Cold War and the Middle East

The United States was primarily interested in the Middle East for economic and strategic reasons.  The discovery of huge pools of crude oil in Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia during the first half of the twentieth century prompted America’s largest petroleum firms to obtain concessions in the Middle East. Similarly, America wanted to take the control of vulnerable Middle East regions in order to thwart the Soviet/Communist influence which could potentially fill the vacuum created by slow-motion withdraw of British and French from its empires in the Middle East after second World War. Some Middle Eastern countries had geographical proximity with the Soviet Union, and it was essential for the United States not to let the influence spill over to the other neighboring gulf countries. 

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The historian Albert Hourani says,"[He] who rules the Near East rules the world and he who has interests in the world are bound to concern himself with the Near East." Thus, the Middle East was more important than other regions, for it served economic as well as strategic interests; was geographically connected to other important regions such as Asia, Africa and, Europe; and was  politically more radical than other regions. I will answer the above questions specific to some Middle East countries—Israel, Iran, and Egypt.

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America wanted to use Israel as a strategic asset, as an ambitious quest to promote regional defense, as a preventive shield against communism in the Middle East, as a trusted and stable ally in the development/ containment of nuclear weapon, as a market for the products of the American defense industry, and as a laboratory for experimentation of democratic values. Israel is the biggest ally in the Middle East and maintains similar relations with the United States as it used to do in the Cold War Era. In Egypt, the United States was distrustful of the regime of Gamal Abd al-Nasser after the Egyptian Revolution deposed King Faruq. The U.S. expressed distaste for the government of Nasser and his policies of non-alignment, nationalism and Arab socialism as US interest was in towards imperialism and consequently in the control of the Suez Canal. The U.S.-Egyptian suffered until the death of Nasser.

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“To ensure the Rovers, Citroens, and Volkswagens continued to roll along the highways of Western Europe and that V-8s continued to roll off the assembly lines in Detroit”, America required oil from Middle Eastern countries. Concerned about the growing Soviet influence in Iran, the United States toppled the nationalist regime of Mohammed Mossadeq which had tried to nationalize Iranian oil. The US-appointed young Mohammed Reza Shah as the Prime Minister for their security and economic interest. Nixon adopted a twin pillars policy in which Iran and Saudi Arabia would serve as anti-Soviet regional proxies. A 1979 Islamist revolution against the Shah's regime swept a new kind of Islamic state into power governed by Islamic jurists and scholars. After this revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Nixon doctrine revealed the limitation of such an arrangement, and the U.S officials decided to stand alone with the Carter Doctrine, a policy reminiscent of President Henry Truman’s approach, with American cast in Britain’s role.