabi ideology. And so he calls the kind of the export of Saudi influence, and it's particularly its ideological influence, as petro dollar Islam or a kind of articulation of Islam, it's rooted in the political economy of oil. And, you know, I think Timothy Mitchell makes a kind of a similar analysis. Yes.

Yes. And, yeah, I was just going to say similar to Timothy Mitchell's Mick Jihad, right? Also, so both of those, whether it's Mick Jihad of Mitchell or whether it's compels, they're both making kind of base in superstructure argument, right? That somehow the economic base, the political economy of oil determines the content of the Islamic social, cultural superstructure. Right. And some people have rejected the Capel's thesis as too instrumental or two structural functionalists or that it kind of reduces the cultural vitality and spontaneity and autonomy of the religion that, you know, kind of reduces it to a kind of, you know, a political economy algorithm or something, you know, or that it's too automatic. Right. So maybe that's valid. I don't know. But what I'm doing in the book is I'm saying, okay, well, if this analysis works to explain Saudi Arabia, it can explain Texas. as well. And so I'm introducing the idea of PetroDolar Christianity and saying that in the same way Saudi Arabia has its austere desert creatures that have all these really sort of kooky, you know, kind of doctrines. Well, Texas has the same fucking thing, right? Texas has a whole bunch of crazy, cookie, you know, far extremist Christian Zionist people. And so I'm saying that that the kind of religion that LBJ adhered to was PetroDolar Christianity. It's a superstructure formation.

that's built on the political economy of Texas oil and gas, right, that there's a functional relationship. And I think you, and I try to trace that relationship through places like the Dallas theological seminary, right? This place that absorbs all this Texas oil money in the 1950s and then, you know, propagates all these kind of, you know, apocalyptic and Christian Zionist themes. And that's where how Lindsay of the late great planet Earth, you know, series of the 1970s about how, you know, events in the Middle East, portend the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus, like where that whole idea that became a cultural fascination in 1970s, it's, in my view anyway, it's rooted in at least one place in the Dallas Theological Seminary, where Hal Lindsay

was a student in the 60s and is sort of absorbing this kind of cultural, you know, worldview, right, that is linked to the political economy of oil. So I'm making an argument that can't be said to be idealist, right, that the, that it's not the religion that's the driving policy, but it's also not materialist, but that there is, I'm a Marxist, so ultimately, if I'm going to choose, I do see economics as upstream from culture and culture upstream from politics, right? I do kind of, I do adhere to the base and superstructure idea that the base determines the superstructure. So I am, I am there, but I'm trying to point out the sort of dialectical kind of, you know, relationship between,

the economic base of Texas oil and gas and the superstructure of Christian Zionism. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not just Texas oil and gas, you know, as Carol shows, Texas-based oil and gas is linked to defense and aerospace in the military industrial complex. So there's a larger historical block or formation, right? And I see PetroDolar Christianity, Christian Zionism, as the superstructural manifestation of that block of capital, of the oil and and gas aerospace defense um that whole kind of rising thing you know that became prominent you know especially you know a little bit nixon but but especially came to to four with uh with regan yeah and just quickly on the dialectical point it is you know the the the properly dialectical way to approach historical materialism and the base superstructure is that ultimately you're right these things are downstream from the economic base but that isn't in any one instance it's not like you can just trace, you know, a simple line from this thing in the superstructure to this thing in the

base. It's now a dialectical back and forth evolving phenomena and they're attached together. So I really do appreciate that. But I just want to kind of clear out this, this chronology that we're going through and maybe we can move on to like a broader chat after that. But all of this is pointing towards the, you know, effective nationalization of, you know, the oil company. So I was hoping you could talk about law 11, law 69, and sort of how this specific story comes to and with the nationalization of oil. Okay, yeah, well, compared to basin superstructure, that should be easier. So the coup that came to power, I think the July 17 coup was really basically organized by the oil

companies. I don't have definitive proof of that, but I do think the 17 coup was organized by the oil companies to preempt the nationalization. But in order for the oil company lackeys that carried it out, they needed to get the more substantial hardcore Ba'athis on board. And so they reached out to Hassan al-Bakr and to Saddam Hussein as the leaders of the underground Ba'ath party to help them carry out the July 17 coup. And they meant to, right, they meant to preempt the oil nationalization. And then, right, you invite those guys in, Bakr and Saddam and, right, they're going to want to run the place. And so a couple

weeks later, Saddam and Bacher, they overthrow the oil company lackeys and consolidate power for themselves. And it's a pretty interesting window, right, because you have a certain facts within the U.S. government who are saying, hey, these July 17 people, these are the good guys. We got to work with them. And they're pushing, they're pushing with the State Department to take them off the state sponsor of terrorism list and to establish diplomatic relations and send them, you know, the whole aid package thing. you know, and they're pushing on the Lyndon Johnson administration, Lyndon Johnson, I have no interest in doing any of that. And then while they're still pushing, the guys that they're celebrating get overthrown.

And then Johnson's like, see, or not necessarily Johnson, but Rosto and all the people who are under them are like, see, told you those July 17 people were nobody and we shouldn't have gotten in bed with them, right? And so you have, you know, Saddam and Baccar, although, you know, they basically come to power in July at the end of July 30th. And they're like, hey, remember us? We're your friends. Let's do business. And so from 1968 to 1970, you have two factions within the boss, right? You have two factions within the boss.

You have one faction that says we need to like, you know, try to forge a relationship with the United States and try to get what we had going in 1963. And then you have another side that says, you know, the Americans are too wed to Israel. That's not going to work. And there's just a straight contradiction between our position on Palestine and their position on Palestine. And it's not going to work. And we'd be best turning to the left and, you know, cultivating the direct relations with the Soviet Union that the nostrils were kind of standoffish again. So you have this kind of internal, you know, fight inside the Ba'ath Party from 68 to 70.

And by 1970, the side that says, let's warm up to the oil companies and let's warm up to the Americans, they're like, we've been trying that for two years and it has not worked. The Americans will not reciprocate. They don't care. All they care about is Israel. they're domestic politics, and they don't care about the oil. They're saying it doesn't matter whether the oil gets nationalized. Whoever owns it is going to have to sell it. It doesn't like they're kind of taking away that Trump card.

Oh, our oil is going to get seized. They're like, it doesn't matter who owns the oil. Whoever owns it is going to sell it on the world market. And so from 68 to 70, the pro-American bothis, right, the kind of more conservative faction are getting nowhere. And so after 1970, Saddam takes the lead of the other side of saying, hey, you know, Tariki and these other people, you know, to Criti, sorry, these other people you have tried to cultivate an alliance with the Americans. It didn't work. Now it's time to try something

else. And so Saddam takes the move in 1970 and say, okay, we spent two years trying to move to the right and consolidate a regime, you know, similar to the one we tried to build in 63 and it did not work. Time for a new approach. And so what Saddam does, he's a, you know, a shrewd operator, at least in his earlier years. He's a good diplomat. And, you know, he's got some organizational talents. And so what he does is he forges an alliance. He's soft and he goes, okay, hey, communist, remember how what we did before? Sorry about that. Whoops, sorry. Can we let bygones be bygones? Here, we'll bring you into the government and we will do a housing program and we'll do rural health and we will, you know, we're going to take all of your program. Give us

your program. We will do it. And so first thing he does is he goes to the communist and he men's fences with the communists. And then, and sometimes the communists are like, ah, we have long memories. We don't want to get involved. And so he's trying to push forward that one. And then he goes to the Kurds. And he says, you know what? We've had this long, you know, on again, off again, fight where the Kurds want autonomy. But how about we bring you in as a member of the government? We give you cabinet posts. We give you autonomy. We give you oil revenues. Let's make peace. And so he makes peace with the communists. And he makes peace with the Kurds. And he makes peace with the Kurds. in the north, and then he says to the Soviet Union, he says, okay, look, we've got our

house in order. We've stopped persecuting the communists, and there are a lot of communists among the Kurds as well. So he's like, you know, we have made peace at home. And so Saddam goes and he negotiates this set of agreements with the Soviet Union that culminated in 1972 in a treaty of friendship and cooperation. And so he kind of been a very methodical way between 1968, 1970, builds a domestic coalition, uses that stable domestic coalition as a way to reach out to the Soviets and say, hey, we've got our house in order. We're also not afraid to deal with you directly because the nostrils in the mid-60s, they would rather do with France or West Germany or Italy or not really cross the red line of, you know, really cozying up to the

Soviets for fear of the consequences. Whereas Saddam was like, okay, you know, our only option, at this point is to actually have a relationship with the Soviets. And so between 1970 and 72, Saddam gets his ducks in order, if you will, or he gets his pieces in a row. And he gets the marketing assistance from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union gives the capital, the technology, opens up Eastern European markets, kind of puts all the pieces in place so that in June of 1972, Iraq is able to issue its law 69, which nationalized like three, they kept the, they kept

the, the Basra, the southern oil production as a kind of bargaining chip, and they don't nationalize that until phase 73 and then finish it in 75. But most of the oil nationalization happens in June of 72 with the support of the Soviet Union. So again, no straight lines in history, right, if we're going to think dialectically, it keeps zinging. zagging back and forth. So there are some zigs and zags, but by 1970, the Baoth have become a, you know, kind of a radical national. And they, and that's, you know, what I call the golden age of Baghdad in the modern era, right? That's when they, you know, spent money on health care and education and hospitals and, you know, development and, you know, really kind of improved the

quality of life for, for many Iraqis, largely because that's the moment that they worked with the communist. So it's ultimately, and then once they did that, they carried out the historical task and they got a lot of, you know, credibility from Kurds and from Shiites and from, you know, all the disparate sectors of Iraqi society. They carried through the historical tasks that Iraqis had been trying to do since the 19, 1920s. And so they got a lot of credit for that. Great. I think that wrapped up the timeline really well. And now, as Brett mentioned, we should get into this little bit of a chat segment because there's a few things that I think all of us wanted to talk about that didn't quite fit neatly within the timeline. So now that

the listeners have this timeline out, we can tie up some odds and ends that we wanted to get to. And I'll start because there are so many things that I want to say. I know, you know, we could talk about everything from how Iraq and oil nationalization had an impact on, you know, an assassination of an Italian politician with, you know, this blaze of glory that Matei goes up. in, you know, his plane that, you know, suspicious circumstances to say the least. You know, I mean, we could talk about anything like that. But also, I guess the two things that I want to hit on here, you mentioned the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviets.

I think it would be really interesting for the listeners to know. I'll put out both things so you can, you know, take them however you want them. I think it's really interesting that the conventional wisdom was that, hey, if, Iraq tries to cultivate closer ties with the Soviet Union. That is going to preclude any sort of dealings, oil or otherwise, with the West. But what happened immediately after this treaty was signed between Iraq and the Soviet Union? Oil exports exploded. I mean, the revenue that they were taking in, I mean, was jumping by many, many factors of times, like exponential increases in export revenue of, of,

oil, which went against the conventional wisdom. It went against what analysts within the U.S. were thinking. But I think it's important to mention because this new revenue that was coming in from the oil exports was what was funding these social programs that you mentioned were co-opted from the platform of the Communist Party. And, you know, you said they just co-opted wholesale, this communist platform. If it was not for this explosion in oil revenue, these programs would not necessarily have been possible. So I think that that's one thing that's worth noting. But I think that's something else that's worth noting.

And it's something that we've mentioned before in other episodes. In fact, in I think our first episode with Vijay Prashad, and in an episode that I've got planned for, you know, one of our future big episodes, which is the AFL-CIA. There's a section in the book here. And I'll quote directly from the book. And listeners, you should really pick up the book in case, you know, this conversation has not been riveting enough for you already.

There's so much in it. But you say, Weldon Matthew's close analysis of the Iraqi labor movement provides deep insight into al-Sadi's organizational strategies. He sought to rest control of the party. Matthews shows that the immediate aftermath of the February coup, the CIA working in association with a subsidiary of the American Federation of Labor, Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO,

set to, quote, liquidate communist influence within the Iraqi labor movement by forming new Ba'athist-led anti-communist labor unions. But in order to do this, the party had to draw strength from the powerful radical currents that traversed the lower ranks of the party's supporters. For the military leadership of the party, the Marxian concept of class conflict was anathema to Ba'athist doctrine regarding the organic unity of pan-Arab society, et cetera, et cetera. etc. There's a lot more, but the long story short is that, you know, as we go through these episodes, as the show goes on more and more, and we see this subversion in, you know, left-wing tendencies within, you know, national liberation movements within, you know, just these, all of

these case studies that we've seen on the show so far. The AFL-CIA tends to pop up more often and then one would care to admit. And that is certainly the case here. So those are the two strains that I just wanted to put out there in case you have any comment that you want to put out there for the listeners are on how oil exports after the treaty with the Soviets really helped, you know, they exploded and they helped fund the civil society projects that were put in place by the Ba'ath Party,

as well as the role of the AFL-CIA and American organized labor in Iran. during this period. Maybe you'll do the oil scarcity one because I don't want to talk about organized labor. I'll get myself in trouble because in my view, man, I just think organized labor in this country has played such a reactionary role. I mean, I hate to say that because we like to think of, you know, we on the left. Our listeners are going to agree with you. Don't worry.

You know, but everything from the Chinese Exclusion Act, I mean, you just go, especially the Cold War, like American labor organizations are like, you know, the Treaty of Detroit. I have a lot of criticism of, you know, their collaboration with the CIA and the Cold War is an unfortunate story. And I think they kind of cut their own throats, if you will, right? Like they help multinational corporations globalize and offshore production and extend their sort of relations of production and exchange all over the world. And then they get decimated at home by globalization, by the office. offshoreing. It's like, well, you help those damn corporations go global in the first place by, you know, like, you know, the American labor movement historically, right, is, there's progressive sides in good labor organizations and communists that worked in labor. And I don't want to, you know, paint with too broad of a brush there. But yes, this is not the, the brightest moment in American labor history as far as collaborating with the CIA to liquidate, you know, communists in Iraq or Honduras or a million other places, you know, labor organizations did

this all over the place. I'm waiting for someone to do a good podcast on the dark side of organized labor, especially in like, you know, someone like Dana Frank that could talk about like, you know, labor union supporting genocidal campaigns in Honduras or Central America. Like labor organizations, unions have a lot to answer for when we think about the state of the world today. They have not covered themselves in glory, I don't think. Well, just as an aside, that is something that we have planned is the role of the AFL CIO with the coup at Ford and Mexico. That's a guest that I've already been in contact with.

He is a listener of the show and was working at Ford during this period of time. I'll be listening for that one. Oh, for sure. I'm looking forward to recording that one. That's going to be. What's really sad, too, just to jump in here really quick is, of course, there was, especially in the teens and 20s, the rise of the IWW, there was this moment in American labor history where it was truly radical, and then these processes to first de-radicalize, and then with the

onslaught of Reaganism to actually de-unionize altogether, really left American unions in a reactionary position for sure, but yeah. Yeah, so no, not trying to throw any shade on Big Bill Hayward or IWWW or Woblies or anything like, yes, there's a good tradition out there. but also sometimes labor unions in a settler colonial context have, right, what's in the interest of the workers is not always in the interest of, you know, our non-human relations and a lot of other, right? Yeah, that's a great point. And I think the key difference also is that it was internationalist in conception. You know, that's the big difference is when they're tied with national interest and subordinate themselves to that.

they're subordinating the workers cause overall because that is fundamentally and ultimately an international question and it's not going to be solved by promoting, you know, workers' rights just in one country. So yeah, yeah, fantastic. Yeah, one big union or else we're all, I mean, we're all, we're all, we're all, we hang together separately, right? Like one big union is, you know, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, Another sort of area that I found so interesting and fascinating in this book in reading it in connection to Orit Boschkin's other Iraq, for those who don't know it, it's called the other Iraq, pluralism and culture in Hashemite Iraq. You know, for the audience that is only familiar with Iraq as, you know, a fragmented and divided country with different ethnic groups, different, you know, sectarian

divisions of Shi and Sunni and ethnics versus Kurds and Arabs and the perspective of, you know, the possible and even imagined breakup of Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and various attempts. to dismember it potentially or not, you know, that their picture of Iraq is of a state that and a society that was fractured and it required a strong man like, you know, like even the more progressive view on, you know, against the U.S. invasion was, you know, playing into this idea that, well, we shouldn't be toppling, you know, Iraq because who knows what hell will break loose because Saddam Hussein's authoritarian control and repression. is the only thing holding, you know, this society and this state together because it's

riven by these divisions. And I think, you know, one thing your book does so well and also in companion with, with her book, is say that there were other histories available, you know, the way it unfolded has come to inflame and intensify sectarian division, ethnic division, through, you know, different processes of resistance against the way in which the Bothist state you know, formulated this real national kind of pseudo-socialist, but, you know, quasi-fascistic orientation, it didn't have to be that way. And so I think, interestingly, the story of, you know, you really posit that the long story of the attempt to nationalize Iraq's oil industry is actually a thread of and a survival of that earlier pluralistic kind of, um,

census politics for a post-colonial Iraq of an anti-colonious and a post-colonialist Iraq that accommodated Kurds and Arab, Sunni, and Shia, because it subordinated those difference to building a society and a politics that shared out the ample resources that would be available for national development if the oil resources could be exploited on behalf of the people of Iraq rather than for the profits of multinational countries. So I wanted to, you know, ask you a little bit more about how your book and its arguments contributes to this national resource sovereignty kind of understanding in political economy and what you might want to say about why this story is so important in understanding.

understanding, you know, Iraq's history in a new frame, what that can contribute to our understanding of anti-colonial, you know, well, against neocolonialism in the political, economic, and geopolitical terms. Yeah, that's a great one. So a big place to begin, I think, is with the, you know, oftentimes unarticulated or basic assumption that, right, Western intervention is a response to sectarian division, right? The idea that these places are divided and at war and you know, things are exploding. And so Western powers have to come in to, to sort that out. And I'm obviously on the side of things trying to say, no, actually sectarianism is generated by Western intervention that the, you know, some of them act to see and others

have demonstrated, you know, Elizabeth Thompson and others have demonstrated that the, all of the tools for a kind of modern, secular, social democratic, like, you know, a modern space to emerge are there and that it's actually neocolonialism or before neocolonism, just straight up colonialism, that wants to create hermetically sealed, you know, tribes and sex and wants to manipulate these social divisions out of the classic divide and rule. And so, and so I'm trying to recover that idea that actually, you know, Iraq has all the cultural, political, intellectual resources to forge a new and better modernity, right? That it's, that it's all there. And that U.S. and broader Western intervention can only subvert that and can only kind of

you know, undermine that and poison that and create a fract. You know, so I try to point to the idea that these divisions or the violence that we see is more of a product, a consequence of U.S. or Western intervention than a cause of, right? That these things are not preexisting, that these are actually generated by colonialism for reasons of state or because they advance, you know, imperial interests of divide and rule. So I try to draw upon that, right? I try to draw upon the idea that, you know, that maybe you'll forgive me if I read a little bit from a roundtable about the book, right? I got some commentary in a scholarly roundtable about the book.

And one of my responses, I pulled it up here while you're speaking because it seemed to really kind of speak to the question that you're raised. And I respond to them sort of saying I'm painting with a broad brush and I say in choosing to employ such broad and sweeping strokes, I was inspired by Edward Said's famous critique of the notion that the quote, secular and democratic West possessed a monopoly on rational thought while the backward and despotic Orient was congenally doomed to religious fanaticism. While some reviewers lamented that Said's seminal critique of Orientalism served only to reinforce a binary congenital. of the world, this was not my concern. I was less interested in dismantling Orientalist binaries than I was in repurposing them. I tried to turn those old Orientalist ideas on their head to reveal Iraq as a fount of secular and democratic wisdom. And the United States is a polity driven, above all else, by a spirit of religious fanaticism. The spirit of religious fanaticism adopted many guises and manifestations in a variety of different, and manifested itself in a variety of

different forms. In the late 40s and 50s, Puritanical anti-communists called upon spectral evidence to purge the community of the faithful of all heresy. In the early 1960s, the evangelicals of economic development spread the good news of modernization to the far corners of the earth. By the late 1960s, the armies of the faithful had set their eyes upon Jerusalem and sharpen their knives for a fight to the finish. Following the lead of Talal Assad and Osamakrani, I try to do something more quote, apocalyptic in nature by removing the veil to reveal the extent to which American secularism was a mere pretense concealing a deeper and sublimated theology. There are undoubtedly secular and democratic traditions to be found in the store of American history, but they are

hardly the dominant influences shaping U.S. parole in the world. So sorry, that's a long recitation there, but what I'm trying to say is that actually, it's psychological projection, right? the United States is religious fanatic. It burns witches at the stake and goes on witch all the time, like witch hunting is in the national culture. It's in the formative. It's, you know, I'm saying, and I tried to investigate early on that actually these guys, you know, Ibrahim and these like, you know, and Assad and Haseeb and Jadir and all these like really progressive forward thinking that Iraq was ahead of the United States in terms of progress towards gender requirements. and integration of racial minorities and whatnot, like the Kurds in Iraq were better positioned than were African Americans in the United States, right? So the United States wants to hold itself out as like, you know, leading the world in terms of, you know, secularism and democracy. When in reality I'm saying that Iraq was more democratic than the United States was in these periods, you know, kind of more substantive understanding of democracy, right? So the women's association, sorry,

blanking in the names, but like a women's association that is essentially associated with the Communist Party. Kossum brings in the first woman to serve as a minister, as the minister of urban housing, I think. He brings in, you know, it passes new family status laws. He's gender progressive. There are, like, he's talking about creating a multicultural populist modernity, talking about weaving Iraqis together. from different, you know, tribes and sex and ethnicities, all having a common purpose in overthrowing the oil companies and using Iraqi national resources for the benefit of the Iraqi people. And so I'm really trying to recover the idea that Iraq is what I, as I called in that little excerpt I read, as a fount of secular and democratic wisdom. Like Americans should

not be of the mindset that they possess. We don't really have a democratic system, right? When 80% of the people want this, but our Senate and our filibuster, all these things won't allow it to happen or, you know, whole sectors of the electorate not being like all the way through this period, right, black people not being able to vote. Like, so there's this whole like conceit that happens in the United States to assume that the United States is this sort of, has this monopoly on secular and rational thought. And I'm saying, you know what, this is all psychological projection, that these people are religious fanatics, right? And that therefore in policy is in many ways, as we said before, you know, rooted in economic interest also, but is a, is it should be understood

as an expression of a kind of religious fanaticism and that there are resources that Iraq, that Americans have much more to learn about democracy from Iraq than Iraq has to learn from the United States. And that's the fun, and that's, you know, towards the end, I only say this obliquely, but that's the problem with the Arabis, is that they're still operating in this developmentalist tradition that thinks that, you know, America can provide the signposts along the way, that America can point to the direction of modernity, right? And I'm saying, no, that in itself is a conceit, right? It's a better conceit than the cold warriors had. But ultimately, this idea that America has everything to teach and nothing to learn, that's the

problem. That's the problem. America needs to stop lecturing the rest of the world about how to organize their societies and maybe take a lesson from societies that are much older, right? Iraq is an ancient civilization, right? There's stores of human knowledge and wisdom. Iraq has so much more to teach us than we have to teach Iraq. And I'm trying to you know, trying to draw some of those, those, those, those, those lessons and recover, but what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, gosh could call it the other Iraq, right? The secular, this democratic, this progressive, this feminist, this, you know, this very progressive tradition that many Americans just sort of

assume doesn't exist. Um, and, you know, that, that an act, you know, that part of the issue of, of, of, of, of what got me into some trouble in that roundtable review is me kind of saying that Kossum was more, um, you know, he was criticizing segregation in the United States, saying you guys call yourself democratic while you subordinate and subject and oppress all your your national minorities, right? And that the United States was driven by sectarian and racial conflict, right? Robert Williams just wants to integrate school pools in North Carolina and he gets the full weight of the clan and the local sheriff and the FBI coming down on his head. Right. And so the United States is driven by racial conflict, right, and sectarianism and

superstition. And so I'm trying to kind of flip the tape, you know, turn it, you know, the Marxist term, right, turn it on its head and say, actually, the United States is all full of violence and fanaticism and sectarianism. And actually Iraq is, is full of a lot of traditions that were scarred, destroyed by the CIA and by the Western intervention. But there's still, I think, a lot in there that we can, that we can glean and learn from. Right. I mean, just to make, to put a really, we can't, like Americans, especially those of us on the left, we're really quick to criticize other countries that have carried out revolutions for doing it wrong. It's like you American leftists, you haven't ever fucking turned over anything. You've never had, you're still working

under the same fucking constitution that has been there that is so reactionary for hundreds of years. So here you are criticizing every other revolution for doing this, that or the other thing wrong. You can't do shit. You can't overthrow your country. You can't overthrow a, you can't establish a real democracy, right? So we can't nationalize ExxonMobil. Where's the Americans that have nationalized the big oil companies? We want to do, like the people, the Green New Deal, people that want to decommission the oil company. There are many people on the left that would love to nationalize the oil companies and decommission them and move to a different alternative energy system. We don't know how to do that. We can't do that. No one in America has

ever done anything seriously progressive on that, like, right? So if we actually want to carry through an oil nationalization agenda. Let's look at somebody that's actually done it, which is Iraqis, right? Iraqis have succeeded where Americans have never even tried. Americans have never even really put a serious effort into controlling corporate influence over their government, right? Iraq has gone much farther than the United States has in that sense. And so that's the quote-unquote the other Iraq that I was hoping to bring to greater awareness

to a broader audience, hopefully. absolutely beautifully beautifully said an amazing way to end this amazing interview and i think that the project that you're engaged in very much mirrors in deep and profound ways the project were engaged in in different ways so this is a natural you know sort of allyship between us so i really appreciated the book i really want to urge everybody um to go to go get the text to read the text i think i mean american chauvinism on the left that that points to other countries and say do it better why you don't do shit here but then the american chauvinism that doesn't have to necessarily learn about the rest of the world. So for a lot of

Americans, even American leftists, the story of Iraq begins and ends with the sort of American war and the invasion of it. And that's like the sort of limits of their understanding of the of the entire conflict. And this fleshes out that, that rich history for decades and decades prior to that. And for that alone, I think it's absolutely essential. So yeah, thank you so much for being generous with your time. And I cannot, you know, overstate how important it is for anybody interested at all and anything discussed here to go out and get this text and dive into it yourself. Well, thank you so much for the kind words and thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about the book. You know, you write these things and sometimes you wonder if it's just

words into the void and to hear that you all have engaged with the book in such a deep and profound way is really gratifying. And I really appreciate you having me on. And the work that you're doing is so critical. I mean, that you're bringing critical voices into a much broader audience. And I learned so much from your shows, all, you know, the collective-wise, you know, the stuff that you have been doing on materialism and deep dives into dialectics and all the great history that you bring. I learn, I walk my dog and listen to your various podcasts and put them on the syllabi sometimes.

Really, it's just such great work that you're doing. So it's really a tremendous honor to be on and share some of my work. Thank you. Thank you. Well, it was an honor and a pleasure having you back on. Again, listeners, our guest was Brandon Wolf Honeycutt historian at California State Stanislaus and author of The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy, Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq. We'll be right back with the wrap up. And listeners, we're going to be.

We're back with the wrap up. We just finished our interview with Professor Brandon Wolf Honeycut, author of the paranoid style of American diplomacy, oil and Arab nationalism in Iraq, and really fascinating conversation, fantastic history. And it really goes to show that the United States cannot let there be any material wealth anywhere in the world and not get its grubby fingers messed up within that. So this is exactly what we saw within this story of Iraq. And this is something that both the book, as well as the conversation with Brandon really highlights, is that when you have internal interests at play, and there is material wealth at play as well, you're going to have a very volatile situation because those internal interests within a

specific country are all going to be playing for those, you know, the material wealth within the country, and in this case, oil. But you also have imperialist powers like the United states that see this country that they have no right being anywhere near, right? And they see it basically as like a natural resource piggy bank for themselves. And they are always willing to play forces within that country against each other in a way that they think that it's going to best benefit themselves. We have seen this time and time again. And this really highlights that. That's why we see so many coups and military uprisings taking place and the U.S. being involved in every single one of them in some way or another, either in terms of trying to push one

force to carry out a coup and in some of these cases that were quite successful, or in other cases when the government that was in charge is one that they liked doing everything that they could to connive that regime to stay in power and repress any of the popular uprising and popular mobilizations that were taking place in the country to keep that regime in power. So the United States and every single one of these uprising and coups had a very direct role to play even under the cloak of darkness. Adnan, anything that you want to add here? Well, firstly, just to say, I just so much enjoyed this conversation.

This is almost to me, as somebody who is engaged with the Middle East, almost like the ideal sort of episode. it engaged not only new understandings and aspects of Iraq's history, you know, in its geopolitical circumstance, in its social and political struggles, but it connected with other key themes that we care about on this show and, you know, on this podcast, which is, you know, corporate and capitalist histories of this resource exploitation. He has a wonderful, you know, kind of concept. of natural resource sovereignty and how it developed and, you know, historically and was contested. So that kind of understanding of capitalism and geopolitics is something that's really

relevant here. And then also U.S. Empire and U.S. diplomacy is contributing to these three fields in this book. I don't know if we really tapped and excavated, you know, all the kind of the sub-themes and issues. It already was such a substantial conversation, but I think to really get the full flavor, I would encourage any of our listeners to go read the book. It's superbly well written and very clear and tells a very interesting and complex intertwined story, you know, of the attempts to nationalize Iraq's oil, the corporate interests that are involved, the, you know, machinations that are involved, how the U.S. government gets engaged, and there's a lot of surprises in this story. A lot of twists. Henry has already

mentioned, I think, in the intro way back, listeners, the run of different, you know, coups, and we had a chance to talk about some of them, it's a tumultuous period. But you really get a sense for a deeper logic that's involved here that is shaped by these global factors of corporate capitalism, some resource management, U.S. domination and empire during the period of the Cold War and how this works out. So Iraq is a real test case. And it's an important test case for us to see these operations and understand these historical dynamics because, of course, the U.S. gets involved and engaged again with suppressing, you know, the will of the Iraqi people in oil war subsequently. So this is such an important deep history, particularly for Americans.

because of our own complicity and also because this is another case that really contributes to an understanding of how U.S. global empire and hegemony has operated in the post-World War II period. You know, people have heard, and there have been good recent histories, for example, of the coup against Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, but little attention actually has come, I think, historically in our writing to U.S. involvement, even though it's been, you know, decades since the U.S. first got involved militarily in Iraq, that nonetheless, this history was never really told us at that time. And it's so wonderful to have had, you know, Brandon excavate and analyze this period of Iraq's history for a broad audience. This is both an academically rigorous

book, but also one that anybody could read and appreciate. And that's not an easy thing to do. So we had a great conversation. I think the book itself will repay even more your efforts. I want to encourage our listeners to go to go read the book too. And there's some really fascinating characters in this book from a personal level. So I know that you mentioned that a lot of folks that listen to this show perhaps are familiar with the coup against Mossadegh, but not so familiar with the coups that were taking place here. And Mossadik certainly was an interesting guy, but there's some really fascinating people that took place in this story that before reading this book and talking to Brandon previously, I was not familiar with. So people as prominent as Abdul Karim Kassum, who was

the president of Iraq that was overthrown in 1963, really a fascinating character and really seemed like a, you know, a genuinely good person, maybe not a radical by the standards of people that listen to guerrilla history. But compared to what was going on in the country at the time, could in some ways be considered a radical, but really just seemed like a very good person and almost too good for his own good, which I, you know, we talked about in the episode. But there's also some really fascinating other characters who I had been completely unaware of, like to hear Yaya, who was a prime minister of the country and in many ways was more radical than Qasem. And somebody that I wish that we had the opportunity to talk more about in the episode,

or Kair al-Din Haseeb, who was this economist who really was instrumental in putting together the plans for the nationalization of Iraqi oil. And in many ways was more radical than any of those people. I mean, some really fascinating characters that I want to divul. more into after reading the book and having these conversations with Brandon about these people because, you know, this kind of history, it's not broadcasted in ways that are accessible by most Western observers. So growing up in the United States like I did, where was I going to learn about Qasim? Where was I going to learn about somebody like Haseeb? Where was I going to learn about

somebody like Yaya? You're not going to see it in history books. You're not going to see it on the news. I mean, Mossadegh is an exceptional case in that he's at least talked about within left circles. But these people are completely whitewashed out of history entirely in the West. So a work like this that really highlights the work that they were doing within Iraq, personal, you know, gives them their due and lets you understand them as both a person as well as a politician. Really fascinating work. And as you mentioned, it's written in an absolutely beautiful way. and I do also highly recommend that the listeners check this out. Brett, what do you have to say?

Yeah, I'll echo all the sentiments uttered by both of you. And I would just also say that something that stuck out to me throughout the conversation was a Brandon's sort of breakdown of what he called Petro Dollar Christianity and some of his insights into the LBG administration and, you know, LBJ's hierarchy of needs. I found that incredibly fascinating. And then as well, we mentioned it in the episode, but that the possible origins or some of the origins of what's come to be known as the Jakarta method

started at this period of time in Iraq, I think is particularly fascinating. Obviously, Vincent Bevins might be a great guest for us at some point on this show to dive deeper and see what happened specifically in Indonesia and beyond. But the fact that the origins of that could be at least argued to be in what happened here, I think is utterly fascinating. As well as Brandon's breakdown of like the, he had a brief moment where he talked about the positivist and empiricist approaches to history. So, you know, he zooms in on the subject material, zooms out to have like a meta-historical,

like what are we doing as historians here? And you're getting some insights about American society and politics at the time. So overall, not only was it a fascinating discussion, it really filled in a lot of, you know, blank spots in my historical understanding. And for that, I'm really grateful. And as you said, the book itself

is really worth a read for anybody at all interested in this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. done is there any last word that you want to have before we close us out oh no i just think this is you know what breck just mentioned also is just one other facet and component of the conversation and also you you have some tantalizing discussions of the of these connections uh between the oil economy uh you know of texas and the u.s and its cultural consequences along with um you know what happens in in a place like iraq and i think there's just so many insights um in the conversation

and in the book um that this was a really i think this is going to be a classic of guerrilla history to be honest i think this was really a great episode and um you will learn so much about uh the oil economy you know that it's not the fact of the u.s you know corporations trying to take the oil But it's also a problem of where in order to maintain prices, they often were not producing income from these oil concessions that they have, much to the detriment of the country and its population that wanted and aspired to develop economically and socially their own country. But they weren't able to use the resources of their own country to do so because the production and control. was, you know, in the hands of these other corporations who had interests that were antithetical to, you know, the country's interests. Yeah, just to jump in for one quick second, I promise I'll be quick. It's worth underscoring one thing that I believe we mentioned a little bit earlier in

the interview, but I could be misremembering and just being from one of my many pages of notes from this book. But it's fascinating that in this book, you really see that there are certain times where the major oil companies have a dramatically different agenda than what the United States government, as well as the other imperialist governments, set out for those companies to do. So, of course, you mentioned what is good for the people of Iraq, what is good for the government of Iraq. Of course, having sovereignty over their natural resources is good for those people in general.

It's not good for the oil corporations, the major oil corporations, or the imperialist governments like the United States, you would assume that then there would be a lot of overlap between the interests of the oil corporations and the U.S. government. And at times, there certainly was. And I hope that that comes through and that that's not obscured by anything that I'm saying right now. And if you read the book, you'll understand it. There are certainly large swaths of time where their interests align with one another. But there's also very distinct periods where their interests do not align. And I find that to be particularly interesting. And in many cases, the oil companies got more of what they wanted than the U.S. government did.

Not always, but you wouldn't assume that going into this. And it's something that was really fascinating about this book. And I want to make sure that I underscore in this part. But anyway, carry on. That's what's so important is just that he does the historical work of telling the really complex story, which is not just simplistic and that there's not just one set of oil companies or domestic oil companies. There's the U.S. that has domestic concerns, economically and politically. that it's trying to satisfy.

And what he does in this book, and I think listeners will appreciate, is give you the rich tapestry of competing forces and a larger framework for understanding how and why certain things happened when they happened and with what consequences. And since we all, you know, have had to live in this world, the Iraqis have had to live with the legacies of these manipulations, contestations, exploitations, you know, it's a very important. history, but it's also methodologically so valuable for people to see, is that when you want to have a real textured critique of the way capitalism has operated in U.S. Empire, you see that there are certain lines of contradiction. We need to know about these because these are actually some of the only points in our weakened state on the left, where if we understand them, there are opportunities, perhaps if we judge and understand correctly what some of the these competing interests are, where some of these contradictions are, where we can direct

our active struggle to actually change these dynamics. I mean, if you just try and go up against U.S. government, oil companies, et cetera, without understanding how the system is playing out in its particular historical circumstances, if you only take a schematic view, you miss potential opportunities. I mean, the people of Iraq also, if they knew exactly what was happening in U.S. domestic politics that might guide U.S. policy, there may have been opportunities also for them to, you know, push back in the situation at various times, right? So this kind of, this is what, you know, history as intelligence for our social struggles really looks like, it seems to me. And that's why I really enjoyed this episode so much.

Fantastic note to end on at none. So on that note, Brett, how can our listeners find you and the other excellent podcast that you take part in. Thank you. You can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. That's all three of our shows and our social media, as Patreon, everything else. And what can the listeners be looking for next from you? Because this will be coming out very soon.

Yeah, over on Rev Left, two wonderful episodes. We just did an episode with Todd McGowan, basically an intro to Lacanian psychoanalysis, which I think is really fascinating. And Todd is one of my favorite guests. And then we also, I also just did an episode on meditation and really kind of getting into the nitty gritty of the details of meditation in the Buddhist context as opposed to like bird's eye view of the philosophy. And that episode's coming out soon as well.

Excellent. I'd also listen to your last episode about climate change is class war. Fantastic interview. As always, really great stuff. So listeners, you should check out Revolutionary Left Radio wherever you get your podcasts. Adnan, how can the listeners? find you and your podcast, which has a conflicting podcast, name the same. Oh, yes.

Well, you can find me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-1-S, A-I-N. And you can listen to the M-A-J-L-I-S, the one that's sponsored by the Muslim Society's Global Perspectives Project here at Queen's University. if you're interested in the Middle East, Islamic world, Muslim diasporic history culture. I'm hoping that we'll have an episode soon. We've been on a bit of a hiatus summer and so on. But I'm looking forward to an episode of my former PhD student about his new book on Islam and anarchism.

So that should be very exciting. So do look for that in August. Yeah, in a brief story, which I think that I told on this part of the show before, is that I contacted you Adnan, and I said, there's a really interesting sounding book that's going to be coming out soon. You should interview this author and you said, yeah, I've been looking at this work for about 10 years now because he was my PhD student. So really fascinating that that worked out like that. And I'm glad that that'll be happening on the Mudge List soon. I'll certainly be tuning in for that. Listeners, as for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-1-995.

I also have another show that I've just launched with my partner called What the Huck, which has a mishmash of different topics, but you can find that wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube, actually, we do video as well by looking for what the hook with a question mark and exclamation point. You can find Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Sk, and you can help support the show by going to Patreon.com forward slash Gorilla History. Again, G-E-R-R-R-I-L-A history. Until next time, listeners, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.