The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

The Shah of Iran, as he had demonstrated the previous month with the great celebration at Persepolis, was eager to fill the vacuum. “The safety of the Persian Gulf had,” he said, “to be guaranteed, and who but Iran could fulfill this function?” The Americans were not happy to see the British go. But if not the British, there was the Shah. This was, after all, the era of the Nixon Doctrine, which attempted to deal with the new political and economic constraints on American power by depending upon strong, friendly local powers as regional policemen. No one seemed better fitted to play that role than the Shah. Nixon himself had developed a high regard for the Shah, whom he first met in 1953, a few months after the Shah had regained his throne. “The Shah is beginning to have more guts,” he had told President Eisenhower then. “If the Shah would lead, things would be better.” When Nixon lost the California gubernatorial election in 1962, he set out on a round-the-world trip. The Shah had been one of the few heads of state to receive him cordially. Nixon never forgot that show of respect when he was down. Now, in the early 1970s, the Shah was intent on leading, not only in Iran but throughout the region, and the Nixon Administration supported him. Though the fact often went unrecognized, there was no other obvious choice. Soviet arms were flowing in large volumes into neighboring Iraq, which had its own long-held ambitions for hegemony over the Gulf and its oil. From here on, a v...