Sensible people learn from relationships like this, and take care not to fall into another one just like it. The US, however, has not been so careful
John Davenport
The Independent Voices
A controversial president is in the Whitehouse. America’s largest oil supplier is a monarchy, which is also the US’s largest arms customer. And American foreign policy in the Middle East is almost entirely dictated by its one-sided relationship with this oil-rich monarchy.
While this sounds much like a description of America’s slightly unnatural relationship with the Wahhabi Saudi Arabia today, it is also an exact description of the relationship between the US and the Iranian Shah in the 1970s.
And look how well that ended.
It seems like the US has a habit of becoming infatuated with Middle Eastern monarchies and forming unhealthy relationships with them that end in tears, drunken tweeting and foreign policy disaster.
Lets go back half a century. In the 1960s the British empire was gently disintegrating and London realised it could no longer afford many of the things it used to. These things included battleships, cigars and the ability to keep a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf.
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Categories: America, Americas, Asia, The Muslim Times, United States, US President, USA
I saw the Shah of Iran in Zurich on the Bellevue round-about. He was driving his own Rolls Royce, probably in the direction of the Dolder Grand Hotel. (what a fall from the very top to the very bottom)