ABSTRACT
For President Richard M. Nixon, flying into Tehran from Moscow on May 30, 1972, was welcome relief, "Getting out of the bush leagues" was how Dr. Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, put it. What became known as the Nixon doctrine was judged especially applicable to the Shah. Iran saw itself as the logical entity to fill the power vacuum and maintain stability in the Persian Gulf, through whose waters passed two-thirds of the world's oil exports. In practice, assigning Iran such a function was sure to upset Saudi Arabia, the gulf's premier oil producer, and Iraq, a bumptious, radical state with the world's second-biggest oil reserves and regional leadership pretensions to match. Successive administrations unquestioningly backed the governments of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey about the Kurds and turned a blind eye to their unstinting efforts to repress or assimilate them.
