ABSTRACT
The Gulf has figured high ori Iran's foreign policy agenda only. Abd al-Nasir's threat to the region and his intrusion into Yemen awakened all the so-called conservative Gulf states to their shared distaste for his brand of revolutionary politics. In truth, the actual power withdrawn from the Gulf in 1971 was relatively insignificant, some 6,000 troops. Britain's paramountcy in the Gulf had contributed to the relative insulation of the region from the remainder of the Arab world, an insulation breached in the 1960s and never to be repaired. The Revolution in Iran undid what had evolved into a tacit arrangement for assuring regional security. Iran's Revolution thus replaced Iran, guardian of the region, with Iran, disruptor of the region. The conflict had a major impact on the region and immediately became the center of Iran's foreign policy attention. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic there have been at least two major schools contending for influence in Iran's foreign policy.
