Would it be better for US to take a more neutral stance between Israel and Arabs since the 1960s?

[Dan the Roman]

This was never going to work for reasons of internal dynamics on both sides.

Stalinism was always going to turn antisemitic, because Zionism was internationalists. Soviet Zionists had links, both personal and ideological with Zionists in the West, and so did Soviet Jews as a whole.

By definition, any group which has an organization - cultural, religious, or ethnic - with links outside the Soviet block was going to get hit with accusations of espionage and treason. The very nature of the Stalinist political system created incentives for every official to go after their rivals, and in the process of going after Jewish Communists they didn't like, antisemitic campaigns were going to be launched.

In short, for the Soviet-Israeli relationship to work, not only with Israel have to go Communist, but all Western Jews would have to also become Pro-Soviet. That wasn't happening so the relationship was doomed with the Cold War.

As for the United States, ultimately Washington had to chose between its allies - the existing governments of Arab states, and their opponents who wished to overthrow them. If the US turned on the monarchies and republics they would have turned to the Soviets for support. Furthermore, that would have required breaking fully with Britain and France on behalf of a policy that would not work.

In short: Both the US and Soviet Union tried to pursue more neutral policies. They were forced into polarized ones by structural factors that made neutrality impossible.

[Dan the Roman]

Also I find a lot of modern discourse is a consequence of the disappearance of traditional diplomatic history from curriculums.

History is not the tale of stupid, racist people doing stupid and racist things. Generally, most things happened for good reasons and structural path dependency is so strong it would have been nearly impossible to avoid things.

Poland's leaders made a number of questionable moves in 1788-1792, but the international system was such that there may have been no winning moves. They were doomed no matter what they did because the rules were stacked against them. Similarly in 1936-39.

There probably were not winning moves in 1920-22 that avoided a lot of people losing their homes in Greece and Turkey.

Armenia had very few in 2020.

I see the Nakba as a tragedy more than a crime in that there aren't really scenarios that end well. We are not in an optimal timeline, and things have probably diverged further since the 1990s, but I am really unsure how you avoid an ugly refugee crisis in 1948. I don't even buy the idea that individual Jewish or Arab leaders could have avoided one because even if they wished for a settlement there were a lot of actors and forces rendering that unworkable.

The Soviet Union did pretty poorly in the Middle East and the US very well. In fact, the US was winning going away between 1973 and 1978 when it lost Iran.

[Dan the Roman]

This was never going to work for reasons of internal dynamics on both sides.

Stalinism was always going to turn antisemitic, because Zionism was internationalists. Soviet Zionists had links, both personal and ideological with Zionists in the West, and so did Soviet Jews as a whole.

By definition, any group which has an organization - cultural, religious, or ethnic - with links outside the Soviet block was going to get hit with accusations of espionage and treason. The very nature of the Stalinist political system created incentives for every official to go after their rivals, and in the process of going after Jewish Communists they didn't like, antisemitic campaigns were going to be launched.

In short, for the Soviet-Israeli relationship to work, not only with Israel have to go Communist, but all Western Jews would have to also become Pro-Soviet. That wasn't happening so the relationship was doomed with the Cold War.

As for the United States, ultimately Washington had to chose between its allies - the existing governments of Arab states, and their opponents who wished to overthrow them. If the US turned on the monarchies and republics they would have turned to the Soviets for support. Furthermore, that would have required breaking fully with Britain and France on behalf of a policy that would not work.

In short: Both the US and Soviet Union tried to pursue more neutral policies. They were forced into polarized ones by structural factors that made neutrality impossible.

Stalin was obviously an antisemite, but there were certainly a number of Communist Russian Jews.

Stalin shifted Communism from an internationalist ideology to a hermetically sealed world where anyone with external ties, be they Comintern agents, ethnic/religious activists with links outside- became suspect. There is a reason Jews were banned from the KGB after it was established.

And this largely extended throughout Eastern Europe. Jews weren't just purged in the Soviet Union. They were removed in every Warsaw Pact state, and in many of the foriegn Communist partied under Soviet control. Heck, Stalin even pressured Mao to imprison his Jewish translator as an American spy. Like Stalin literally told the CCP to purge the half dozen or so Jewish volunteers they had for years!

I actually don't think Israel played a role. The Slansky trial was in 49 along with the Night of Murdered Poets. These were driven by internal Soviet dynamics and therefore nothing the US did would effect them.

[Dan the Roman]

No, the mistake was not doing more to prevent the Iranian revolution or at they very least ensuring that Khomeini did not take over.

You’re absolutely right, the US should have done all in its power to prop up the Shah in 1978-79 against the will of most Iranians, intervening in Iran again like we did in 1953 would certainly have gone a long way to solving our foreign policy issues in that part of the world. If only our leaders had consistently heeded this kind of brilliant foreign policy advice!

 

The Shah of Iran was one of our staunchest Allies and we absolutely should have taken actions to prevent his fall . In fact Carter did the opposite, and took action to stop the Iranian military from doing a counter Coup .

On the contrary, Carter’s biggest mistake was letting the Shah into the US. That was the direct catalyst for the hostage crisis and Khomeini took full advantage and consolidated his power.

There actually was a new, comparatively moderate government in Iran in the initial months after the Shah fled Iran (fleeing the country is in and of itself a de facto abdication/resignation that means the leader is no longer legitimate, much like Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 or Ashraf Ghani in 2021). The Carter administration was actively negotiating with it. There’s no guarantee that Khomeini wouldn’t have come to power had the Shah not been allowed to enter the US, but that decision made it more or less a certainty.

Its actually worse. The US NSA was meeting with the Iranian PM and FM in Algiers on split-screen while the Shah was entering the country as Carter initially said no, then changed his mind while Brzezinski was out of the country making it look like a deliberate humiliation of the Iranians when in fact Carter was merely up to his usual habit of humiliating his staff.

[Dan the Roman]

The Shah only got the authority he did because Eisenhower and Churchill wanted to remove a democratically elected socialist government that was going to use Iran's resources to benefit Iran. Basically, Mossadegh was shoved from power by the West because he put the interests of Iranians ahead of Western interests, and the West simply couldn't have that. It was that same dubious logic that led to US interventionism all over the world for much of the Cold War.

This is so wrong it’s laughable.

Dude it's factual. The C.I.A. disclosed the information to the public. We launch a coup against Mossadegh to put in a authoritarian monarchy that would serve the interests of the West. The Shah was a ruthless leader who the people of Iran were rightfully in their overthrow of his regime. What happended was unfortunately in the nation becoming a theocracy, let's not be apologetic to the Shah and how America is to blame for overthrowing the leader that the Iranian people put in place.

Have you read the documents? I suggest it. They are fascinating.  There were a lot of mistakes to go around, but Mossadegh was speed-running the Daoud path in Afghanistan, and it was a succession struggle by the summer of 1953.

[Dan the Roman]

Bro do we seriously have neocon(s) arguing in this thread that the Shah could be saved after 2.5 decades of screwing himself over?

Neither the Shah in late 1978 nor Mossadegh by the summer of 1953 could have been saved. The failure of both were nevertheless tragedies.