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,
Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party been led by Akram al-Homsi. Khalil Haddadeen, Jordan's former Minister of Information, was elected to Parliament during the 1993 and 1997 elections on a pro-Iraqi and pro-Saddam Hussein stance. At the time of the 1966 split, the party had an estimated 1,000 members. It was active in the Arab Liberation Front (ALF). The ALF's first leader was Jordanian, Zaid Haydar. Munif al-Razzaz, who joined the party in 1966, eventually became an ALF leader. From there, he climbed the party ladder and became a member of the National Command before he was placed under house arrest by Iraqi authorities. Shahir Abu