Since the Second World War, the United States has been the dominant world power in the Middle East. Every political campaign or military intervention has been carried out to ensure the control of the world's most valuable energy source. Despite new discoveries of oil reserves in Central Asia, the Middle East still has two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, and its oil is still the cheapest to pump and produce. The U.S. has relied on repressive regimes such as Iran under the Shah, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to do its work. When necessary, it has intervened directly to punish regimes that have challenged its dominance in the region as it did to Iraq in 1991. To this day, the U.S. spends ...view middle of the document...
When the postwar settlement made Israel a British protectorate, Britain backed Jewish immigration to Palestine, hoping to create a strategic settlement in the Arab world. American policy in this period was mainly concerned that countries in the region did not come under the control of nationalist regimes. The first sign of that was when the democratically elected president Mohammed Mossadeq, who had great popular support, nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. (Richman) The U.S. organized a coup and toppled Mossadeq, replacing him with the pro-western Shah, whose power was funded by the great aids the US provided for Iran.Israel is conceived to be the most reliable ally for the U.S. in the Middle East because of its basis. The Jewish state was formed from the mass expulsion of local Arab populations, and so the people would want the aid of the U.S. against any rising from the local Arabs. Israel is also considered as a source of instability in the region that the U.S. can firmly rely on. The U.S. can rely on Israel's superior military power to help police the region because Israel's history makes the majority of its citizens keen defenders of the Israeli state. (Isseroff) In addition, Israel's dependence on America to pay for its massive military power over its neighbors makes Israel firmly pro-Western. On the other hand, the forced expulsion of Palestinians by Israel has created a source of resistance in the region that threatens to disturb U.S. relations with Arab states.Following the Second World War, as the U.S. attempted to expand its supremacy over the Gulf States, Washington viewed Israel as an ally, but only as one among many. However, as the threat of Arab nationalism rose after Mossadeq's, who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and Nasser's, who nationalized the Suez Canal, rise to power in the early 1950s, U.S. aid to Israel began to increase. (Isseroff ) By the 1960s, U.S. officials realized that Israel could be counted on to work, to restrain the expansion of Arab nationalism in the region, especially after Israel proved its self superior to the combined forces of several Arab nations in the Six Day War.But it was Israel's ostentatious victories in the Six Day War and again in the 1973 war against Egypt and Syria that helped to bring Egypt into the U.S.'s side. Under President Anwar Sadat, Egypt became the first country to recognize the state of Israel. Ever since, Egypt has become the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, and thus, the U.S. adds another country to its 'under control list.' (Isseroff)U.S. failure in Vietnam to impede communism convinced U.S. planners in the late 1960s of the importance of securing their control in the Middle East without direct military intervention. The new Nixon Doctrine looked to local powers to be America's regional police force. In the Middle East, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia became the three 'pillars' on which U.S. power depended on in the region. Saudi Arabia has...
