Iyad Allawi

Iyad Allawi (1945- ), Iraqi businessman and politician, Prime Minister of the interim regime in Iraq (2004-2005).

Born in Baghdad to a Shiite family, Allawi studied medicine in the city. He joined the Baath Party in 1961. In 1971 he left for London to train as a neurologist. As president of the Iraqi Student Union in Europe, he was suspected of acting as an agent for Iraq’s new Baathist regime, but in 1975 he publicly broke with the Baath Party. In 1978, Allawi began to work for the British secret service MI6. Later that year he narrowly survived an assassination attempt. In 1991, Allawi formed the Iraqi National Accord (INA), a network of dissidents opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein, and established with backing from MI6 and the US Central Intelligence Agency. An attempted coup d’état led by the INA in 1996 failed when it was infiltrated by Iraqi agents.

Allawi continued to provide information about the Iraqi regime to British intelligence services. Intelligence about Iraqi weapons capabilities—in particular a claim that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons that could be ready to use within 45 minutes—was used by the British and US governments to justify the War on Iraq. Following the US-led invasion, Allawi was appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) in July 2003. He was an outspoken supporter of allowing former Baathists to rejoin the government. The following year he was elected by the IGC to be prime minister of the interim regime, when sovereignty of the country was returned to Iraqis by the occupying forces in June 2004. The new Iraqi government was given control of oil revenues and the Iraqi police and military forces; it was not given operational control of overseas troops that remained in the country.

Multi-party elections held in January 2005 saw Allawi’s interim alliance finish in third place in the polls, effectively removing them from power.