Hardan al-Tikriti

Hardan was born in 1925 in Tikrit.

His father was a police officer, a Sunni Arab and a member of the tribe of Al-Shiyasha.

As an officer in the Iraqi Air Force, he was educated at the flight academy in Baghdad and was commissioned as a Flying Officer in 1946.

In 1961, Hardan joined the Baath Party and he played a key role in both the 1963 and 1968 revolutions in Iraq.

By the start of 1963, Hardan was the commander of the Iraqi Air Force base near Mosul.

On 8 March 1963, with the Baath Party fighting to gain control of Syria, Hardan ordered an air attack on the part of the Syrian air base at Aleppo that was in the hands of supporters of the old government.

However, whilst the strike aircraft were en route, the Syrian Baathists took the air base and the attack was cancelled.

During the period in 1963 when the Baathists were in power in Iraq, Hardan was appointed as commander of the entire Iraqi Air Force.

However, when the President Abdul Salam Arif withdrew his support from the Baath Party in late 1963, Hardan followed suit.

Hardan then relinquished his command and was appointed Defence Minister in which capacity he served from November 1963 until March 1964.

Prior to the coup, Hardan came together with other major political figures in the Ba'th Party and Nationalist officers to carry out the plans made for the change in government.

Military officials felt that too many civilians and important leaders had been wrongfully killed under Abd al-Karim Qasim, the current President.

Qasim has also aligned himself with some of the Communist militia who was imposing violence on citizens of Iraq.

Key players in this coup attempt included Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Salih Mahdi Ammash, Abd al-Sattar, Abd al-Latif, Mundhir al-Wandawi, Makki al-Hashimi, Tahir Yahya, and Hardan al-Tikriti.

Abd al-Karim Qasim was to be removed from his position in office and to do this the communist commander of the Air Force, Jalal al-Awqati, had to be killed.

They also believed that the capture of Qasim and his sentencing to death was necessary for the transfer of power to take place.

On 8 February after Qasim's seat was captured by members of the coup, he was killed and his body was displayed on television for all of Iraq to see.

Abd al-Salam Arif was the person placed into the Presidential seat by the National Command of the Revolutionary Council (NCRC) after the February 8th events.

He appointed Ahmad Hasan Al-Bakr, a devoted Ba'thists, to be his vice president and Ali Salih al-Sa'di as his Minister of the Interior.

Although Abd al-Salam Arif was the President, al-Sa'di managed to maintain most power among the three because he was the leader of the Ba'thist Party at the time.

Bakr was also a member of the Ba'th Party; Arif, on the other hand, was not.

The government setup with Arif, Sa'di, and Bakr had no firm foundation because of the way that these men assumed their positions (the coup) of power.

There was also an inability to find stability and common agreement among the three men.

Opposing views began to surface as a result of unresolved opinions regarding the direction of the state of Iraq and an imbalance of power between Arif, Bakr, and Sa'di.

On 18 November 1963 Hardan would once again assist in a power transfer, this time it was in collusion with the current President of Iraq, Abd al-Salam Arif.

Arif wanted to regain control of the state that was handed to him by the NCRC so he brought Hardan and General Tahir Yahya together to launch an attack on the National Guard currently residing in Baghdad.

Arif managed to regain his control over the state after the attack also making the decision to remove Sa'di from the government because he had become a threat to Arif and the Iraqi people.

Sa'di was accused of attempts to spread Socialism throughout the state corrupting the government setup that Arif had in play.

On November 11, after being asked to step down from his position in government as Minister of Interior, Sa'di refused and went on with his plans to attend the Extraordinary Regional Conference.

At the conference he planned to have Hardan al-Tikriti, along with others who threatened his power and intentions, removed from their political positions.

Instead Sa'di was met by the National Guard who arrested him and the rest of his supporters, forcing them onto a plane set to leave the state and land in Madrid.

Hardan played the major role in this coup by delivering the final blow.

During the 1968 coup, in the early hours of 17 July 1968, Hardan telephoned the sitting Prime Minister Abdul Rahman Arif to inform him that he had been removed from office.

Hardan then escorted Arif to the airport where the deposed Prime Minister was flown out of the country.

Hardan was re-appointed Minister of Defence in the aftermath of the 1968 coup.

During his time as Defence Minister, Hardan was instrumental in securing large-scale military aid for Iraq from the Soviet Union.

Although Hardan was promoted in office, there was still one remaining man ahead of him with the power to control him – Sa'dun Ghaidan.

In order to change this, Hardan needed to gain the favor of Ghaidan, which he managed to do with the help of Hasan Al-Bakr.

Hardan 'Abdul Ghaffar al-Tikriti (حردان عبدالغفار التكريتي) (1925 – 30 March 1971 ) was a senior Iraqi Air Force commander, Iraqi politician and ambassador who was assassinated on the orders of Saddam Hussein.

Additionally he held the titles of vice chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and vice president of Iraq.