America’s Ties to Israel Might Lead It to War With Iran
Donald Trump is once again threatening war with Iran just six months after bombing the Islamic Republic in June. Part of the reason for his hawkishness is his closeness to Israel, whose increasingly reckless actions threaten the whole Middle East.
After the end of the Cold War, it was possible that the US and Iran might have normalized relations. But Israel’s commitment to dominating the region stood in the way. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)
Two new histories of US-Iran relations ask why these nations — once strategically linked by Cold War imperatives — have been hostile to one another for almost half a century. Afshin Matin-Asgari’s Axis of Resistance: A History of Iran–US Relations engages this question through the lens of imperialism, while Dalia Dassa Kaye’s Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy offers an account of US-Iran relations in the language of the foreign policy establishment. While the former sheds light on the US role in undermining the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution, the latter refuses to interrogate the reasons for this hawkishness.
The Revolution and Its Aftermath
For Afshin Matin-Asgari, a US academic from the Iranian diaspora, the poor relations are a product of US refusal to accept Iranian autonomy. Before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iran was a client state whose primary purpose, from the US perspective, was as a market for arms and as a bulwark against the Soviets in the Persian Gulf.
Matin-Asgari’s focus on US imperialism frees him from idealizing US-Iran relations prior to the revolution. His focus on the revolution itself is perhaps unsurprising given that he was among the leftist students studying in the United States who returned to participate in the events of 1978–79.
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