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Listed as one of Tony Barber's History books of the Year, Financial Times Summer Books 2014

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah

The United States and Iran in the Cold War

Roham Alvandi

Challenges the conventional view of the shah as a mere instrument of American power during the Cold War by extending the study of US-Iran relations into the 1970s when the shah emerged as a major international figure.
Draws on extensive multi-archival research, making use of recently declassified U.S. documents.
Draws on Persian-language sources.
Examines the origins of Iran's nuclear program in the 1970s under the shah.

Listed as one of Tony Barber's History books of the Year, Financial Times Summer Books 2014

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah

The United States and Iran in the Cold War

Roham Alvandi

Description

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, is often remembered as a pliant instrument of American power during the Cold War. In this book Roham Alvandi offers a revisionist account of the shah's relationship with the United States by examining the partnership he forged with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Based on extensive research in the British and U.S. archives, as well as a wealth of Persian-language diaries, memoirs and oral histories, this study restores agency to the shah as an autonomous international actor and suggests that Iran evolved from a client to a partner of the United States under the Nixon Doctrine. Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah offers a detailed account of three key historical episodes in the Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi partnership that shaped the global Cold War far beyond Iran's borders. First, the book examines the emergence of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf as the Nixon administration looked to the shah to fill the vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the region in 1971. Then it turns to the peak of the partnership after Nixon and Kissinger's historic 1972 visit to Iran, when the shah succeeded in drawing the United States into his covert war against Iraq in Kurdistan. Finally, the book focuses on the decline of the partnership under Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, through a history of the failed negotiations from 1974 to 1976 for an agreement on U.S. nuclear exports to Iran. Taken together, these three episodes map the rise of the fall of Iran's Cold War partnership with the United States during the decade of superpower détente, Vietnam, and Watergate.

Listed as one of Tony Barber's History books of the Year, Financial Times Summer Books 2014

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah

The United States and Iran in the Cold War

Roham Alvandi

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The United States and Iran in the Cold War
2. "Protect Me": The Nixon Doctrine in the Persian Gulf
3. Iran's Secret War with Iraq: The CIA and the Shah-Forsaken Kurds
4. A Ford, Not a Nixon: The United States and the Shah's Nuclear Dreams
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Listed as one of Tony Barber's History books of the Year, Financial Times Summer Books 2014

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah

The United States and Iran in the Cold War

Roham Alvandi

Author Information

Roham Alvandi, Assistant Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

Roham Alvandi is Assistant Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Listed as one of Tony Barber's History books of the Year, Financial Times Summer Books 2014

Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah

The United States and Iran in the Cold War

Roham Alvandi

Reviews and Awards

"Roham Alvandi's Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah does exactly what it promises in its title. The book is an excellent insight into the interactions between the three aforementioned figures in what was a pivotal period of US, Iranian, and Cold War history. Alvandi's skill is writing in such a way as to appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike. He weaves through a deep history, placing his triumvirate of characters in context without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail, and delivers a highly readable and effective study." - Stephen McGlinchey, E-International Relations

"lively, clear and entertaining writing. This is indeed a useful, highly recommendable book that may attract specialists in international relations, Iranian affairs and US political history, as well as the general reader." - David Sarias Rodriguez, History

"a major contribution to recent scholarship on the global history of the Cold War ... Alvandi's account of the process and its consequences is the fullest and most revealing to date." - David S. Painter, American Historical Review

"Alvandi's commendably clear style and approach serves to highlight and articulate an argument ... redefining the relationship between Iran and the United States away from the popular orthodoxy of the patron-client relationship ... Alvandi takes a refreshing look at a relationship that has long been considered both the high tide of USIran relations and the roots of its eventual collapse." - Ali M. Ansari, English Historical Review