CIA activities in Iraq
The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in covert actions and contingency planning in Iraq ever since the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, although the historiography of Iraq–United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s. The CIA is alleged to have sponsored an unsuccessful Ba'athist assassination plot against Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, although several scholars have disputed this.