The Penguin History of the World

This limited perception was also for a long time obscured and confused by the Cold War. The shape of that conflict sometimes blurred into older frameworks, too; to some observers an old-fashioned Russian desire for influence in the area seemed to be a strand in Soviet policy now nearer satisfaction than at any time in the past. The Soviet Union had by 1970 a worldwide naval presence rivalling that of the United States and established even in the Indian Ocean. Following British withdrawal from Aden in 1967, that base had been used by the Soviets with the agreement of the South Yemen government. All this was taking place at a time when further south, too, there had been strategic setbacks for the Americans. The coming of the Cold War to the Horn of Africa and the former Portuguese colonies had added significance to events taking place further north.

Yet Soviet policy, in a longer perspective, does not appear to have benefited much within the Muslim world from the notable disarray of American policy in the mid-1970s in the Middle East. Egypt had by then fallen out with Syria and had turned to the United States in the hope of making a face-saving peace with Israel. When in 1975 the General Assembly of the United Nations denounced Zionism as a form of racism and granted the PLO ‘observer’ status in the Assembly, Egypt was inevitably more isolated from other Arab states. By this time, the PLO’s activity across the northern border was not only harassing Israel, but also making Lebanon, whose élites were very Europeanized, a PLO sanctuary, followed by its ruin and disintegration. In 1978 Israel invaded southern Lebanon in the hope of ending the PLO raids. Although the non-Islamic world applauded when the Israeli and Egyptian prime ministers met in Washington the following year to agree a peace providing for Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai, the Egyptian three years later paid the price of assassination by those who felt he had betrayed the Palestinian and Arab cause.

The limited settlement between Israel and Egypt owed much to President Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate who had won the American presidential election of 1976. American morale was by then suffering from other setbacks than those in the Middle East. The Vietnam War had destroyed one president and his successor’s presidency had been built on the management of American defeat and the peace settlement (and it was soon clear how little that settlement was worth). There was in the background, too, the fear many Americans shared of the rising strength of the USSR in ballistic missiles. All this affected American reactions to an almost wholly unforeseen event, the overthrow of the shah of Iran. This not only dealt a damaging blow to the United States, but also revealed a potentially huge new dimension to the troubles of the Middle East and the volatility of Islam.

Long the recipient of American favour as a reliable ally, in January 1979 the shah was driven from his throne and country by a coalition of outraged liberals and Islamic conservatives. An attempt to secure constitutional government soon collapsed as popular support rallied to the Islamic faction. Iran’s traditional ways and social structure had been shaken by a policy of modernization in which the shah had followed – with less caution – his father Reza Khan. Almost at once, there emerged a Shi’ite Islamic Republic, led by an elderly and quite fanatical cleric. The United States quickly recognized the new regime, but unavailingly. It was tarred with guilt by association as the patron of the former shah and the outstanding embodiment of capitalism and western materialism. It was small consolation that the Soviet Union was soon undergoing similar vilification by the Iranian religious leaders, as a second ‘Satan’ threatening the purity of Islam.

Soon after the Iranian revolution, students in Tehran worked off some of their exasperation by storming the American embassy and seizing diplomats and others as hostages. A startled world suddenly found the Iranian government supporting the occupiers, taking custody of the hostages and endorsing the students’ demands for the return of the shah to face trial. President Carter could hardly have faced a more awkward situation, for at that moment American policy in the Islamic world was above all preoccupied with a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. A severance of diplomatic relations with Iran and the imposition of economic sanctions were the first responses. Then came an attempted rescue operation, which failed dismally. The unhappy hostages were in the end to be recovered by negotiation (and, in effect, a ransom: the return of Iranian assets in the United States, which had been frozen at the time of the revolution), but the humiliation of the Americans was by no means the sole or even the major importance of the episode.