This file contains dialogues between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi ambassadors in foreign countries. This period contains an Iraqi ambassador comment on the Zionist influence in the United States. He stated that the American brains were conducting the Zionism in the United States. He added that the Jewish immigration whether to Israel or to the United states would create a threat on the Arab Countries. Saddam commented that the Soviet Jewish immigration to these states would decrease because the regime has changed in the Soviet Union. He said that Israel wished the Berlin wall would move to the States of the Middle East. Their target was to eliminate the wall separating them from the Arab States. He added that the democratic changes were continuously occurring. He gave an example about a protest in Czechoslovakia. It leads to the resignation of 11 Ministers of the Czechoslovakian government. Saddam answered that when a protest occurred in the Yarmuk City, Iraq, the Revolutionary Command Council considered carefully how to deal with the protest. . Israel was afraid from the Iraqi evolution to a technologically developed country. Saddam stated that every new power appearing in the world might threaten the two existent enormous poles. That was the reason Iraq fought. This period contains the Saddam declaration on the ambassadors' freedom to express their opinions. He also noticed that they were well prepared for the discussion. He added that the good preparation for the conferences was the key of their success.

This excerpt is a part of the lengthy document from the Yugoslav Nuclear Energy Commission meeting held on April 16, 1979. The discussion included cooperation with different countries in the development of peaceful nuclear technology, exploration of options to acquire and sell uranium (yellowcake) on the global market without any restrictions, and joint programs in developing or exporting nuclear technology (Romania, Indonesia, and Iraq). 

The focus here is on investigating the possibility of constructing a nuclear reactor in Iraq in cooperation with France. The details are fuzzy, although it is undoubtedly the Osiraq nuclear reactor. Important for understanding the context is the fact that Yugoslavia and Iraq had already established lucrative barter arrangements on the principle “armaments for oil.” More importantly, the general undertone throughout this and other meetings of the Commission in a previous couple of years is the attempt of the Yugoslavs to find loopholes in the existing safeguards and other restrictions related to selling sensitive nuclear technology to other countries based on a belief that the NPT did not function and that the ‘nuclear haves’ were once again trying to reestablish much stricter monopoly on nuclear technology than before. 

This 93 minute audio file dated from 1992 contains a meeting chaired by the Iraqi President with the National Command of the Ba'th Party. They discussed the following topics: ‐Dispatching Iraqi Ba‐thists to Lebanon to support the Lebanese Ba'th party there. ‐ Edification of the people in southern and northern Iraq over the Party's principles. ‐The mechanism of defending the Iraqi sovereignty from the Kurdish, and Iranian enemies. ‐ Ba'th party affairs. ‐The role of the Iraqi media during the 1st Gulf war. ‐ Research centers and their impact on the development of the Iraqi individual. ‐The foreign propaganda and media attacks on the country. ‐ Reviving the national intellect. ‐ The Ba'th party ideology. ‐ controlling the treason acts in southern and northern Iraq. (Translator's Comment: from 01:15:59 till 01:33:37 are blank.)

This file contains a National Command meeting presided over by Saddam Hussein. The attendees discuss the Baath party and its role in national development, the relationship between the Arab countries and Europe, and the international balance of power following the Cold War.

Süha Umar is a Turkish Ambassador (Rtd.) He served as Head of the Turkish Delegation to ACRS.

Peter Jones is a former Canadian diplomat. He served as a member of the Canadian delegation to ACRS. 

Robert Einhorn is a former US diplomat. He served as the head of the US delegation to ACRS. 

In March 1945, the Arab League (AL) was founded in Cairo. It arrived at the tail-end of a gargantuan four-year-long endeavor to economically integrate the entire Middle East and North and northeast Africa in order to make its polities more self-sufficient during the world war, in which shipping with Allied countries was dangerous and when military trumped civilian needs. This endeavor was supported by national authorities, aided by the United States, and directed by officials of the British Empire. Britain was paramount in the region, and by 1943 its armies, with the US military, evicted all German and Italian troops from North Africa.

Towards the end of the war, the British Empire developed a greater interest in allied Arab countries cooperating more closely. Hence, it backed the establishment of the AL. The latter was not at all simply a British project, though. It also reflected a highly particular version of pan-Arab nationalism: rather than promoting territorial or political unification, it allowed key states to assert their voice in the Arab World.

The Arab League had six founding members. These were Saudi Arabia, a British ally, and Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan, which all were in various ways British-ruled; so was Yemen, which joined in May 1945. Though Palestinians worked with it, Palestine was not an official founding member. Britain was not keen. As Palestine’s Mandate power, it continued to heed Yishuvi interests. Moreover, AL member governments were not truly supportive either. They did, however, take a great interest in the Palestine conflict. In November 1945, the AL re-established the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), which first was founded at the start of the Palestine Revolt, in 1936, but outlawed by Britain in 1937. When the AHC imploded due to intra-Palestinian infighting, the AL in 1946 created the Arab Higher Executive, renamed AHC in 1947. Moreover, the AL in 1945 declared a boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Palestine. And in 1945, too, it executed plans going back to 1944 to open abroad public relations “Arab Offices” (AO), whose main writ was to explain why Palestine’s Arabs, not the Zionists, should become the sovereign in Palestine. One AO was in London. Another was in Washington, DC, open until 1948, and a third followed in 1946 in New York, open until 1947; they have been treated in Rory Miller’s “More Sinned against than Sinning?: The Case of the Arab Office, Washington” (2004) and Daniel Rickenbacher’s “The Arab League's Propaganda Campaign in the US Against the Establishment of a Jewish State” (2020). 

Supported by some British officials, the AL opened AOs in the United States because it feared Zionist lobbying and public relations there and because it knew the US government would help shape the postwar Middle East, even if Britain was still the premier power. The man behind the idea of the AOs, Musa Alami (1897-1984), and a majority of AO officials, including Ahmed Shukairy (1908-1980), were Palestinians. There were other Arabs, too. One was the Lebanese Nejla Abu-Izzedin (1908-2008), who had received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1934; another was the Anglo-Lebanese Cecil Hourani (1917-2020), brother of the famous historian Albert Hourani (1915-1993), who discussed the AO in An Unfinished Journey: Lebanon and Beyond (1984).

The text printed here, excerpts from a report, in English, reflects the work of the Washington AO, its travails, and the AL officials’ views of the US. It is noteworthy that the original of the text forms part of a broader file created by the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, the para-state government of the Yishuv in British Mandate Palestine. The file is kept at the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem.

Following Lewis’ cable, and the realization that the raid should have been at least somewhat anticipated, the administration opted to develop a more restrained, sober approach towards Israel, constructing what was termed a “political strategy for responding to Israeli attack”.

The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily for 25 July 1990 describes the latest developments in Iraq, Kuwait, Liberia, the Soviet Union, China, Taiwan, European Community, Hungary and Germany.