Word: shahs
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...example, said Simes, the Soviets had good reason to be pleased with the Shah of Iran: he bought Soviet arms, "paying very quickly and in hard currency," and he supplied 45% of the natural gas used by three Soviet republics near the Iranian border. Also, the Soviets could not be happy about the rise of a militant Islamic nationalist movement on their borders, since the U.S.S.R. harbors millions of fervent Muslims...
Despite all that, says Simes, "the Soviets discovered that the situation in Iran was of great concern to the United States," and "as soon as they determined for themselves that the Shah had no chance, they immediately found that this was a terrible, corrupt, pro-American and generally horrible government." Moscow then directed much effective anti-U.S. propaganda into Iran. In the months ahead Moscow will be sharply looking for other such opportunities...
...Scholar Jim Bill: "There is a record of blundering in Iran -the story hasn't even begun to be told yet-that compromised our national interests in a very serious way in that part of the world. We continued to support a succession of losers. We supported the Shah to the absolute last possible moment. The only thing we didn't do for him is send troops. Then when his people drove him from the country, we switched to another loser. Anyone could see that [Shahpour] Bakhtiar [whom the Shah named Prime Minister before he left Iran...
Akins believed that the Administration did too little too late. Said he: "Every pro-American Iranian I know says the same thing: 'For God's sake, why didn't you put pressure on the Shah earlier to make concessions?' If he'd made the concessions a year earlier that he made in December, he could have looked forward to the ten or 15 years of tranquil reign that the CIA predicted...
...transportation firm to pay his bills, said he knows many Iranian students who are also in bad financial straights. He added that his tuition should have been paid by rent on a building in Iran that his father had leased to the government under the Shah...