British Revival and American Decline? Anglo-American Relations and the Persian Gulf 1979–1987

Abstract

Understanding the trajectory of Anglo-American relations in the Middle East in the latter half of the twentieth century has rarely enjoyed consensus. Some have characterised it as a period of perpetual competition, with London unwilling or unable to accept its diminished status. Others, post-Suez, are more sanguine. Britain, it is argued, acted as a tutor to the United States still struggling to configure its global power with its regional interests. This article questions such assumptions. While its overt military presence across the Persian Gulf had declined by the mid-1970s, Britain had kept discreet military ties with a range of actors in the Gulf. By the early 1980s, with Washington struggling to make sense of the Iranian revolution and its wider impact across the region, Britain, now under Margaret Thatcher, proved adept at using commercial opportunities to recast and secure its strategic and economic interests across the Gulf, notably in Saudi Arabia. Thus, far from being the nadir of British influence in the Persian Gulf, the 1980s witnessed its revival.