"Hitler hatte von der Luftwaffe eine "heroische Geste" gegenüber seinen irakischen Waffenbrüdern gefordert."
Lit Tr - "The situation urgently calls for a futile heroic gesture to encourage our friends and we think you're just the very chap to lead it ..."
From the text, it seems Kommandant Junck wasn't very impressed with his assignment either.
From Tripod.com -
"By 1940 the Iraqi air force contained six air wings (planes were primarily of British and U.S. origin). In 1941, following the pro-Axis coup, the Iraqi armed forces faced an Allied intervention by predominantly British Commonwealth troops (mainly East Indians and Transjordanians); despite heavy numerical superiority and some meager assistance from the Vichy French in Syria as well as from a few German transport planes that supplied Iraq with some badly needed war materiel, the Iraqi armed forces were quickly routed. The Iraqi air force lost about 20 aircraft in the course of the brief struggle (out of a total of 56 that Iraq possessed at that time). A peace treaty very favourable to the Allies was immediately signed in the aftermath,
Followed soon after by the occupation of Persia as neatly described by John Masters in "Bugles and a Tiger." LFH