American interests in the Persian Gulf and the implementation of the Nixon doctrine: The Case of Iraq, 1968-1972

By Bruno Pierri

After the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, Iraq had acquired relevance for the U.S. and the USSR. Moscow was Baghdad’s main arms supplier, but the Baathist regime was also interested in reducing dependence from a single foreign country. Finally, the conflict against the Kurds was a danger of destabilisation in the area. The treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union and the nationalisation of the Iraq Petroleum Company, both in 1972, led Nixon to finance Kurdish resistance and endorse the sale of heavy weapons to Iran, which was becoming the hegemonic power. Therefore, an agreement was necessary and the 1975 Iran-Iraq treaty settled the border dispute between the two countries, while the Shah terminated support to the Kurds. The accords had been inspired by Kissinger in order to prevent the Soviets from exploiting Arab-Persian tensions with the aim of expanding their influence.         

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Studium S.r.l.
• Release date: Jan 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9788838248894

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1968-1972

Introduction

A few weeks after the outbreak of the Six-Day War, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a report on the Persian Gulf and the relating American interests. This analysis had been caused by the likelihood of a British withdrawal from the area. Up to then, London had always granted stability, but an outlook like that inevitably affected the interests of the regional main regimes and those of the two Cold War superpowers. The British military presence had always been regarded as something necessary to guarantee the West a favourable access to oil, but now all this was becoming counter-productive. The CIA asserted that the British withdrawal would provide the Soviet Union with some opportunities to expand her influence, but on the whole the Americans were not so worried, since their rivals were not ready to run the risk of breaking the regional balance of forces. At the moment, the Russians pursued State-to-State relations and trade connections with conservative monarchies of the area, such as the recent agreement with Iran on the piping of natural gas to the Soviet Union, but at the same time encouraging anti-imperialist policies of radical regimes. The real threat to ward off was the danger of Arab nationalist influence, whose main representatives were Nasserism from Egypt and the Baath regime of Syria [¹].

At the time of the June War, the Soviet Union enjoyed quite a good posture in the Middle East, as the United Arab Republic and Iraq relied almost completely on Moscow for arms supplies, while in Syria the government were no longer pursuing a neutralist stand. Nevertheless, Soviet goals were always a little different from those of the Arabs, as they did not wish another full-scale war with Israel. Therefore, Moscow had to accept a few risks towards the West by rearming Arab radical regimes and fomenting anti-Western aspirations, but at the same time this policy carried the risk of another war with the Zionist State. In this context, American intelligence was persuaded that the Soviets would establish even a closer relationship with the radical States of the area [²] . According to American sources, Moscow’s decision was due to the need to acquire a political golden share in the Middle Eastern area, despite the fact that the Kremlin did not follow any resumption of major hostilities [³] . The socialist superpower was also gaining ground in the energy market, for Moscow had by then become the world’s second oil producer and refiner and intelligence reports quoted the 1966 and 1967 agreements with Iran and Afghanistan on the exchange of gas and military equipment. However, even if the Kremlin had no intention to achieve control of Middle East petroleum, the White House could not ignore the Soviet attempt to gain access to that kind of raw material as an attractive political and economic asset for Moscow, such as the recent bid to Iraq to expand her activities in the South fields [⁴]. In particular, Iraq was becoming a good target for the Soviet expansion. An agreement signed in December 1967 had pledged the USSR to extend the necessary aid and equipment to the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) for drilling activities in the South and conducting geological surveys in the North [⁵]. Moreover, Arab-Persian rivalry could become another source of friction, especially after the major oil discovery in December 1967 in the middle of the Gulf, which had focused the attention on the problem of agreeing on the dividing line between Iranian and Saudi offshore concessions [⁶].

In the meantime, the rapid events of the Six-Day War had shown that Britain’s presence in the area was no longer able to play any significant role in a critical situation. Despite all this, stability was absolutely necessary and cooperation and a minimum of understanding between Iran and Saudi Arabia was required. Therefore, the Anglo-Saxons allies had to encourage King Faisal and the Shah to set up such a collaboration [⁷]. Britain and the United States were following the same way to safeguard their interests and reached the same conclusions, which after about a year took the name of Nixon Doctrine. Concerning this, the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, stated in February 1968 that it would be better for the littoral States of the area to take the advantage of such an opportunity to bear the responsibility of stability and establish fruitful relations among themselves [⁸]. The United States as well was willing to turn Iran into a regional power able to guarantee stability by replacing the British role in the region. Henry Kissinger himself, even before being appointed National Security Advisor, had written that it would be of paramount importance for American and Western interests to keep a regional balance in order to prevent Europe’s and Japan’s economic lifeline from being under threat. Since Washington had no chance to send in troops to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean while the Vietnam War was still on, someone else had to be assigned such a responsibility. A decision like that had to rely on well equipped armed forces, thus Washington committed herself to the economic and military development of her allies on the spot. From the Iranian point of view, all this did nothing but confirm what had already been decided by local powers, as in December 1967 a joint Iranian-Turkish-Pakistani communiqué had affirmed that the preservation of peace and stability in the area was to be rested only with littoral States. However, American policymakers realised that relying only on Iran would not please Arab monarchies. Therefore, Saudi Arabia was identified as a second and coequal regional power with the task to counter-balance Nasser’s influence in the Arabian Peninsula [⁹], though from a military point of view the scarcely populated