The Silk Road: A New World History of Human Civilization Spanning Two and a Half Centuries from the Persian Empire to the Contemporary International Scenario (4)

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Mid-20th century: World War II

World War II

In the early Soviet-German alliance, the Soviet Union sent resources from Ukraine to Germany.

Hitler, the leader of Germany, was a world-famous ambitious man who was elected to power in 1933. At the beginning of World War II, Germany's reputation in the Middle East and Central Asia was very good at this time. German engineering and communication companies had undertaken many infrastructural projects in the Middle East and Central Asia, and their expertise was very popular, all of which left a good impression of Germany in the Middle East and Central Asian countries. In addition, Hitler was anti-Semitic and very supportive of the independence of the Arabs, so the relationship with the Arabs was very good.

By 1940, Germany had the upper hand; it was almost on the verge of taking the Suez Canal and gaining control of Syria, and was on the verge of advancing into Iran (renamed Persia) and Iraq to gain control of oil.

The Soviet Union joined the British and American allies, and the Middle East was sacrificed for someone else's war.

However, in 1941, Hitler made an unexpected decision. At the beginning of World War II in 1939, Germany wanted to annex Poland. Hitler persuaded the new Soviet government to decide to form an alliance with Germany. Poland was a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union because it had taken military action against the Bolshevik regime. Germany was running low on food and Hitler needed Ukrainian food for the war effort. The Soviet Union generously offered Ukrainian supplies to Hitler. However, in 1941, because Germany's success depended on the food supplied by the Soviet Union, Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in order to prevent the Soviet Union from stopping the supply of food and raw materials. This, of course, pushed the Soviet Union back to the side of Britain, France and the United States.

The Allies were prepared to provide arms and supplies to the Soviet Union, and decided to occupy Iran (renamed Persia) for the sake of transportation routes and other strategic considerations, including, of course, the defense of the oil fields. When Britain and Russia entered Iran, the Shah of Iran complained about the invasion, so the British forced the Shah to abdicate. The already anti-British Iranian masses rallied in anger.

This is not Iran's war; the squabbles and military conflicts of World War II had nothing to do with the inhabitants of cities like Tehran or Isfahan, who watched their country being swallowed up in a contest between European powers. But such a view is useless.

The situation in Iran was suppressed by strong-arm tactics.In 1942 Britain and the Soviet Union signed an agreement with Iran that allowed Britain and the Soviet Union to use Iranian roads, waterways, oil pipelines, airports, and telegraph stations as they pleased.

After the fall of France, Britain also began an attack on Syria to prevent French strongholds in Syria from being used against the Allies.

The German offensive against the Soviet Union was going well, but the Soviets had a scorched-earth policy in Ukraine and South Russia, and after a while the Germans realized that they were not getting the food they wanted, and food shortages were becoming more and more acute. The Holocaust began, and Germany needed to exterminate its overpopulation. Meanwhile, the Allies succeeded in bringing supplies to the Soviet Union through the ancient Persian Corridor, and the situation was reversed. Finally, in 1945, World War II ended. The Great Powers divided the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into East and West, with half going to the Soviet Union.

The Late Twentieth Century: From the U.S.-Soviet Confrontation to the Political Situation in the Modern Middle East

U.S. replaces Britain in Middle East

After World War II, various anti-British sentiments in the Middle East and Central Asia caused the British to lose their position and were replaced by the Americans. The Americans renegotiated with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and other countries, giving them a much better share of the profits and better economic support than the British.

Left-wing thinking swept the world after World War II, with many disillusioned with the reality of the two wars and attributing the problems of the wars to capitalism. The Soviet Union soon recovered, advocated equality, and prepared to overthrow the Shah of Iran and establish a communist government, a major problem for the United States, which had acquired an exclusive Iranian oil license after the war. The U.S. was already preparing to improve the Iranian transportation system in Tehran. So the U.S. began to support the Iranian government and provide substantial economic assistance. The propaganda on both sides became a confrontation between the free and communist worlds.

U.S. Creates Pro-Western Government

The nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by the new Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1952 caused concern not only in Britain but also in the United States.

After British lobbying the US decided to introduce a new government in Iran, providing funds to train Muslim clerics who opposed the Prime Minister because they felt that the anti-religious views of communism ran counter to Islamic teachings. Eventually Mossadegh stepped down and the US government took over the position of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but the anti-Westernism that he represented, developed from anti-British, anti-imperialism, would persist.

The U.S. was not only interested in the economic benefits of oil, but also wanted to consolidate its diplomacy in the Middle East and prevent the Middle Eastern countries from turning to the Soviet Union. The export of Iranian oil had been halted in the early 1950s due to the chaos. If Iranian oil production was not resumed, there was a high probability that it would be plunged into the camp of the Communist Soviet Union in a state of economic depression, which was not favorable to the reconstruction of Europe, so the successful takeover of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.) was an urgent matter for the U.S.. Due to "national security interests", the U.S. government mobilized U.S. oil companies to participate in Iran's oil industry and opened the back door to anti-trust laws.

The United States attitude towards Iran is very much better than that of the United Kingdom. The US provided more than five times as much direct aid and also provided gold aid for infrastructure. Later, a whole line of pro-Western governments was created between the Mediterranean Sea and the Himalayas, with Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan all joining the Baghdad Pact.

Pan-Arabism Rises as U.S. Fosters Middle East Power Politics

The Soviet Union is working to win allies.

The Soviet Union continued to operate to win over the Middle Eastern countries to the communist camp. When Afghanistan and the United States failed in their demand for arms, the Soviet Union immediately took advantage of the situation. They also tried to destabilize Nasser, the Egyptian revolutionary whom the U.S. had raised. Nasser did not want to choose sides between the US and the USSR, he wanted pan-Arabism. He wanted pan-Arabism, which was regarded as a third way to choose a side between the US and Russia.

The Soviet Union's proximity to Egypt provoked Britain and France to attack Egypt in order to secure the Suez Canal. In order to ensure that the Middle Eastern countries were not provoked, the US chose to side with them and initiated more programs to spread money to the Middle East in order to improve relations with the Arabs. Despite these efforts, the existence of the Israel issue prevented the U.S. from gaining full favor with the Arab states.

Question of Israel

Israel has been intensifying the conflict between Arabs and Jews. The problem of Israel was sown by the British during World War I. The British decided to establish Israel because too many Jews immigrated to Britain, and gave the Jews a piece of land in Palestine to solve the problem of too many Jewish immigrants, but they did not take into account the backlash of the Arab nations around them. The U.S. had to support both Israel and the Arab nations, which made it very difficult for the U.S. to win the favor of both sides.

U.S. Fosters Strongman Politics

The 1958 coup in Iraq, which was about to turn to the Soviet Union, was a wake-up call for the United States. In order to prevent the Middle Eastern countries from defecting to the Soviet Union, the United States and the pan-Arabist Egypt renewed their friendship. Although there is no direct evidence, it is reasonable for scholars to speculate that the two countries cooperated in bringing the Hassan regime to power and controlling the situation in Iraq.

Since then the United States has fostered a series of strongmen in the Middle East. Both the Soviet Union and the U.S. supplied large quantities of weapons in order to maintain the favor of leaders who were willing to befriend them.

It didn't take long for the leaders of the countries involved to realize that they could move between the two superpowers and let them compete with each other for the greater good of their countries.

The Challenge of Pan-Arabism

Pan-Arabism, which began in Egypt, seems to have been quite successful, and in 1960 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was formed, an organization of oil-producing countries, such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Venezuela, to combine their interests in controlling the price of oil. While these countries wanted to regain control over oil prices, they were also asking the US and Russia for technical and loan assistance to build up their military power.

In 1972, when Iran nationalized its oil industry, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forced the West to renegotiate by demanding that its members reduce production, which led to a quadrupling of the price of oil in three years, and the West eventually had to renegotiate. The oil states also attacked Israel, which symbolically challenged the West.

Oil demand drives arms and nuclear technology deals

The U.S. has tried to reduce its dependence on oil, including the development of a green energy industry, but the results cannot be seen in the short term. The price of oil keeps rising, so Western countries are selling arms to eliminate their huge trade deficit. Iran and Iraq are engaged in a regional arms race and have started to develop nuclear weapons. As Iran tried to develop nuclear power, the United States sold nuclear systems to Iran, and Germany and France contracted with Iran to provide technology. Iraq is in a similar situation.

Anti-Western Sentiment in the Middle East

U.S.-Iranian Tensions, Soviet Troops in Afghanistan

To secure the favor of the Shah, the U.S. ignored and tolerated the corruption that would lead to economic stagnation and the persecution of religious minorities and opposition parties. This had a strong backlash in the civil society. The economic problems of the Iranian civilian population finally became too serious, leading to the success of the opposition's Khomeini revolution, which was supported by the people, and the anti-British sentiment of many years before had become anti-American. Immediately, Khomeini nationalized the oil industry, canceled US military procurement contracts and shut down US intelligence facilities, which bled the US economy and deprived it of a pipeline to the Soviet Union.

In 1979, the U.S. took in four fleeing Shahs, which angered the Khomeini regime, which took over the U.S. embassy and worsened relations between the two countries. The US imposed an oil embargo on Iran, but this had little effect because Iranian oil could easily enter the US through third-party transactions, and a reduction in supply would only increase the price of oil. The Soviet Union then entered Afghanistan. Hassan of Iraq, fearing that the USSR would favor Iran, took advantage of the chaos to invade Iran, and the situation in the Middle East began to become more chaotic.

U.S. alliance with Iraq, dissolution of the Soviet Union.

At first, the situation was unfavorable to Iraq. The Soviet Union was not satisfied with Hassan's actions and stopped supplying arms to Iraq, while the United States wanted to curry favor with Iran. However, after a short while, the US realized that the situation was that Iraq was against the Soviet Union and decided to help Iraq again. In order to form an alliance with Iraq, the U.S. ignored Hassan's use of chemical weapons. At the same time, the U.S. supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. These opponents were called mujahideen, and some of them, like Osama bin Laden, became important figures. These efforts eventually drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in 1989. The Soviet Union was dissolved soon afterward.

Iraq out of control

After expelling the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, the U.S. tried to renew its friendship with Iran and started to send weapons to Iran through Israel. Hassan was furious when he found out that the US had betrayed him. To add insult to injury, the U.S. canceled some of its promised aid to Iraq due to domestic political factors.

Iraq then challenged the United States by invading Kuwait in 1990 to destroy the oil fields. Iraq was sanctioned by the United Nations, and the war was quickly ended by a joint air campaign by multinational forces. Over the next decade, the United Nations repeatedly imposed sanctions on Iraq in the hope that it would reduce its military forces, but the resolutions also restricted Iraqi exports and financial transactions, which had a significant impact on the poor. By 1998, the U.S. had written the overthrow of Hassan into its national policy.

The U.S. uses force, and riots continue in the Middle East.

The U.S. has had a long history of a continuous policy of softness toward Iran and Afghanistan. The situation changed after the Qaeda bombing of the U.S. embassy in 1998, when the U.S. fired missiles at four Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, which angered the Taliban, a major Afghan power. The U.S. attack added to anti-American sentiment in a region where people were already unhappy with the U.S.'s long history of support for corrupt regimes. Bin Laden's idea of freeing Muslims from the grip of the West gained even more attention.

In 1999, the famous 9/11 incident occurred. Two days later, the U.S. asked neighboring countries to prepare for military action against the Taliban. The US was determined to gain control of the Middle East regardless of the consequences. Later on, the US got rid of Hassan and intervened in the Afghan coup, hoping that the Middle East countries could recover from the turmoil by their own strength. But after that, large-scale riots continued.

The reputation of the United States has been damaged and anti-American sentiment persists.

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