Wars Of Ambition The United States Iran And The Struggle For The Middle East Afshon Ostovar by Afshon Ostovar 9780190940980, 0190940980 instant download after payment.

When President George W. Bush took office in January 2001, America's influence in the Middle East was relatively strong, and adversarial states were largely marginalized and contained. The September 11 attacks upended all of this and prompted the Bush administration's bold plan to remake the Middle East through a war in Iraq. By bringing liberal democracy to Iraq, Bush hoped that the country would be a springboard for the spread of democracy to neighboring authoritarian states, aiming to make the region not only more stable, prosperous, and amenable to Western values but also more friendly and accepting toward Israel. Yet the vast disruption that the war caused created an opportunity for Iran to advance its own opposing ambitions. Iran strove to turn the Middle East into a bastion of resistance to Western hegemony and bring an end to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The resulting clash over the future regional order not only intensified the Iraq war, it reverberated in states across the region. With the Arab Spring and the outbreak of new conflicts, the US-Iranian showdown became entwined in a much more complex struggle, one which drew in other regional and foreign powers that all pursued differing agendas. Emerging from the chaos was an empowered Iran and a deeply unsettled broader region in which nominally pro-Western states began to recalibrate their relations with Washington even as they welcomed deeper roles for its key rivals: Russia and China.