The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East Audiobook (Free)

struggling with a recession . European nations at risk of defaulting on the loans . . . A possible global financial meltdown. It happened before, in the 1970s.

Oil Kings may be the tale of how oil came to dominate U.S. home and worldwide affairs. As Richard Nixon fought off Watergate questions in 1973, the U.S. economy reacted to an essential oil lack initiated by Arab nations in retaliation for American support of Israel in the Arab- Israeli battle. The price tag on essential oil skyrocketed, causing about The Essential oil Kings: The way the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East critical inflation. One man the U.S. could rely on in the centre East was the Shah of Iran, a loyal ally whose grand ambitions had made him a respected consumer for American weaponry. Iran sold the U.S. essential oil; the U.S. marketed Iran missiles and fighter jets. However the Shah’s overall economy depended almost entirely on essential oil, as well as the U.S. overall economy cannot tolerate annual double-digit increases in the price of this essential item. European economies had been hit actually harder from the soaring essential oil prices, and several NATO allies had been vulnerable to default on the debt.

In 1976, with the U.S. overall economy in peril, President Gerald Ford, locked in a good election race, made the decision he had to discover a country that could sell oil to the U.S. more cheaply and break the OPEC monopoly, that your Shah refused to do. On the suggestions of Treasury Secretary William Simon and against the assistance of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Ford produced a deal to sell advanced weaponry towards the Saudis in exchange for a modest cost hike on oil.

Ford shed the election, however the deal had lasting effects. The Shah’s overall economy was destabilized, and disaffected components in Iran mobilized to overthrow him. The U.S. acquired embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues even today.

Andrew Scott Cooper draws on newly declassified docs and interviews with some essential figures of that time period showing how Nixon, Ford, Kissinger, the CIA, and the Condition and Treasury departments-as well as the Shah and the Saudi royal family- maneuvered to control events in the Middle East. He details the trick U.S.-Saudi intend to circumvent OPEC that destabilized the Shah. He reveals how close the U.S. came to sending troops into the Persian Gulf to break the Arab oil embargo. The Essential oil Kings provides solid proof that U.S. officials ignored warning signs of a potential hostage crisis in Iran. It discloses that U.S. officials offered to sell nuclear power and nuclear fuel towards the Shah. And it displays how the Ford Administration hardly averted a Western debt problems that could possess triggered a financial catastrophe in the U.S. Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing information regarding a number of the important figures of that time period, The Oil Kings is the history of an era that we thought we knew, a time whose momentous reverberations still influence events in the home and abroad today.