Paternalistic and patronizing
The Iran-Contra affair was a scandal involving the US and Iran. Iran was at an arms embargo at the time, so no arms were supposed to be sold to this country. The US though was secretly selling arms to Iran. This came out on the surface and became a big scandal. The US administration was trying to justify this move that they have done it order to free American hostages held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, but it turned out that the arms sale started much earlier then that. Apart from having a badly damaged reputation, both at home and on the international scene, the US success in the region was also damaged. The Arab world was a sworn enemy of Iran, and they thought that the US is their friend and protector, but it came on surface that the US is arming their enemy, so it disrupted the relations with these countries for the time being.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941 marked the official entrance of the United States into World War II.
During the 1930s, Japan, having already annexed Korea in 1910, sought to further expand its empire, particularly to gain natural resources. In 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, a small, resource-rich province in northern China, and set up a puppet state called Manchukuo. In 1937, Japan invaded the rest of China and by some estimates killed as many as 300,000 people during the infamous Nanking Massacre. China would lose as many as 14 million people by the end of World War II.
Western powers were distressed by Japanese expansion, particularly because it violated the “Open Door” Policy supported by the League of Nations (a precursor to the United Nations), which had been put in place to ensure equal trading opportunities with China. The League of Nations reprimanded Japan, but this did nothing to stop its expansion.
