ABSTRACT

The events of the "Arab cold war" described in this chapter were only one example of the many ways in which the larger American-Soviet cold war had a major impact on the Middle East. The alignment of each of the superpowers with one or another side of the Arab-Israeli conflict was another. Starting in the 1960s and until the end of the cold war in 1991, the United States backed Israel, while the Soviet Union supported most of the Arab states engaged in the conflict. The Suez war was the last time until the end of the cold war that the superpowers found themselves on the same side of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Soon the Arab cold war began, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration's limited sympathy for the Egyptian regime of Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser was exhausted, and the American-Soviet rivalry ratcheted up in the Middle East.