This is the first comprehensive work to examine the complex transformation of the Iraqi Communist Party from vanguard actor under Iraq's conservative monarchy to rearguard lackey under U.S. occupation. The Communist Party of Iraq was initially fostered by Iraq's embryonic intelligentsia as an approach to national liberation during the period of British domination. By 1963, the conservative Baath party had quashed the Communist Party, killing its members or sending them into exile. Dependent on the Soviet Communist Party, the Iraqi Communist Party floundered until the U.S. government took it under its wing in the 2003 occupation.