In the coup's aftermath, he was elected the chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and the president; he was later appointed the prime minister.

Under al-Bakr's rule, Iraq grew economically due to high international oil prices, which strengthened its position in the Arab world and increased Iraqis' standard of living.

Al-Bakr gradually lost power to Saddam in the 1970s, as the latter strengthened his position within the party and the state through security services.

During his early military career, he took part in the Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's failed revolt against the British in 1941, and was imprisoned and expelled from the army.

In 1959, a year following the coup, al-Bakr was again forced to retire from the military under allegations that he led an anti-government rebellion in Mosul by officers who favoured closer ties with the United Arab Republic.

[6] Because of Qasim's government's repressive policy towards the opposition, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, Secretary (leader) of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's Iraqi branch, reorganised the party's rank and file, and on 24 December 1962 launched a nationwide protest against Qasim's government.

The government's treatment of dissent did not soften and by 1963 several leading Iraqi Ba'athists had travelled to Beirut to plan a coup against Qasim.

[10] Al-Bakr led the February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état,[5] later called the Ramadan Revolution, and overthrew Qasim's government.

After a couple of years, al-Bakr was elected as the Iraqi branch's Secretary General of the Regional Command.

Al-Bakr consolidated his hold on the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi branch by appointing supporters to important offices.

[16] Ali Salih al-Sadi, the Secretary General of the Iraqi branch's Regional Command, was expelled from the party in 1964, and al-Bakr succeeded him in office.

[22] The coup of 1968, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, brought al-Bakr and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in Iraq.

From his military headquarters, al-Bakr contacted Abdul Rahman Arif, the President, and asked him to surrender.

[25] Before taking power, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party tried successfully to recruit military officers for the cause; some, such as Hardan al-Tikriti were already Ba'ath Party members, others, such as Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif, the deputy head of the military intelligence and Ibrahim Daud, the commander of the Republican Guard, were not members.

[27] While an-Naif and Daud, according to Con Coughlin, should have had the upper hand because of their support within the military, they lost the power struggle to al-Bakr due to his political skills and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party's organisational structure.

A shift happened under Saddam's command; a socialist economy, according to Con Coughlin, with government ownership of natural resources and the means of production was established.

Saddam also started a diversification programme to ensure that Iraq would not be dependent on its oil revenues in the future.

The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the highest legislative and executive organ of party and state, implemented and decided the goals of the plan.

[35] The introduction of subsidies and the removal of financial burdens from the peasantry were populist, but were also part of al-Bakr's plan of creating a patrimonial system with himself at the top.

Corruption also proved to be a problem, and the acquisition of land of people close to the political leadership was repeated on a scale not seen since the time of the monarchy.

This agreement would signal the end of the IPC's dominance over Iraq's oil resources; it also reinforced al-Bakr's belief that the company needed to be nationalised.

In addition, al-Bakr and Saddam had taken steps to make the anticipated loss less severe on the people and the economy; Saddam visited Moscow and negotiated a treaty whereby the Soviet Union would buy some of Iraq's oil, and second, the government did not nationalise the IPC subsidiaries and gave French members "special treatment".

This policy proved highly successful, and there was a massive increase in the price of oil in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War.

The oil revenues strengthened the political elite's patrimonial system; the means of patronage exceeded "anything available" to previous rulers.

These programmes were not properly developed until the mid-1970s, when increasing oil revenue allowed the government to invest more in such areas.

[31] According to Con Coughlin, the author of Saddam: His Rise and Fall, one of the Ba'ath Party's main goals was the elimination of both the Iraqi upper and middle classes.

Around this same time he founded the National Progressive Front in an effort to broaden the support base for his government.

His government initially supported closer ties with Nasser, and under his rule Iraq almost joined the United Arab Republic.

According to historian Charles R. H. Tripp, the Ba'athist coup of 1968 upset "the US-sponsored security system established as part of the Cold War in the Middle East.

"[44] From 1973 to 1975, the Central Intelligence Agency colluded with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran to finance and arm Kurdish rebels in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War in an attempt to weaken al-Bakr.