Strategy and Politics in the Middle East, 1954-1960 - Defending the Northern Tier (Hardcover, New)

The period covered by this book, 1954-60, witnessed a significant change in Allied strategy for the Middle East. Its focus switched from Egypt to the states of the so-called northern tier of the Middle East: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. Allied planning focused now on holding up a future Soviet offensive against the Middle East at the strategic passes that cut through the Zagros mountains, across the Iraqi-Iranian border. This was to be done with the indigenous ground forces of the northern tier states, complemented by Allied strategic and tactical nuclear bombing. In 1955, the Baghdad Pact became the political expression of the new strategy. The economic and strategic interests of the West in the Middle East provide the context for the tumultuous events of this period: the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1954 for the evacuation of Egypt; the formation of the Baghdad Pact in 1955; the Suez Crisis which, together with the escalating Arab-Israeli conflict, erupted into open war in November 1956; and finally, the crises that rocked the Middle East in July 1958: the fall of the Hashemite dynasty and the ancien regime in Iraq, and the British and American military interventio in Jordan a