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American Policy and the Iranian Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard W. Cottam
Richard W. Cottam*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

Anyone familiar with Iranian history would not have been surprised by the uneasy coalition of religious leaders, secular intellectuals, and bazaar merchants that spearheaded the antishah movement in Iran. Once each generation in this century such a coalition has attempted to gain political control of the nation. Each time, including this one, their efforts have met the determined resistance of one or more external powers. There appears to be a cruel geopolitical determinism at work. Iran, standing at the meeting point of competing imperial interests, is not allowed for long the luxury of chaotic development. Internal chaos threatens the delicate balance of external competitors—each fearing the other will take undue advantage of the situation. And since the kind of regime the coalition claims to seek, liberal and democratic, is certain to be at least initially unstable, it has been consistently the negative target of the external competitors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1-4: Iranian Revolution in Perspective , 1980 , pp. 279 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1980

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References

Notes

1. For an account of the British role in the episode see Ullman, Richard, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-21: The Anglo Soviet Accord, Volume 3 (Princeton, 1972), pp. 384–88.Google Scholar

2. Yeselson, Abraham, united States Persian Diplomatic Relations, 1883-1921 (New Brunswick, 1956).Google Scholar For the American government view see Foreign Relations of the United States (1943), Volume IV, p. 515.Google Scholar

4. See interviews of Henry Grady, US News and World Report, October 19, 1951, pp. 13-17 and The New York Times, October 11, 1952, 5:5.

5. The most accurate account of this event is found in an unpublished paper by Kenneth Love, “America's Role in the Pahlevi Restoration.” Of published accounts the most useful is the obviously authorized article by Richard and Gladys Harkness, “The Mysterious Doings of CIA,” Saturday Evening Post, November 6, 1954, pp. 66-68.

6. Love, op. cit.

7. For a generic left view see Kolko, Gabriel, The Roots of American Foreign Policy (Boston, 1969).Google Scholar

8. See the statistic published by the Office of Business Economics, U.S. Department of Commerce.

9. See Nirumand, Bahman, Iran: The New Imperialism in Action (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

10. The New York Times, July 19, 1962, 2:2.

11. Most interesting of these was Oriana Fallaci, “The Shah of Iran,” The New Republic, September 1, 1973, 217:18.

12. For the statistical picture of Iranian military expenditures as a proportion of GNP see U.S. Arms Control and Development Agency, “World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1967-76.”

13. See the summary of the senate report in The New York Times, August 2, 1976, 1:5.

14. Herman Nickels, “The U.S. Failure in Iran,” Fortune, March 12, 1979, Volume 99:5, p. 96.

15. For an excellent account of Soviet-Iranian relations see Chubin, Shahram and Zabih, Sepehr, The Foreign Relations of Iran (Berkeley, 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. The New York Times, March 19, 1975, 47:2.

17. Chubin, Zabih, op. cit., p. 310. See also Ramazani, Rouhollah, Iran's Foreign Policy, 1941-1973 (Charlottesville, 1975), p. 434.Google Scholar

18. See the summary of the Pike Committee report on CIA foreign policy activities, The Village Voice, February 16, 1976, p. 85.

19. See Richard W. Cottam, “The Case of the Kurds.” Paper delivered at the American Political Science Association Conference in Washington, September 1977.

20. For a description of Iranian and American policy see Burrell, Robert and Cottrell, Alvin, Iran, The Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

21. For this viewpoint see Halliday, Fred, Arabia Without Sultans (New York, 1973)Google Scholar, Chapters 10-11.

22. Chubin, Zabih, op. cit., pp. 310-12.

23. The New York Times, August 2, 1976, 1:5.

24. Fallaci, op. cit., p. 21.

25. The New York Times, September 24, 1974, 12:4.

26. The Economist, June 21, 1975, 255:66.

27. The Carter human rights policy toward Iran is detailed in Cottam, Richard W., “Arms Sales and Human Rights: The Case of Iran,” a chapter in Brown, Peter G. and MacLean, Douglas (eds.), Human Rights and Foreign Policy, Lexington Books, 1979.Google Scholar

28. See the testimony of Charles Nass in “Human Rights in Iran.” Hearings the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, October 26, 1977.

29. Kayhan International, February 25, 1978.

30. Nickels, op. cit., p. 97.

31. The New York Times, August 26, 1977, 8:2 and October 9, 1977, 1:1.

32. Kayhan International, January 7, 1978.

33. See for example Payam-e Mojahed, October 1978.

34. William Sullivan, “Dateline Iran: The Road Not Taken,” Foreign Policy, No. 40 (Fall 1980), pp. 175-86.

35. Ibid.