The Cold War in the Middle East 1950-1989

1. COLD WAR IN MIDDLE EAST
BY
BILAL MAJID

3. EPISODES OF COLD WAR IN
MIDDL-EAST
There were four main episodes of Cold war in middle east.
1. The Suez Crises 1956.
2. The Six Day war 1967.
3. The October War 1973.
4. Camp David Accord 1978.

4. THE COLD WAR IN MIDLE-EAST: SUEZ CRISES TO CAMP
DAVID ACCORDS
THE COLD WAR saw a deepening Soviet-American rivalry in the Middle-
East, from the mid 1950’s to the late 1970’s on three levels.
1.A geopolitical struggle to recruit allies and secure access to strategic
resources(oil).
2. Diplomatic maneuvers to prevent the Arab-Israeli conflict from
escalating into a super power confrontation.
3. Ideological competition for the future of the Muslim world, where
secular nationalists and Islamic radicals shook the foundations of colonial
empires and absolute monarchies throughout the region.

5. Precursors of War
1. American involvement in Eastern Europe and Asia prompted
Truman to vest the cause of protecting Western interests in
Middle-East to English.
2. Creation of Israel May 1948.
3.US recognition of Israel.
4. Nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company(AIOC) By
Mohammad Mossadiq 1951.
5. Ouster of Mossadiq, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi assumed the
power.

6. MOHAMMAD MOSSADIQ SHAH REZA PAHALVI

7. The Suez Canal Affair
1. Suez canal served as imperial life line,
facilitating the flow of oil, trade and troops
towards East-West.
2. The canal was operated by Anglo-French
company & was protected by 30,000 British
Tommies stationed at the Suez base.
3. The base served as home to Royal Air Force
squadron in early years of Cold war against Soviet
union

8. GAMAL ABDEL NASSER

9. Challenge to Anglo-French
control
1.Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Cairo.
2. Nasser pressed British in 1954 to withdraw
from its Suez base.
3. Israeli attack on Egypt and Washington’s refusal
to provide arms.
4. Arms from Czechoslovakia in September 1955.
5. Nasser the “Poster Boy” opposes CENTO and
other western defense organizations and supports
NAM, fit well with SOVIET plans.

10. ASWAN DAM PROJECT
Determined to prevent Russian encroachments in the
Middle East, USA and Britain Premiers employed
economic aid to draw Egypt back toward the West.
2. The
United States, Britain, and the World Bank offered
Nasser $200 million to
build a high dam on the Upper Nile at Aswan under
following promises;
a. Nasser should tone down his anti-Israeli rhetoric.
b. He must take part in secret peace negotiations with Israeli premier David Ben
Gurion.
c. He must distance himself from Kremlin.

12. NASSER’S RESPONSE
1.Nasser’s actions during the spring of 1956 gave
neither the White House nor Whitehall much cause for
optimism.
2. The Egyptian leader refused face-to-face talks with
Ben-Gurion.
3.He encouraged Jordan’s King Hussein to expel British
military advisers from
Amman, and recognized the People’s Republic of China.
4. By the summer of 1956, the Aswan Dam project was
dead on arrival both
in Washington and London.

13. US RESPONSE
1. On July 19, Eisenhower decided that “we should
withdraw
the U.S. offer.
2. After alerting Whitehall, John Foster Dulles informed the
Egyptian ambassador that “no single project was as
unpopular today as the Aswan Dam.”
3. On the other side of the
Atlantic, Prime Minister Anthony Eden and Foreign
Secretary Selwyn Lloyd questioned Nasser’s bona fides and
promoted pro-Western moderates like Iraqi
prime minister Nuri Said to curtail the spread of Pan-
Arabism throughout
the region.

14. ANTHONY ADEN
NURI SAID

15. SUEZ CRISES 1956
1.Nasser was not surprised by America’s decision, but he did resent the abrupt
and condescending manner in which it was communicated.
2. He secured $400 million commitment from the Kremlin in early June 1956.
3. Bolstered by Soviet military and economic aid,
on July 26 Nasser announced that Egypt was expropriating the Anglo-French
company that operated the Suez Canal and would use the tolls to finance the
Aswan Dam.
4. British officials were annoyed and discarded Nasser's statement and "agreed
that our essential interests in this area must, if necessary, be safeguarded by
military action.”
5. Eisenhower also
regarded Nasser’s actions as outrageous, but he worried that armed
intervention would backfire and instructed Dulles to seek a diplomatic
solution.
6. While
the diplomats talked, the Egyptians made certain not to disrupt the oil tankers
passing through the canal, reinforcing the American view that any resort to
military force would be misguided and premature.

17. SUEZ CRISES CONTINOUES……..
7. Eisenhower directed Eden to resolve issue by
diplomacy and covert action.
8. “The Americans’ main contention,” Eden
remarked privately on September 23, “is that we
can bring Nasser down by degrees rather on the
Mossadeg lines.”
9. Unbeknown to Eisenhower and
Dulles,however,Britain and France were
conspiring to regain control of the Suez Canal by
force with help from Israel.
10. Britain was desperate to show his iron, France
wanted to avoid hurdle in Algeria and Israel eyed
on Straits of Tiran.

18. CULMINATION OF FINAL
ASSAULT
1. Tripartite meeting at Sevres(France) and deciding
of ‘war plan” on 23 October 1956.
2.On 30 October Israel staged a lightening attack on
Egypt.
3. Eden and Mollet issued their ultimatums.
4. Nasser scuttled several Egyptian freighters to
block the Suez Canal.
5. Nasser’s Syrian allies blew up a British-owned
pipeline that carried Iraqi petroleum to the
Mediterranean, the oil crisis that Britain and France
had hoped to avoid suddenly materialized.

20. SOVIET-US RESPONSE TO
TRIPARTE INVASION.
1.The American response was clear and consistent from the
very outset. Washington sought an immediate ceasefire under
UN auspices, warned London and Paris not to send in troops,
and worked to prevent Moscow from intervening.
2. Soviet leaders were
eager to divert attention from their own impending military
intervention to depose a reformist regime in Hungary.
3.Khrushchev embraced Nasser, issued thinly veiled nuclear
threats against Britain and France,
and offered to send in Russian “peacekeepers” to guarantee
regional stability.

21. US’S CONCERN
1.Despite America’s pressure Whitehall pressed on and tried to retake
the canal with gunboats, bombers and paratroops.
2.The White House employed
financial leverage to force the British to stop shooting and start
withdrawing from Egypt.
3. America halted Britain’s armed intervention and removed the specter
of Soviet troops in the Middle East.
4. The biggest challenge the United States faced, however, was Israel,
which refused to pull its troops out of the Sinai and Gaza.
5. Eisenhower
threatened to impose economic sanctions in February 1957.
6. Ben-Gurion did not budge until the UN agreed to station blue-
helmeted
observers along the Egyptian frontier and the United States guaranteed
Israel’s right of free passage through the Straits of Tiran.

22. POST WAR CONCERNS
1.Seriously at odds with its friends in London
and Tel Aviv and deeply mistrustful of the
nationalist regime in Cairo, Washington
worried that Moscow might move into the
vacuum in early 1957.
2. US feared of soviet eyeing on Middle-East
“to seize the oil, to cut the Canal and pipelines
…, and thus seriously to
weaken Western civilization.
3. The formal membership in Baghdad Pact.

23. EISENHOWER’S DOCTRINE
1.The preferred option at the White house to contain
soviet union come to be known as ”Eisenhower’s
Doctrine”
2. Based on a joint resolution
approved by Congress in March 1957, providing up to
$200 million in US economic aid and authorizing the
use of American troops to assist any Middle Eastern
nation threatened by armed aggression from any
country controlled by international communism.
3. Washington backed pro-western moderates like
King Saud of KSA and Jordan’s king Husain as
counterweights to Nasser

24. KRIMLAN’S CONCERN
1. Khrushchev rejected Syrian
request for Soviet MIGs, and
pilots to fill them in March 1957.
2. Kremlin's threat that Eisenhower
might use force to protect
American interests in middle-
east.
3. Kremlin suspects Nasser’s Pan-
Arabism plan.

25. Political turmoil in middle-east
1. Syria joined United Arab Republic(UAR)
IN FEBRUARY 1958.
2. Pro-Nasser Muslims in Lebanon
challenged the authority of President
Camille Chamoun.
3. Left-wing Iraqi officers overthrew Nuri
Said on july14 1958.
4. Camille Chamoun was threatened and
requested USA for help.
5. White House send 14,000 US Marines to
Beirut.

26. LEADERS UNDER THREAT

27. 6. Soviet Union alarmed at US intervention in
Lebanon and supported Iraq revolution.
7.” The Destruction of Iraq”(Khrushchev's
concern)
8. Dull’s hypothesis. “Turkey, Iran and Pakistan
would feel – if we do not act – that our
inaction is because we are afraid of the
Soviet Union,”
9. “Americas involvement is necessary”.
10. ‘Nationalism against Communism’

28. US Accommodates to Pan-Arabism
1. From 1959-1960 Eisenhower
sought an accommodation with
Nasser, the most vocal advocate of
Pan-Arabism.
2. US distances from Israel.
3.”Food Peace Program.
4.Eisenhower-Nasser meet in
September 1960 at UNGA Session.
5. Eisenhower promised to respect
UAR position as neutral unless it will
not come under Soviet domination.
6. Nasser headed home hoping better
relations with Washington.

29. TOWARDS SIX DAY WAR
1. JFK inherited Oval office in 1960.
2. He was determined to expand Eisenhower’s
rapprochement with Nasser.
3.Kennedy administration offered Egypt a three-year
$500million aid package.
4. As grateful
as he was for US economic assistance, however,
Nasser was not about to abandon Pan-Arabism,
especially after Syria seceded from the UAR and Crown
Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the heir apparent to King
Saud, challenged Egypt’s leadership of the Arab world.

30. • 5.In summer of 1962, Nasser hired West German
scientists to develop short range missiles, asked the
Soviet Union for
medium-range bombers, and stepped up his long-
distance exhortations for revolutionary change in
Riyadh.
6. In late September 1962, pro-Nasser officers seized
power in Yemen.
7.Crown prince Faisal of KSA supported royalist
guerrillas with men money and material.
8. Nasser sent 60,000 troops and several squadrons of
soviet made aircraft to support new Yemen Arabic
Republic(YAR).
9.White House publically recognized the YAR.

31. SAUDI-EGYPT TUSSLE
1.Egyptian bombers struck royalist base camps
inside Saudi Arabian early 1963.
2. Kennedy agreed to provide Faisal with a
squadron of US air force jets as a deterrent.
3. American and
Egyptian pilots were playing a high-altitude game
of cat and mouse along the Saudi–Yemeni border
and Congress was on the verge of banning PL-480
wheat shipments to Egypt.

32. LYNDON B JHONSON

33. Breaking of Relations
1. Relations between Cairo and Washington deteriorated
rapidly once Lyndon B. Johnson moved into the White
House.
2.Irritated by what he regarded as
American economic blackmail, Nasser tilted toward the
Soviet Union in 1964,welcomingKhrushchev to Cairo in
May to celebrate the completion of the
Aswan Dam.
3. Kremlin calls for “wars of national liberation” from
Southeast Asia to the Middle East, and heralding the
creation of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jerusalem in 1964.

35. 4. Egyptian mob sacked the offices of the US Information Agency in Cairo
in December.
5. Johnson froze American grain deliveries. Nasser responded by inviting
the Vietcong to open an embassy in Egypt in the spring of 1965 and
requesting more
military hardware from Moscow.
6. Hafez al-Assad, a pro-Nasser leader seized power in Damascus in
February 1966.
7. He concluded an arms deal with the Kremlin that would bring Syria
hundreds of tanks and a squadron of MIG-21 jet fighters.
8. While the Soviets were moving closer to Nasser and the Arab radicals,
the
Americans were moving closer to the Israelis.
9.USA started armament of Israel.
10. Johnson approved the sale of 210 tanks to Israel in April 1965 and 48
A-4 Sky hawk jet fighters a year later.

36. HAFZAL AL ASAD

37. ARAB-ISRAIL CONFLECT: THE
BIGNING
1. PLO guerrillas
attacked Israeli villages from base camps in Jordan, Israel
struck back, destroying
the town of Samua in the Jordanian controlled West Bank in
November1966.
2. Syrian artillery began to shell northern Israel in solidarity
with the PLO early in the new year.
3.Israel eyed on coup d'état Syria for regime change.
4. USSR vowed to
defend its new friends in Damascus and warned Nasser that
the Israelis had actually mobilized fifteen brigades for an
attack on the Golan Heights.

38. 4. Israel denied the charges of invading Syria
and in turn accused Kremlin for exaggerated
the threat.
5. Based on what was at best misinformation
and at worst disinformation, Nasser
mobilized the Egyptian army in mid-May.
6. He demanded that UN should withdraw
the observers it had stationed in Gaza and
the Sinai valley.
7. He closed the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli
shipping.

39. 8. Israel regarded Nasser’s act as a war.
9. For three weeks, the Johnson
administration pressed Israel not to attack
and urged
the Kremlin to help persuade Egypt to reopen
the straits.

40. ISRAIL LAUNCHED ATTACK
1. on June 5, when dozens of jets marked with the Star of David
knocked out Nasser’s air force on the tarmac while hundreds of
Israeli tanks smashed through Egyptian front lines in the Sinai,
seized Gaza, and raced west through sand dunes and scrub
brush toward the Suez Canal.
2.Nasser angrily appealed to the Soviet Union and to other Arab
states for help.
3. Kremlin condemned Israel as an aggressor and called
for a ceasefire.
4. Jordan’s King Hussein sent his army into action against the
Jewish state.
5. The combined forces suffered and Israel seized east Jerusalem and
the rest of west bank.
6. Pro-Nassern protests in Kuwait and Libya forced these two pro-
western regimes to halt oil exports to United States.

41. 7.Eager to avert a more serious crisis, the Johnson
administration pressed Israel to accept a UN sanctioned
ceasefire on June 10.
8. With Israeli forces
just forty miles from Damascus, Aleksei Kosygin, Khrushchev’s
successor as Soviet premier, used the “hot line” to warn the
White House that Soviet intervention was imminent.
9. Lyndon Johnson decided to call the Kremlin’s bluff
and sent the US Sixth Fleet into the war zone in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
10. Israel accepted the ceasefire, Kosygin backtracked, and
as one White House aide put it, “everyone relaxed a bit as it
became clear that the fighting was petering out.

42. 11. Israelis controlled Gaza, the Sinai, East
Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan
Heights while Nasser was thoroughly
humiliated.

44. POST WAR DEVELOPMENTS
1.On 10 June 1967 Kosygin and Johnson met in
Glassboro, New Jersey, to discuss how best to
avoid another crisis in the Middle East.
2. On June 19,
Johnson had unveiled a five-point peace plan
whose chief ingredients were Israeli withdrawal
from the occupied territories and an Arab to a
formal peace treaty.

46. THE DECIDING THREE NO’S
1. Israeli troops dug
in for a long stay from the Golan Heights to the
Suez Canal, prompting Nasser to issue his
infamous “Three No's” in late August at an Arab
summit held in Khartoum, Sudan.
a. “no recognition of”,
b. “no negotiations with”,
and “no peace for
Israel.”

47. UN RESOLUTION
1. US officials worked behind the scenes to secure
support for UN Security Council Resolution 242, which
called for the Israelis to
withdraw from the occupied territories, for the Arabs
to respect the sovereignty
of all states in the Middle East, and for both sides to
sit-down together at the negotiating table.
2. Resolution
242 was adopted unanimously by the Security Council
on November 22,1967, and UN Secretary-general U
Thant sent Gunnar Jarring, a Swedish diplomat, to the
Middle East in December to discuss its implementation

48. THE 1973 OCTOBER WAR
• Oct. 6, 1973 - Egypt and Syria launch a coordinated attack on Israeli
positions along the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. Egyptian troops
cross the canal, secure a beachhead in the eastern portion of the Sinai
Desert, breaching Israel's Bar-Lev line. Syrian troops defeat Israeli forces
on Mt. Hermon in northern Israel.
• Oct. 7 - Syria captures most of the southern portion of the Golan Heights
• Oct. 8 - Israel launches its first counterattack against Egypt, which is
unsuccessful. The Soviet Union supplies additional arms to Syria and
Egypt.
• Oct. 9 - Against orders, reserve Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon launches a
counterattack against Egyptian forces in the canal area. Sharon's actions
lead to moves for his dismissal.
• Oct. 9 - U.S. Jewish leader Max Fisher urges President Richard Nixon in a
meeting at the White House to "please send the Israelis what they
need." That night, Nixon tells Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that "all
your aircraft and tank losses will be replaced."

49. CONTINOUES……………
*Oct. 10 - Washington authorizes an airlift of military supplies to Israel
after the Soviet Union sends additional arms to Egypt. Israel
successfully attacks Egyptian troops that had moved out of range of
their protective surface-to-air-missile umbrella. Israel has recaptured
most of the territory in the southern Golan.
*Oct. 11 - Israel attacks Syria from its positions on the Golan Heights.
The Soviet Union's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly
Dobrynin, tells U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Soviet
airborne forces are on the alert to defend Damascus. Kissinger warns
Dobrynin that if the Soviets send troops to the Middle East, the United
States would as well.
* Oct. 12-13 - The United States sends additional arms shipments to
Israel.
* Oct. 14 - In one of the largest tank-to-tank battles ever fought, Israel
is estimated to have lost 10 tanks, the Egyptians anywhere from 250
to 300. Iraq and Jordan send troops to the Golan, in response to
appeals for assistance from Syria.

51. •Oct. 16 - The first Israeli troops cross the Suez Canal. Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat asks the Soviet Union to convene the United Nations and seek
a cease-fire.
•Oct. 17 - Ten Arab member-nations of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries announce they will cut oil production until Israel
withdraws from Arab territory captured during the 1967 Six-Day War and
the rights of the Palestinian people were "restored." The embargo was not
completely lifted until March 1974.
•Oct. 20 - Israeli forces reach within 10 miles of Damascus.
•Oct. 21 - Israeli forces, led by reserve Maj. Gen. Avraham Adan, encircle
the Egyptian Third Army. Forces led by Sharon take up positions less than
40 miles from Cairo.
•Oct. 22 - Israel overtakes all Syrian positions on Mt. Hermon. The United
Nations adopts Security Council Resolution 338, which calls for an
immediate cease-fire, the implementation of Security Resolution 242,
which called for an exchange of land for peace, and negotiations between
the "parties concerned" aimed at establishing a "just and durable peace.“
•

53. • Oct. 23 - Fighting continues despite the cease-fire. The United
Nations Security Council passes Resolution 339, which restated
the group's call for an immediate cease-fire and called for the
dispatch of U.N. observers to the area.
•Oct. 24 - A second cease-fire is put into effect, but fighting
continues between Egypt and Israel. As a result, the Soviet
Union threatens the United States that it will send troops to
support the Egyptians. The United States puts its nuclear forces
on a higher alert. The Soviet Union withdraws its threat the
following day.
•Oct. 28 - Israeli and Egyptian military leaders meet to
implement the cease-fire at Kilometer 101 marker in the Sinai.
It is the first meeting between military representatives of the
two countries in 25 years. By the end of the war, Israel has lost
roughly 2,500 soldiers, Syria 3,500. Egyptian casualties are
unknown.

54. CAMP DAVID ACCORD
• The Camp David Accords had their origin in Sadat’s unprecedented visit to
Jerusalem Sadat’s on November 19-21, 1977, to address the Israeli Knesset,
the first visit by an Arab head of state to Israel. Sadat was named “Man of
the Year for 1977″ by Time Magazine.
• Sadat’s visit initiated peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt that
went on sporadically through 1977 and into 1978. Reaching a deadlock,
both Sadat and Begin accepted President Carter’s invitation to a US –
Israeli – Egyptian summit meeting at the Presidential retreat, Camp
David (in Maryland) on September 5, 1978.
• From September 5 through September 17, 1978, twelve days of
secret negotiations were conducted at Camp David between Sadat
and Begin, mediated by US President Jimmy Carter

56. •The Israeli-Egyptian negotiations were concluded by
the signing of two agreements at the White House.
•The agreements were based on UN resolutions 242
and 338, and were meant to constitute a basis for
peace between Egypt and Israel, as well as to reach
“a just, comprehensive, and durable settlement of
the Middle East conflict” for all neighbors willing to
negotiate with Israel.
•The first dealt with the future of the Sinai and peace
between Israel and Egypt, to be concluded within
three months. Israel agreed to withdraw from all of
the Sinai

57. •The second agreement was a framework establishing a format for the
conduct of negotiations for the establishment of an autonomy regime
in the West Bank and Gaza to settle the question of the Palestinians.
•The Israel-Egypt agreement clearly defined the future relations
between the two countries, all aspects of withdrawal from the Sinai,
military arrangements in the peninsula such as demilitarization and
limitations, as well as the supervision mechanism
•The framework agreement regarding the future of Judea, Samaria and
Gaza was less clear and was later interpreted differently by Israel,
Egypt, and the US.
•President Carter witnessed the Accords which were signed by
Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin.
•The two agreements between Israel and Egypt led to a negotiated
peace between those two nations in 1979, the first between Israel and
any of its Arab neighbors. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel
Peace Prize for their historic agreements.

60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28nFObH
0Bck&feature=relmfu