# Assadist–Saddamist conflict

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The Assadist–Saddamist conflict, also known as the Ba'ath Party intraconflict, was a conflict and ideological rivalry between the Assadist Syrian-led Ba'ath Party and its subgroups, loyal to Ba'athist Syria, and the Saddamist Iraqi-led Ba'ath Party and its subgroups, loyal to Ba'athist Iraq. The conflict continued ideologically even after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and subsequent toppling of President Saddam Hussein, and ended after the fall of the Assad regime to a Syrian opposition offensive. Nonetheless, both regimes demonstrate shared traits, including strong militarization of society, autocratic rule, oppression, limitations on freedoms, power monopolization, electoral fraud, and responsibility for extensive suffering in both nations and the wider region.

## History
### Early Ba'athist divide

The conflict emerged after the Ba'ath Party split into two factions, that of Syria and that of Iraq, following the 1966 Syrian coup d'état where Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar were overthrown by Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid. In the 1970s, the two Ba'athist parties managed to reconcile, although the conflict erupted again as a result of the 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge in Iraq.

### Assadist–Saddamist conflict

In 1980, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, leading to the Iran–Iraq war, the Syrian Ba'ath chose to ally with Iran. This began a Syrian Ba'athist alliance with Shia Islamists, and an Iraqi Ba'athist alliance with the West and Sunni Islamists. Despite the Ba'ath Party as a whole claiming to be secular, the conflict is partially rooted in sectarianism as the Iraqi Ba'ath party was led by Sunnis, while the Syrian Ba'ath party was led by Alawites. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party supported the Muslim Brotherhood in their revolt against the Syrian Ba'ath.
During U.S. Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq in 1983, Saddam Hussein gave him a videotape. The video was allegedly filmed in Syria, and showed Hafez al-Assad overseeing Syrian troops strangling and stabbing puppies to death, and a line of young women biting off the heads of snakes. The video appeared to have been edited, with various clips of Assad applauding spliced in to suggest he was present. Rumsfeld would later write that he was sceptical of the video's authenticity, speculating that Saddam was using the video as a means to paint the Assad regime as barbaric and convince the U.S. to take Iraq's side in a potential conflict. The video was later released by Rumsfeld via his "The Rumsfeld Papers" website in 2011.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. After United Nations Security Council authorization, Syria joined the coalition that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War. Syria broke relations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and joined other Arab states in sending military forces to the coalition that forced Iraq out of Kuwait. However by 1997, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad began reestablishing relations with Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Hafez died in 2000 and Iraq sent Vice President Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf to attend the state funeral. The ascendance of Bashar al-Assad in 2000 boosted this process. Under Bashar, Syria ignored the sanctions against Iraq and assisted Iraq to illegally import oil.

### Collapse of both regimes

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and removed the Saddamists from power, leaving the Syrian Arab Republic as the only remaining Ba'athist state, until a 2024 offensive by the Syrian opposition which ousted the Ba'athist regime from power.
In 2024 after the Bashar al-Assad regime collapsed, Ali Khamenei stated that Iran's support for Ba'athist Syria in 2013 was a response to Hafez al-Assad's support for Iran during the Iran–Iraq War by blocking transit of 1 million barrel of oil through the Mediterranean Sea.