United States ousted Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and Lebanon’s sectarian
communities began a new round in the struggle to control the government.
Turkey and Iran, both nations with long histories, emerged in new guises in the
wake of World War I. Turkey, which had been the core of the Ottoman Empire for
some four hundred years, came under the dynamic leadership of former general
Mustafa Kemal (later named Ataturk). Turkey regained large pieces of territory, includ-
ing Istanbul, that the victorious allies had severed from the former Ottoman lands. In
1919 Kemal advocated positions incorporated into a statement known as the National
Pact, which has since served as a basis for Turkish policy. The pact abandoned Tur-
key’s claim to most Arab lands but insisted that all Turkish-speaking regions rightfully
belonged to the new Turkish state.
Persia also emerged from World War I with a new identity and a new monarchy.
Reza Khan Pahlavi, a former army commander, worked his way to power in the 1920s
and renamed the country Iran to emphasize the Aryan background of most of its
people. While Kemal guided Turkey to genuine independence from foreign powers,
Pahlavi proved unable to do the same for Iran because of Iran’s strategic location and
international interest in its oil resources. Britain and Russia exerted substantial control
over Iran until after World War II, and a British-run oil company dominated the
national economy. In the 1950s, the United States became the dominant outside
power in Iranian affairs, a position it would retain until the late 1970s.
World War I also launched the processes leading to independence for Egypt and the
creation of Saudi Arabia, two of the most important nations in the Middle East. Although
not strictly a colony, Egypt had been under effective British control since the late nine-
teenth century. Egyptian nationalists took seriously Britain’s promises of independence.
Discovering after the war that these promises were empty, nationalists launched a popu-
lar uprising in 1919 that forced London to begin easing its grip. Britain granted limited
autonomy to a local Egyptian government in 1922 and a greater degree of independence
in 1936. On the Arabian Peninsula, Sharif Hussein lost his bid for pan-Arab primacy in
1924, when he suffered military defeat by the armies of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, a rival
tribal leader. Saud established a monarchy in a new country named after his family.
A New Era
Despite the diplomacy of the European powers during and after World War I, the
Middle East quickly became an unruly place. The postwar revolt against British rule
in Egypt was followed by successive clashes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria.
Taken together, these events demonstrated that Britain and France lacked the military
resources to pacify completely their regional domains and that many locals resented
having their destinies plotted in faraway European capitals.
In Afghanistan, a new king, Amanullah, sought in 1919 to assert his country’s
independence from London by launching a surprise attack on British forces across the
border in imperial India. A brief war ended in a draw but brought British recognition
of the high cost of imposing their will on the Afghan kingdom. A treaty signed in
August 1919 gave Afghanistan its independence, after which the king established closer
relations with the new communist leaders in Moscow.
The first of many modern-day conflicts in Palestine took place in April 1920, dur-
ing a festival honoring Moses, when Arabs—frustrated by Jewish immigration—rioted
6 FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST