Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World

9 Mirage of Stability: The United States and the Shah of Iran

9 Mirage of Stability: The United States and the Shah of Iran 122 Apersistent oversight in U.S. reconstruction efforts around the globe has been the failure to anticipate that an externally initiated process of change may introduce greater inequality within a nation by equipping one subset of a population with better survival tools than another. This situation may polarize society and destabilize it. In Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the injection of Western economic rationality and weaponry started a cycle of inequality (see table 9-1). As in postcolonial Africa, imported skill was narrowly distributed, endowing recipients with the means to dominate less well-positioned citizens. The less well-trained fell further behind, initiating a downward spiral of recrimination and polarization that, once begun, made consensus on the future social order difficult to attain.With gains from development so unevenly distributed in Iran, the marginalized—including those operating within the economic network of the bazaar, which was Iran’s traditional method for distributing goods and services—worked to destroy the system they identified with the new inequalities. Why Such Blindness? The fall of the shah in January 1979 was largely unforeseen in America, where the leader of Iran’s revolution and the cause for which he stood were virtually The evidence suggests that we are poorly equipped to deal with revolutionary societies, and when religion is added to revolution, we are paralyzed. —Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (1985) Iran under the great leadership of the Shah is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership, and to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you. —President Jimmy Carter, speaking in Tehran, December 31, 1977 The United States and the Shah of Iran 123 unknown. The answer as to why the American foreign policy establishment was so willfully uninformed about a country it believed was critical to U.S. economic and military security highlights the limitations of U.S. cold war policies in the third world. In this chapter I divide these limitations into two categories, conceptual and strategic failures, as they pertain to Iran.1 Throughout the cold war America’s foreign policy establishment felt secure that Islam would inoculate Middle Eastern populations against revolutionary tendencies.2 This view was born of the belief that Communistinspired revolution was the real world danger, and that the Islamic clergy could see this danger and could be counted on to fight it. Many Americans believed that the Russians were behind the revolutionary events that began to unfold in Iran in 1979. To think otherwise would have challenged the premises of U.S. global strategy. Few in Washington anticipated how effectively the clerics had absorbed the social critique of Iran’s left and used the sanctuary of the mosque to promote leftist agendas of social change.3 The cold war lens distorted the West’s understanding of the role of Muslim clerics and their influence over Middle East populations. The Most Strategic of Nations The shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was a lynchpin of U.S. security in the Middle East for four U.S. administrations, beginning with Eisenhower, a cautious supporter; Kennedy was a cautious reformer; Johnson, an enthusiast ; Nixon and Ford, strong and visible backers; Carter, reluctant and hypercritical . The Eisenhower administration gave the wink to covert U.S. operations to help organize the downfall of Iran’s elected prime minister, Muhammad Mossadegh, in 1953. The formal mechanism that ended Mossadegh’s tenure was a dismissal by decree by Mohammad Reza Shah Table 9-1. Historical Timeline of Iran, Pahlavi Dynasty to the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1926–Present Reza Shah 1926–41 Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi 1942–79 Muhammad Mossadegh (prime minister) 1941–53 Muhammad Mossadegh (ruler) 1953 (3 days) Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (dictator) 1953–78 Ayatollah Khomeini (ruler of Islamic Republic) 1979–89 Islamic Republic of Iran 1979–present Source: Roberto Ortiz de Zárate, Iran, Zarate’s Political Collections: 1996–2006 (www.terra.es/ personal2/monolith). The Economic Failure of Client Regimes 124 Pahlavi,4 the figurehead monarch who, since taking the throne in 1941, had avoided day-to-day politics.5 The shah’s unconstitutional action was preceded by a U.S.-funded campaign to discredit and remove the elected prime minister and replace...