This book provides the first ever intelligence history of Iraq from 1941 to 1945, and is the third and final volume of a trilogy on regional intelligence and counterintelligence operations that includes Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran) (2014), and Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran) (2015). This account of covert operations in Iraq during the Second World War is based on archival documents, diaries, and memoirs, interspersed with descriptions of all kinds of clandestine activity, and contextualized with analysis showing the significance of what happened regionally in terms of the greater war. After outlining the circumstances of the rise and fall of the fascist Gaylani regime, Adrian O’Sullivan examines the activities of the Allied secret services (CICI, SOE, SIS, and OSS) in Iraq, and the Axis initiatives planned or mounted against them. O’Sullivan emphasizes the social nature of human intelligence work and introduces the reader to a number of interesting, talented personalities who performed secret roles in Iraq, including the distinguished author Dame Freya Stark.

A companion to the pioneering Nazi Secret Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran), which told of Germany’s spectacular failure in the region, this carefully researched study of British, American, and Soviet success makes for fascinating reading. Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran) introduces us to Allied and Axis spies, spycatchers, and spymasters and to the highly effective methods employed by regional security forces to safeguard the lines of communication, the Lend-Lease supply route from the Gulf to the Caspian, and the vital oilfields, pipelines, and refineries of Khuzistan from Nazi attack and indigenous sabotage. Of particular interest in this study of neglected operational narratives and key clandestine personalities is its lucid description and analysis of Anglo-American and Anglo-Soviet intelligence relations, as the three Allies moved inexorably towards postwar realignment and the Cold War.

A pioneering investigation into the secret world of wartime Persia (Iran), meticulously sourced and based on six years of extraordinarily wide and deep research in the German, British, and American archives. This study exposes the problems, pressures, and personalities among the competing German intelligence services that targeted Persia, and it describes the highly effective methods employed by the implacable Allied security forces that resisted them. It tells a riveting tale: there are parachutists, gold, guns, dynamite, double agents, mistresses, and Byzantine intrigues galore in this compelling historical narrative. At the same time, as a serious academic study and a penetrating analysis of catastrophic intelligence failure, Adrian O’Sullivan’s book is a highly significant contribution to Second World War intelligence history.