US Foreign Policy and Iran

Donette Murray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135219888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

US Foreign Policy and Iran is a study of US foreign policy decision-making in relation to Iran and its implications for Middle Eastern relations. It offers a new assessment of US-Iranian relations by exploring the rationale, effectiveness and consequences of American policy towards Iran from the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the present day.

As a key country in a turbulent region and the recipient of some of the most inconsistent treatment meted out during or after the Cold War, Iran has been both one of America's closest allies and an 'axis of evil' or 'rogue' state, targeted by covert action and contained by sanctions, diplomatic isolation and the threat of overt action. Moreover, since the attacks of 11 September 2001, Iran has played a significant role in the war on terror while also incurring American wrath for its links to international terror and its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapons programme.

US Foreign Policy and Iran will be of interest to students of US foreign policy, Iran, Middle Eastern Politics and international security in general

Donette Murray is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. She was awarded a PhD in International History by the University of Ulster in 1997.

1
The crucible of revolution

Carter’s bitter legacy

Recently we have discovered that our trust has been betrayed. The veils of secrecy have seemed to thicken around Washington. The purposes and goals of our country are uncertain and sometimes even suspect. Our people are understandably concerned about this lack of competence and integrity … it is time to reaffirm and to strengthen our ethical and spiritual and political beliefs. There must be no lowering of these standards, no acceptance of mediocrity in any aspect of our private or public lives.¹

[Jimmy Carter, 12 December 1974]

Timeline

1976
November	Jimmy Carter wins the Presidential election
1977
November	Shah visits Washington
December	Carter toasts Shah in Tehran, calls Iran ‘an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world’
1978
January	Protests in Qom against a government-linked article casting aspersions on the character of Ayatollah Khomeini
August	Abadan fire blamed on Shah and leads to more protests
October	Public sector strikes begin in Iran
September	Jaleh Square Massacre in Iran generates huge protests
November	Strikes spread throughout Iran, paralysing the economy; Ambassador Sullivan sends his ‘thinking the unthinkable’ telegram reversing previous assessments about the Shah’s chances of survival; Carter asks George Ball to assess the situation and provide recommendations
1979
January	General Huyser is sent to Iran to bolster Iranian military; Shah leaves Iran for ‘a holiday’
February	Ayatollah Khomeini returns; US embassy is briefly besieged

October	Carter decides to allow Shah to enter the US for life-saving medical treatment
November	US embassy is invaded; 66 diplomats taken hostage; Carter halts import of oil, expels Iranians from US, freezes Iranian assets and sends a personal envoy to Iran
1980
April	Carter breaks diplomatic relations with Iran and orders sanctions on all goods except medicine and food; hostage rescue attempt is aborted in the Iranian desert, eight servicemen die; Secretary of State Vance, who disagreed with the mission, resigns
July	Shah dies in Cairo
November	Carter loses presidential election to Ronald Reagan
1981
January	Hostages are freed moments after Reagan takes the oath of office

Change you can believe in

Mario Cuomo’s truism that one campaigns in poetry but governs in prose would hit Jimmy Carter hard. The outsider from Georgia, untainted by the excesses, scandals and failings that had battered Washington, set out a stall calculated to emphasise the differences – in terms of policy substance and underlying principle – that he promised would reinvigorate American politics and restore the public’s trust in its elected representatives. At the heart of Carter’s platform lay a desire to find a new rationale for US power in an era where, increasingly, hard power capacity did not appear to equate comfortably with ‘usable’ power. As Hedley Bull put it:

in place of Kissinger’s starting-point of the national interest there was a return to ideological objectives; in place of the negative ideological objective of anti-communism there was the positive one of the promotion of American values; in place of the older values of American liberal internationalism – the rights of the state and of nations – there was a new emphasis on the rights of human beings.²

Carter recognised the complexities of the Cold War struggle and appreciated, intellectually at least, the need for pragmatism in international politics. He was also convinced that a moral centre – what America was, what it stood for, what it offered to the world – was fundamental to overcoming the Soviet threat.³ Indeed, Carter owed a debt to (and had enormous personal sympathy for) the powerful urge emanating from the left wing of the Democratic Party, fixated on the promotion of human rights and zero tolerance of culpable (particularly rightist) regimes. In his estimation, these issues had been improperly and unnecessarily reduced to subordinate status.⁴ Many, in particular those who espoused Realpolitik, viewed idealism and pragmatism as incompatible. Carter, however, was convinced that they could and should coexist:

I was familiar with the widely accepted arguments that we had to choose between idealism and realism, or between morality and the exertion of power but I rejected those claims… I could understand the justification for supporting some of the more conservative regimes. At least within those countries, it was not possible to conceal all the abuses of human rights. World condemnation and our influence could be much more effective here than in Communist countries.⁵

Thus, commitments to human rights, a focus on North–South politics and a tightening up of arms sales put the world – America’s enemies as well as her allies – on notice that there was a new way of doing business. Threatening as it did to de-legitimise the Soviet Union and overturn decades of difficult, often unpalatable diplomacy, the president-elect knowingly raised the stakes high:⁶

we’ve been hurt in recent years in this country. In the aftermath of Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Pakistan, Angola, Watergate, CIA, we’ve been hurt. Our people feel that we’ve lost something precious. That’s not necessary. I want to see our nation – return to the posture and an image and a standard to make us proud once again … we ought to be a beacon for nations who search for peace and who search for freedom, who search for individual liberty who search for basic human rights.⁷

It was a bold move, calculated to get the attention of the American people. When Carter took office, they, and heads of state around the world, held their breath and waited to see if and indeed how this rhetoric would become a reality.

Translating words into policy was always going to be difficult and, from the outset, the new administration struggled under the weight of some of the apparent contradictions it had provoked. Although the criteria for arms sales were tightened up and aligned more closely with foreign policy goals, these transfers actually increased during Carter’s time in office.⁸ Moreover, while the president himself came to acknowledge that human rights was the lodestone of his administration rather than the sole determinant of policy, for many, the nuances (and compromises) necessary to enable this strategy to succeed were either beyond their grasp or their tolerance. The result, according to Stanley Hoffmann, was fragmentation, conflicting actors and centrifugal forces.⁹ This was most visibly on display in Carter’s national-security team which was deliberately constituted with a view to harnessing conflict. Carter brought in a doveish Secretary of State – Cyrus Vance – and a hawkish National Security Adviser (NSA) – Zbigniew Brzezinski – who were temperamentally and ideologically poles apart. Their clashes, perhaps somewhat exaggerated when it came to some issues, became legendary. As one analyst put it the ‘team had five ranking members with four different agendas’. Carter and his vice president Walter Mondale were focused on human rights, Vance on arms control, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown on cost effective military technology and Brzezinski on hitting the Soviet Union.¹⁰ Carter was convinced that he could manage this ambitious administration. Not everyone agreed. His presidency, perhaps predictably, was marked by accusations of double standards, naivety and incompetence.¹¹ Few knew it in the earliest days of 1977, but it would be in connection with Iran that this criticism would burn most brightly.

On Iran, more of the same

For Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the contrast with the Nixon–Ford era was immense and, initially at least, deeply unsettling.¹² He need not have worried. This ally, Carter quickly decided, required careful handling. Once elected, the president declined to depart from the legacy bequeathed to him for several reasons. America’s relationship with Iran existed in the context of the convergence of a series of wider foreign policy goals that included confounding the Soviet threat (what former National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher described as the ‘primordial’ force in US foreign policy), augmenting the US’s intelligence capacity, securing energy supplies (for the US and its allies), enhancing regional stability and the generation of arms sales.¹³ These – and a friendship underpinned by longevity – continued therefore to confirm Iran as an exceptional strategic asset in the Middle East. The Shah’s usefulness was demonstrated in numerous ways: the counter-insurgency assistance he provided in Oman, his active support for US goals in the Horn of Africa and in the buffer that Iran offered against the Soviet Union and a pro-Soviet Iraq. In short, the Shah was important for the reasons he had always been. As one senior official put it, he was ‘sitting on an area of the world we consider necessary for our own national security’.¹⁴ ‘I do not think it can be disputed’, Assistant Secretary of State Alfred Atherton added: ‘that a strong and secure Iran, sharing our objectives of global peace, stability and economic well-being, is essential to the peace and continued progress of the states in the Persian Gulf region and to our own interests there.’¹⁵

Carter noted in his diary, that he continued to do what other presidents had done before him, consider the Shah a strong ally:

I appreciated his ability to maintain good relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and his willingness to provide Israel with oil in spite of the Arab boycott. At the time of his visit to Washington in November 1977, I was especially eager to secure his influence in support of Sadat’s dramatic visit to Jerusalem.¹⁶

The ‘clientitis’ this produced exerted a strong pull on those who had invested considerable time and energy on the high-maintenance monarch.¹⁷ Moreover, since the administration believed that Pahlavi was very much in control, Vance could write with confidence ‘we decided early on that it was in our national interest to support the Shah so he could continue to play a constructive role in regional affairs’.¹⁸ Carter’s instructions to William Sullivan, his new ambassador to Iran, confirmed the continuity in US foreign policy:

The president made clear that he regarded Iran as strategically important to the United States and our allies. He also warmly endorsed the Shah as a close friend and a trusted ally and stressed the important of Iran as a force for stability and security in the Persian Gulf region. He outlined traditional attitudes toward the problem of oil pricing and several other matters of a bilateral nature between our two countries.¹⁹

During this meeting, Sullivan asked Carter for guidance on three policy issues: military equipment sales, Iran’s request for nuclear-power plants and whether the president wished to see a continuation of the long-standing collaboration between the CIA and SAVAK. Carter was unequivocal about all three. He wished to be quite generous with the Iranians and told Sullivan there was nothing on their current arms shopping list (including the AWACS [airborne warning and control systems] that were still being introduced at the time into the US Air Force) that he regarded as problematic. Similarly, as long as the safeguards were observed, the president expressed contentment about Iran’s acquisition of atomic power. Finally, because of the intelligence the US received from the listening stations, Carter ordered that the CIA–SAVAK links should also continue.²⁰

In addition to these incentives for maintaining a close relationship with Iran, a number of more negative factors further reduced the likelihood of the new administration shifting course. To begin with, in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, America’s options were perceived as being more limited than at any time in its recen...