Conformity and Challenges in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Years 361entire Arab world even more vigorously against Europe and the U.S. and give
the Soviet Union more influence in the Middle East, so they went to the U.N.
to force Israel, Britain, and France to stop the attacks. Nasser had won, and
his fame in the Third World was greater than ever. In the region, more and
more “Nasserites” came to power, including Karim Kassim in Iraq. In 1958,
Kassim and other nationalist officers in Baghdad deposed the old monarchy
and, as in Egypt and elsewhere, tried to develop a neutral path and control
their own resources. The U.S., as in Iran in the early 1950s, began to look for
ways to get rid of the new leader and his supporters and eventually sup-
ported a 1963 coup and assassination of Kassim in Iraq led by the Ba’ath Party,
of which a young officer named Saddam Hussein was a member. The CIA
went to Baghdad after the coup and worked with the new regime to “elimi-
nate”–usually by killing–hundreds of Kassim’s supporters. The U.S. clearly
had a dilemma in the Middle East. Its actions–support of Israel, opposition to
Arab nationalism, supporting coups–led to more animosity toward America in
the region, but it had to act, according to American leaders, to preserve its oil
FIGuRE 7-6 Abdel Nasser raising the Egyptian flag over the Suez Canal in
Port Said in celebration of the final British military withdrawal from
Egypt, June 1956