Sub-titled 'The Battle Between the United States and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East'. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, Great Britain sought to establish itself as the dominant imperial power in the Middle East, and by the early 1940s its influence stretched from Cyprus to Sudan, and from Egypt to Iran. Yet its regional empire did not endure. We usually assume that Arab nationalism brought about the end of the British Empire in the Middle East - that Gamal Abdel Nasser and other Arab leaders led popular uprisings against colonial rule that forced the overstretched British from the region. Barr draws on newly declassified archives to argue instead that the US was the driving force behind the British exit. Although the two nations were allies, the Americans were drawn to the region for reasons of commerce and ideology. They found themselves at odds over just about every question, from who owned Saudi Arabia's oil to who should control the Suez Canal. It is impossible to understand the region today without first grappling with this little-known prehistory. "A gripping tale of diplomatic legerdemain, political hypocrisy and, once the intelligence boys got going, derring-do." - Times. "The 1953 coup against Mosaddegh...reads like a page-turning spy thriller."- Wall Street Journal. Illus., 454 pages.
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