Cold War
This conflict was one of the first episodes of the Cold War outside Europe, and was a factor in the evolving and increasingly contentious political relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which followed their joint victory in World War II. According to Lenczowski, Truman's actions laid the foundations of US relations with Iran, and were based on his understanding of the nature of the Soviet system and its expansionist proclivities, as well as on his conviction that Soviet threats and aggression should be contained, with force if necessary.
Soviet influence and expansion occurred elsewhere in Southwest Asia also and led to the Truman Doctrine of the Cold War. Taking Truman's cue, successive US presidents enlarged and refined their policies toward Iran by extending economic and technical assistance, strengthening its military potential, establishing closer cultural ties, and integrating Iran into the regional security system encompassing the other countries of the 'Northern Tier' of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Read more about this topic: Iran Crisis Of 1946
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or war:
“It’s alive and waiting for you. Ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, or the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill.”
—Harry Essex (b. 1910)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)