Faisal II (Arabic: الملك فيصل الثاني, romanized: al-Malik Fayṣal al-thānī; 2 May 1935 – 14 July 1958) was the last King of Iraq. He reigned from 4 April 1939 until July 1958, when he was killed during the 14 July Revolution. This regicide marked the end of the thirty-seven-year-old Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, which then became a republic.
The only son of King Ghazi and Queen Aliya of Iraq, Faisal acceded to the throne at the age of three after his father was killed in a car crash. A regency was set up under his uncle Prince 'Abd al-Ilah. In 1941, a pro-Axis coup d'état overthrew the regent. The British responded by initiating an invasion of Iraq a month later and restored 'Abd al-Ilah to power. During the Second World War, Faisal was evacuated along with his mother to the United Kingdom. There, he attended Harrow School alongside his cousin Hussein, the future King of Jordan. The regency ended in May 1953 when Faisal came of age.
The overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and the formation of the United Arab Republic in February 1958 only provided impetuses to ideas of a revolution. The Hashemite Arab Federation was formed between Iraq and Jordan in February 1958 with Faisal as its head, which did not quell widespread opposition. In July 1958, a group of Royal Iraqi Army officers led by Abdul-Karim Qasim mounted a coup d'état and overthrew the monarchy. Faisal was executed along with numerous members of his family in the process at the Al-Rehab Palace massacre on 14 July 1958.
Faisal was the only son of King Ghazi of Iraq and his wife, Queen Aliya, second daughter of 'Ali bin Hussein, King of the Hejaz and Grand Sharif of Mecca. Faisal's father was killed in a mysterious car crash when he was three years old; his father’s first cousin, Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, served as regent until Faisal came of age in 1953. He suffered from asthma.
Faisal's childhood coincided with the Second World War, in which the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq was formally allied with the British Empire and the Allies. In April 1941, his first cousin once removed 'Abd al-Ilah was briefly deposed as Regent by a military coup d'état which aimed to align Iraq with the Axis powers. The 1941 coup in Iraq soon led to the Anglo-Iraqi War. German aid proved insufficient, and the Regent 'Abd al-Ilah was restored to power by a combined Allied force composed of the Jordanian Arab Legion, the Royal Air Force, and other British units. Iraq resumed its British ties, and at the end of the war joined the United Nations.
During his early years, Faisal was tutored at the Royal Al-Rehab Palace with several other Iraqi boys. During the Second World War, he lived for a time with his mother at Grove Lodge at Winkfield Row in Berkshire in England. Faisal attended Sandroyd School then Harrow School with his paternal second cousin Prince Hussein, later to become King Hussein of Jordan. The two boys were close friends, and reportedly planned early on to merge their two realms, to counter what they considered to be the "threat" of Communism and left-leaning variants of pan-Arab nationalism. Recently, 143 drawings by Faisal using either pencil or crayon were put on display at Iraq's National Archives depicting backdrops of the war he lived through. These include drawings of aircraft, bombs, killer robots, and extreme fighting on both land and sea and drawings also depicting peaceful subjects, including landscapes, birds, and buildings, as well as maps of Europe and North Africa.
In 1952, at age 17, Faisal began plans to visit the United States and its many development projects such as agriculture, power projects, canal systems, and land reclamation schemes. Of particular interest to the King were the irrigation projects as Faisal would later tell the New York press that those were “very much needed in our country."
On 12 August, 1952, Faisal began the five-week tour and, along with Regent 'Abd al-Ilah, arrived at 11 AM, on the Hudson River on the RMS Queen Mary and were given a tour around the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan. The next day, Faisal went on a tour of the Empire State Building and after arriving at City Hall for a reception with Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri, he famously went to attend a game held at Ebbets Field. The visit was covered by many news outlets nationwide that many forgot Faisal's original motives for the visit. He would also famously be on the side of the Brooklyn Dodgers but reportedly could not tell the difference between them and the other team, the New York Giants, until one of his aides told him that the team's names are written on the players' clothes.
In the following days, he would tour Radio City Music Hall and the Esso Oil Company. On 16 of August, both would depart from LaGuardia Airport for Washington, D.C., where he met President Harry Truman. Over the following weeks, he would meet other famous individuals, such as Dean Acheson, the actor James Mason, and Jackie Robinson, among others.
Less than a year after his visit to the United States, Faisal attained his majority on 2 May 1953, commencing his active rule with little experience and during a changing Iraqi political and social climate exacerbated by the rapid development of pan-Arab nationalism. On the same day his cousin, Hussein, was enthroned in Jordan. Reportedly, Faisal's reign was marked by tolerance and co-existence with other faiths and branches of Islam and projects such as an irrigation project, inspired by the US project. Public buildings were built under his reign such as al-Shawy Mosque which he visited along with scholars and notables of Baghdad on TV. Faisal initially relied for political advice upon his father’s cousin Prince 'Abd al-Ilah and General Nuri al-Sa'id, a veteran politician and nationalist who had already served several terms as Prime Minister. However, Faisal's reign simultaneously grew increasingly unstable against a backdrop of economic inequality coupled with the rise of Communism, anti-imperialist sentiment, and mounting Pan-Arab nationalism.
Hastening Faisal's demise was the decision taken by his regent (later confirmed by him) to allow the United Kingdom to retain a continued role in Iraqi affairs, through the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1948, and later the Baghdad Pact, signed in 1955. Increasing massive protests greeted news of each of these alliances, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators and an increasing deterioration of loyalty to the Iraqi Crown.
As oil revenues increased during the 1950s, the king and his advisors chose to invest their wealth in development projects, which some claimed increasingly alienated the rapidly growing middle class and the peasantry. The Iraqi Communist Party increased its influence. Though the regime seemed secure, there was dissatisfaction with Iraq's condition. An ever-widening gap between the wealth of the political elites, landowners, and other supporters of the regime on the one hand, and the poverty of workers and peasants on the other, intensified opposition to Faisal's government. Since the upper classes controlled the parliament, reformists increasingly saw revolution as their sole hope for improvement. The Egyptian Revolution of 1952, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, provided an impetus for a similar undertaking in Iraq.
During his reign, Faisal initiated large-scale plans for the modernization of Greater Baghdad. The goal of this ambitious project was to improve and develop infrastructure and housing, provide essential public buildings, reform the building industries, and train future Iraqi architects to not rely on Western help. The increase in the economy that subsequently enabled the plans for Greater Baghdad to be developed was due to negotiations with the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company in 1952 that achieved an equitable share of oil rights and a substantial increase in Iraq's revenue. Faisal also created the semiautonomous Development Board which consisted of six members including a foreign advisor with the goal of improving living conditions and construction. After various negotiations, the board received a percentage of the annual oil revenue and in 1955 it established a six-year plan with a larger budget, a quarter of which was assigned to public buildings. In an effort to secure the authority of King Faisal II and the Royal Family and to thwart possible tensions, funds needed to be invested in urban areas where it was feared the conflict would potentially appear.