There is no ‘Middle East.’ There’s a Levant America loves and a Gulf China needs

Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (seen as pro-Moscow) and restored Shah Reza Pahlavi’s monarchy reflected American determination to preserve its monopoly over access to the region’s energy resources.

It took the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however, to trigger a public declaration of this vital U.S. national interest. President Jimmy Carter, in his continue reading …