Confrontation in West Asia

Recent developments in Iran and Afghanistan have increased the importance of the Gulf region as a strategic area—and generated a new urgency to the Superpowers’ efforts to enhance their military presences there. As much of the world’s oil has been transported through the Gulf in the last two decades, that body of water was recognised as of strategic importance to Western interests in the Gulf in the last three decades. Observers have been watching with concern the recent developments in these oil lands—a very sensitive region—and their implications for international peace and security. The activities of the two Superpowers in this region have assumed some of the Cold War overtones. Alarm bells about the possibility of a US–Soviet confrontation in the Gulf are ringing loudly.