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" Since it looks like we might have something of an Oscar smackdown between Argo. in which the brave CIA spirits escaped American diplomats out of Tehran, and Zero Dark Thirty, in which the brave CIA helps find Osama bin Laden so some SEALS can shoot him in the head, the timing is right for a little of the back story, which the State Department provided this week by releasing a whole trove of archival material regarding the relationship between the U.S. and Iran \u2014 and, by extension and effect, the U.S. and the entire Middle East \u2014 between 1973 and 1976. This volume is part of a subseries of the Foreign Relations series that document the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, documents U.S. policy towards Iran and Iraq from 1973 to 1976. The volume&amp;#039;s six chapters are divided into two chronological sections. The first section documents the increasingly close political, economic, and strategic relationship, which developed between the U.S. and Iran during the mid-1970s; the second section covers Washington&amp;#039;s somewhat more distant interactions with Iraq, with whom the United States did not maintain formal diplomatic relations following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The subtitle for the collection, of course, could be Propping Up The Peacock Throne, as the events described herein deal with the U.S. support for the Shah, and for the government of Iraq, within which Saddam Hussein was gathering power in preparation for his formal takeover in 1979. These events led to, among other things, the Iranian Revolution that got dropped on Jimmy Carter&amp;#039;s head, and the incredibly savage Iran-Iraq War in which the U.S. backed both sides in some of the bloodiest realpolitik in the nation&amp;#039;s history. Just a cursory glance through the 978 pages reveals how tight the alliance between the U.S. and the Shah&amp;#039;s government, and how important Iranian oil was to the U,S, as a counterweight to the rising power of OPEC among the other oil-producing states in the region. One telegram from Washington concerning the Shah&amp;#039;s ambitious energy policy rings a little ironic, given what&amp;#039;s going on today. We are aware of and sympathetic to the Iranian interest in building on experience in the petroleum field to develop a capability in the broader energy field. We would be prepared to assist Iran in investing in U.S. industries developing new concepts of nuclear breeder reactors. Efficient breeder reactors promise to be a major element in meeting world energy needs into the next century. And so, always, it goes. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16960/cia-history-with-iran-and-iraq-121412/?click=news>