Hussein was the president of Iraq from 1979 until he was deposed in 2003 by American-led forces during the Iraq War. Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majidida al-Tikriti was born in Al-Awja, near Tikrit, Iraq. In 1957, he joined the opposition Ba'ath Party. Following the overthrow of the monarchy, Saddam was part of a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow the revolutionary regime. In 1963, after the Ba'athists took control of the government, Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned for three years. In 1969, he became a deputy to the president and was appointed a general in the Iraqi military. Saddam promoted economic modernization and expanded social services, funded by oil revenues. His staunch anticommunism and opposition to fundamentalist Islam resulted in American support for Saddam when he seized power in 1979.

Saddam continued his modernization and secularization programs, but ruthlessly suppressed dissent. He also sought to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and later used chemical weapons against ethnic Kurds and other opponents of the government. With U.S. backing, the regime went to war with Iran in 1980. The conflict ended in a stalemate in 1988, but resulted in more than 1 million dead on both sides and left Iraq with a war debt of $75 billion. In an effort to gain new resources to repay his debts, Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, provoking the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

After Saddam's defeat by the American-led coalition, the United Nations (UN) imposed a range of economic and military sanctions on Iraq and established no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam endeavored to have the sanctions removed or reduced. He sponsored a complicated smuggling system to partially evade the sanctions in the Oil-for-Food Program. The Iraqi leader also provoked a series of air strikes by the United States following the discovery of an Iraqi plot to assassinate former president George H. W. Bush in 1993, Iraqi military action against the Kurds in 1996, and the regime's noncompliance with UN-mandated inspections for WMDs, including the ejection of UN weapons inspectors. On 31 October 1998, President William J. Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made the removal of Saddam, or regime change, the official policy of the United States and committed the country to provide support for antiregime groups.

During the prelude to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam offered limited cooperation with a new round of UN inspections, but the administration of George W. Bush asserted that the regime continued to hide WMDs, while also supporting Islamic terrorist groups. On 20 March 2003, American-led coalition forces invaded Iraq and by 9 April, allied troops had captured Baghdad. Saddam went into hiding, but was captured on 13 December.

In June 2004, Saddam and other senior officials from his regime were transferred to the custody of the Iraqi interim government. After a contentious trial, on 5 November 2006 Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity for ordering the executions of Shiites and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging on 30 December 2006.

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