100 Years of 100 Things: US Involvement in the Middle East

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today, Thing No. 41, 100 years of US involvement in the Middle East. So relevant now obviously. US involvement with the Middle East has been one of the most complicated and vexing foreign policy areas for just about a whole century. How to change it yet again will be a major question facing the new Trump administration.

Our involvement with the Middle East did a lot to make Jimmy Carter a one-term president in the 1970s. That was largely blowback from something that the Eisenhower administration did in the '50s. George W. Bush goes down in history as largely a failed president because of his actions in the Middle East. US policy there alienated part of the Democratic base from the Biden-Harris administration with repercussions just recently in the election.

Why are we here and how did we get here? How did we wind up in a rolling 45 years conflict with Iran or become the target of Al-Qaeda for one of the defining events of the century, the 9/11 attacks in 2001? How did we wind up with all the pressure on Washington from pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups? How did the oil economy of the last 100 years lead us to this point in history today? Such a big topic and still so relevant.

We'll try to focus mainly on three big things for the purposes of this conversation. Iran, Israel-Palestine, and oil. We have two guests. Gideon Rose, adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, the former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and and author of the book How Wars End. He was associate director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

Also with us, Rami Khouri, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, op-ed contributor to Al Jazeera online, co-author of the book Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC, think tank, which describes itself as dedicated to furthering the understanding of the Arab world in the United States and to providing insight on US policies and interests in the Middle East. Thank you both very much for joining our 100 years series. Welcome back, both of you, to WNYC.

Gideon Rose: Thank you. Good to be here.

Rami Khouri: Yes, great pleasure. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Gideon, let's start with the topic of oil and the year 1908. You wrote an article in Foreign Affairs this year about US involvement in Iraq that begins with the line, "Sometimes foreign policy lies downstream from technology." It reminds us that, "The oil riches of the Middle East were first discovered in 1908, and soon the region was essential to the global economy." Can you tell us a little more of what happened in 1908 where oil was discovered and how that changed the Middle East relationship with the West and the West's relationship with the Middle East and the years immediately afterwards?

Gideon Rose: The discovery in what is now Iran, then Persia, in 1908 of massive oil resources helped make the Middle East, and particularly the Persian Gulf and its surrounding areas, a crucial strategic resource in the oil-dominated industrialized world of the 20th century and beyond. In the same way that forests were important when you had shipbuilding industries or coaling stations were important when you had steamships, oil became a crucial resource.

The Gulf, with its weird local geography of strong powers at the top, Iraq and Iran, and weak powers at the bottom, the GCC, became a crucial player. The question of how to get the oil from the Gulf outside to the world to power the global economy, because it rapidly became crucial, became an essential issue in 20th-century politics. Britain was the dominant colonial power at the time in the area. This was, in effect, Britain's problem. It took the oil. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was in charge of it.

When Iran becomes independent in the post-World War II era when decolonization happens, they nationalize the oil. This creates a tension with the Brits and ultimately leads to the imposition of the Shah or the installation of the Shah as the ruler of Iran. The United States takes over in the post-war era from Britain as the guarantor of the regional economy. It becomes the dominant power in the world. It takes over, in effect, responsibility for the broad regional stability and security and flow of resources out.

It doesn't know what to do with this. First, it tries to get it to local contractors like Iran and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, but then the Iranian revolution happens. It keeps getting drawn in. It helps Iraq and Iran balance each other during the Iran-Iraq War because it doesn't want either one to win and dominate the Gulf. In the 1990s, it gets involved with the containment of both Iraq and Iran after having pushed Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991.

Then finally, it goes directly involved in trying to run Iraq in the post-Iraq War era. Now, we're out of that business and we don't want to be there. We're pulling back. What you see now is they're still in a powerful Iran that is essentially in place to dominate the region unless there's some kind of pushback. The US's new move is to rely, like in the '70s, on two local proxies to essentially counter Iran, Saudi Arabia, and this time, Israel. That's where we are.

Brian Lehrer: Well, that was quite a romp through 100 years right there. We'll come back and look a little more closely at some of those points. Rami, let me turn to you. You wrote an article for the Arab Center in October that begins by saying, "The past month may prove to be the most critical moment of geostrategic transformation in the Middle East since the regional Arab State order was born around the First World War." Rami, we'll eventually get to why you think the last few months are so critical. For now, can you do a little history for the listeners of what you mean by the regional Arab state order and how it was born around the First World War?

Rami Khouri: Sure. Thank you for having me. I'll add more complexity to what Gideon said. Most of which I agree with, some of which I don't. The broad trend is, I think, correct. The region was strategic for the West well before oil was discovered. Napoleon was there in 1798, shooting up different countries. The British and the French were competing for the region for strategic routes to their colonies around the world.

Then there was also, Edward Said described as well, the Orientalist infatuation with the Middle East and the Orient and Egypt and the holy sites and all that. There's other factors besides oil, but oil became the dominant one in the 20th century for sure. Then, of course, when you had the Cold War, then the region became a proxy battleground as Southeast Asia and other places did. There's many reasons why the powers are in and out of there.

In my view, the single most common factor in the region's turbulence that we've experienced and certainly in my lifetime, my last 55 years of covering the region as a journalist and analyst, is the actions of Western military powers in the region. The French and the British and the Americans. The Russians come in and out here and there. They're not really Western, but the foreign military powers. This is not only nonstop for the last 200 years, more or less, but is actually intensifying.

You have about 30, 40 American military bases in the region and others similarly. You even have regional powers now, or would-be powers like the UAE creating military and strategic bases around the region. People want to control this region, or at least have their interests shared. What happened after World War I, after the Ottoman Empire declined, the region started to emerge with more independent countries.

Some of which were shaped by their own forces. Some of which were shaped by British and French lines on a map and various factors. The main point is that these countries, Arab countries, there's about 22 of them. We don't even actually know the real number because some of them split up and then they join up again. Sudan, Yemen, Morocco, Iraq. They all have little appendages that we're not sure if they're still part of those countries.

These are very volatile, fragile countries physically and in other ways. The common factor besides the nonstop Western foreign militarism is that there isn't a single Arab state that's been validated by its own citizens. None of these countries were created by the will of their people. Either local strongmen took over by military force and created a country or foreign powers came in and manipulated things. The various ways that states happened and have been kept in power.

These Arab states, for the last 100 years or so, have had a very erratic record on the four critical tests that I put on the performance of independent states, and that is citizenship, sovereignty, development, and social justice, let's call it. The Arabs have not performed well in most of those areas. Very erratic. That's why there's so much violence all over the region and armed groups.

The biggest people fighting in the region now are not Arab states anymore. They used to be in the '50s, '60s, '70s. Now, they're Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarullah, popular mobilization forces, non-state armed actors that are more powerful than some of the states. This is a really terrible situation, but it's the reality we have. It's critical that we analyze it correctly together and then figure out, "Well, how can we get out of this terrible situation?"

Brian Lehrer: Well, to Gideon's point, and I'll give this to you, Rami, first, and then back to Gideon, when he wrote in his Foreign Affairs piece that, at first, when the oil economy broke out more than 100 years ago there, at first, order in the area was maintained by the United Kingdom, the dominant colonial power. In the decades after World War II, the United States took over the role. I guess my question is, why was any Western country in a role like that "maintaining order" rather than simply the oil-rich Middle Eastern nations themselves? Rami?

Rami Khouri: Well, because none of them were really mature, stable, strong, and clear and decisive states that responded to the rights and desires of their own citizens and also interacted rationally and intelligently with foreign powers or other regional powers. These states were born in some kind of imperially-guided chaos and sharing the pie without local input of any significant form. Then they ended up partly because of the advent of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Zionism entered the picture in the 1917 with the Balfour Declaration.

That Palestinian-Zionist conflict, which became the Israeli-Arab conflict, only really picked up in the '30s and '40s and ever since then. Gideon mentioned that the US saw Israel as one of its two guarantors. Of course, that only created a much more militant situation and unstable situation all across the region, partly because of Israel's behavior, partly because of other factors. When we put all those things together, big powers don't like instability. Certainly, their economic investors don't like instability. This has been the hallmark of the US and others in the West that we want stability. It doesn't matter if they're all autocrats. As long as the place is stable, we're happy.

Brian Lehrer: Gideon, same question.

Gideon Rose: Yes, Brian, I agree with everything Rami said. I think your question is legit, but it's also a bit naive because the fact is that order that is peaceful and calm and beneficial to the citizens of countries and regions is not a natural thing in the world and has never really existed much in the Middle East. From Sargon on, thousands and thousands of years, you've either had local chaos or, more usually, one form or another of empire that has maintained order through a kind of leviathan that controls everything.

The most recent one of those empires was the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the area for a very long time, several centuries. The sick man of Europe. It's the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which leads to the 20th-century Middle East in which there is no dominant power. It's replaced by the colonial powers like Britain and France, which essentially provide a mini-version of imperial order.

Then after World War II, they are pushed back because they've been too weak to be able to do that and faute de mieux in this environment in the post-war era with local states who are authoritarian and aggressive and a local balance of power that doesn't really stabilize itself. The United States feels increasingly drawn in to maintain order because the region is crucial for the global economy.

If there were no oil in the region, it would not be involved because it would just let disorder percolate like it has done in Africa and some other places elsewhere. Because there is the oil there, there's a real stake for everybody outside the Gulf in the free, stable flow of relatively cheap oil. That's what the United States is trying somehow to figure out how to manage.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as we do in these 100 years segments, we can take a few of your oral history calls, your personal oral history calls on the phones or in text messages. In this case, if you are from or have ancestry in or any other ties to any country in the Middle East, any Arab country or Israel or Iran, how has US policy impacted you or your family or your country of origin or ancestry at any time over the past 100 years? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I think you get that this is not for simply debating the US role in the Israel-Hamas War, which, of course, is part of today's context for doing this segment.

This is more of a 100-year view of why the US even got so entangled in the first place and why the current involvement is what it is. It's your oral history calls on the phones or in text messages. If you are from or have ancestry in or any other ties to any other country in the Middle East, how has US policy impacted you or your family or your country of origin at any time over the past 100 years? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, for our guests, Gideon Rose from the Council on Foreign Relations and Rami Khouri from the Arab Center Washington, DC, among other credits for both of them. We'll continue right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's our 100 Years of 100 Things series, number 41, 100 Years of US involvement in the Middle East, with Gideon Rose from the Council on Foreign Relations, Rami Khouri from the Arab Center Washington. We appreciate both of their time and some of you on the phones as we go at 212-433-WNYC or in text messages, 212-433-9692.

We've been talking so far about US involvement with respect to oil. We've come up to the present even in that respect. Let's back up now and talk about the origins of the US involvement in this century-old Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let's start in 1917 with the Balfour Declaration, the policy statement from the British government during World War I, when the Ottoman Empire still controlled the area but was about to fall.

As the Encyclopedia Britannica describes it, the Balfour Declaration stated Britain's support for establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, but also said, "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Here comes the US component. Britannica goes on to say that the British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the side of the Allied Powers in World War I. Rami, if you accept Britannica's context, did it work? Did Britain get something it wanted from American Jews or from the United States from issuing the Balfour Declaration?

Rami Khouri: Probably after some years, it did, but I think there's other reasons why this happened. There were a lot of anti-Semites in the British government. They wanted the Jews who were suffering in Eastern Europe and Russia to go to Palestine, not to come to England. Britain and the US passed laws restricting Jewish immigrants coming from Europe to those countries, so that was one reason.

Also, Great Britain felt as an imperial power that to have a country, a Jewish home, homeland, or state that was close to them would be strategically valuable for them. There were other reasons why the Balfour Declaration was passed. It was just a very effective Zionist lobbying. One of the great stories of one of the great dimensions of this 100 years is how effective the Zionist and then the state of Israel's lobbying has been in Europe initially and then in the United States.

There's also a third factor, which is you had these Christian fundamentalists, Protestant movements in Britain in the 19th century that were very powerful. Many of them were in government. They wanted a Jewish state just for their own millennial, eschatological reasons. They wanted to have all the Jews go back to Palestine and then the Messiah would come and all kinds of great things would happen. Peace for 1,000 years.

There's quite a few different things together, but the fact is that it did happen. The description of the Palestinians who made up around 93% of the population, including my family in Nazareth, where our home is still-- we still have it in Nazareth, they were called the non-Jewish population. That's like saying you take New York City and you say the non-red-headed population, which is the majority. The vast majority are non-red-headed.

This was a racist imperial process from the very beginning. It was outrageous. That's what happened in the Imperial Age. The British did this. The Zionists had tried to get the Ottomans, the Russians, and others to support creation of a Jewish state. None of them went for it because they realized it would probably cause a lot of problems, which it did. The British accepted for the reasons they did. Really, it's the starting point that we have to look at. You're right.

Brian Lehrer: Gideon, anything to add or disagree with there, especially again with respect to the United States' role in the British-mandate Palestine era?

Gideon Rose: If oil is one pillar of the region for outside powers to get involved, Jerusalem and the birthplace of all the major Abrahamic religions is the other. There has always been a constant Western interest in the Holy Land. Go back to the Crusades. You can do other kind of things. The combination, as Rami talks about, of Christians and Jews caring about Jerusalem and the Holy Land and Muslims caring about it also has been the source of a constant tension and struggle there.

Again, in the wake of the Ottoman Empire, when you end up getting British colonialism instead, one of the things we focus on in colonialism is the immediate oppression and the immediate actions. Another thing that is often horrible as a consequence is that they just never really prepare for the aftermath and just walk away. Just like in India, you ended up getting partition and massive problems in the subcontinent. When the British walk away at almost exactly the same time, when the British walk away from Palestine writ large, you end up getting wars and tensions and ethnic cleansing there as well.

Brian Lehrer: Gideon, I don't want to get bogged down as I said earlier in this segment in the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself with the competing versions of who's the big or bad guy and everything else. The focus here is the history of the United States' role. Maybe we could jump ahead to 1978, when President Jimmy Carter brokers the peace treaty and the return of land between Israel and Egypt.

The 1990s Oslo process, also announced in Washington between Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, that was supposed to start settling the whole thing. My question is, to what degree was the US seen after all this talk about the selfish interests of the various Western powers in the Middle East over oil and other things early in the century? To what degree was the US seen as an honest broker by any side over that period or a necessary player to bring a two-state solution when we weren't actually a party to the conflict, Gideon?

Gideon Rose: I think that's a good way of putting it because it's two different things. It's not just honest broker. I would say it's an honest enough broker, but the connection with Israel, which was always strong, was one of the things that made the US desirable as a partner. It was precisely because the United States was strong and backing Israel that, eventually, many of the Arab states realized that if they wanted to deal with this problem, which they couldn't deal with directly, having lost war after war, they had to go through Washington as well as Jerusalem.

Essentially, you should think of the two-state solution not just as a question of justice, not just as a question of rights, but as a question of how to harmonize the two major interests of the United States in the region, which is security of Israel and good relations with the Muslim states around it and in the Gulf. Dealing with the aftermath of the original partition, dealing with the legacies of the divided Palestine that the British left has been a problem for whoever wants to manage the region.

The two-state solution, some kind of situation in which Israel becomes safe and secure in its borders and there's some solution to the Palestinian problem that allows them to have some kind of security and stability and autonomy, that is seen as the Holy Grail, which could make the conflict residue of '48 and '67 go away. It has been stalled because the local players each want maximalist goals. We're in this continuing, ongoing conflict that seems to never get anywhere.

Brian Lehrer: Rami, same question.

Rami Khouri: Yes, I would, again, agree with almost everything Gideon said with a few slight variations. He mentioned autonomy as one of the goals for Palestinians. It's actually sovereignty and statehood and liberty and dignity. This is one of the weaknesses that we've seen in the American government over the years. By the way, one side point, the imperial tradition in the region is very powerful with the Ottomans, the French, the British, and others.

Then when the US took over, the US has proved to be an amateur imperialist power. They don't know how to do imperialism. These other characters did it really well in the fact that it served them for many, many years, and then they got out. As Gideon said, they left a mess behind. The US doesn't quite know how to do it. It's very amateurish. Therefore, it keeps getting into all of these situations, including now where it's fighting people in Yemen and Iraq and all over the place.

The fundamental point about the Israelis and Palestinians is that for a resolution that's fair and permanent and stable, they have to be seen as two people who have equal rights before law and before God and before each other. That hasn't happened. It started with the Balfour Declaration and then it happened throughout the century. The US and Israel have never seen Palestine as a state and a people that has equal rights as does the state of Israel. We've come to that resolution in the Arab world. We've recognized Israel. We've offered to live in peace. The details have to be negotiated, but there's never been a serious response from the Western powers.

What's happened is that the intervention of the US, Camp David, Oslo, other ones, what's going on right now, the ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza has always been predicated in the eyes of the officials in Washington on the Israelis having a slight or serious advantage over the Palestinians, that Israeli security and sovereignty take priority over any other issue. This is one of the reasons, I think, we've never really achieved a permanent resolution. The peace treaties that did work, Egypt and Jordan worked because they did treat both sides as having absolutely equal rights. Therefore, that should be a lesson that we can go back to. This is a man-made conflict and it has man-made solutions.

Brian Lehrer: Gideon?

Gideon Rose: I agree with Rami in general, except that I think there's something missing from his analysis, which is power, which is the reason why those treaties with the Arab states were ones that were ultimately able to be worked out was because there had been a series of wars that established a balance of power or a distribution of power that was agreed upon. Israel had to acknowledge that its enemies weren't going anywhere. The Arab states around it had to acknowledge that Israel wasn't going anywhere.

That ultimately led to an externalization of the problem and peace settlements. The problem in Palestine is that you still have the residue of previous wars in terms of subject populations that are very large, growing, and kept in place by various policies on all sides, but a dramatic imbalance of power. The Israeli armed forces and Israeli economic power have only grown from strength to strength over many decades, whereas the Palestinians have not.

The imbalance of power essentially is out of whack with the kind of solution that Rami wants. Elsewhere in the region, it wouldn't even be a question. It would just be Israeli domination of subject populations. Nobody got too upset in the region when other regional governments do the kinds of things the Israelis are doing. For various reasons, the Israelis are held to higher standards, as I think is appropriate, because we expect of them as a liberal democracy to be more than just an oppressor of local populations, but the big fact is--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Gideon Rose: How do you create a balance when you don't have a balance of power?

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one current news addendum to this and then we're going to take our second break and go on to part three of this 100 years conversation, the US and Iran in the Middle East. Looking at the current moment, obviously, things have deteriorated to the point of the war that's going on today on multiple fronts. President Biden is reviled by Palestinians and their supporters for the continued arming of Israel with no real humanitarian conditions, even as tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza. Biden was also trying to broker a ceasefire, which he hoped could lead to a longer-term settlement that also involved other Arab countries. That didn't work, at least not to this point.

Now, Donald Trump has been elected again with his history of staunch support for Israel, but also saying he wants Israel to finish this war, as I think the way he put it. Trump campaigned on America First isolationism, no more US involvement in endless wars. I wonder, Gideon, you first, if either of you see a genuine tension in the incoming administration between those goals or if Trump will continue to send arms by the billions of dollars with no conditions and continue to deploy US troops on warships to the region with the risk to American lives that that involves.

Gideon Rose: The real question is, what are the terms that the Israelis want to end the wars on? Because even if they defeat Hamas militarily, even if they defeat Hezbollah militarily as they are doing, even if Iran stays out, the question of what happens to the occupied territories, what happens to Gaza remains open. They hear there is a possibility for a deal.

The upside of Trump is he might actually be able to pull this off. Imagine a second Abraham Accords, a follow-on deal in which the Saudis and other states agree to recognize Israel. Israel agrees to have some kind of transition to autonomy or something with a revived PA, a non-Hamas leadership in the occupied territories. You end up merging towards an anti-Iran agreement that stabilizes the region. That's possible, but it would require the Israelis to shut down their hardliners.

Brian Lehrer: Right, but that's what Biden has been trying to do. Exactly what you just described. Various parties won't go along. Netanyahu won't go along, for example. What if it doesn't work, is really my question? How do you see the Trump administration then staying involved or engaging in America First isolationism and pulling back with money and troops if it doesn't work?

Gideon Rose: This is the big question, just as in Ukraine where the question is, would Russia take the deal the Trump administration wants to give it? If they don't, what will happen then? We don't know whether Putin or Netanyahu will take the deals the Trump administration wants to give them. It's a giant question mark. What will happen if they don't?

Brian Lehrer: Rami?

Rami Khouri: Yes, this is where I disagree with most of what Gideon said on this particular point. The idea of harnessing Abraham Accords II to form a regional coalition against Iran strikes me as the most effective way to perpetuate huge warfare across the region for decades and decades to come. I'm old enough to remember Alexander Haig and people trying to create anti-Iranian coalitions back in the '70s and '80s and it just doesn't work.

There's two problems that demonizing Iran as the source of all evil as before Iraq was. Before that, the PLO. Before that, the Soviet economy, the Soviet Union. Israel and the US together need to have a source of all evil that they can fight against and sell this to Western officials and publics, which they do very effectively. That's why we've had this nonstop regional warfare situation. Now, Iran is this bad guy.

I agree there should be a regional approach to resolving these issues. I'm in the middle of writing an article that will come out very soon looking at the grand bargain idea where you get the Saudis, Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and Iranians, and then a bunch of other people can be involved. Those critical parties working together on an agreement that essentially responds to their poor rights and demands and each side responds to the other side's core rights and demands.

I would just again adjust what Gideon said that the Palestinians would not just get autonomy. They'd get sovereignty, statehood, security, and dignity. Equal rights with the Israelis. This would be done in a way that satisfies everybody's need to be secure and safe. I believe it can be done. This is possibly one of the ways that people might appeal to Trump as his huge ego to be the great peacemaker and the historic figure that he could be the person who actually brought permanent peace and justice and stability to the Middle East.

Imagine if the Israelis and Palestinians and Lebanese and Iranians and Syrians and Saudis were all working together to create high-tech stuff and water desalination, the world's history would change if you had this enormous human talent from all of these countries and their resources working together for the common good, which is the whole vision of the Arab peace plan, which is to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and then move on to regional collaborations in all fields.

Gideon Rose: I share Rami's hopes, but I just don't think that's a realistic plan for right now. I wish we could get there someday.

Brian Lehrer: Which brings us explicitly to part three of this 100 years segment number 41 on the US involvement in the Middle East. The US and Iran. We'll get to that right after this. We have some Iranian-American callers calling in. That's really who's calling in on this segment, so we're going to get to some of you too. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Today, Thing No. 41, 100 years of US involvement in the Middle East. We've covered two of the three major topics that we have for this conversation. Obviously, this is one that could go on for hours and days and weeks and, unfortunately, decades. We've talked about oil. We've talked about Israel-Palestine.

Now, with our guests, Gideon Rose from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other things, and Rami Khouri from the Arab Center Washington, among other things. Finally, Iran. Again, backing up in this 100-year history to the year 1953 and a military coup inside that country. Again, to cite Britannica as a history source, it says, "Funded by the United States and the United Kingdom, the coup removed Mohammad Mosaddegh from power and restored Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as Iran's leader."

It says, "The United States took the leading role in a covert operation called Operation Ajax, whereby CIA-funded agents were used to foment unrest inside Iran by way of the harassment of religious and political leaders and a media disinformation campaign." Huh, media disinformation campaigns aren't new. "These efforts formally approved by President Eisenhower. It is generally agreed today," says Britannica, "that the 1953 coup sowed the seeds for the Islamic Revolution of 1979, in which the Shah was overthrown and went into exile. In 2013," it adds, "the CIA formally disclosed its role in the coup." Gideon, assuming you agree with that telling, why did we do it? Why was the US involved in such a thing in somebody else's country?

Gideon Rose: That's a little bit of a tendentious treatment actually. What happened was in the post-war era, the new Persian government decided to nationalize its oil company. The British were very upset with this because they had a large share of it and they didn't want to give it up. They essentially blockaded the government and put economic pressure on. The US is struggling to figure out what to do. They tried to get Mosaddegh to do something to make a compromise with the British. He wouldn't.

Ultimately, they got involved in a coup effort. It's one of these things like in Chile, where the government of Mosaddegh would probably have fallen anyway even if the US hadn't put some kind of attempt to topple it in place. The ultimate thing that happens is you get an authoritarian government under the Shah, which falls to another kind of authoritarian government under Khomeini. It's part of the general picture of unstable political development post-Ottoman Empire rather than a uniquely American or British evilness.

Brian Lehrer: I thought you were going to say it was mostly about the Cold War, but you kind of said it was mostly about oil.

Gideon Rose: It's about oil in the Cold War because the question becomes Mosaddegh, when he's trying to have his fight with the British, says, "Oh, I'm going to sell oil to the Russians." The Soviets had already been trying to take over some of the provinces near them. In this context, the question of not allowing a strategically important country like Iran to fall to the Soviet orbit meant that you ultimately wanted pro-Western rulers who you could live with in some way. That was common throughout the region. It still exists in places like Saudi Arabia, which is we're making the same deal with Saudi Arabia now.

Brian Lehrer: Bijan in Philadelphia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bijan, thank you for calling in.

Bijan: Hi, Brian, thank you. Thank you to your guest. Really interesting conversation. As it was going on, the thought that I had come to my mind, and I hate to make it a little bit more abstract, but particularly to Iran, just about how much of the history of contemporary Iran exists in the space between fantasy and reality and how much, at least in the diaspora, we really cling to one narrative or the other.

I think it's an attempt to stabilize yourself if you're in a free fall. It's analogous to hanging onto a cloud to try and slow down your ascent. Then the result is this living in a space in between two worlds over here and over there. I think for many of us as we listen in the conversations, this one is quite fruitful. Every time there's a big event in the Middle East, you read a 1,000-word think piece about what Iran is or what its role in the region is.

Sometimes you might say that's completely opposite of the experience I've had for 38 years of my life, or you might say that person really has their finger on it. Then the wind blows some more and everything seems to change again. I think, again, as a member of the diaspora listening to this conversation, it's about trying to create a stable foundation from which you can at least project something into the future. Unfortunately, all too often, we see that that foundation sifts like it's built on sand. Then it becomes more difficult to figure out what we're doing in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. We're going to go to another Iranian-American caller. Maryam in Scotch Plains, you're on WNYC. Hello, Maryam.

Maryam: Hi, Brian. A big fan of your show. Yes, I'm an Iranian American and I have two points to make. First, Gideon Rose has actually provided some inaccurate information, which not to point finger at him. I think it's a common misconceptions among US politicians or people who make policy advices to people. For example, the first thing he started saying that before World War I, Iran was basically a dependent colony and it was after that that Ottoman Empire fell apart.

All these countries, including Iran, became independent. Iran was never a colony of anywhere. Iran, of course, had bad governance, dynasties after dynasties of very poor governance after Safavids. In fact, the fights between the wars between Safavids and Ottomans were the source of weakening of both of these two civilizations to the point that both of them went downhill for the centuries to come unfortunately. This is one thing.

The second thing is you started your segment with 1953 coup. Well, that is the seed of all our common experiences since then for the last 70 years generations after generations. If the US and Brits had stepped out of that country, had let that democratic government for the first time to succeed, we would never have had the revolution. We would never have had all that mistrust that still exists. All the problems that have come after that one after another, they would not have happened. Again, I think Gideon was, again, pushing a narrative that that was the essential thing to do. No, it was not. Why? Doesn't want to accept that staying out of people's business would, in fact, be better off for everyone, including US.

Brian Lehrer: Maryam, I'm going to leave it there because we have about three minutes left in the show, but thank you very much. Gideon, that was addressed to you.

Gideon Rose: She's correct that Iran was not a direct colony, but it was still influenced by colonial powers like Russia and Britain to the point where it was no longer really autonomous back in the day.

Brian Lehrer: Anything else on that as the root of all evil in US-Iran relations ever since?

Gideon Rose: The real question is political stability in the Gulf and the mixture of that with economic development and how the Gulf relates to the outside world. Geopolitics and power are at the root of all this, much more, I think, than people would like them to be, but they're still going to be there. The question is, how do you deal with them?

Brian Lehrer: Rami-- Oh, go ahead. Anything you want to say?

Rami Khouri: Yes, just to follow up there from what Gideon said, geopolitics and power, and I would add. That's a very common and very American Western view I would add to it, the Middle East component, which is social justice. The 800 million people in the Middle East, in Turkey and Iran and the Arab countries and Israel, roughly most of them don't have the right to express themselves freely or be taken seriously.

They're increasingly living in difficult conditions, poverty and inequality, et cetera. The sense of social justice is so powerful and it drives a lot of the events in this region. Brian, in your wisdom, you did mention the two critical dates, 1917 and 1953. I tell a lot of people in my talks and interviews and what I said, "Look, if you want to understand the Middle East in one sentence, it's 1917 and 1953." It's the relationship between humiliation and resistance. '17 and '53 humiliated the Palestinians and the Arabs and the Iranians.

In return, they resisted in various forms, military, political, cultural, social, economic. They're still resisting. Those two core dates have to be recognized. It's no accident that the pro-Israeli forces in the US that I interact with a lot and still learn from refuse to talk about history. They don't want to talk about history. You and your wisdom and we in our rational approach are talking about history because you can't solve the present problems unless you understand how we got here.

I tend to be more confident that human nature ultimately will prevail. Even power, which Gideon mentioned, the US power in Afghanistan and Vietnam, the French in Algeria was unmatched anywhere in the world. They were sent home scurrying like defeated rats because they misused their power. Maybe rats is too strong a word, but defeated aggressors. Power doesn't always prevail in the end. I think human dignity and social justice are more powerful forces. That's what you hear coming out of the people of this region.

Brian Lehrer: I would add that in my experience. A lot of people who want to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do want to talk about history, but they start the calendar. They start the clock at different points, depending on who they want to blame more for the current situation. That is another segment on this show where we are not going to solve the Middle East today. Hopefully, for all of you, that was a useful deep dive in the context of our 100 Years of 100 Things series. It's been 100 years of US involvement in the Middle East.

We thank our guests, Gideon Rose, adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, the former editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and author of the book How Wars End, and Rami Khouri, senior policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, op-ed contributor to Al Jazeera online, co-author of the book Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters, and non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC, think tank. Thank you both so much for giving us so much time today. We really appreciate it.

Gideon Rose: Thank you, Brian.

Rami Khouri: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Brian Lehrer: Stay tuned for All Of It, everybody.

 

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