Since 1945

Taught by: [Imperator]



Sections in order

1. Israel
2. Iran
3. Iraq




Israel

In 1948 the British mandate of Palestine was divided into two separate states, one Jewish and one Muslim. The Arab nations felt threatened by this new non-Islamic state in the center of the Middle East and attacked Israel. The Israelis crushed this coalition of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Despite the defeat, these nations refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist and launched another war in 1967, prompting Israel to begin bombing military targets in all three nations and seizing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 1973, the Arabs attacked for a third time and the United Nations had to bring an end to the conflict. In 1982 Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in return for recognition and peace. Around this time the Palestinians became more violent and began launching terrorist attacks that persist to this day. Hope for peace in the form of former President Bush’s “Road Map to Peace” fell flat and tensions remain high between Israelis and Palestinians especially after several short wars between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel.




Iran

Beginning in 1925, the Shah (King) ruled Iran and pushed for western reforms and culture to be brought into Iran. Some Muslims were disaffected by this change and preferred a government based on Islamic law. Leading this movement was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose revolution ousted the Shah in 1979, making Iran a secular, anti-western nation called the Islamic Republic of Iran. Islamic law continues to be the guiding influence in the country today.

In November 1979, Iranian students seized 66 Americans from the American Embassy in Tehran sparking the Iran Hostage Crises. 52 of these people would be held for 444 days while the other 14 were released. In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran, which encouraged the Iranian government to resolve the crises and caused the release of the Americans on January 20, 1981.

In 2005, the international community learned that Iran had a secret nuclear weapons program although the government maintains that the program is for peaceful nuclear energy only. This provoked another crisis between the U.S. and Iran as former President Bush and the United Nations tried to force a freeze of the program. The Revolutionary Guard, the elite arm of Iran’s military, has recently been proved to be supplying both Iraqi insurgents and Afghan Taliban fighters with weapons, which has heightened tensions.




Iraq

In 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. He was a brutal totalitarian that held the country in a vice. Tensions with Iran erupted into the Iran-Iraq War in September 1980, which lasted until 1988. The war was extremely bloody and costly to both nations. Hussein deployed chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in the north of Iraq during the same time. The cease-fire in 1988 ended the war but solved none of the issues that had started it.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein again aggressively invaded a nation, this time tiny but oil rich Kuwait. The following year a coalition of Arab nations led by the United States defeated Iraq and forced them to withdraw from the nation. Then in March of 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq again because of fears that Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi army was crushed quickly by U.S. forces but an insurgency flared up that spread violence across the nation culminating in 2006 with sectarian violence reaching levels high enough some deemed it “Civil War.” Due to the “surge” ordered by former President Bush, there has been a sharp decrease in violence and President Obama has ordered the draw down of combat troops due to the increasing stability.




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