Revisiting the U.S. Role in Three Middle East Crises

Middle East Quarterly Summer 2018 Volume 25: Number 3

George L. Simpson, Jr. June 01, 2018

It has long been conventional wisdom to blame the Western powers, first and foremost the United States, for the ills of the contemporary Middle East. No sooner had al-Qaeda terrorists steered two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center than the atrocity was presented as a response to Washington’s overbearing and self-serving Middle Eastern policy.

What goes around comes around, ran the common argument, and it is only natural for the seeds of rage that Washnigton has sown to come home to roost. In the words of historian Gabriel Kolko: “The events of September 11 were the direct result of over fifty years of American involvement in the region, the consequence of actions and policies that have destabilized the arc of nations extending from the Mediterranean to South Asia.”

This conventional view wrongly inverts Washington’s Middle Eastern policy and the nature of its relations with local allies. Not only have Middle Eastern actors not been hapless pawns of foreign powers, but they have been active and enterprising free agents pursuing their own goals and agendas, often beyond Washington’s control and at times against its wishes.  And nowhere has this tendency been more vividly illustrated than in three major crises in the formative period when U.S. administrations became engaged in the region: the November 1947 partition resolution and the creation of the state of Israel; the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq; and the June 1967 Six-Day War............To Read More.....