The Arab Countries • 303regime. In 1932 Iraq was the first Arab mandate to become nominally inde¬
pendent and join the League of Nations, but British troops remained.
Regrettably, Iraq's stability was upset by Faysal's early death in 1933, an
Assyrian uprising that the Iraqi army put down violently, and a popular
mood of strident Arab chauvinism in the late 1930s. Several coups brought
military dictators into and out of power, culminating in 1941 with Rashid
Ali al-Gaylani's ardently nationalist and pro-Nazi regime, which was
crushed by the British. Meanwhile, Faysal's successor, Ghazi, died in a car
crash in 1939, leaving the throne to his four-year-old son, Faysal II. A re¬
gency was set up under the boy's uncle, Prince Abd al-Ilah, who was allied
with a shrewd politician named Nuri al-Sa'id, who managed to be both
pro-British and Arab nationalist. Though trained as an Ottoman army of¬
ficer, Nuri had joined the Arab revolt in 1916 and thereafter served the
Hashimites.
With British encouragement, Nuri proposed in 1942 a union of Fertile
Crescent Arab states: Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Such a combination would have been dominated by Iraq. This union was
opposed by the Jewish settlers in Palestine. The French, still clinging to
Syria and Lebanon, were hostile. But the fiercest objections to Nuri's plan
came from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which did not want Baghdad and the
Hashimites to lead the Arab world. As explained earlier, the Egyptian gov¬
ernment, also with British backing, countered in 1944 by proposing to cre¬
ate what became the Arab League. Iraq, unable to rally enough support for
its Fertile Crescent union, joined the League and soon became Zionism's
most vociferous Arab foe.
Iraq's army fought in the 1948 Palestine war, but the country suffered
less from the defeat than did Israel's neighbors. Its rising oil revenues were
being invested in river irrigation and other projects that promised future
prosperity. Its cabinets changed with alarming frequency, the various mi¬
nority problems festered (nearly all Jews were allowed to emigrate, minus
their property, to Israel), the socioeconomic gap between the landowning
shaykhs and the peasant masses widened, and the pro-Western monarchy
lost popular support. But the West did not notice. Britain's remaining mil¬
itary presence was camouflaged politically in 1955 when Iraq joined with
Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Britain to form an anticommunist alliance
commonly called the Baghdad Pact. Iraq's government ignored its military
ties with the other Arab League members. Relations between Baghdad and
Cairo were usually bad. Both competed for Syrian and Lebanese support.
To Westerners, Iraq was a model modernizing nation—that is, until its
monarchy was felled by an army coup in 1958, one that they blamed on
Egypt's press and radio attacks.