Abstract
For the past 50 years, Iran and Iraq have been regarded and dealt with as elements in a wider U.S. agenda. A summary of the milestones in bilateral relations will serve to underline the ways ties with the United States influenced both parties and by extension their relations with each other. Some observations can then be made about how the United States has itself made a connection between Iraq and Iran and treated them as a pair—either by deliberately playing off one against the other, as during the Iran-Iraq War, or by lumping the two together under “dual containment” in the 1990s and on a so-called axis of evil depicted by President George W. Bush in January 2002. A year later, the U.S. intervention in Iraq was portrayed as the first step in a regional democratization strategy that would oblige Iran to change too.
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Notes
Bruce Robellet Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 410–31.
See James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 79 where he cites four reasons for the U.S. decision to intervene, namely preoccupation with the Soviet threat, oil interests, the success of British persuasion, and Mosaddeq’s negotiating techniques that eventually backfired.
Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 140–42.
Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 119–64.
For discussion of the deliberations in Washington see: Hussein Sirriyeh, U.S. Policy in the Gulf 1968–1977: Aftermath of the British Withdrawal (London: Ithaca Press, 1984), chapter 2.
Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 13–21.
Anthony H. Cordesman, The Gulf and the Search for Strategic Stability: Saudi Arabia, the Military Balance in the Gulf and Trends in the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984), p. 160.
Sick, All Fall Down and Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (London: Penguin Books, 1981).
Apparently by connivance rather than just good fortune, as recounted by Gary Sick in October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1991), especially pp. 145–46.
Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War (Norfolk, UK: Thetford Press, 1986).
For a discussion of the Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean and U.S. countermeasures see Alvin J. Cottrell and Michael L. Moodie, The United States and the Persian Gulf Past Mistakes, Present Needs, Agenda Paper No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: National Strategy Information Center, 1984).
William B. Quandt, “The Gulf War: Policy Options and Regional Implications,” in American Arab Affairs, no. 9 (Summer 1984), p. 3.
Bruce W. Jentleson, With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush and Saddam (New York: WW Norton, 1994), pp. 42–48.
Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Gulf Crisis and Strategic Interests: a Military Analysis,” in American Arab Affairs, no. 9 (Summer 1984), p. 8.
Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, p. 306; Jentleson, With Friends Like These, p. 46; and Alan Friedman, Spider’s Web: Bush, Saddam, Thatcher and the Decade of Deceit (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 27.
Caspar Weinberger, Security Arrangements in the Gulf, Gulf Cooperation Council Reports Series, no. 3, 1988, p. 6.
George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (Macmillan: New York, 1983), p. 790.
Zachary Karabell, “Backfire: US Policy Toward Iraq, 1988–2 August 1990,” in Middle East Journal, vol. 49, no. 1 (Winter 1995), p. 33.
For an assessment see Hossein Alikhani, Sanctioning Iran: Anatomy of a Failed Policy (London: I.B.Tauris, 2000).
Gary Sick, “US policy in the Gulf: objectives and prospects,” in Managing New Developments in the Gulf ed. Rosemary Hollis (London: RIIA, 2000), p. 44.
Mike Allen and Karen DeYoung, “Bush Charts First-Strike Policy on Terror Cells,” International Herald Tribune, June 3, 2002.
Richard Perle, “Why the West must Strike First Against Saddam Hussein,” Daily Telegraph, August 9, 2002
Brian Knowlton, “War talk by Cheney is tougher,” International Herald Tribune, August 27, 2002.
For analysis of the internal politics behind U.S. decision-making see Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004)
Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004).
Ali M. Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2000), chapter 3.
Robert D. Kaplan, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1993), p. 263, and Jentleson, With Friends Like These, p. 33.
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© 2004 Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick
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Hollis, R. (2004). The U.S. Role: Helpful or Harmful?. In: Potter, L.G., Sick, G.G. (eds) Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980427_10
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