"The U.S., in turn, has tried repeatedly to reshape the Arab world to
suit its putative interests. Unlike Britain and France, it speaks the
language of partnership and peace, not of mandates and empire. Ever
since 1948, however, the U.S. has both wanted to privilege Israel and
secure oil from conservative pro-American monarchies — to ostensibly
build a stable pro-American Middle East by changing Arabs rather than
changing the U.S.’s priorities in the region. And ever since, there has
been protracted Arab resistance to this notion that Arabs must conform
to American expectations of them in their own part of the world.
The U.S. has long buttressed an anti-democratic political culture in the Middle East by supporting the Shah of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, absolutist Gulf monarchies, Israeli colonialism, and authoritarianism in Egypt. It has also generated significant new forms of resistance to its vision of a docile pro-American regional order, evident today mainly in the form of an Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis. "
The U.S. has long buttressed an anti-democratic political culture in the Middle East by supporting the Shah of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, absolutist Gulf monarchies, Israeli colonialism, and authoritarianism in Egypt. It has also generated significant new forms of resistance to its vision of a docile pro-American regional order, evident today mainly in the form of an Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis. "
