This paper relies on research in Iraqi and American archives to investigate the role of the 1990-1 Gulf War, as well as the sanctions regime that ensued, in shaping global politics following the Cold War. George H. W. Bush announced a “New World Order” for the post-Cold War international system in a speech outlining the American policy to remove Iraq from Kuwait. Following the war, Iraq became a test-case for methods of coercion and containment short of conventional war. The idea of using internationally backed sanctions, no-fly-zones, and embargoes in place of war gained traction during the World Wars. However, throughout the Cold War one superpower or the other had almost always vetoed them at the United Nations. Only with the end of a bi-polar international system was the United Nations able to employ these tools in Iraq. Yet, as this paper will argue, U.S. overreach and its callousness to Iraqi suffering created opportunities for the regime in Baghdad to transform Iraqi plight into a political tool. Baghdad used the dire humanitarian situation in Iraq to divide and undermine the American-led coalition at the United Nations. In doing so, the Ba‘thist regime not only challenged the United States, but also delegitimized American efforts to build a robust post-Cold War order. Placing Iraq within this global context destabilizes narratives that contrast the “bad war” in 2003 with the “good war” in 1991. In such narratives, the 1991 Gulf War quickly and neatly achieved American objectives. In fact, the damage and suffering that the Gulf War caused in Iraq became political tools to undermine the more strategically important American efforts to build a New World Order. As such, this paper will position 1990s Iraq within debates about the post-Cold War international order in a more forceful manner than has been done thus far.

The Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb are simultaneously two of the most important oil shipping lanes in the Middle East and the greatest potential sources of supply and pricing instability. This paper will trace the evolution of US, British, and UN policy towards these two vital waterways since the discovery of oil in the early 20th Century. This analysis will focus on the history of economic calculations, diplomatic maneuvering, and coordinated efforts to oversee their security, while at the same time searching for alternative transit points for Arabian and Persian oil supplies.

This paper examines the Iran-U.S. standoff by analyzing the history of the Iran-Iraq War. It does so by addressing the following questions: How do Iranian accounts of the war portray the U.S. role in the conflict? How do Iranian views of the U.S. role shape Iran’s policies today? What is the conflict’s significance for the international history of the modern Middle East? The paper answers those questions by demonstrating that the United States is a central player in Iranian accounts of the war and that Iranian views of the U.S. role in the conflict have a significant impact on Iran’s policies and perceptions of the United States today. It argues that addressing the war’s legacies is important to easing U.S.-Iran tensions, and that international intervention in the conflict represents a critical yet under-appreciated episode in how regional powers understand the global history of the Middle East. This paper utilizes historical methodology and critical analysis of Persian-language primary sources to understand the war’s significance and narratives thereof in Iranian history and politics. According to Iranian accounts, it was U.S. intervention—its extensive support for Iraq and its allies; its protection of oil tankers from Iranian attacks and its engagements in the Gulf “Tanker War”; its failure to condemn Iraq for initiating the war and using chemical weapons; and its shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988—that convinced Iran that the war was unwinnable and had to end. For Iranian leaders, this history reinforces the conviction that the United States is determined to limit Iran’s power and thus cannot be trusted. However, despite the critical U.S. role in the war, English-language studies of the conflict have consistently neglected Iranian narratives of the conflict, the Persian-language sources in which they can be found, and the valuable perspectives they provide. Such neglect is important to address not only from a historical and academic perspective, but also from a policy perspective. That is especially true because this history informs Iran’s political and strategic outlook, its conception of itself and its position in the world, and its non-relationship with the United States. Iranian leaders consistently argue that if their relationship with the United States is to improve, this history will have to be addressed. It is accordingly important for anyone concerned with this relationship to understand how Iran perceives its history, and particularly the U.S. role therein. This paper contributes to that understanding.

This paper examines the connection between the multinational oil companies’ negotiations with Middle East oil producing countries in 1970 and 1971 and Iran’s emergence as the U.S.’s primary security partner in the Persian Gulf. In January 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon ultimately chose to back Mohammad Reza Shah rather than U.S. oil companies during negotiations with the Shah. This allowed Nixon to support the Shah’s military build-up in the Persian Gulf on the eve of British military withdrawal from the region. A serious obstacle to the Shah’s vision of Iranian military power emerged in the first quarter of 1970: The Shah did not have the resources to purchase the U.S. military hardware he believed Iran had to have to replace the British as the dominant power in the Gulf. This problem took shape as the Nixon Administration took office in the U.S. in 1969. The Shah believed this U.S. administration was predisposed to help Iran, because of the longstanding personal friendship between Nixon and the Shah. Yet in 1970, as the U.S. was in the process of reviewing its post-British Gulf policy, the U.S. defense establishment was questioning whether the Shah’s aggressive military spending was in the Shah’s best interest. Nixon wanted to help the Shah, despite the Pentagon's misgivings. But Nixon would not be able to secure Congressional approval to divert business away from Saudi Aramco to buy more Iranian oil. The British military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf contributed to the Shah’s increasing anxiety over the budget crisis he faced in 1970, which was a result of a shortfall of oil revenues and Iran's ambitious and rapid military spending. My argument bridges two separate historiographical literatures. First, it adds the political economy dimension to the literature on U.S.-Iranian relations during this period, building on Roham Alvandi’s Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah (2014). My paper emphasizes that Iran’s military spending was not an inevitable result of an unbroken rise in Iranian oil revenues from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Instead, the sources demonstrate Mohammad Reza Shah’s determination to assert Iran’s military supremacy in the Gulf despite Iran’s budget shortfall in 1970. Second, it contributes to the literature on the 1969-1971 oil crisis by explaining that Nixon broke with history in siding with the Shah over the U.S. oil companies in order to empower Iranian primacy in line with the Nixon Doctrine.