Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi (1945–2015) was an Iraqi Shia politician, mathematician, and prominent dissident who founded and led the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in 1992, an umbrella opposition group aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime. Born into a wealthy Shiite Muslim family in Baghdad, he was exiled to Lebanon in 1958 following the 1958 Iraqi coup. Educated in the United States, he earned a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1969. He initially pursued a career in banking, founding the Petra Bank in Jordan in 1977, which grew rapidly but collapsed in 1989 amid allegations of fraud, leading to his conviction in absentia in 1992 after he fled the country. Exiled from Iraq since 1958, Chalabi became a key exile figure in lobbying for Western intervention against Saddam, providing disputed intelligence to U.S. neoconservatives on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to advocate for the 2003 Iraq invasion; this intelligence was later discredited and contributed to the U.S.-led invasion. He was accused of fabricating evidence and had ties to Iranian intelligence, earning him a reputation as a convicted fraudster and alleged Iranian agent. Following the invasion, Chalabi returned to Iraq and held influential positions in post-Saddam politics, including president of the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003 and deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in 2005 under Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. However, his political career was marred by controversies, including U.S. raids on his home in 2004 over suspicions of passing classified information to Iran, and ongoing allegations of corruption and embezzlement. Despite his role, Chalabi was never broadly popular among Iraqis, who viewed him as an opportunistic exile more aligned with foreign powers than national interests. He continued to wield influence in Iraqi politics as a Shia leader until his death from a heart attack in 2015, leaving a legacy as a masterful but divisive manipulator in the networks of influence surrounding the Iraq War.