Word: shahs
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What happened to the Shah's once very real support? Sums up a senior American businessman with many years' experience in Iran: "He lost contact with the peasants. He lost control of inflation. He lost contact with the mullahs. He lost control of SAVAK [the secret police]. He lost control of his own family and all the outrageous deals they made for personal profit. All he had left was the army...
That the Soviet Union is anxious to extend its influence throughout the crisis area is beyond dispute.* What is less certain is how boldly it is pursuing this goal. Moscow's view of Iran under the Shah appears to have been highly ambiguous. Some experts believe Iran's Tudeh Communists played a direct role in the well-organized strikes of the oil workers and in the mass demonstrations against the Shah. Russian radio stations broadcast anti-American and anti-Shah propaganda. Yet the Soviets also became the Shah's third largest arms supplier and entered into several...
There is evidence that the introspective Shah recently began to realize that the end was coming, though he remained immobilized and unable to accept the fact that his grand scheme had failed. When TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis asked him in late November what he felt had been his biggest mistake, the Shah answered sadly: "Being born." On another occasion, he wondered aloud how many of his people would go into the streets to cheer and support him as a million Frenchmen once did for Charles de Gaulle during his hour of need. Says a Western diplomat in Tehran: "I doubt...
...great opportunists who will readily take advantage of a situation that presents strategic gain with the minimum of risk," says a senior British official. But he adds that the conservative Soviet leadership should be credited with properly understanding the serious risks involved in actively seeking to overthrow the Shah and deny Persian Gulf oil to the Western world. He concludes: "There is no concrete evidence suggesting that the Russians have been masterminding or in any way been directly involved in the drastic changes taking place in Iran...
...difference between conditions in Saudi Arabia and Iran helps explain why the entire crescent can be so difficult to understand and predict. Unlike the Shah, a stern, remote and isolated figure, the huge Saudi ruling family, with its estimated 5,000 princes, has its roots in the lives of its people. Its members are married into the families of commoners all over the country. They take their places in the chain of command below nonroyal superiors in the civil service. Saudi rulers take their "desert democracy" seriously: even the lowliest citizen can approach King Khalid or Crown Prince Fahd with...