The stereotypical view of someone from the Middle East is that they don’t particularly like America and a more cynical view is that they enjoy calling us “American pig dogs” and the like. But I’m curious, what did the Middle East think of the Cold War? Did they see the USSR as godless heathens? Did they prefer one side to ‘win’? I imagine they didn’t like either side poking their nose into their lands.
I know the folly of generalizing the views of millions of people. But humor me.
Iran, of course, was led by a pro-American dictatorship installed by the CIA. Iraq was in a US-oriented orbit until 1959, when it pulled out of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO, aka the Baghdad Pact), a mini-NATO organization intended to buttress the Soviets out of the Middle East. Places like Kuwait and Qatar were about as relevent to world politics as Laos and Nepal are today. Yemen – which was divided then – actually had some interesting struggles with Britain, but that’s neither here nor there.
The most interesting development was the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement in the mid-1950s. Egypt (along with India) basically led the way in arguing that poor countries, like those in the Middle East, were getting screwed by the Cold War. The idea was more or less that they wanted to opt out of the Cold War. The US reaction was more or less, “You’re either with us or against us,” and the NAM was viewed with considerable suspicion here. OTOH, the Soviets were more in the “If you’re not against us, you’re with us” camp, and relations were less frosty, but probably not accurately described as “warm.”
Inicidentally, the fruits of the NAM eventually led to a pan-Arabist movement, which, despite its failure, has had effect in that today we tend to think of the Middle East as more or less a bloc in world opinion, not least of which on the Palestinian-Israeli issue.
It should also be mentioned that the US earned a lot of chits in the Middle East when it opposed the UK/French/Israeli takeover of the Suez Canal. A number of Middle Eastern politicans like to throw that fact in the face of the US: “We were really with you in 1956, because the US really stood for freedom then… But it’s been all downhill since the US stopped questioning the use of Israeli military power against us. What happened to you? How could you be so right then, but so wrong now?”