Shahid al-Sadr was the revolutionary wing of the Iraqi Islamic Dawa Party. The group was founded after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, being inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini's teachings in Iran. Shahid al-Sadr was named for its leader, Imam Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who led the Dawa Party and its war against the secularist Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. On 1 April 1980, the Shahid al-Sadr group attempted to assassinate Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, but this attempt failed.
On 9 April 1980, Saddam had Sadr executed, and the Shahid al-Sadr rebels retaliated with a terrorist campaign. In mid-December 1981, Shahid al-Sadr launched the first Shia suicide bombing when it bombed the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in revenge for Iraq's invasion of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, and Shahid al-Sadr attempted to assassinate Saddam in 1982. This led to the Dujail Massacre of 8 July 1982, in which 148 Shi'ites were massacred by the Ba'athists. On 12 December 1983, the Shahid al-Sadr group carried out a series of bombings in Kuwait, targeting foreign institutions in addition to the main oil refinery. In 1987, the group failed to ambush Saddam's motorcade, and it also tried to assassinate Uday Hussein in 1996. After the Iraq War's start in 2003 and the fall of Saddam, Shahid al-Sadr dissolved, and the Dawa Party became the ruling party of Iraq.