Andrew Cooper. The Oil Kings; How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East. Simon & Schuster, 2011.
Andrew Cooper has taken on the complicated task of describing oil diplomacy during the Nixon and Ford administrations from 1969 to 1977. His leading characters are Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and Mohammad Rezi Pahlavi, Shah of Iran from 1944 until deposed by the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Former Vice-President, Richard Nixon made a trip to Iran in 1967. With little in common, he and the Shah took a liking to each other. His conversations with the Shah convinced him that secular, authoritarian regimes like Iran’s were essential to the stability of the region. Hence Iran should not be pressured into adopting Western notions of democracy and human rights. Those views, according to Cooper, would govern the Nixon Administration’s policies toward Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States during his Presidencies.
Henry Kissinger was also a strong advocate for a commitment to Iran. Together Iran and the U.S. would be the guardians of the Persian Gulf and its oil resources. In the first few months of Nixon’s presidency, the Shah made a state visit to the U.S. In a discussion of the Iran’s role in America’s energy future, both Nixon and Kissinger gave the Shah a verbal commitment, a “blank check,” agreeing to his unilaterally raising oil prices, which both parties acknowledged were bargain-basement. The Shah would, in turn, use his petrol-dollars to buy U.S. military equipment and technical assistance. He also had ambitious plans for Iran’s social and economic transformation, the so-called “White Revolution,” to be financed with those revenues.
The Shah was a ‘big spender.’ Some in the Nixon Administration were concerned about his indulging himself in military hardware for which his country seemed to have no use. And could ill-afford.
The Shah also wished a continuation of the joint support for the Iraqi Kurds who were in revolt against Sunni Arab domination and Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. “Continued” because the American Central Intelligence Agency had been supporting the Kurd’s resistance with arms channeled through Iran.
Augmenting his commitments, Iran would continue to maintain unofficial but good relations with Israel. It took no part in the Egyptian/ Syrian attack on Israel in October 1973. It continued to supply Israel with its oil during the Arab oil embargo that followed.
Cooper does an amazingly good job of relating oil politics in the Middle East to the turmoil within the Nixon Administration resulting from the Watergate burglary in 1972 and Nixon’s forced resignation that first year of his second term.
The Shah was an early believer in “peek oil.” Middle Eastern oil resources were finite. Western industrial economies should pursue other sources of energy, but that would not happen as long as petroleum remained so cheap. He contended that the price of oil should be allowed to rise to the point that it equaled the price of other forms of energy. Moreover, oil prices should reflect the rising cost of the goods and services that Iran bought from the U.S. and its other trading partners. Cooper makes the Shah out to be a reasonable man and looking ahead.
President Ford had a different view of oil prices. He blamed the troubled American economy in the 1970s on the “oil shock.” Oil producers must hold the line on prices in view of the harm that “unreasonable” increases would cause to industrial economies. (Oil prices, in terms of real dollars, remained around $20.00 per barrel throughout the period from 1969 to 1977.)
Ford invoked the threat of the Communist parties winning control of European democracies as reason for keeping oil prices low. Cooper makes Ford into a “cold war warrior,” not capable of the foreign policy successes of the Nixon Administration and Henry Kissinger’s ‘realism.’ Kissinger, in response, was critical of the Ford Administration’s shifting our allegiance away from secular Moslem rulers like Mohammad Rezi Pahlavi and toward a dependence on conservative regimes, particularly the Saudis.
The Oil Kings does not illuminate the recent “Arab spring” or our renewed efforts to isolate Iran. It would take several additional volumes to cover the thirty-five years since 1977. But Andrew Cooper is the man to make the effort, if this book is any indication of the quality of his investigative journalism.