The foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East, a geopolitical region including parts of Africa and Asia, has among its primary considerations matters of petroleum politics, international trade, the War on terror, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The first major instances of US foreign policy in the region came with the American–Algerian War which lasted from 1785 through 1795, followed by the First Barbary War (1801–1805), shortly after the 1776 establishment of the United States as an independent sovereign state. US foreign policy then became much more expansive in the aftermath of World War II, with the goal of preventing the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the region during the Cold War. US foreign policy delivered extensive support in various forms to anti-communist and anti-Soviet regimes. Among the top priorities for the U.S. with regard to this goal was its support for the State of Israel against its Soviet-backed neighbouring Arab countries during the peak of the Arab–Israeli conflict. In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. also replaced the United Kingdom as the main security patron for Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf, in order to ensure, among other goals, a stable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. As of 2023, the U.S. has diplomatic relations with every country in the Middle East except for Iran, with whom relations were severed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. American influence in the Greater Middle East has reduced in recent years, most significantly since the Arab Spring, yet is still substantial. Currently stated priorities of the U.S. government in the Middle East include resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction among regional states, particularly Iran.
History
The United States' relationship with the Middle East before World War I was limited, although commercial ties existed even in the early 19th century, as seen with the American–Algerian War. From 1801 to 1805, the U.S. fought against Ottoman Tripolitania during the Tripolitan War regarding tributary payment which president Thomas Jefferson refused to pay. In 1833, President Andrew Jackson established formal ties with the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. The Sultan saw the U.S. as a potential balance to Britain's overwhelming regional influence. In 1857, commercial relations opened between the U.S. and Persia, after Britain persuaded the Persian government not to ratify a similar agreement in 1851. After defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Britain and France took control of most of its former territories. They held mandates to do so from the League of Nations. The United States refused to take any mandates in the region and was "popular and respected throughout the Middle East". "Americans were seen as good people, untainted by the selfishness and duplicity associated with the Europeans." American Christian missionaries brought modern medicine and set up educational institutions all over the Middle East, as an adjunct to their religious proselytizing. The United States also provided the Middle East with highly skilled petroleum engineers. Thus, there were some connections made between the United States and the Middle East before the Second World War. Other examples of cooperation between the U.S. and the Middle East are the Red Line Agreement signed in 1928 and the Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement signed in 1944. Both of these agreements were legally binding and reflected an American interest in control of Middle Eastern energy resources, mainly oil, and reflected an American "security imperative to prevent the (re)emergence of a powerful regional rival". The Red Line Agreement had been "part of a network of agreements made in the 1920s to restrict the supply of petroleum and ensure that the major [mostly American] companies ... could control oil prices on world markets". The Red Line agreement governed the development of Middle East oil for the next two decades. The Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement of 1944 was based on negotiations between the United States and Britain over controlling Middle Eastern oil. Below is shown what the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had in mind for a British Ambassador in 1944:
Persian oil ... is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours.
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