This article documents a current court case. Information may change rapidly as the case progresses.

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

This article is about the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister under Saddam Hussein. For the head of Pakistani National Security Council, see Tariq Aziz (bureaucrat).

Tariq Aziz
Tariq Aziz, c. 2005
member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council 5th Deputy Prime Minister[1]
In office July 16, 1979 – April 9, 2003
Succeeded by	Jay Garner, as Head of the Coalition Provisional Authority
Foreign Minister
In office 1979 – 1991
Born	April 28, 1936 (1936-04-28) (age 72) Tel Keppe, Iraq
Political party	Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party
Religion	Chaldean Catholic

Mikhail Yuhanna, later and more popularly known as Tariq Aziz or Tareq Aziz, (Arabic: طارق عزيز, Syriac: ܜܪܩ ܥܙܝܙ) (born 1936 in Tel Keppe) was the Foreign Minister (1983 – 1991) and Deputy Prime Minister (1979 – 2003) of Iraq, and a close advisor of former President Saddam Hussein for decades. Their association began in the 1950s, when both were Ba'ath party activists, while the party was still officially banned.

Since Saddam Hussein was both Prime Minister and President of Iraq, Aziz often played the role of Iraq's de facto head of government. Because of security concerns, Saddam rarely left Iraq, and Aziz in turn would often represent Iraq at high-level diplomatic summits. In December 2002, Aziz called the arms inspection a "hoax" and war "inevitable." What the United States wanted, he averred, was not "regime change" in Iraq but rather "region change." He summed up the Bush Administration's reasons for war against Iraq tersely: "oil and Israel."^[2] Aziz's Chaldean Catholic faith made him unique, as the Iraqi government's only high-ranking Christian government official.^{[citation needed]}

Aziz is currently in prison in Camp Cropper in western Bagdhad^[3], at the direction of the United States government. He is on trial.^[4]