"The essays in this volume grew out of a lecture series at Temple University during the 1970-71 academic year." Includes bibliographical references and index.

This book is a study of the origins, development, and end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War rivalry in Iran from 1945 to 1962 and its influence on the political and economic development of the country. It traces the roots of this rivalry to the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran in 1941 during the Second World War that subsequently led to U.S. involvement in Iran in 1942 as part of the Allied war effort. While analyzing the superpower rivalry, the book also focuses on the development of U.S.-Iranian relations and U.S. policy toward Iran, whose primary goal was to keep Iran free from communism. The book traces the development of U.S.-Iranian relations and U.S. policy toward Iran through the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations and examines whether there were any elements of continuity among the three administrations in keeping Iran free from communism. The book also provides an in-depth analysis of the response of the Shah and the Iranian government to foreign-power rivalry in Iran.

Bruce Kuniholm takes a regional perspective to focus on postwar diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece and efforts in these countries to maintain their independence from the Great Powers. Drawing on a wide variety of secondary sources, government documents, private papers, unpublished memoirs, and extensive interviews with key figures, he shows how the traditional struggle for power along the Northern Tier was a major factor in the origins and development of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This book offers a distinctive approach to understanding Anglo-American relations with Iran in the early Cold War. It establishes how the United Kingdom and United States used soft power between 1953 and 1960 to combat communism and promote their respective ways of life in Iran. It identifies their motives, the types of initiatives employed, and the extent to which they perceived their policies to be a success. It is a historical case study through which wider conclusions regarding UK and US foreign policy can be drawn. As well as illustrating the competitive tensions within the Anglo-American 'special relationship', it highlights the role of individuals in the making and shaping of diplomatic endeavours. More broadly, the analysis of UK and US interactions in Iran through the prism of soft power underlines that there was more to both countries’ Cold War foreign policies than the containment of communism.

Richard Cottam served in the U.S. embassy in Tehran from 1956 to 1958 and was consulted by the Department of State during the 1979 hostage crisis. This book draws upon his expert personal knowledge of Iranian politics to describe the spiraling decline of U.S.-Iranian relations since the cold war and the political consequences of those years U.S. policy, he argues, is flawed by ignorance, inertia, the tenacity of a cold war mentality, a quixotic tilt toward Iraq, and the blatant inconsistency of the Reagan administration's arms-for-hostages scheme that produced the Iran-contra scandal.

"Incisive, eminently readable... McCormick reminds his readers of the unfashionable truths of our time: American domination of the postwar order, the weakness and conservatism of the Soviet Union, the gratuitousness of the nuclear arms race." -- The Nation