largely because of al-Rikabi's effective recruitment drive in Shia areas. Between 1963 and 1970, after al-Rikabi's resignation, Shia representation in the Regional Command had fallen to 14 percent. However, of the three factions within the Ba'ath Party, two out of three faction leaders were Shia. By the end of 1951, the party had at least 50 members. With the collapse of the pan-Arabist United Arab Republic (UAR), several leading Ba'ath members, including al-Rikabi, resigned from the party in protest. In 1958, the year of the 14 July Revolution that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy, the Ba'ath Party had 300 members nationwide. General Abd al-Karim Qasim, the leader of the Free Officers Movement which overthrew the king, supported joining the UAR, but changed his position when he took power. Several members of the Free Officer Movement were also members of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party considered the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of the pan-Arab movement, to be the leader most likely to succeed, and supported Iraq's joining the union. Of the 16 members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 were Ba'ath Party members. However, the Ba'ath Party supported Qasim on the grounds that he would join Nasser's UAR. Qasim's Iraq: 1958–1963 Shortly after taking power, Qasim changed his position on joining the UAR and started campaigning for the "Iraq first policy". To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party, which was opposed to the notion of pan-Arabism. The change of policy provoked several pan-Arab organisations, especially the Ba'ath Party. Later that year, the Ba'ath Party leadership was planning to assassinate Qasim and take power to continue the policy of pan-Arabism. Saddam Hussein was a member of the operation. At the time, the Ba'ath Party was more of an ideological experiment than a strong, anti-government, fighting machine. Most of its members were either educated professionals or students, and Saddam Hussein fit the bill. Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the leader of the operation, asked Hussein to join it when one of the team members left. The idea of assassinating Qasim may have been Nasser's and speculations exist that some participants in the operation received training in Damascus, which was then part of the UAR. However, "no evidence has ever been produced to implicate Nasser directly in the plot." The assassins planned to ambush Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959. One man