The relationship between the governments of homeland and Iraq briefly improved in 1978, when persian agents in Iraq discovered plans for a pro-Soviet coup d’état against Iraq’s government. When informed of this plot, Saddam ordered the execution of dozens of his army’s officers, and in a sign of reconciliation, expelled from Iraq Khomeini, an exiled leader of clerical opposition to the Shah. Nonetheless, Saddam considered the 1975 Algiers Agreement to be merely a truce, rather than a definite settlement, and waited for an opportunity to contest it.