There are a number of individual years in modern Middle East
history that stand out in importance. The ledger just since the end
of WWII would invariably include the following: 1948, 1956, 1967,
1973, 1982, 1991, and 1993. In each of these years war,
realignment, and/or peace processes occurred, i.e., some event or
series of events that engendered a dramatic and lasting period of
change by causing shifts in the balance of power and/or ideological
and perceptual transformations in the region. At no time, however,
was dramatic and all-encompassing change more apparent in the
Middle East in the post-WWII era than in 1979--so much so that, in
my opinion, future Middle East scholars will conclude that the year
1979 constituted a, if not the major watershed in modern Middle
East history.The happenings of 1979, particularly the signatory
events--the Iranian revolution, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty,
and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan--fundamentally altered the
entire Middle East and had far-reaching consequences beyond the
region itself. The regional instability created by the Iranian
revolution led directly to the taking of the U.S. hostages in
Teheran later in the year, an event in and of itself that had
important domestic political repercussions in the United States as
well as opened the door of terrorism against U.S. interests. The
Iranian revolution also spawned the environment for the Iraqi
invasion of Iran in 1980, a war that lasted eight long years and
established the parameters for the infamous Iran-contra affair,
and, through the Iran-Iraq war, the revolution can be directly
linked to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the resulting Gulf
crisis and war. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty created a
framework for peace that perforce compelled the Arab states to
pursue a negotiated resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to
which the historic 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of
Principles and the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty owe a great
deal; in addition, the treaty upset the balance of power in the
Arab world that led directly to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in
1982 and affected Saddam Hussein's decision to invade Iran in 1980.
Finally, the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan accelerated
the break-up of the Soviet empire and the end to the cold war as
well as affected the political disposition in the United States
that led to the Reagan era. At the regional level, the war ravaged
Afghanistan, and in the ensuing chaos it created a multitude of
opportunities for the expansion of Islamist movements fighting
against godless communism and then American imperialism--the
Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the heightening of Pakistani-Indian
hostilities, and disruption and turmoil in the former Central Asian
Soviet republics are all the off-srping of the Kremlin's decision
to invade Afghanistan. An important breaking point had occurred,
and new paradigms had been established. 1979 was both an end and a
beginning.After an opening chapter that provides a
historiographical analysis of the efficacy and legitimacy of
examining the made-made and Western categorization called "1979,"
the book offers a historical survey of the three primary events
occurring during the year: the Iranian revolution, the
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. The culminating third chapter of the book connects the
dots of history, i.e., outlines and explains the important
repercussions of the events of 1979 down to the present day.
General
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