“Our Most Dependable Allies”: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Eisenhower Doctrine, 1956–1958

From January 1957 to August 1958, US policy in the Middle East was guided by the Eisenhower Doctrine. A key facet of the doctrine was the creation of a coalition of conservative Arab states to oppose the influence of Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser. The region's major conservative states, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, played prominent roles in the implementation of the Eisenhower Doctrine, yet while US policymakers were eager to mold King Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud into a regional leader, they were decidedly ambivalent toward the ambitions of the Hashemite regime in Iraq and skeptical of its long-term viability.