"Washington bears a considerable amount of the responsibility for the radicalism of the Iranian Revolution and the resultant deterioration in US-Iranian relations"

Résumé du document

'When examining the policies that the United States conducted toward Iran from 1945 to 1979, one cannot help but realize that Washington bears a considerable amount of the responsibility for the radicalism of the Iranian Revolution and the resultant deterioration in US-Iranian relations.' Evaluate the merits of this statement. Be sure to use the arguments of Richard Cottam in IRAN AND THE UNITED STATES as the starting point of your discussion'

Extraits

[...] The assumption that Iran was an American proxy in the Middle East didn't take into consideration the fact that internal politics itself was not balanced enough to have Iran focus on outside threats. Iran's expectations on the United States Foreign powers, especially Russia and Britain, always understood the strategic importance of Iran. But with Britain resigning and Russia's influence growing in the region, the United States decided to step in, with two goals, one geostrategic, the other economic: defeating the USSR and taking advantage of Iran's abundant oil resources. [...]

[...] The United States had no will whatsoever to get involved in Iranian politics, as proved by the 1960 Anglo-American agreement, which states that United States will continue vigorous Cold War action in the Middle East” but considered area to be a British Commonwealth responsibility”[4]. Thus, the problem was that the American intervention in Iran was mostly motivated by the international context of external Soviet threat. As Brands explains, Pentagon didn't like the idea of Russian invasion anywhere, but it frowned especially on Soviet expansion into a region that help much of the world's petroleum”[5]. Thus, Iran was too much of a strategic area for the United States not to get involved, but only for international and strategic reasons. [...]

[...] Although such internal factors favored the recent evolutions in Iranian politics ( especially the fact that since the early 1900s, Iran had had a “history of revolution”[7]( the United States have a decisive responsibility in the 1979 Revolution and in the anti-Americanism of many Iranians. Indeed, the latter was too focused on countering Soviet expansion and had no previous involvement in Iran for it to assume any role in the assertion of Iranian democratic principles. The dual containment policy that has prevailed since the rise of Iran and Iraq as dangerous powers in the Middle East doesn't help change the Iranians' perception of the Great Satan: United States replaced Britain as the object of Iranian nationalists' hatred and xenophobia”[8]. [...]

[...] The ambivalent image of the United States (both the herald of democratic values and the foreign dominator( puzzled Iranians quite a lot. For instance, Carter's human rights policy had no real implications in Iran, and only increased Iranian people's expectations of an American tutor that would show Iran's officials install democracy in their country. The government, not much pressured by the United States, both refused to implement such reforms and to see the influence of America's human rights' policy on Iranians. [...]

[...] Washington bears a considerable amount of the responsibility for the radicalism of the Iranian Revolution and the resultant deterioration in US- Iranian relations" "When examining the policies that the United States conducted toward Iran from 1945 to 1979, one cannot help but realize that Washington bears a considerable amount of the responsibility for the radicalism of the Iranian Revolution and the resultant deterioration in US- Iranian relations." Evaluate the merits of this statement. Be sure to use the arguments of Richard Cottam in IRAN AND THE UNITED STATES as the starting point of your discussion”. [...]