AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD IRAQ AND IRAN In

This research discusses the evolution of American foreign policy toward Iraq and Iran in recent decades. In the 1970s, the United States relied chiefly on Iran, which it supported with economic and military aid to maintain its interests in the region. After the Khomeini Revolution of 1979 and during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, it played Iraq and Iran against each other but, as time went by, shifted most of its support to Iraq. During the Persian Gulf War, the United States marshalled a powerful coalition war effort against the Iraqis but stopped short of marching on Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein for fear of shifting the power balance in the central Middle East to Iran. Since 1993, the Clinton administration has pursued a policy of dual containment toward Iraq and Iran which has enjoyed some temporary success but which increasingly shows signs of lacking the necessary broad international support to endure very much longer. Whether, however, other more effective American foreign policies can be devised for dealing with Iraq and Iran depends primarily on internal developments within those nations which are very largely beyond the control of the United States.

Iran as a Bulwark Against Communism and Nasserism

Iran, Iraq and Turkey were the northern tier of Middle Eastern anti-communist states organized to block Soviet southern expansion by the British with American support in the postwar period. Iraq dro

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hen come back to haunt him, Iraq was the only option" (p. 50). These views were formalized in a National Security Council Directive, NSD-26 of October 3, 1989, which envisaged an Iraq friendly to the United States being brought into the "family of nations", and its central finding was that "normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the gulf and the Middle East" (Pythian, 1997, pp. 42, 51). If Saddam had many doubts as to the American response to his going into Kuwait, they were probably set to rest by the American Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, who told him, in a meeting on July 25, 1990, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait" (Bennis & Moushabeck, 1991, p. 395). When President Bush made the decision to stop the fighting in the Gulf War after Iraq's army had been ejected from Kuwait, he used as his reason for not going further the fact that neither the applicable U.N. resolutions nor the wishes of the allies in the Coalition extended to such a contingency. However, he clearly had in mind balance-of-power considerations. American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell said, "Our pract
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Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page)

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