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The United States, Iran and the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard W. Cottam
Richard W. Cottam*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

It would be premature to declare the Cold War over in the summer of 1969. The Cold War rhetoric continues to abound in the United States in the debates over Vietnam and the ABM; dangers of Soviet-American confrontation are serious in the Arab-Israeli conflict; and Soviet behavior in Czechoslovakia is of the Cold War mold. But, as symbolized by Richard Nixon's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, there is widespread agreement among American leaders that an era of negotiation and rapprochment with the Soviet Union has been entered. The indications are already strong that for Iran this portends an era in which the Soviet-American conflict will not influence very significantly Iran's internal affairs.

As this new era begins, there are already signs that the Cold War world view, including the Soviet-American confrontation in Iran, is about to be drastically revised by a new generation of students of the Cold War.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Winter 1970, pp. 2 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1970

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Footnotes

*

This paper was delivered at the Conference on the “Structure of Power in Islamic Iran,” co-sponsored by the Society for Iranian Studies, and the Near Eastern Center of the University of California at Los Angeles. The Conference was held on June 26-27, 1969, at the University of California, Los Angeles.

References

Notes

1. Cohen, Bernard C. The Political Process and Foreign Policy: The Making of the Japanese Peace Settlement (Princeton, 1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. See Ellwell-Sutton, L. P. Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London, 1955)Google Scholar; and Fatemi, Nasrollah Saifpour Oil Diplomacy: Powderkeg in Iran (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

3. For a good account of American Diplomacy in Iran before the Reza Shah period see Yeselson, Abraham United States-Persian Diplomatic Relations, 1883-1921 (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1956).Google Scholar On the oil question see Elwell-Sutton, op. cit., Fatemi, op. cit., and Cottam, Richard Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964), pp. 202-3.Google Scholar

4. Millspaugh, Arthur C. Americans in Persia (Washington, D. C., 1946).Google Scholar

5. On this subject see Millspaugh, op. cit., and Lenczowski, George Russia and the West in Iran (Ithaca, New York, 1949).Google Scholar

6. See Cottam, op. cit., pp. 124-29.

7. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947, pp. 566-582.

8. Cottam, op. cit., p. 237.

9. For a development of this scheme see Etzioni, Amitai A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

10. See for example an interview of Grady, U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 19, 1951, pp. 13-17.

11. Cottam, op. cit., p. 212.

12. For the text of Mossadeq's letter expressing this point to President Eisenhower see The Department of State Bulletin, July 20, 1953, pp. 76-77.

13. Cottam, op. cit., pp. 211-221.

14. The most complete account of this episode in print remains the article by Richard and Gladys Harkness, “The Mysterious Doings of CIA,” The Saturday Evening Post, November 6, 1954, pp. 66-68. However an unpublished account by Kennett Love is far more complete and accurate. Love was an eye witness.

15. Baldwin, George B. Planning and Development in Iran (Baltimore, 1967)Google Scholar; Amuzegar, Jahangir Technical Assistance in Theory and Practice: The Case of Iran (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

16. Schelling, Thomas C. Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 13.Google Scholar

17. Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence (New Haven, 1966), p. 38.Google Scholar

18. Samuel P. Huntington, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, April 1965, pp. 386-430.