Simon & Schuster
Titles appearing in Reference — Research Book News — December 2011
The oil kings; how the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia changed the balance of power in the Middle East.
Cooper, Andrew Scott.
Simon & Schuster, ©2011 530 p. $28.00 E183
978-1-4391-5517-2
This work reconstructs the history of US oil diplomacy in the Middle East in the 1970s, structuring the narrative around the triangular relations between the US, Saudi Arabia, and pre-revolutionary Iran. The author describes how much concern to keep the price of oil low drove American policy makers in their approach to the region, leading first to arms deals with the Shah in exchange for Iranian oil and later to closer relations with the Saudis, who ramped up production in order to break the OPEC monopoly at American bequest, which had the inadvertent effect of undermining the Iranian regime of the Shah. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
