Foreign relations of Cuba needed oil. Relations between the countries deteriorated rapidly. In April 1961, following air attacks preparing for the Bay of Pigs Invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, prime minister Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a socialist republic, and moved quickly to develop the growing relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. In 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States. Shortly afterwards, many nations throughout Latin America broke ties with Cuba, leaving the island increasingly isolated in the region and dependent on Soviet trade and cooperation. Following the establishment of diplomatic ties, and after the Cuban missile crisis in
CIA activities in Iraq Castro as well as his trips throughout the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and China. In 1991, former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Hermann Eilts told journalist Elaine Sciolino that Mahdawi had been the target. By 1961, the CIA had cultivated at least one high-level informant within the Iraqi wing of the Ba'ath Party, enabling it to monitor the Party's activities. A CIA cable reveals that the Ba'ath Party "first approached Arif about a coup in April 1962." In mid-1962, alarmed by Qasim's threats to invade Kuwait and his government's expropriation of 99.5% of the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company's (IPC)