Yugoslavia established a large engineering and technology presence in Iraq soon after Saddam Hussein came to power.

[4] Later on, in the 1990s when FR Yugoslavia was isolated by international sanctions, Serbian company Yugoimport SDPR designed and built Ba'ath party headquarters in Baghdad along with an additional five underground bunkers for Saddam Hussein; Yugoimport SDPR's blueprints of the bunkers in which Saddam and loyalists hid during the United States invasion merited enough importance that they were handed over to the United States when the invasion began.

[5] A rumor was speculated by the media in 1999 during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein allegedly negotiated a discreet military alliance that would improve their ability to defy the West and withstand Allied bombing attacks, along with low-profile support from Russia and China.

[6] In 2002, a Yugoslav ship Boka Star, owned by a Montenegrin named Marko Balić was seized by the United States Navy after it was tipped off to have a large weapons shipment to Iraq.

[9] The deal included the delivery of 20 Utva Lasta aircraft to the Iraqi Air Force,[10] all of which were delivered by early 2012.