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Title details for The Oil Kings by Andrew Scott Cooper - Available

The Oil Kings

How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East

by Andrew Scott Cooper
Rob Shapiro
Audiobook
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The news-making story of the backroom deals behind America’s decision to switch allegiance from Iran to Saudi Arabia as the dominant oil supplier in the Middle East—and how this action helped to create the conditions for the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Pivotal moment in U.S. history: In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab countries discovered the power of oil. Skyrocketing prices and fuel shortages rocked the U.S. economy, driving up inflation and sinking the stock market. President Nixon was preoccupied with Watergate so Henry Kissinger stepped into the breach, cutting deals with the Shah of Iran: the U.S. got oil; the Shah got advanced weapons. But as Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, struggled with stagflation, the price of oil became critical. The Shah refused to hold down prices. Desperate to win election and listening more to Treasury Secretary William Simon than to Kissinger, President Ford cut a deal with Saudi Arabia: advanced weapons in exchange for price relief on oil. The switch in allegiance left the Shah with a multi-billion-dollar hole in his budget, so he began draconian economic cutbacks, creating a huge unemployment problem in Iran. These actions helped to cause his downfall, and the Islamic revolution ensued, the repercussions of which are still being felt thirty years later.
Revelatory reportage: No other history of the period or of the oil industry includes the startling revelations in The Oil Kings . Cooper draws on recently declassified documents, new interviews with key figures, and the diary of a top aide of the Shah to show how Nixon, Ford, Kissinger, the CIA, and the State, Defense, and Treasury departments—as well as the Shah and the Saudi royal family—all maneuvered to try to control events in the Middle East. Now, for the first time, the full story of what lay behind these momentous, world-changing decisions can be told.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 9, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780307967183
      • File size: 569636 KB
      • Duration: 19:46:44

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      There's nothing surprising about Rob Shapiro's narration, but neither is there in this topic. Tracing the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, as well as historical aspects of politics in Iran, this title is only for those who are genuinely interested in this subject. Shapiro does an adequate job and capably tackles the Arabic names of organizations in the Middle East. His logical, measured delivery matches the subject matter, though neither fully maintains one's attention. M.R. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 4, 2011
      The petro-politics of the 1970s caused world-historical upheavalsâand an international melodrama of statecraftâin this scintillating diplomatic history. Historian Cooper untangles the foreign policy conundrum arising from America's support for the reliably anticommunist Shah of Iran, whom Richard Nixon encouraged to raise oil prices so he could afford to buy U.S. weapons. This dynamic, the author contends, created a monster: to support his wild overspending on arms and pharaonic development projects, the Shah demanded huge OPEC price hikes that crippled the world economyâand provoked an American rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, whose flooding of markets with cheap oil ruined Iran's finances and sped the Shah's downfall. Cooper gives a lucid analysis of shifting oil markets and unearths revelationsâincluding American-Iranian planning for invasions of Arab countriesâfrom meticulous research. But this is a saga of not-so-great men and their wranglings. Its centerpiece is Cooper's superb, lacerating portrait of Henry Kissinger. As the super-diplomat's obsession with great-power rivalries founders in a new world of global economics that he can't fathom, Cooper gives us both a vivid study in sycophancy and backstabbing and a shrewd critique of Kissingerian geo-strategy. Photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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