Iran: the foreign policy puzzle that keeps defeating Washington

After the Suez Crisis, the region had effectively passed into the hands of the new superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. By the early 1970s the United States already had a modest military footprint in the Persian Gulf: a naval presence in Bahrain under a 1948 agreement, limited forces in Saudi Arabia based on a 1951 arrangement, and the first steps toward a military presence in the newly formed United Arab Emirates in 1972. The hostage crisis ended in January 1981 with the signing of the Algiers Accords, under which the US agreed to unfreeze Iranian assets and refrain from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs.

Author: RT

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