The Iranian Revolution and U.S. Policy

THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION AND U.S. POLICY Nikki R. Keddie Xhe fears and frustrations of the United States during the hostage crisis, along with the dramatic aspects of the continuing Iranian situation, have led to interminable postmortems of the Iranian revolution, many of which play on the theme of "who lost Iran?" As with the "who-lost-China" fight of the 1950s, many of these analyses maintain that Iranian politics were, and should have remained , controllable by the United States, and furthermore, that the revolution was preventable (or its course at least manageable) if only the proper U.S. action had been taken. These postmortems also suggest that crucial errors were made in the last years of the shah's rule, and that they were made by a few individuals in the U.S. government. Among those singled out most frequently, Nixon and Kissinger have been blamed for having given the shah a blank check in 1972 to buy inordinate amounts of nonnuclear arms without the customary congressional reviews. Carter has been charged with indecision, and his State Department human rights staff censured, for suggesting reforms. The CIA and embassy political analysts have been accused of not knowing Persian and of having little contact with the opposition (particularly the clerical and bazaar classes), and ambassadors who placated the shah by discouraging such contacts have also been held accountable. All of these charges, particularly the blank check on arms and its manifold consequences, contain some truth (although on human rights the shah was handled with kid gloves), but none of these charges, nor any combination of "mistakes" made by individual Americans, come near to explaining Nikki R. Keddie, a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, was president of the Middle East Studies Association in 1981. Her latest books are Roots of Revolution: An Interpretative History of Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), and Continuity and Change in Modern Iran, coedited with M. Bonine (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981). 13 14 SAIS REVIEW even those parts of the Iranian revolution that may be attributed to U.S. policy. For that, one must go back to World War II and trace not so much the individual acts and errors, but the underlying assumptions and interests inherent in U.S. policies. First, despite a long-standing rhetorical interest in improving the Iranians ' lot, beginning with F.D.R. and continuing through Point Four, AID, the Peace Corps, and various other programs, the Iranian people were never of central concern to the United States. These programs had limited budgets, and their aims constituted only a small part of U.S.-Iranian relations. Hence, the programs were justly criticized in both the United States and Iran. Major international considerations were far more important in U.S. policies toward Iran: — Iran was a source of oil for the West second only to Saudi Arabia. Oil also was increasingly tied to other important U.S. economic interests, especially U.S. exports paid for by Iranian oil revenues. The U.S. government had supported attempts by Americans to get Iranian oil concessions since the 1920s and again during World War II, but abandoned these attempts under pressure. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) maintained an effective monopoly until it was nationalized in 1951 in response to Iranian nationalist agitation. Even before the 1951 crisis, U.S. companies had marketing agreements for AIOC oil and, with the oil settlement of 1954, U.S. companies took 40 percent—the same percentage held by AIOC—of the new oil consortium now called British Petroleum (BP). Even after the terms of the fictitious nationalization of oil in 1954 were improved for Iran in the early 1970s, the international companies in the Iranian consortium retained their marketing position and, consequently, their profits have risen dramatically with OPEC's price increases. The oil factor caused a general convergence of interests among the U.S. government, U.S. oil companies, and the shah. The only important conflicts over oil prices within this tripartite group after 1973 occurred when one segment of the U.S. government favored lower oil prices and the shah and U.S. oil companies pushed for higher ones...