MITSOTAKIS: When Iran Was Our Ally

In 1980, former president Richard Nixon wrote a book titled The Real War detailing how the United States was losing ground to the Soviet Union on the world stage. One of his central concerns was the effects of the then recent fall of the Shah of Iran.

Though Leftists (and Ron Paul-types) would never admit it, there was a significant threat of Soviet expansion into Iran and toward the Persian Gulf in the post-war period, which was thwarted only thanks to the Shah. Nixon witnesses this as vice-president in the 1950s, and by the time he became president the shah’s value as an ally to the United States had been cemented.