In February 1991, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, visited Tehran and met with Iran’s president, Ali Akhbar Rafsanjani. Neighboring Iraq figured high in the conversation. The US and its allies had just launched the ground war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation forces, this coming three years after the end of the disastrous Iran-Iraq war which cost over a million lives and devastated the economies of both countries. During the meeting, Gandhi asked Rafsanjani whom he thought should and could rule neighboring Iraq. Rafsanjani thought for a moment and then replied, “Saddam Hussein.” What a depressing assessment it was that, in the mind of Rafsanjani, only a pitiless despot like Saddam could hold Iraq together and prevent its sectarian and ethnic divisions from plunging the country into a Hobbesian bloodbath. Doubtless, that was one of Saddam’s final thoughts as he meekly accepted the noose around his neck and scoffed
