Tariq Aziz

Tariq Aziz (Syriac: ܛܐܪܩ ܥܙܝܙ, Arabic: طارق عزيز Ṭāriq ʿAzīz, 28 April 1936 – 5 June 2015) was an Iraqi politician and journalist who served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq from 1979 to 2003 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1983 to 1991. He was a close advisor of President Saddam Hussein. Additionally, Aziz was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council and the Regional Command of the Iraqi Branch of the Ba'ath Party. Ethnically Assyrian, he was both an Arab nationalist and a Chaldean Catholic.

His association with Saddam began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. Due to security concerns, Saddam rarely left Iraq, so Aziz would often be Iraq's highest-level representative at international and diplomatic summits. In the year prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Aziz said that the United States did not want "regime change" in Iraq but rather "region change". He said that the Bush administration's reasons for war were "oil and Israel." After surrendering to American forces on 24 April 2003, Aziz was held in prison, first by American forces and subsequently by the new Iraqi government, in Camp Cropper in western Baghdad. He was acquitted at trial of some charges but was later found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 15 years in 2009 for the executions of 42 merchants found guilty of profiteering in 1992 and another 7 years for relocating Kurds.

On 26 October 2010, he was sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal, which sparked international condemnation from Iraqi bishops, other Iraqis, the Vatican, the United Nations, the European Union and the human rights organization Amnesty International, as well as various governments around the world, such as Russia. On 28 October 2010, it was reported that Aziz, as well as 25 fellow prison inmates, had begun a hunger strike to protest the fact that they could not receive their once-monthly visit from friends and relatives, which was normally set for the last Friday of each month. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani declared that he would not sign Aziz's execution order, thus commuting his sentence to indefinite imprisonment. Aziz remained in custody for the rest of his life and died of a heart attack in the city of Nasiriyah on 5 June 2015, aged 79, and is buried in Jordan.

One of the most prominent figures during the Ba'athist era of Iraq, he was the sole Christian to hold a high position in Saddam's government. Aziz's trademark, such as cigars and his glasses and mustache have drawn comparisons with the American movie star, Groucho Marx.

Aziz was born on 28 April 1936, near the city of Mosul in northern Iraq,^{[better source needed]} to an Iraqi Assyrian family. He and his family were of the Chaldean Catholic Church. There are claims he was born Mikhail or Michael Yuhanna (Syriac: ܡܝܟܐܝܠ ܝܘܚܢܢ Arabic: ميخائيل يوحنا) and later changed his name to Tariq Aziz (which denotes "glorious past") to gain acceptance by the Arab and Muslim majority. However, this was denied by his son.

He studied English at the University of Baghdad and later worked as a journalist, before joining the Ba'ath Party in 1957. During the 1950s, when Iraq was under the monarchical rule, Aziz along with other Ba'athists opposed the government. During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States showed limited interest in the Arab Socialist Party, which later became the Ba'ath Party, and its rise to power in Iraq. In this period, the U.S. was primarily concerned with the spread of Soviet communism around the world, particularly in the Middle East, rather than focusing on the internal politics of Arab countries.

According to Tariq Aziz, the U.S. did not perceive the Ba'ath Party as a significant force, either in Syria or Iraq, mainly because the U.S. lacked a deep understanding of Iraq’s political landscape. Aziz noted that while Britain and France had extensive historical involvement in the region, the United States did not have the same expertise and often viewed issues through a Cold War lens, concerned primarily with communism.

The Ba'ath Party first came to power in 1963 following the Iraq Revolution of 1958, a time when Tariq Aziz was serving as the editor-in-chief of the party's newspaper. Despite this significant political shift in Iraq, Aziz remarked that American diplomatic engagement with the country remained minimal. During the presidency of John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson, there was little meaningful interaction between Iraq and the U.S. government, with very few American journalists visiting Iraq compared to journalists from Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. In 1963, he was editor of the newspaper Al-Jamahir and Al-Thawra, the main newspapers of the Ba'ath party.