Irans Nuclear Activity and the US Response to It - Research Paper Example

It has continued to stay guard on its long-time rival Iraq despite the U.S. invasion in 2003 and has played a significant role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.Iran has explained its role in the Middle East, stating that it had the duty and obligation as a concerned nation-state. Iran has claimed that Washington was trying to cause conflict among ethnic groups in the region.During the Cold War, the world was haunted by horrors of death, and this was personified by the Christian Bible’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – pestilence, war, famine and death.

These four are now interchanged with a pandemic, terror, climate change and nuclear proliferation. The history of the Middle East has been haunted by the Four Horsemen. The United States links terror and nuclear proliferation to the state of Iran. Whether this is true or not, there are many issues that should be proven and cleared first in order to arrive at such a conclusion.The story of Iran is a story of years of conflict and ethnic rivalry and submission of a people who wanted peace. Iran is perceived as another source of conflict in the region, and there is a growing concern that this could escalate because of its nuclear energy program.

Iran is a strategically important country in the Middle East. It shares a 1,250-mile border with the Soviet Union and so it helped check Soviet expansionism.Another reason for this strategic significance of Iran is that during the period from 1970 to 1990, there were several proxy conflicts which involved the East and West, for instance, the conflicts in Southeast Asia, Angola and Mozambique, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and several other countries, the reasons of which were indigenous in nature.

There was ‘Great Power’ involvement through the reinforcement of sophisticated weapons. The United States led the Western alliance defending Europe from the then Soviet Union by building a virtual defensive position from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.