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25 1 AMERICA AND MIDDLE EASTERN OIL The quest for energy starts with the mythical Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to help shivering humans, and runs through to the modern struggle to ensure oil supplies to a global economy, whose lifeline is black crude. One American official asserted in 1944, referring to the Persian Gulf, that the “oil in this region is the greatest single prize in all history.”1 He could not have known what travails would await America, especially after it assumed responsibility from Great Britain in 1971 for the security of the Persian Gulf, a region that includes Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Nor could he have known how the use of cheap oil would at once drive the global economy and allow for industrialization and bring unforeseen problems for human beings the world over. This chapter explains the rising role of oil in American foreign policy toward the Middle East and, in doing so, illuminates key signposts of the rise of the oil era in the Middle East. This enables a better understanding of what role American actions may play in motivating terrorism and how those actions are perceived and misperceived. We cannot understand the story of the petroleum triangle without a sense of America’s role and of the broader rise of the oil era. Oil has played an increasingly dominant role for America, drawing it into the region over time.2 However, not all American actions have been driven by 1. Cited in Yergin, Prize, 393. 2. For extensive evidence, see Yetiv, Explaining Foreign Policy. 26 CHAPTER 1 oil to the same extent, even though popular accounts may suggest as much. The 1990–91 American-led reversal of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was far more about oil than the 2003 invasion of Iraq—although Washington would probably not have invaded Iraq in 2003 were it not for a chain of oil-related previous events. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which was fundamentally tied to the eight-year Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), shaped the events that contributed to the U.S. invasion in 2003.3 Washington would not have had a case against Saddam were it not for the sixteen UN resolutions that Iraq had violated, and these resolutions were issued in response to Iraq’s violations of UN Resolution 687 imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. And had Saddam not invaded Kuwait, Washington may never have had reason to fear that he could threaten American and global interests. In fact, that invasion was also linked to oil. Were Kuwaiti oil reserves not so inviting and had Iraq not fought with Kuwait over a host of oil issues, including drilling rights and quota-busting, an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would have been less likely. Middle Eastern Oil Discovered In 1907, a large petroleum field was discovered in Iran. It was the opening salvo of the oil era in the Middle East, although its rapid development would come during World War II and thereafter—at a time when the globalization era was taking off in earnest. By May 1933, Washington and Riyadh made an agreement that would fashion their oil relations for the century. Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL), founded in 1870, struck a sixty-year contract giving SOCAL the exclusive right to explore and produce oil from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. By 1938, the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), as it would later be called, first discovered oil in commercial quantities.4 The Persian Gulf became vital during the two world wars. The Allies viewed Iran in particular as a vital conduit for sending arms to Russia during World War I, and both the Suez Canal and the petroleum fields of Persia were perceived as critical to Allied interests. Defeating the Ottoman Empire, which had allied with Germany, meant penetrating the Middle East, much of it under direct or indirect Ottoman influence despite the weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century. In the years preceding World War I, the discovery of oil allowed Britain to shift its coal-fired navy to one that was oil-fired, allowing it greater speed, power, and maneuverability.Britain had no oil,but it did manage to exploit Iran’s burgeoning 3. Yetiv, America and the Persian Gulf. 4. On the evolution of these relations, see Pollack,“Saudi Arabia,” esp. 78–79. [18.189.14.219] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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