The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)

by Mehran Kamrava

  3. Anthony Nutting, Nasser (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972), pp. 316–17.

  4. Taylor, Superpowers and the Middle East, p. 31.

  5. Quoted in Dan Hofstadter, ed., Egypt and Nasser, vol. 2, 1957–66 (New York: Facts on File, 1973), p. 5.

  6. Taylor, Superpowers and the Middle East, p. 60.

  7. Seale, Struggle for Syria, p. 293.

  8. Hofstadter, Egypt and Nasser, p. 37.

  9. Quwatli, for example, was retired and given the honorific title of “First Citizen of the UAR.” Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1964: A Study in Ideological Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 15.

  10. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

  11. Nutting, Nasser, p. 263.

  12. Quoted in Hofstadter, Egypt and Nasser, p. 109.

  13. Quoted in ibid., p. 106.

  14. Kerr, Arab Cold War, p. 35.

  15. Robert W. Stookey, Yemen: The Politics of the Yemen Arab Republic (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), p. 186.

  16. Nutting, Nasser, p. 338.

  17. Ali Abdel Rahman Rahmy, The Egyptian Policy in the Arab World: Intervention in Yemen, 1962–1967; Case Study (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1983), p. 96.

  18. Tawfiq Y. Hasou, The Struggle for the Arab World: Egypt’s Nasser and the Arab League (London: KPI, 1985), pp. 138–39.

  19. Rahmy, Egyptian Policy, p. 147.

  20. Stookey, Yemen, p. 244.

  21. Hasou, Struggle for the Arab World, p. 157.

  22. Soon after the Egyptian withdrawal, Yemen’s President Abdullah Salal, who had led the republicans in their fight against the royalists, was overthrown in a military coup and replaced by Said Abdel Rahman Iriani.

  23. Nutting, Nasser, p. 285.

  24. The most serious attacks occurred on May 27, 1965, September 5, 1965, April 30, 1966, July 14, 1966, and April 7, 1967.

  25. Edgar O’Ballance, The Third Arab-Israeli War (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1972), p. 20.

  26. Fred J. Khouri, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, 3rd ed. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985), p. 247.

  27. Quoted in Hisham Sharabi, “Prelude to War: The Crisis of May–June 1967,” in The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective, ed. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 53.

  28. Khouri, Arab-Israeli Dilemma, p. 243.

  29. For details of parliamentary challenges to Eshkol’s premiership, see O’Ballance, Third Arab-Israeli War, pp. 32–33.

  30. Ibid., p. 21.

  31. Khouri, Arab-Israeli Dilemma, p. 258.

  32. O’Ballance, Third Arab-Israeli War, p. 67.

  33. Ibid., pp. 78–79.

  34. Ibid., p. 232.

  35. Ibid., p. 272. The IDF later claimed that 778 Israeli soldiers and 26 civilians had been killed and that another 2,586 soldiers had been wounded along with 195 civilians.

  36. Sharabi, “Prelude to War,” p. 57.

  37. Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32–33.

  38. Ibid., p. 30.

  39. Bassam Tibi, Conflict and War in the Middle East: From Interstate War to New Security, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 83.

  40. Ajami, Arab Predicament, p. 41.

  41. O’Ballance, Third Arab-Israeli War, p. 142. This proved especially damaging to Egypt’s own progress in the war, as many Egyptian officers, having lost their lines of communication with their commanders, were initially relying on reports by Cairo Radio to make decisions.

  42. Kirk Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years: Ideology, Politics, and Civil Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p. 209.

  43. For a text of Nasser’s resignation speech, see “Nasser’s Resignation Broadcast, June 9, 1967,” in The Israeli-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, ed. Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, 5th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 160–65.

  44. Tibi, Conflict and War, pp. 90–91.

  45. Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years, pp. 213–15.

  46. Samih K. Farsoun and Christina E. Zacharia, Palestine and the Pal-estinians (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p. 134.

  47. Quoted in Adnan Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hash-emite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1999), p. 184.

  48. “Security Council Resolution on the Middle East, November 22, 1967,” in Laqueur and Rubin, Israeli-Arab Reader, pp. 217–18.

  49. For an analysis of the writings and arguments of some of these intellectuals (e.g., Hisham Sharabi, Anwar Abdel Malik, Jalal Amin, and Samir Amin), see Issa Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), pp. 87–118.

  50. Rasheed el-Enany, Naguib Mahfouz: The Pursuit of Meaning (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 26.

  51. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Sadat and His Statecraft (London: Kensal, 1982), p. 48.

  52. Raymond Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat: The Post-populist Development of an Authoritarian-Modernizing State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 46.

  53. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 289.

  54. Anwar el-Sadat, The Public Diary of Anwar Sadat, vol. 1, The Road to War, ed. Raphael Israeli (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), p. 109.

  55. Because the October 1973 War occurred during Ramadan and Yom Kippur, the Arabs refer to it as the Ramadan War and the Israelis as the Yom Kippur War. More objective observers, however, simply refer to it as the 1973 War.

  56. For the increasing professionalization of Middle Eastern militaries after the 1967 War, see Mehran Kamrava, “Military Professionalization and Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East,” Political Science Quarterly 115 (Spring 2000): 67–92.

  57. On crossing the Suez, which the Egyptians did in a matter of hours, Dayan later said: “I had a theory that it would take them all night to set up the bridges . . . and that we would be able to prevent this with our armor.” Quoted in Frank Aker, October 1973: The Arab-Israeli War (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1985), p. 23.

  58. Ibid., p. 21.

  59. Tibi, Conflict and War, pp. 109–10. The airlift is said to have included some seven hundred to eight hundred tons of military equipment daily. Peter Allen, The Yom Kippur War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982), pp. 208–9.

  60. Aker, October 1973, p. 57.

  61. Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), pp. 254–55.

  62. Quoted in Joseph Lorenz, Egypt and the Arabs: Foreign Policy and the Search for National Identity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), p. 47.

  63. Tibi, Conflict and War, p. 116.

  64. Quoted in Hassan el Badri, Taha el Magdoub, and Mohammed Dia el Din Zohdy, The Ramadan War, 1973 (Dunn Loring, VA: T. N. Dupuy Associates, 1978), p. 201.

  65. Ibid., p. 202. This book was originally published in Arabic in Cairo under the title Harb Ramadan.

  66. Aker, October 1973, p. 58.

  67. Ajami, Arab Predicament, p. 116.

  68. Hinnebusch, Egyptian Politics under Sadat, pp. 56–57.

  69. “My main concern in this connection,” he wrote, “is whether Israel really and truly wants peace. For my part I really want peace and have proved it beyond a shadow of doubt.” Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 306.

  70. Khouri, Arab-Israeli Dilemma, p. 414.

  71. John Waterbury, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 240.

  72. Ibid., p. 370.

  73. Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. 801.

  74. Ibid., p. 805.

  75. Shlaim, Iron Wall, p. 325.

  76. Ibid., p. 801.

  77. Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli
Conflict, 4th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), p. 329.

  78. Shlaim, Iron Wall, p. 328.

  79. Khalil Nakhleh, “The Political Effects of the October War on Israeli Society,” in Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973, ed. Nasser Aruri (Wilmette, IL: Medina University Press International, 1975), p. 167.

  80. Ibid.

  81. King Hussein of Jordan, “Disengagement from the West Bank (July 31, 1988),” in Laqueur and Rubin, Israeli-Arab Reader, p. 340.

  82. Tareq Ismael, International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East: A Study in World Politics (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 104–5.

  83. Joe Stork, “The Oil Weapon,” in Aruri, Middle East Crucible, p. 352.

  84. Giacomo Luciani, “Oil and Political Economy in the International Relations of the Middle East,” in International Relations of the Middle East, ed. Louise Fawcett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 89.

  85. Ibid; emphasis added.

  86. Ibid.

  5. THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION

  1. There is a rich theoretical literature on revolutions; some of the more notable works are Peter Calvert, Revolution and Counter-revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Jack Goldstone, ed., Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994); and Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Social Revolutions in the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). For my own writings on the subject, see Mehran Kamrava, Revolutionary Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), and “Revolution Revisited: Revolutionary Types and the Structuralist vs. Voluntarist Debate,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 32 (June 1999): 1–29.

  2. As the Iran-Iraq War is covered in detail in the next chapter, the only references to that event here are in passing.

  3. Approximately 60 percent of Iran’s population of about sixty-six million is thought to have been born after the revolution. Because of concerted efforts by the government, however, the fertility rate declined from 7 children per woman in 1986 to 3.5 in 1993. Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, trans. Jonathan Derrick (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 156.

  4. Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-burgh Press, 1979), pp. 60–61.

  5. Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany: SUNY Press, 1980), p. 59.

  6. For an insightful, succinct analysis of the causes of the collapse of the Azerbaijan rebellion, see Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, 1926–1979 (New York: NYU Press, 1981), pp. 150–53.

  7. Fakhreddin Azimi, Iran: The Crisis of Democracy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 340.

  8. James Goode, The United States and Iran, 1946–51: The Diplomacy of Neglect (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 10.

  9. Peter Avery, Modern Iran (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 405.

  10. Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982), p. 111.

  11. For obvious reasons, the precise role of the CIA in the coup that overthrew Musaddiq is shrouded in mystery. Nevertheless, on the eve of the 1978–79 revolution, the CIA’s principal organizer of the coup, Kermit Roosevelt, wrote what remains a unique, if not thorough, account of the CIA’s efforts. See his Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979). Equally interesting, and more thorough and objective, are a series of CIA reports and other documents related to the coup compiled by the New York Times, James Risen’s “Secrets of History: The CIA and Iran,” 2000, www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html.

  12. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, pp. 226–27. This is not to imply that everyone who took part in anti-Musaddiq demonstrations had been paid to do so. As Cottam correctly notes (on p. 229), “Regardless of foreign participation, Mossadeq could not have been overthrown if significant elements of the population had not lost faith in his leadership.”

  13. Shahrough Akhavi, “The Role of the Clergy in Iranian Politics, 1949–1954,” in Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil, ed. James A. Bill and William Roger Louis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), p. 92.

  14. For a detailed account of Musaddiq’s trial, see Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), pp. 294–307.

  15. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 420.

  16. This actually happened to a close former associate of Dr. Musaddiq, Alahyar Saleh, a popular nationalist in his own right. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, p. 301.

  17. Asadollah Alam, The Shah and I: The Confidential Diaries of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969–1977, trans. Alinaghi Alikhani and Nicholas Vincent (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 390.

  18. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (London: Hutchinson, 1961), p. 125.

  19. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), p. 176.

  20. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Inqilab-e Sefeed [The White Revolution] (Tehran: Imperial Pahlavi Library, 1967), p. 25.

  21. Akhavi, Religion and Politics, p. 102.

  22. Unlike their Sunni counterparts, who have no formal hierarchy, the Shiʿite clergy are hierarchically divided into four strata: from lowest to highest, the muezzin or akhunds, the hojjatoleslams, the ayatollahs, and the grand ayatollahs (ayatollah uzma). The 1978–79 revolution gave rise to the innovative position of the Leader (velayat faqih, or jurisconsult), to be occupied first by the revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

  23. For the White Revolution’s various principles and the dates of their enactment, see Pahlavi, Answer to History, pp. 193–94.

  24. For the first view, see Katouzian, Political Economy of Modern Iran, p. 241; for the second view, see Gholam R. Afkhami, The Iranian Revolution: Thanatos on a National Scale (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1985), p. 56.

  25. Ibid. For a rare and recent study of Hoveida and his tenure in office, see Abbas Milani, The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Washington, DC: Mage, 2000).

  26. Even regime insiders knew this. Of the party’s first congress, the shah’s court minister wrote in his diaries: “The whole thing was excellently state-managed, but hollow; utterly hollow and false.” Alam, Shah and I, p. 422.

  27. Ibid., p. 494.

  28. Pahlavi, Answer to History, p. 145.

  29. Hushang Moghtader, “The Impact of Increased Oil Revenue on Iran’s Economic Development, 1973–76,” in Towards a Modern Iran: Studies in Thought, Politics and Society, ed. Elie Kedouri and Sylvia Haim (London: Frank Cass, 1980), p. 241.

  30. Ibid., pp. 254–55.

  31. Ibid., pp. 259–60.

  32. Alam, Shah and I, p. 535.

  33. Ibid., p. 548.

  34. There is a vast and rich literature dealing with the role and influence of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran in the final months of the Pahlavi regime. Perhaps the most authoritative work is James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

  35. Pahlavi, Answer to History, p. 165.

  36. For an analysis of the main parties forming the National Front, see Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, pp. 264–68.

  37. Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, p. 451.

  38. Mujahedeen Khalq, Sharh-e taʿsis va Tarikhche-ye Vaqayeʿ Sazman-e Mujahedeen-e Khalq-e Iran az Sal-e 1344 ta Sal-e 1350 [Explanation of the foundation and a history of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran from the year 1965 to the year 1971] (Tehran: Sazman-e Mujahedeen, 1358/1979), p. 45.

  39. For more on this, see ibid., pp. 58–72.

  40. For an account of the activities of the Mujahedeen and the Fedayeen before the revolution, see Mehran Kamrava, Revolution in Iran: The Roots of Turmo
il (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 60–65.

  41. For an English translation of Al-e Ahmad’s major work, see Weststruckness, trans. John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1982). See also Michael C. Hillmann, ed., Iranian Society: An Anthology of Writings by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (Lexington, KY: Mazda, 1982).

  42. See Ali Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariaʿti (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998).

  43. Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: NYU Press, 1993).

  44. Kamrava, Revolution in Iran, p. 47.

  45. Dilip Hiro, Iran under the Ayatollahs (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 93.

  46. Ibid., pp. 106–7.

  47. See, for example, the U.S. secretary of state’s views in Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 370–75.

  48. Pahlavi, Answer to History, p. 15.

  49. Hamid Algar, trans., Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press, 1980), p. 29.

  50. This included especially the hostages themselves, who believed the takeover would last only a few hours, as had been the case the previous February, or a couple of days at most. See, for example, the thoughts of a former hostage, Richard Queen, Inside and Out: Hostage to Iran, Hostage to Myself (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981), p. 57.

  51. Gary Sick, who worked at the White House at the time and was involved in many of the initiatives to free the hostages, writes in detail of efforts by two private attorneys hired by Iran’s foreign minister, Sadeq Qotbzadeh, to broker a deal for the hostages’ release. See Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 294–328.

  52. For more on the planning and execution of the rescue mission, see Paul Ryan, The Iranian Rescue Mission: Why It Failed (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985).

  53. This position was taken chiefly by President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. See his Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985), p. 499.

  54. Sick, All Fall Down, p. 364.