Iran S Policy In The Persian Gulf 1968 1975

This book examines Iran’s policy in the Persian Gulf from 1968 to 1975 after the British military withdrawal from the region in 1971. It deals in detail with the questions of Bahrain and the Shatt-al Arab and examines the relationship of Britain’s ‘East of Suez Policy’ (1968-1971) to the politics of the region, and, especially, the role of Iran. Britain’s military pullout from the Persian Gulf influenced Iran’s determination to build a credible deterrent to replace the “power vacuum” without the intervention of foreign powers. The main factors which influenced Iran’s policy in the region were the Iranian oil industry, Persian Gulf security, Iran’s military preparedness and arms build-up.

This book examines the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards the Persian Gulf states from 1979 to 1998.

This book is a major reinterpretation of the Iran-Iraq War and is a source for reexamining the U.S. involvement in the Gulf. Pelletiere demonstrates that the war was not a standoff in which Iraq finally won a grinding war of attrition through luck, persistence, and the use of poison gas. Instead, Iraq planned the last campaign almost two years prior to its unfolding. [The Iraqis] trained extensively and expended enormous sums of money to make their effort succeed. What won for them was their superior fignting prowess and greater commitment. Gas--if it was used at all--played only a minor part in the victory.' Pelletiere concludes that the key to understanding the war is the Extraordinary Congress of the Ba'th Party held in July 1986. It was there that the initial planning for the final campaign was done, and this campaign is what decided the fate of the conflict. The study centers around the last Iraqi campaign, which Pelletiere argues was based upon World War II blitzkrieg tactics, but he also treats the background, the politics, and the history of the conflict, and analyzes the significance of the war to the Middle East and to the position of the United States there.

Religion, nationalism, ethnicity, economics, and geopolitics all are important in explaining Iran's goals and tactics in its relationship with the outside world, as are the agendas of key security institutions and the ambitions of their leaders. This report assesses Iran's security policy in light of these factors. It examines broad drivers of Iran's security policy, describes important security institutions, explores decisionmaking, and reviews Iran's relations with key countries. The authors conclude that Iraq is widely recognized as the leading threat to Iran's Islamic regime and Afghanistan is seen as an emerging threat. In contrast, Iran has solid, if not necessarily warm, relations with Syria and established working ties to Pakistan and Russia. Iran's policies toward its neighbors are increasingly prudent: It is trying to calm regional tension and end its isolation, although its policies toward Israel and the United States are often an exception to this policy. Iran's security forces, particularly the regular military, are often voices of restraint, preferring shows of force to overactive confrontations. Finally, Iran's security forces generally respect and follow the wishes of Iran's civilian leadership; conducting rogue operations is rare to nonexistent.

The United Arab Emirates were established in response to the British decision to withdraw from the Gulf by 1971. This decision, announced in 1968, had left the rulers of the emirates perplexed and alarmed. After decades of mutual suspicion and rivalry, fostered by British imperial dominance, the emirates were now obliged to seek security in fede

Behind the Iran-Iraq war rests a history of conflict stretching back to the Ottoman Turks and the Persians. This book examines the deep-seated and complex factors involved in the rivalry between these two nations. It focuses particularly on the period between 1969 and 1984, a time that saw both the rise of the Ba’th party in Iraq and Khomeini’s return to power in Iran. These changes did much to escalate tensions. The Ba’th party’s ideological, socialist regime and its emphasis on political secular concerns stood in marked contrast to Iran under Khomeini and his efforts to spread an Islamic revolution among the nation’s Shiite majority. The author discusses how these differences have affected three long-term problems: Iraq’s and Iran’s rivalry for dominance in the Arabian Gulf region; disputes over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which serves as a boundary between the two nations; and the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq, supported by Iran. The volume also looks at the most recent episodes of crisis and analyzes the evolution of the Iran-Iraq war and its implications both regionally and globally. Unlike other studies of Iraq’s relations with Iran, Abdulghani’s is distinguished by its systematic and comprehensive synthesis which interlocks legal, cultural, historical and political issues that have characterized relations between the two countries.

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah offers a detailed account of three key historical episodes in the Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi partnership that shaped the global Cold War far beyond Iran's borders. It examines the emergence of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf as the Nixon administration looked to the shah to fill the vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the region in 1971. It then turns to the peak of the partnership after Nixon and Kissinger's historic 1972 visit to Iran, when the shah succeeded in drawing the United States into his covert war against Iraq in Kurdistan. Finally, it focuses on the decline of the partnership under Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, through a history of the failed negotiations from 1974 to 1976 for an agreement on U.S. nuclear exports to Iran. Taken together, these episodes map the rise of the fall of Iran's Cold War partnership with the United States during the decade of superpower détente, Vietnam, and Watergate.