The United States Relations with the Middle East

The role of the Middle East has been very crucial to the United States, especially after WWII. The U.S. had three strategic goals in the Middle East and consistently followed them throughout various events that unfolded in the region. First, with the emergence of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the U.S., policymakers began to recognize the importance of the Middle East as a strategic area in containing Soviet influence. This also coincides with the U.S. becoming increasingly wary of Arab nationalism and the threat it posed to U.S. influence. Secondly, the emergence of the new Israeli state in 1948 further deepened U.S. policy and involvement in the region while also creating friction between the U.S. and Arab states which were

The American public was so captivated by the Iran Hostage Crisis because they were blindsided by this radical action and their knowledge of America’s involvement in Iran was limited. The media played a major role in influencing their emotions and they already had trouble trusting the American government. This unknown involvement began in 1943 when President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to discuss how to remove the British and Soviet military forces from Iran because Iran wanted to be its own nation. The United States aided the young Shah, the ruler of Iran, and his government with military weapons and loans. Over time, Prime Minister Mossadegh, of Iran, gained more and more power until he was the true ruler of Iran and the Shah was just a figurehead. The United States, fearing the spread of communism, devised a secret plan for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to over throw Prime Minister Mossadegh.

After World War 2, the United States took over Britain’s job of overseeing the Middle East. The United States tried to avoid conflict while preventing the spread of communism. They successfully stopped the spread of communism, but couldn’t have done much worse trying to prevent conflict and stabilize the Middle East. The United States policy destabilized the Middle East, Iraq in particular, by overthrowing the Hussein regime at a poor time and deepening the anti-Western attitude in the Middle East.

“The United States recognizes the provisional Government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.” These are the words of President Harry Truman from a speech he gave shortly after Israel became a recognized nation in 1948. Consequently, the political leaders of the United States have brought America on a rough journey to the current state of foreign policy and relationship with Israel. Since 1948, the United States’ active position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen very little change or progress towards achieving settlement between these two nationalistic states. In the last 65 years, the majority of U.S. presidents repeated mistakes made by their predecessors in office, and this in turn has had little

All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer details the 1953 American-orchestrated coup in Iran. Iran was under British economic control, but as it modernized, Iranians began fighting for their own control. Their fledgling democracy was working to modernize, until the UK and the US decided to interfere to protect Britain’s colonial holdings from Soviet influence. Because the US was not interested in protecting a British business, British politicians emphasized the threat the USSR held to Iran, leading to Americans inserting themselves into a nation’s politics in which they had no place. They successfully orchestrated a coup, however, the negative, long-term, anti-Western results overwhelm any positive effect. All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer paints a picture of the results of action without adequate attention to future results.

Topic: U.S-Arab relations: Assessing the successes and failures of American policy towards the GCC since 2008.

According to Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty’s “The American Nation: A History of the United States”, “During World War II, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and later the United States occupied Iran and forced its pro-German shah into exile, replacing him with his twenty-two year old son, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi” (Carnes and Garraty). In the early 1950’s, executive power was relocated to the leftist Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh.

Mosaddeq supervised a nationalist party that sought to end all foreign intrusion in Iranian affairs. He sought to nationalize the oil industry, whereas, the shah promoted a privatized system (“Iran Hostage Crisis”: Wright 1). Also known as the Iranian Coup D’état of 1953, the United States aided the Shah to overthrow the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq. Joined with the Shah, the Central Intelligence Agency, more commonly known as the CIA, and the British intelligence engineered a plan to depose Mosaddeq. The Shah bribed powerful figures, planted false reports in newspapers and provoked street violence as methods of disposing of Mosaddeq (Wright 22). President Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed and ordered the CIA to embark on Operation TP- Ajax to dispose of Mosaddeq and install a new government by the Shah (Cohen, p. 57). The United States and Iran became official allies.

The American government is known to promote democratic values throughout the world. Though the ideals America was fighting for during the Cold War, the government still managed to participate in the overthrow of democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh threatened to nationalize Iran’s oil in 1951 and later gained the support of the Iranian government. The British companies had many investments in Iranian oil. It is with the approval of nationalization that the economies of both British and Iran were ultimately harmed. The British government requested the help of the US so that they could perform a coup to overthrow Mossadegh. With suspicions of Mossadegh supporting communism, and being supported by the Tudeh Party, the United States government was willing to sacrifice their democratic ideologies and credibility in the region for the insurance of an anti-communist leader. This would prove to cause problems that still resonate in today’s political and military negotiations in this region.

In 1953 the Central Intelligence Agency working in tandem with British intelligence overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, who was educated in the West and pro-America. Shortly after being elected in 1951 he nationalized the British run oil fields, denying Britain control of Iran’s hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. The operation included the use of techniques such as; propaganda, bribery, engineered demonstrations using agents of influence, and false flag operations. “The CIA’s agents harassed religious leaders and bombed one’s home in order to turn them against Mossadeqh.” They also attacked mosques, and distributed phony anti-Mossadegh

Many attribute the tensions that led to this event to the 1953 British and U.S. led effort that deposed the democratically-elected government of Mossadegh. This effort was led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which was known as codenamed Operation Ajax. The democratically elected leader was ousted by military force and a Shah was established who represented an absolute monarch. The agreement between the U.S. and the Shah consisted of military and economic support to Iran while the U.S. would receive a continuous supply of oil. Because of this agreement the Shah's acquired wealth and power which caused significant contempt among the Iranian people; especially those who enjoyed the democratic political system that was

The first main covert operation within the middle east that the US was involved in was operation Ajax in Iran in 1953. The CIA and MI6 agents organized a coup de tat to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in order to replace him with pro-American autocrat Shah Mohammed Pehalvi. The Shah ruled Iran until the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted him. US activities within Iran were viewed and resented by muslims as “naked imperialism.” Although the CIA spent decades either evading questions on their involvement and denying their involvement in operation Ajax, in August 2013 the CIA released declassified documents that confirmed their involvement in the

Once upon a time, in a mountainous land between Baghdad and the Sea of Caviar there lived a nobleman. This nobleman, after a lifetime of carping at the way the kingdom was run, became Chief Minister of the realm. Within a few months he had the whole world hanging on his words, his deeds, his jokes, his tears, and his tantrums. His personal behavior, which included wearing pajamas for numerous public appearances; speeches to the Majles (Parliament) from his bed, which was brought into its chambers. Frequent spells of public weeping, helped focus world attention upon him during his premiership. Yet, his people loved all that he did, and cheered him to the echo whenever he appeared in the

The 1953 Anglo-American coup in Iran was empowered and legitimized by the “Myth of America.” Walter Hixson describes the Myth of America as a notion of America as “a manly, racially superior, and providentially destined ‘beacon of liberty,’ a country which [sic] possesses a special right to exert power in the world” (Merrill and Paterson 10). This amalgamation of ideas about America and its place in the world gained strength during the Cold War, a struggle that further forced American foreign policy to assume a role in “creating, affirming, and discipling conceptions of national identity” (Merrill and Paterson 12). Exploring the Anglo-American coup in Iran from the perspective of the Myth of America sheds light on the mechanism through which the coup was facilitated. While securing oil may have been the motivation to undergo the coup in the first place, this Myth of America catalyzed many steps in the process of the coup. Ignoring the role of American national identity in the coup ignores key factors in the decision making and ideology that surrounds the covert

The United States has had some international issues with Middle Eastern countries in the past. It goes without saying; the most recent is the current gulf war led by George W. Bush and of course the previous gulf war led by his father George H.W. Bush. With neighboring Iran, there have been quarrels such as the Iran-Contra affair. This involved a political scandal in which Ronald Reagan's administration sold military arms to Iran. At this time they were in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, while the United States had hostages held in Lebanon by Hezbollah. The United States hoped that Iran would influence Hezbollah to release the American hostages, but didn't. Finally, with Saudi Arabia also part of the Middle East, the United States