Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's triumphant return to Tehran in February 1979, the last act in the dramatic overthrow of the Shah of Iran, presented Washington with a major policy quandary. Until the 1960s, the United States had relied on British imperial forces to safeguard the West's crucial oil interests in the region. Its own Gulf flotilla--based at a modest facility in Bahrain--did little more than show the flag. As long as the cold war lasted, the superpowers, wary of provoking each other, had by tacit agreement stayed clear of each other. But the Shah was the chief US client and military surrogate, and when Khomeini took his place, he neutralized America's defensive capacity in the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia was the logical fallback. US involvement with the Saudis dated back to World War II, when President Roosevelt declared the kingdom strategically important, thus eligible for lend-lease. In 1945 Roosevelt held a celebrated shipboard meeting with the Saudi king, Abdul Aziz, which came to symbolize the bond between the countries. Oil was Roosevelt's chief interest, of course, but military strategy also played a role. Late in the war, the United States built an airfield at Dhahran in eastern Saudi Arabia, which emerged in subsequent years as a base that permitted US planes to reach deep into Soviet Asia.

After World War II, President Truman went a step further by certifying the kingdom's eligibility for military training and equipment. As petrodollars poured in, the Saudis deposited tens of billions, through purchases and investments, into the coffers of American industry. In the 1950s, when Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser was cozying up to Moscow and was sweeping through the region, the Saudi government stood as a bulwark at America's side. The Sauds' hostility to Nasser was in part a product of inter-Arab rivalry. No less important, it derived from the royal family's religious beliefs, impregnated with a deep aversion to the atheism at the core of Soviet Communism.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.