Word: shahs
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...moment seems unprepared to meet such a challenge. After weeks of indecision and disbelief, the Carter Administration finally realized last month that the Shah's days as an absolute monarch were ending. From the very beginning of the cold war, the Shah's country had been a cornerstone of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)* and a bulwark of Western influence. It was largely the U.S. that restored the ruler to his Peacock Throne after the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Yet U.S. intelligence failed dismally at assessing the depth and range of opposition to the Shah...
...fairness, the dilemma created by Iran is one that would have tested any American President. The Carter Administration inherited a relationship with the Shah that could hardly have been more cozy. In 1972 Richard Nixon decided to lift all restrictions on arms sales to the Shah. Soon billions of dollars' worth of the most sophisticated weaponry and aircraft in the U.S. arsenal began pouring into Iran. America's decision to depend on the Shah as its surrogate policeman in the Persian Gulf was perceived as even more crucial in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when...
Until recently, the Shah was believed by practically all Western observers to have a base of support that included the peasantry, the middle classes who were supposed to benefit from the Shah's heady campaign of modernization, and the armed forces. Exactly what happened to that support will be debated for a long time. Without doubt the answer is more complex than the pat view of some American journalists who today try to argue that the Shah never enjoyed much support at home and was largely an invention...
...unbridled pursuit of industrial growth, technological progress and military development, the Shah sent tens of thousands of young Iranians overseas for advanced education. Many of them stayed abroad as embittered exiles. The Shah did not seem to realize that the middle classes, which in time came to constitute about 25% of the Iranian population, wanted increased political rights and freedom of expression as well as a share in the country's new wealth. According to the University of Texas' James A. Bill, one of the ranking experts on Iran in the U.S., the Shah's tactics broke...
...Middle East, also swept through Iran, where the Shi'ite mullahs have traditionally served as the conscience of the people. The mullahs were scandalized by growing corruption that clearly involved the royal family, by the jet-setting Western ways of Iran's new rich, by the Shah's apparent contempt for the faith to which most of his people belonged. Beyond that, the mullahs were infuriated early last year when the then Premier, Jamshid Amuzegar, canceled the $80 million annual subsidy that they had formerly received from the Palace to spend on mosques, scholarships and travel...