In the 1950s and 1960s, oil supply was not a problem in the United States. As a nation, the U.S. acted as though there was an endless amount of cheap oil and gasoline. Emblematic of this attitude was America’s love affair with high-powered, high-performance, tricked-out, gas guzzling automobiles (“muscle cars”) that generated a whole genre of pop music (“hot rod…

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Although American foreign policy recognized the U.S.’s special relationship with Israel, it also acknowledged that peace in the Middle East was essential for international stability. Thus, American diplomatic leaders continually tried to improve relations between the competing sides. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, Egypt’s ( and other Arab nations) foreign policy had been built around destroying the Jewish…

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Iran, known from ancient times as Persia, has a culture that dates back to early biblical times. It is one of the oldest major civilizations in the Middle East, and from time-to-time was an empire of major proportions. Persia was conquered by Islamic forces in the seventh century. The Shia sect is and has been Iran’s official religion since around…

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Iran and Iraq represent different, hostile strains of the Muslim religion (i.e. the Shiite and Sunni branches) and there have been long-simmering border disputes between the countries. Those facts, plus Arab-Persian cultural differences, make these two countries enemies. Due to hostility stemming from the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis, the United States shifted its friendship from Iran to…

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