The Main Protagonist: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq Facing Khomeini’s Iran

Abstract

From the sixteenth century onwards, Mesopotamia was part of the Ottoman Empire, until Britain inherited its Middle Eastern dependencies. At the death of the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ — a term invented by Russia’s Nicholas I in alluding to the Ottoman Empire — the British troops expelled the Turks and captured the territories. Despite occupation in 1916, present-day Iraq was not colonized in the legal sense of the word. Created in 1921, the same year Reza Shah took part in a rebellion in Persia, Iraq was administered by Great Britain, under a League of Nations mandate, then granted independence on 3 October 1932.