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Middle East and Eisenhower doctrine

Even before he was inaugurated Eisenhower accepted a request from the British government to restore the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) to power. He therefore authorized the CIA to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. This resulted in increased strategic control over Iranian oil by US and British companies.

In November 1956, Eisenhower forced an end to the combined British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt in response to the Suez Crisis, receiving praise from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Simultaneously he condemned the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary in response to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He publicly disavowed his allies at the United Nations and used financial and diplomatic pressure to make them withdraw from Egypt. Eisenhower explicitly defended his strong position against Britain and France in his memoirs, published in 1965.

After the Suez Crisis, the United States became the protector of unstable friendly governments in the Middle East via the " Eisenhower Doctrine ". Designed by Secretary of State Dulles, it held the US would be "prepared to use armed force... aggression from any country controlled by international communism". Further, the US would provide economic and military aid and, if necessary, use military force to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East.

Eisenhower applied the doctrine in 1957–1958 by dispensing economic aid to Jordan, and by encouraging Syria's neighbors to consider military operations against it. More dramatically, in July 1958, he sent 15,000 Marines and soldiers to Lebanon as part of Operation Blue Bat, a non-combat peacekeeping mission to stabilize the pro-Western government and to prevent a radical revolution. The Marines departed three months later. Washington considered the military intervention successful since it brought about regional stability, weakened Soviet influence, and intimidated the Egyptian and Syrian governments, whose anti-West political position had hardened after the Suez Crisis.

Most Arab countries were skeptical about the "Eisenhower doctrine" because they considered "Zionist imperialism" the real danger. However, they did take the opportunity to obtain free money and weapons. Egypt and Syria, supported by the Soviet Union, openly opposed the initiative. However, Egypt received American aid until the Six-Day War in 1967.

As the Cold War deepened, Dulles sought to isolate the Soviet Union by building regional alliances against it. Critics sometimes called it " pacto-mania ".