The media has already started to beat the war drums about an impending conflict between the United States, Israel ( maybe even the rest of the world), with the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the American president has strongly signaled his dissatisfaction with the JCPoA, a.k.a. “The Iran Nuclear Deal” that was put into effect in August of 2016. We have covered this matter extensively here at the Duran, and there will certainly be more news as events develop.
But what is the nature of the conflict in the first place? Many people are not old enough to remember a time when the United States and Iran were on much better terms. What was it like, and why did it go bad?
We will take a brief look at this now.
Iranian Demographics
The actual demographic information on Iran may come as a surprise to the average Western reader. Iran is quite a populous country, with some 80 million people residing in a land about one-sixth the size of the geographical United States. The population density is actually about 30 percent greater than the American population at the present time.
Iran is home to one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with known kingdoms in existence as long ago as the fourth millennium, B.C. Its greatest territorial extent, under the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great, stretched from Eastern Europe to the Indus Valley, and the empire lasted for about two centuries. It later fell to Alexander the Great and was divided into several Hellenistic states. In later times it experienced independence and the status of empire again.
This is the land that is also known as Persia. It is NOT an Arab country as such, and the language of the people is Farsi, not Arabic. The dominant religion of the country is presently the Shia variant of Islam, but this was a conversion that took place in the 16th through 18th centuries. Before that, the country was Sunni, going back all the way to the Arab Conquest of Iran in the seventh century A.D.
Iranian artists and scientists were great contributors to the advance of their respective fields during the Islamic Golden Age, with the development of algebra, geometry, trigonometry and even elements of what came to be known as calculus. The scientific method itself has its roots with Ibn al-Haytham, who developed a methodical approach to experimentation and has been described as the world’s first “true scientist.”
Iran was and continues to be one of the leaders in the field of astronomy. One can visit western websites, such as spaceweather.com, and see regular contributions of astronomical observations by Iranian astronomers to this day. Further, this site lists Iranian scientists, philosophers, mathematicians and artists across the entire history of the country.
Iran is clearly an extraordinary repository of history and culture.
Relations with the world powers before 1979
The Persian Shahs were the emperors and kings of the nation for many centuries, and one of the most powerful of them was Nader Shah Afshar, who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. However after he was assassinated, the empire he created began to disintegrate, and further conflicts with the Russian Empire in the 19th century lead to large losses of territory.
In 1905, spurred by continuing losses of land to the Russian Empire, and the strife caused by the Great Famine of 1870-71, which killed some 20-25% of the population of Iran at that time, the country became a constitutional monarchy, ending the days of empire. However, the nation suffered further famine in 1921 and occupations by Russian and British forces at various times. During World War I the Ottoman Empire also got involved and many people were lost to the Assyrian and Armenian Genocides in the years between 1914 and 1920.
Iran’s strategic location became a source of both trouble and opportunity during the Second World War. The German invasion of Russia in 1941 was followed by an invasion by British and Soviet forces of Iran, forcing the abdication of Reza Shah in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the establishment of Iran as a conduit through which military supplies were transported from the British and American military forces to the Soviet Union until the war ended.
However, in 1943, Winston Churchill, Frankin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin together issued the Tehran Declaration, a guarantee of the independence and boundaries of Iran in the post-war period. Iran became fully independent in 1946, after the last of the Soviet troops left the region.
As to the United States, the first record of diplomatic interaction with Persia (Iran) dates back to 1856’s Treaty of Commerce and Navigations, which lasted until 1928. The Persians actually sought financial assistance from the United States after the first World War, but the deal failed to go through. After that there was no real interaction until World War II. That being said, there were cordial relations between the two countries until World War II. Many Iranians who were sympathetic to the Persian Constitutional Revolution came to view the United States as an ally, or “third force” in their struggle to break free of British and Russian dominance in Persian affairs. The Americans in turn were interested in and supported Persia’s drive to become free of foreign influence and to modernize its economy. Despite trouble during the Constitutional revolution in which two Americans died, relations remained friendly until the 1950’s and relations with Iran’s leadership remained solid until the overthrow of the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.
The CIA and the seeds of change
Between the end of World War II and the 1979 Revolution, the relationship between the United States and Iran was very friendly. Iran’s long border with the Soviet Union and its position as the largest and most powerful country in the Persian Gulf region made Iran a pillar of US foreign policy in the Mideast. The exchange of Iranian and American students was great, and some 25,000 American technicians were sent to Iran to maintain the military equipment, such as F-14 Tomcat fighters, that had been sold to the Shah’s government. From 1950 to 1979, an estimated 800,000 to 850,000 Americans visited or spent time living in Iran, and often expressed great admiration for the Iranian people.
But Iran was also the first power that the United States ever “managed” through covert activity. In 1953, Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown by a CIA-organized group. This event is considered the turning point in US and Iranian relations, though its full effects were not to be seen or felt until 1979. While the relations between the two countries continued, a very anti-American sentiment festered in the people who resented their government being manipulated by the CIA’s activity. This resentment was exacerbated by the strong support for the Shah, and the support of his dreaded SAVAK secret police, trained by none other than General Norman Schwarzkopf, the CIA and the Israeli Mossad!
Nevertheless, the Americans continued to help the Iranians build the country, providing Iran with its first nuclear reactor and fuel, and after 1967, the US provided Iran with weapons-grade enriched uranium. This, ironically was a result of the American Atoms for Peace program.
The overthrow of the Shah and the Islamic Republic of Iran
The election of Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1976 was perhaps the trigger point for the collapse of Iranian and American relations. As we noted before there were certainly some very controversial actions taken by the American government to uphold the Shah and his government. But when Carter became President, his foreign policy platform emphasized human rights, and the Shah’s regime was known for a very poor record in this regard.
The American President apparently chided the Shah on his human rights record and the Shah responded with a minor amnesty for some prisoners and allowed the Red Cross to come and visit Iranian prisons. However, the ball was rolling and liberal opposition formed organizations that wrote open letters denouncing the Shah’s regime.
President Carter provided further fuel to the anger that was growing among the Iranian revolutionaries in his 1978 New Year’s Eve toast in which he said:
Under the Shah’s brilliant leadership Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troublesome regions of the world. There is no other state figure whom I could appreciate and like more.
Wikipedia’s entry here is worth direct inclusion for what happened next:
Observers disagree over the nature of United States policy toward Iran under Carter as the Shah’s regime crumbled. According to historian Nikki Keddie, the Carter administration followed “no clear policy” on Iran. The American ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalled that the US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully”.
On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would “back him to the hilt.” At the same time, high-level officials in the State Department believed the revolution was unstoppable. After visiting the Shah in summer of 1978, Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal complained of the Shah’s emotional collapse, reporting, “You’ve got a zombie out there.” Brzezinski and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger were adamant in their assurances that the Shah would receive military support.
Another scholar, sociologist Charles Kurzman, argues that, rather than being indecisive or sympathetic to the revolution, the Carter administration was consistently supportive of the Shah and urged the Iranian military to stage a “last-resort coup d’etat” even after the regime’s cause was hopeless.
The overthrow of the Shah and the installation of the radical Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came as a surprise to the American government, its State Department and intelligence services, which all had underestimated the magnitude of the unrest, and had gone on record stating in a report that Iran was nowhere near any sort of revolutionary situation.
At this time the Shah himself was dying of cancer, and he sought treatment (and most likely asylum) in the United States. This further angered the revolutionaries in Iran, who thought that the US was about to resort to covert measures to overthrow the revolutionaries.
On November 4, 1979 the revolutionary group named Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line occupied the American Embassy and took American 66 diplomats hostage. While some fourteen were released early on, the remaining 52 were incarcerated as hostages for 444 days, freed the day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration at the exact minute his 20 minute inauguration speech concluded.
This crisis was the cause of the US ending its diplomatic relations with Iran. At this time the US also froze about $12 billion in Iranian assets.
Part II in this series is forthcoming.
The post The Iran – American relationship – Part I (Background and history through 1981) appeared first on The Duran.