Asian Roulette - Part II
It's strange that American friendships die with the regimes they sponsor and not with the country itself. One would have appreciated it if US had kept its relations intact with Iran and its people, that would have been good foreign policy.
THE AMERICANS could never design a steadfast policy in the region, their shaky alienations and shifts due to their own greed of accomplishing their own various agenda’s have resulted in their having a forceful presence rather than a friendly presence in the region.
They tried Iraq to give in to the Saudis whims along with giving up the Russian alliance. They also wanted to control or thwart the Shia powerbase by pleasing the Saudis and Iranians to once again have them toe their line. The Iranians were clear, either leave Israel and Saudis or forget about everything. This choice and its result was the main reason in Iranians seeking and getting Russian support after the Iranian Revolution. This was America’s biggest blunder in the region.
The Shah of Iran was let down by USA in many ways than one. The only gain was that Iraq was finished as a threat to Saudi Arabia and their puppet Kuwait along with UAE, but apart from it, it only led to making the Iranians believe that they would be next and her view of mistrust of US friendship was further strengthened as the US had ditched Iraq after supporting it during the Iran-Iraq war during the Gulf and Persian Wars too. Now Iran is once again on their agenda as once Iraq was. The US will not rest till they finish Iran as they now have no other choice or option left. There is another reason and that is both US and Saudis now want a permanent solution to be the only powers controlling the region by finishing the third remaining power base in Asia and that is Iran.
Iran’s refusal to toe the American or Saudi line after the revolution and their strategic bent towards Russia with their logistical and financial support to Hamas has to culminate in war. Iranians had never had it as good as they are having it now. They became more powerful because their only enemy Iraq had been subdued by America and Saudi Arabia put together, one enemy being finished by another. The Russians were quick in grasping the Iranian opportunity and moved towards formulating a new alliance involving other Central Asian regions as friends.
It’s strange that American friendships die with the regimes they sponsor and not with the country itself. One would have appreciated it if US had kept its relations intact with Iran and its people, that would have been good foreign policy as regimes keep coming and going but countries remain where they are. The Russians and the central Asian Muslim world is now with Iran and Iraq would toe the line once again towards Russia hence making it a new powerful alliance challenging American, Chinese and Saudi Arabian and their respective allies erstwhile designs in the region. Egypt being focused in its own region and having their own independent foreign policy bent again mainly towards Russia and India.
The Gulf wars and invasion of Afghanistan is the result of American hegemony and was nothing but a ruse to establish their own powerbase in the Gulf.
The main reason for the Gulf war was that Iraq was fighting Iran on Saudi and American support and after the Iranian revolution and its economic woes it stopped acting as a stooge to them and wanted to have peace and consolidate itself. Throughout much of the Cold War, Iraq had been an ally of the Soviet Union and there was a history of friction between it and the United States of America because of Iraq’s position on Israeli–Palestinian politics and its disapproval of a peace pact between Israel and Egypt.
The Americans also disliked Iraqi support for various Arab and Palestinian militant groups. Such as Abu Nidal, which led to its inclusion on the developing U.S. list of state sponsors of international terrorism?
The US remained officially neutral after the invasion of Iran that became the Iran–Iraq War and helped the Iraqis with full support in order to finish Iran forever as it was leaning towards Russia.
With Iran's new found success in the war and its rebuff of a peace offer in July, arms sales to Iraq reached a record hike in 1982, and in November 1983, the Reagan administration then sent Donald Rumsfeld to meet President Saddam as a special envoy and to cultivate ties.
By the time the ceasefire with Iran was signed in August 1988, Iraq was virtually bankrupt, with most of the debt owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq pressured both nations to waive the debts, as they had actually fought their war too, but they refused as America was hell bent on collecting its bill of sale in cash from them.
The collapse in oil prices had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. The Iraqi government described it as a form of economic warfare, which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's Rumaila oil field and it also was accused by Iraq of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil, thus further hurting the Iraqi economy in meeting its war debt.
Iraq claimed Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra and had only reluctantly accepted Kuwait as independent only in 1963 as it believed that Britain had drawn the border between the two countries, and deliberately tried to limit Iraq's access to the ocean so that any future Iraqi government would not be in a position to threaten Britain's domination of the Persian Gulf. On August 2, 1990 Iraq launched an invasion of Kuwait and after the decisive Iraqi victory; Saddam Hussein installed Ali Hassan al-Majid as the governor of Kuwait.
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and 665 - in 1991, had led to the Persian Gulf War, as it had authorized the naval blockade to enforce the embargo against Iraq on the behest of US and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War terminated on April 11, 1991.
Login
 Login through Social ID
|
