The half-decade from 1976 to 1980 was a period of exceptionally rapid change and considerable instability in the central balance of power. That in itself necessarily affected Australia’s position in the world of powers, and the impact of the changes was magnified by the circumstance that most of them took place in what came to be called the ’arc of crisis’, a great geographical crescent running from south western Asia (Afghanistan) through the Persian Gulf area, the Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa, and further south. The region may be regarded as a sort of in-depth extension of the Indian Ocean littoral, and it seemed to develop in the late 1970s as a kind of ’fault zone’ in international politics, an area where earthquakes must be expected. The epicentre of these earthquakes was of course Iran. Australia, as the only Indian Ocean power which was also a full member of the loose tacit alliance-structure of the West and its fellow-travellers, thus found itself uncomfortably close to the main prospective theatre of international crisis. Certain facilities on its shores rose sharply in importance and thus in potential controversy.