IPC had a huge impact on the amount of revenue that the government generated and thus had a certain amount of influence over the government. The second major factor was inability of the Iraqi government at that time to source the technical knowledge and skill necessary to take over oil operations in the country. The Qasim era Beginning in the early 1950s, as the strength of nationalism in Iraq grew, the focus came to bear on foreign control over the oil production of the country. Abd al-Karim Qasim was a nationalist Iraqi Army general who seized power in a 1958 coup d'état in which the Iraqi monarchy was murdered. He ruled the country as Prime Minister of Iraq until his downfall and death in 1963. Before the coup, he used the fact that the IPC was producing oil for western nations rather than for the benefit of Iraq citizens as one of his main points of contention with the Iraqi government. Once in power, he was critical of several aspects of the IPC. First, he was critical of the monetary arrangement between the IPC and the government. He also did not appreciate the monopoly that the IPC had been granted. However the economic situation at the time did not permit Qasim to nationalize the IPC – western nations had boycotted Iranian oil when Mossadeq nationalized its oil company and could be expected to do the same in this case. (It is likely that nationalization would have been Qasim's favored route had he had the necessary capabilities). Further, Iraqis lacked the technical and managerial capabilities to run the IPC. Qasim needed the oil revenues to run his government and to keep the military satisfied. Therefore, Qasim resorted to many other tactics including increasing transit rates at Basra by 1,200%. In response, the IPC stopped producing oil that used Basra as a shipping point. The ensuing confrontation was the lowest point in relations between the two up to this point. On 12 December 1961, the Iraqi government enacted Law No. 80, which expropriated 99.5 per cent of the IPC group's concession areas without compensation and put an immediate stop on oil exploration. Law 80 did not impact the IPC's ongoing production at Az Zubair and Kirkuk, but all other territories, including North Rumaila, were returned to Iraqi state control. One major difference between these negotiations and those of 1952, was the stance