MIDDLE EASTERN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

Middle Eastern US Relations Contacts with the Middle East by the United States had been made by traders before the American Revolution. After the Revolution, American ships continued to trade with the area. Though the traders were occasionally attacked by pirates operating out of Northern Africa, this problem was largely alleviated by the Barbary Wars of the late 18th century.

Besides traders, missionaries came to the region to spread Christianity. They were largely ineffective in converting the populace to Christianity, but were able to establish several schools in the area. These schools helped to spread American culture in the area. Together, the traders and the missionaries spread American values and culture to the Middle East.

By the First World War, the work of American missionaries the region had created an almost uniformly favorable view of the United States. Many Arabs viewed the United States as the only Western power with no imperial ambitions in the region. This view was reinforced during World War I by President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, particularly concerning America's championing of the principle of self-determination.

At the time most of the Middle East was controlled by the decadent Ottoman Empire, and sought autonomy or freedom from the Empire. After the First World War it became apparent that though the Ottoman Empire would no longer control the Middle East, the peoples of the region would not be allowed to establish their own nations.

Realizing this, peoples in the Middle East that were resisting the encroachment of European powers hoped that the United States would serve as a counterbalance to Western Europe's imperialism. This hope was expressed to the King-Crane Commission, which had been dispatched to the area by President Wilson to determine the preferences of the populations regarding which nation should be chosen to help them toward independence, as specified by the mandate system of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

The inquiry conducted by the King-Crane Commission showed the degree of sympathy for the United States that existed in Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. Many in the region told the Commission that they would prefer an American mandate to that of another power (such as Britain or France). However, the results of the Commission's studies became worthless when the Senate, led by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge vetoed the Versailles treaty, and with it, the League of Nations.

By vetoing the Treaty, the United States also gave up the mandates it was scheduled to receive.(Namely the Dardanelles and Armenia.) Britain occupied the Trans-Jordan (Palestine) and Iraq. France occupied Syria. Iran, though technically independent, was dominated by Britain and the USSR

America largely withdrew from the area. The one exception was the American oil companies who sent out surveying teams and helped discover the petroleum fields in Saudi Arabia that would later make the country rich. However, their access to the area was limited by the British and French governments who ensured that companies from their own countries enjoyed special advantages in the area.

During the Second World War, American troops played a key role in driving the Axis powers out of the region. After the war, Middle East oil production grow in importance. This event also coincided with the decline of the British and French dominance in the region. The United States stepped in to replace the vacuum the Europeans had previously occupied.

However, that replacement process did not occur over-night. The real turning point came in 1947. That year exhausted from the war and the monetary price associated with it, Great Britain could no longer continue its monetary support of Greece and Turkey to fight Communist rebels in those countries. Britain appealed to the United States to shoulder the costs. Pres. Truman, wary of further communist expansion, agreed to take up the burden. The result was the Truman Doctrine. In a speech to Congress, Pres. Truman pledged aide to any nation threatened by communism.

In the early fifties, Britain and the United States opposed the government of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, which had nationalized the country's mainly British-owned oil industry. Truman had viewed Mossadegh as a nationalist, and did little to interfere in the situation. In 1953 though, Mossadegh supporters forced the shah, Reza Pahlavi, to flee the country. President Eisenhower, who had viewed Mossadegh as a communist in any event, decided it was time to intervene. He instructed the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the prime minister and reinstate the shah. Over time though, the shah's government became increasingly autocratic. Using his secret police, the SAVAK, the shah tried to keep the country in an iron grip. Thus, the American identification with the shah's regime became more and more of a liability, as Iranian nationalism, grew in the face of the shah's totalitarian government.

At the time, Britain was also engaged in a bloody conflict with the Zionist movement in Palestine. The Jewish underground fought back in a guerilla war in an effort to set up their own country in the region. This movement was supported to a large degree by Jewish groups in the United States, who sent arms and money to the Jewish fighters.

In 1946, the United States began to become involved in the situation in Palestine with a proposal for an Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. The British agreed and the group eventually recommended the immediate entry into Palestine of 100,000 survivors of the Holocaust (who were still being kept in refugee camps). This decision was not as altruistic as it first appeared. Actually, the decision to send them to Palestine had only been made after other countries, including the United States refused to accept the Jewish refugees.

This recommendation undermined the efforts of the British, who were struggling to maintain their commitments to the Arab community in the region, who were completely opposed to the influx of more Jews, while confronting the growing insurrection of the Jews in Palestine. As time went on, Arabs also began to attack British troops and Jews in the region. By 1947, Britain asked the United Nations to determine the status of the territory.

In the UN, the United States played a key role in the passage of Resolution 181. This resolution partitioned Palestine, allowing for the creation of Jewish and Arab states. Jews were ecstatic, but Arabs in the region became furious at the loss of what they considered their territory. In any event, the British withdrew from the area on May 14, 1948. Immediately, neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation of Israel.

The Jews, who had anticipated the war, were able to eventually defeat the invading armies. During the fighting, President Truman, against the advice of his military advisors, who thought the Jews would lose the war, and private interests, who wanted Arab support so that they could move into the region to drill for oil, supported Isreal.

These two events were symbolic of the way the United States replaced the British in the area. The U.S. would back conservative Arab regimes and would rely on Israel as a key ally in the region. The problems this policy has produced have marked U.S. relations with the area since that time.

Relations In the region became particularly acute during the Suez War of 1956. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal. This worried the British and the French, who joined the Israelis in an attempt to end guerrilla attacks in the region and replace Nasser. Though the United States empathized with European complaints, America did not feel the problem should be solved by force. It condemned the invasion, as did the UN and the Soviet Union. Eventually, international pressure forced Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt.

Though one crisis had been solved, another loomed. America became increasingly concerned with the growth of Soviet influence in the region. American policy makers tended to view the Arab nationalists as procommunists. Though this was not entirely correct, the Arabs were backed to a large degree by the Soviet Union. To promote American interests in the region, America increasingly relied on Israel, which was supplied with moreand more financial and military support.

Though Israel was the principal U.S. ally in the region, the United States was also supported, to various extents, by several Arab countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco.

In 1957, President Eisenhower announced what was to become known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. He stated that, if necessary, the U.S. would use armed force in the Middle East to fight communist aggression (which the U.S. identified in the extremist Arab movements in the region). Thus, the doctrine became the basis for American support for conservative regimes against their radical local rivals. It was used to justify landing U.S. marines in Beirut, Lebanon during 1958 to promote political stability during a change of governments.

The Eisenhower administration also tried to incorporate the Middle East into its chain of regional pacts directed against the Soviet Union. The result was the Baghdad Pact, which later evolved into the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or even the South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), the pact was never very strong, and was highly unpopular in many local countries. Ultimately, it included only the non-Arab Muslim states of Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.

The Kennedy administration initially tried to break with the previous U.S. practice of equating Arab nationalism with procommunism. To this end, President Kennedy tried to warm relations with Egypt. However, this effort was undermined by the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war in 1962 and Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The United States eventually ended up siding with Saudi Arabia and its faction, the Yemeni royalists, against Egypt and its faction, the Yemeni republicans, who were backed by the Soviets.

In this tense atmosphere, the Arab-Israeli War broke out in June 1967. This war created a number of problems for U.S. policy, which still persist to this day. Foremost among them has been the task of reconciling American sympathy and support for Israel with a desire to maintain good relations with Arab countries resentful of Israel's unwillingness to evacuate territories occupied during the 1967 war (the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip).

In 1973, Egyptians and Syrians launched an attack on Israel. Though initially both countries made breakthroughs against the Israelis, eventually they were defeated after the United States sent Israel more weapons. American involvement in the conflict angered many Middle Eastern countries, which announced an embargo on all oil sales to the U.S. At the same time, the price of oil was quadrupled.

While the United States was struggling to negotiate a peace between the Israelis and Egypt and Syria while coping with massive oil shocks at home, renewed importance was being attached to Iran. In the wake of the debacle in Vietnam, Nixon announced that the U.S. would no longer play such a large role in international politics, but rely increasingly on its local allies. Thus, America gave increasing support to the shah's regime. The shah upgraded the Iranian military in an attempt to turn his country into a regional superpower. This process both increased tensions with Iran's neighbors, notably Iraq, and alienated elements among the Iranian public who were already highly critical of their nation's subordination to the United States and the shah's harsh dictatorial rule over the country.

America did have one diplomatic success in the Middle East during this time however. In 1979 President Carter held the camp David meetings which led to the Camp David Peace accords, a peace treay for Isreal and Egypt.

In 1979 a popular Islamic Revolution brought down the shah, and wrecked havoc with American policy in the Gulf region. The new regime, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, demanded that the shah, who had fled in exile, be returned to Iran to face charges of corruption and brutality. Instead, the United States, against the advice of the Iranian embassy, admitted the shah in to undergo medical treatment. Rioting broke out in Iran, and the American embassy was seized, the occupants held hostage. The hatred of the shah transferred itself to hatred of the United States.

Anti-Americanism, angered Americans, arousing their concern about the Middle East which was already in the forefront of their minds because of the oil crisis of the 1970s. Yet, the American public's lack of understanding of the region often complicated the task of U.S. policymakers. American diplomatic responses ranged from the Carter Doctrine, which proclaimed the Gulf an area vital to American interests, to the Reagan administration's sending of American warships to protect the flow of Kuwaiti oil from Iranian attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, even while the administration was covertly trying to reestablish relations with Iran, as was revealed during the Iran-Contra scandal.

American relations with the Middle East in the 1980s continued to be dominated by the Arab-Israeli conflict and the question of oil. Israel and the Gulf became major preoccupations of American policymakers. The Reagan administration initially went along with Israel's invasion of Lebanon and later committed U.S. troops there while supporting a Lebanese government backed by only one of the country's sects. The objective was apparently support for Israeli objectives in Lebanon and opposition to its local rivals, the PLO and Syria. The result was a defeat for the United States and Israel and the government they supported, at the cost of the lives of over three hundred American servicemen and diplomats, the kidnapping of many other Americans, and serious damage to American interests that had been built up over more than a century dealings with the region.

In the Gulf, the United States began the 1990s aligned with Iraq, a vestige of policymakers' obsession with the revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran. The Bush administration, however, turned against Iraq after its invasion, occupation, and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990. Bush eventually led a thirty-nation coalition in January of 1991 to liberate Kuwait.

The allies smashed the Iraqi army and entire domestic infrastructure in a devastating campaign that lasted barely seven weeks and cost very low American casualties, but left hundreds of thousand of Iraqis dead. However, the United States did not remove Saddam Hussein (Iraq's harsh dictator) from power, and stood by as Saddam crushed opposition groups at the end of the war. Currently, the United States and Britain are engaged in an undeclared air war with Iraq whose objectives and duration are unclear.

Recently, relations with Iran have begun to thaw. In the mid 1990s, a moderate, Mohammad Khatami, was elected president of Iran. In 2000, moderates won an overwhelming majority over the conservatives in legislative elections. Though relations between the two countries are improving though, the two countries continue to treat each other warily, and conservatives still hold control of the Iranian Revolutionary Council which may slow the pace of moderate reforms.

During the last 200 years, the United States has played an ever larger role in the affairs of the Middle East to safeguard access to the immense oil reserves in the region. The result has been tumultuous and has intertwined American in the complex relations of the countries in the area.

[Adapted from Text by Rashid Khalidim]

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