The two decades from 1969 marked the tightening of Israel–US strategic ties. With the Cold War becoming more and more predominant in the America view of the Arab–Israeli conflict, American presidents, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, justified the tightening strategic relations between the two nations in the role Israel would ostensibly play in the defence of the Middle East against Soviet expansion. It did not really matter that Israel would not play that role; for Israel, the idealism that was prevalent in the relations between the two nations was not solid enough, and Israeli leaders gladly recited the Cold War rhetoric in their communication with American officials. Visually, the Arab–Israel conflict played a significant role in the conduct of the relations between the two countries, from the attempts to deal with the consequences of the 1967 June War to the 1982 Lebanon War. These, though, were only a minor irritation in what became deeper and closer ties, encompassing economic and industrial ties, the deepening of cultural connections and intensification of strategic cooperation, mainly in intelligence sharing and development of technologies.

This chapter analyzes the political debates in the United States about arms sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the United States “lost Iran” in 1979, the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan identified regional instability as a threat to the security of the oil-rich Persian Gulf and “global economic health.” Both administrations turned to arms sales as a means to secure alliances in the face of American vulnerability. In this context, the burgeoning military sales relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia arrived through an Iranian workshop. Congressional debates about the sale of fighter jets and AWACS to both nations, as well as the corporate lobbying of the Bechtel Corporation, reveal important logical columns in this shift to a more aggressive foreign policy based on military relationships: the link between economic growth and US Cold War legitimacy, the importance of military sales to the US domestic economy, and the crucial place of weapons transfers in good relations with the ruling monarchies in Iran and then Saudi Arabia. When it came to the regional security of the Middle East and secure flows of its oil, this was the time when military force began to become the premier instrument of US diplomacy for a new global age.