Триъгълник на „разведряването“ – Америка, България и Иран през 60-те години на ХХ век
The Détente Triangle – America, Bulgaria and Iran in the 1960s

Summary/Abstract: In the first half of the 1960s the Cold War confrontation entered into a new phase of arms races and uncontrollable ideological and psychological warfare that created obstacles for normal political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the two sides of the “Iron Curtain”. However, in the second half of the decade, international relations improved significantly and foretold the onset of the Détente era. This process had a direct impact on Bulgarian foreign policy and made possible he resumption of the US – Bulgarian relations. The Bulgarian foreign policy made a giant step toward the establishment of friendly bilateral relations, which, it must be added, was achievable with the blessing of and permission from the Soviet Union. Bulgaria carried out an active campaign to create stable and lasting trade relations with America. The financial difficulties of Moscow and the well-hidden economic collapse of Bulgaria in the 1960s sparked the Soviet pursuit of “peaceful coexistence”, to which Washington, being in a better position, responded only a decade later. Yet even under these international circumstances the US did not build closer economic ties with Bulgaria. That initiative was left to Iran, the closest US ally in the Middle East, which in 1966 established fruitful economic relations with the “most unfavored” Soviet satellites – Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria.

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