Cold War US hegemony in the Middle East collided with nationalist independence movements

Evidence

At the intersection of three continents and with more than 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves, the Middle East became a vital strategic location. As Britain’s regional influence waned, the United States competed with the Soviets to be the new Western hegemon. However, the mid-twentieth century witnessed a wave of independence movements across the world, including in the Middle East. Nationalist leaders such as Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Hafez al-Assad of Syria defied US hegemonic interests in the region. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 638

Categorization

• XREF: Frames the CIA’s Mossadegh coup context that Anansi/Chomsky-type histories cover; connects to the broader archive on US regime-change interventions. — connects to: Cold War superpower rivalry froze UN membership and pushed new states to Bandung. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1293; Foreign policy elites across camps share the aim of US hegemony — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 461