Download U.S. Middle East Involvement

United States Involvement
in the Middle East










Iraq
Iran-Iraq War
Afghanistan
Persian Gulf War 1 (Operation Desert Storm)
Persian Gulf War 2 (Operation Iraqi Freedom)
War in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom)
Saddam Hussein
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Kuwait
Al-Qaeda


Strong American support for Zionism
Foreign Aid: U.S. supports new nation of Israel



Security (Military)
Developmental (Economic)
Historically supportive relationship with few
major issues


Today U.S. and Iran do not have direct
diplomatic relations. Why?
Post WWII U.S. interest:



Shared a long border w/U.S.S.R. (cold war
rival)
Oil
1953 Mohammed Mossadeq elected
Prime Minister (Socialist: wanted to
nationalize oil)


U.S./Britain help overthrow coup d’etat
(CIA-Ajax)
Support establishment of Shah Reza
Pahlavi

Shah Pahlavi’s reign



Received much U.S. support
Staunch ally through six Presidents
(1953-1978)
Harsh treatment of citizens
 Secret police (SAVAK)
 Torture

Iranian Islamic Revolution 1977-Jan. 1979



Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Led revolution from exile in Paris
Shah flees Iran (health reasons?)




Diplomatic crisis between Iran
and the United States.
Islamist students and
militants took over the
American embassy in support
of the Iranian Revolution.
Demanded the U.S. return the
Shah to face trial
53 Americans were held
hostage for 444 days from
November 4, 1979 to January
20, 1981
6 Americans escaped (“Argo”)

U.S. President Jimmy Carter





Negotiations
Military rescue failed
Economic Sanctions
1980 Presidential Election Issue
Hostage release Jan. 21, 1981
Fear of Reagan???
 Negotiations end economic
santions.

British Mandate
•Post WWI British colony
British Backed Monarchy
•King Faisal chosen by England
Dictatorships
•1958 Baath Revolution
•Secular (non-religious) government
•Uses oil $ for government projects
•Hussein begins to eliminate
opponents
• Arrests/Trials
• Murder
• Consolidates power 1979 (same
time Iranian Revolution.


Saddam Hussein
sees Iranian
Revolution as a
chance to regain
Shatt al-Arab.
Invades Iran
September 22, 1980.
Sunni (Saddam
Hussein) vs Shia
(Khomeini) rivalry


The Iraqi offensive was
initially successful,
capturing the port city of
Khorramshahr by the end
of 1980.
Iranian resistance
proved strong,
however, and Iraqi
troops had withdrawn
from the occupied
portions of Iran by
early 1982.





War stagnates into
trench warfare. (like
WWI)
War of attrition
Horrific losses
U.S. supports Iraq
U.S. secretly helps
Iran. (Iran Contra
Scandal)






Iraq uses chemical weapons
Arabs, Soviet Union, Europe
support Iraq.
Syria, Libya, North Korea,
China support Iran.
Finally, in July, 1988, Iran
accepts United Nations–
mandated cease-fire
Cease fire original borders,
nothing gained.
LOSS OF LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!
 Iraq claimed the land
 Claimed Kuwait was
stealing oil (“slant
drilling”)
 $ owed to other
countries for previous
Iran-Iraq War.
 Hussein thought no one
would stop him
Claimed Kuwait
was stealing oil
(“slant drilling”)
Iraq claimed the land

Hussein thought
no one would
stop him
Persian Gulf War
$ owed to other countries for
previous Iran-Iraq War.
Draw a
3rd copy
of this
graphic
organizer
on the
right side
of your
notebook.

Why did Saddam invade Kuwait in 1990?
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, under the direction of
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi army took control of
Kuwait in a very short amount of time. The United nations
responded to the Iraqi invasion by demanding that Iraq withdraw
its troops from Kuwait. The United nations asked other countries to
cut off trade to Iraq (Embargo) in an attempt to force them to
withdraw, that attempt failed.
The United States and thirty other countries formed a
coalition and began sending military troops into Saudi Arabia
over the next few months.

The united Nations set a date for Iraq to leave
Kuwait, Iraq rejected the date and refused to
leave. The U.S. and their allies began attacking
Iraq through the use of air power then by a
ground assault. After a devastating battle
resulting in many Iraqi deaths, the Iraqi’s were
driven out of Kuwait.

Although the war was a decisive military
victory for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq
suffered enormous property damage, and
Saddam Hussein was not removed from
power. In fact, Hussein was free to turn his attention to
suppressing internal Shiite and Kurd revolts, which the U.S.-led coalition
did not support, in part because of concerns over the possible breakup
of Iraq if the revolts were successful. Coalition peace terms were agreed
to by Iraq, but every effort was made by the Iraqis to frustrate
implementation of the terms, particularly UN weapons inspections.

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked two
targets in the U.S. Al-Qaeda is a group of Islamic
terrorists that were largely based in
Afghanistan. They hijacked four airplanes and
intentionally crashed two of them into the World
Trade Center in new York. The third plane was
crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia and the fourth
crashed in rural Pennsylvania in route to its target,
the White House in Washington, D.C. The terrorist
attacks on that day killed nearly 3,000 people.

Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan in 2001?

Osama bin Laden was blamed for the attacks, U.S.
President George Bush called on other countries to
help wage a war on terrorism to crush al-Qaeda. In
October 2001, U.S., British, and Canadian forces
invaded Afghanistan in search of bin Laden and to
destroy al-Qaeda and their allies the Taliban
(Operation Enduring Freedom). Although bin
Laden was never found the grip of the Taliban and
al-Qaeda on Afghanistan was broken. The U.S. let
forces still struggle to control portions of the country.

Saddam Hussein was still president of Iraq at the time of the
Afghanistan invasion. Officials in the U.S government
feared connections between Hussein and al-Qaeda
and the allegations that Iraq was building Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMD’s) in the form of
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons. The
United Nations sent inspectors to Iraq to check for WMD’s
however Iraq failed to allow them to complete their inspections.
In response the U.S. Congress passed an Iraq War Resolution
that authorized the president to go forward with a war in Iraq.

In march 2003, the U.S. began bombing targets in the
capital of Baghdad. British, Australian, Polish, and
American soldiers invaded Iraq and defeated the
Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein was captured, put on
trial for crimes against humanity by the Iraqi’s, and
later executed.

Weapons of Mass Destruction were never found in
Iraq. It is difficult to determine how many Iraqis
have died since the invasion, but as of 2007, more
than 500,000 Iraqis may have died according to one
study. Many deaths are due to sectarian violence.
Over 4,000 American soldiers have been killed and
over 20,000 have been wounded in Iraq thus far.




3-2-1
List three types of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Name two wars the U.S. fought against Iraq
Name the former dictator of Iraq



Oil
Stop Terrorists
Spread democracy

The group is wanted by
the United States for its
September 11, 2001,
attacks on the World
Trade Center and the
Pentagon, as well as a host
of lesser attacks. To escape the
post-9/11 U.S.-led war in Afghanistan,
al-Qaeda’s central leadership is
believed to have fled eastward into
Pakistan, securing a safe haven in
loosely governed areas there.

Al-Qaeda seeks to rid Muslim countries of what it
sees as the influence of the West and replace their
governments with fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
After al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on America, the United States
launched a war in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda’s bases there and overthrow
the Taliban, the country’s Muslim fundamentalist rulers who harbored bin Laden
and his followers.

“Al-Qaeda” is Arabic for “The Base.”

Al-Qaeda grew out of the opposition to the 1979
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, bin Laden and the
Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam, recruited, trained, and financed
thousands of foreign mujahadeen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries.
Bin Laden wanted these fighters to continue the "holy war" beyond Afghanistan.
He formed al-Qaeda around 1988.



At the top was bin Laden. He was killed during a US
Special Forces raid on May 2. 2011 in Pakistan.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Egyptian Islamic
Jihad, was thought to be bin Laden's top lieutenant
and al-Qaeda's ideological adviser: killed by a US
drone attack.
Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan who was captured by
Pakistani authorities in 2002 but managed to escape
from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan in 2005, has
emerged as the public face of al-Qaeda and another
top-level leader. Some counterterrorism experts
consider him a top strategist and a theological scholar,
arguing that his religious scholarship makes him one
of the most effective promoters of global jihad. This
article quotes Jarret Brachman, a former analyst for
the Central Intelligence Agency who is now research
director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point: “I think he has become the heir apparent to
Osama bin Laden in terms of taking over the entire
global jihadist movement.”





Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an Egyptian, was an original
member of al-Qaeda's leadership council and had
been a trusted adviser to bin Laden for more than a
decade. He served time in prison in the early 1980s
with deputy leader al-Zawahiri for their role as
conspirators in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat. He was killed June 1, 2010.
Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian, who is believed to be
under house arrest in Iran along with some other top
leaders of the organization. He remains one of the
FBI’s most wanted terrorists.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian and
financial officer of al-Qaeda
Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s son and possible
successor, believed killed by a missile attack in 2009.
Adel and Abdullah are wanted for their role in the
1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.


The Jordanian radical Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who
established the Sunni Muslim extremist group alQaeda in Iraq (AQI) and directed a series of deadly
terror attacks in Iraq—including the beheadings of
kidnapped foreigners—was also associated with alQaeda. Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to bin
Laden in October 2004, and bin Laden praised
Zarqawi as "the prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike near
Baghdad in 2006.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, one of al-Zawahiri’s disciples
since joining the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1982,
succeeded Zarqawi as AQ #1 leader until he was
th
killed on April 18 , 2010

U.S. officials say several top al-Qaeda leaders are in
their custody. These include a senior lieutenant,
Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in
March 2002, and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior
commander in Afghanistan. In March 2003, the
alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and al-Qaeda's
treasurer, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, were also
captured in Pakistan. They, along with four others
detained at Guantanamo Bay, were charged with
murder, terrorism, and violating rules of war in
February 2008.

Besides being detained, several senior leaders in the network
have died or have been killed in the U.S.-led war against
terrorists.




A senior al-Qaeda commander, Muhammad Atef, died in the U.S. air
strikes in Afghanistan.
Media reports said Abu Obaidah al-Masri, a senior al-Qaeda leader
believed to be involved in the 2005 London subway and bus bombings
and in planning attacks in Afghanistan, died of hepatitis in Pakistan in
April 2008.
In April 2006, Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir and Abu Bakr al-Suri, two of
al-Qaeda's top bomb makers, were killed in Pakistan.
In January 2008, Abu Laith al-Libi, al-Qaeda’s senior military
commander and a key link between the group and its affiliates in North
Africa, was killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas in a secret U.S. missile strike.

What event led Osama bin Laden to form Al-Qaeda
in 1988?


There is no single headquarters. From 1991 to 1996, al-Qaeda
worked out of Pakistan along the Afghan border, or inside Pakistani cities. AlQaeda has autonomous underground cells in some
100 countries, including the United States. Law
enforcement has broken up al-Qaeda cells in the United Kingdom, the United
States, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Albania, Uganda, and elsewhere.
To escape the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s leadership once again
sought refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas after September 11, 2001. Bin Laden, along
with some other members of the organization, is thought to be hiding in Pakistan
along the Afghan border.

It’s impossible to say precisely, because al-Qaeda is decentralized. Estimates
range from several hundred to several thousand
members.










Egyptian Islamic Jihad
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
Islamic Army of Aden (Yemen)
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Iraq)
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Kashmir)
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Algeria) (formerly Salafist
Group for Call and Combat)
Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)
Abu Sayyaf Group (Malaysia, Philippines)
Jemaah Islamiya (Southeast Asia)












The group has targeted American and other Western interests as well as Jewish targets and Muslim
governments it sees as corrupt or impious—above all, the Saudi monarchy. Al-Qaeda linked attacks
include:
The February 2006 attack on the Abqaiq petroleum processing facility, the largest such facility in the
world, in Saudi Arabia.
The July 2005 bombings of the London public transportation system.
The March 2004 bomb attacks on Madrid commuter trains, which killed nearly 200 people and left more
than 1,800 injured.
The May 2003 car bomb attacks on three residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The November 2002 car bomb attack and a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli jetliner with shoulderfired missiles, both in Mombasa, Kenya.
The October 2002 attack on a French tanker off the coast of Yemen.
Several spring 2002 bombings in Pakistan.
The April 2002 explosion of a fuel tanker outside a synagogue in Tunisia.
The September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks on four U.S. airplanes, two of which crashed into the World
Trade Center, and a third of which crashed into the Pentagon.
The October 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing.
The August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Council for Foreign Relations.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9126/
Retrieved May 13, 2009