This file contains a transcription for a meeting between Saddam Hussein and the head of the Iraqi army, during the Iraqi‐Iranian War. Pages 2‐5 contain a detailed summary of the file written in English. Pages 6‐7 contain names of high‐ranking officers, for unspecified reason. Page 8 contains the register's number (64), the year (1983), and the transcript's number (1‐3). Pages 9 and 60 contain the names of the committee, which transcribe the meeting. Page 10 contains the index of the register, the tape's number (1), the date of recording (11/ 05/ 1983), and the codes. Page 11 contains names of personnel attending a meeting. Pages 12‐15 contain discussions between Saddam Hussein and Air Forces commander concerning the exploding of Iranian oil Fields
by bombing it with missiles. They also include orders by Saddam Hussein to destroy the Ardishir oil Field. Pages 16‐22 contain discussions between saddam Hussein, the chief Army of Staff, the Deputy chief Army of Staff, and the military Operation Director concerning the formation and the training of Brigades and Sectors and the activities on certain fronts. They also discussed the problems that soldiers face on the battleground because of the high number of casualties and destroyed weapons, so the battleground became infected. For the rest of the document, they also discussed the status of the battleground, weapons, deliveries, targeted Iranian locations.   Andimeshk and Dezful are mentioned repeatedly.

This audio file from a meeting dated 1 May 1991 between Saddam Hussein and the General Command of the Army regarding the enlargement of the Army, the political changes which affect the Army and its training. Saddam Hussein admired the forming of the Republican Guards groups, soldeirs who participated in Qadissyah Saddam (Iran-Iraq War). In addition, this file includes a discussion regarding the invasion of Kuwait and the low morale of Iraqi soldiers, the American request to cease-fire because of the Iraqi soldiers' brevity, the gradual erosion of Iraqi morale on the front, and the increase of Divisions' numbers within the Army. Major General Sultan discussed the use of high-technology weapons by the American forces in the First Gulf War.

The full version of the text excerpts included here was reprinted in a collection of the works of its author, Abdallah al-Tariqi (1919-1997), who had first published it in its Arabic original in the journal Dirasat ‘Arabiyya and before held it as a speech, in 1965 at the Fifth Arab Oil Conference in Cairo.

Al-Tariqi was born in what would become Saudi Arabia. He was educated at Fuad I (now Cairo) University Egypt (B.S.) and the University of Texas (M.A. in petroleum engineering and geology), and trained for another year in the US oil industry before returning to Saudi Arabia in 1953. The next year, he became Director-General of Petroleum and Mineral Affairs in the Ministry of Finance and National Economy. As such, he was inter alia responsible for relations with the then only oil company in Saudi Arabia, a conglomerate of four US firms called the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), which had received a concession in 1933, first found oil in 1938, and began extraction from the end of World War II. While taken by the anti-imperialist stance and policies of Egypt President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), al-Tariqi in the 1950s was a reformist modernizer. He accepted the royal Saudi political system and the kingdom’s relationship with the United States. But he was determined to greatly improve Saudi oil income and negotiation position vis-à-vis the US company, often upholding as a model Venezuela’s Creole Petroleum Company.

In parallel, he worked for more coordination between oil producing countries, to improve their position vis-à-vis Western companies. In 1957, he helped bring about a Saudi-Iranian oil information exchange agreement. In 1959, he was a driving force behind the First Arab Oil Conference, in Cairo. And there, he, the Venezuelan Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo (1903-1979), and a Kuwaiti, Iraqi, and Iranian delegate concluded a momentous agreement. Though informal, it “marked the first real steps toward creating a common front against the oil companies,” as Daniel Yergin put it in his classic work The Prize (1991). The agreement laid the foundation for the birth of the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) in 1960 in Baghdad, analyzed by Giuliano Garavini in The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the 20th Century (2019).

In 1960, too, al-Tariqi became Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Affairs. But in 1962, a clash within the Saudi ruling elite cost him both his post and his ARAMCO board membership. He left Saudi Arabia; co-founded an independent oil consultancy in Beirut; and accentuated his view that oil is a global rather than country-by-country issue that needs a united Arab solution vis-à-vis the West. In parallel, his language became more pointed: he now talked about colonialism. And he embraced the nationalization of oil. This had worked in Latin America in the late 1930s when the US government needed its neighbors’ goodwill as clouds of war were gathering over Europe—but it had failed in Iran where a CIA-led coup removed Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq (1882-1967) in 1953, scaring Middle Eastern oil officials until the early 1960s

Transcript of a meeting between Saddam Hussein and other unidentified Iraqi Ba'ath party members. The meeting specifically discussed raising morale and mobilizing popular support--including how to discourage retreats from the front. Also includes discussion of chemical weapons.

This file contains a transcript of a conversation between President Saddam Hussein and top officials in the Iraqi Regime during the Iran-Iraq War. They discussed the Iranian air force and fighter planes, Israeli attempts to strike the Iraqi nuclear plant, and events on the front lines of the war.