Saddam Hussein To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party, which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism. Later that year, the Ba'ath Party leadership was planning to assassinate Qasim. Saddam was a leading member of the operation. At the time, the Ba'ath Party was more of an ideological experiment than a strong anti-government fighting machine. The majority of its members were either educated professionals or students, and Saddam fit the bill. The choice of Saddam was, according to historian Con Coughlin, "hardly surprising". The idea of assassinating Qasim may have been Nasser's,
Hussein of Jordan Iraqi aid helped Jordan's finances; Hussein had felt it humiliating to keep asking Gulf countries for assistance. Hussein made a little-known attempt to heal the rift between the two Ba'ath regimes of Iraq and Syria in April 1986. The meeting between Hafez Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein occurred at an airbase in Al-Jafr in the eastern Jordanian desert. The talks lasted for a day, after which no progress was made. Saddam was angry at Al-Assad for supporting Iran against an Arab country, Iraq, and Al-Assad was adamant about establishing a union between Iraq and Syria, which Saddam rejected. On 11 April