Word: shahs
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Helms believes that for too long America has heard only of the Shah's repressions and his violations of human rights. The difficulty of governing Iran was never understood in the U.S. nor, for that matter, was the Shah's loyalty to the U.S. Helms remembers that during the oil embargo of 1973, the Shah sent his emissaries to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to plead for a quick end. He kept Israel supplied with oil at that time. Once he secretly sent a tanker out to refuel an American carrier task force running...
There were many failures over time that caused the Shah his problems today, admits Helms. Our own curtailment of the CIA has not helped. Even before the CIA's operations were cut back, the agency did not have enough Farsi-speaking agents. And maybe, muses Helms, the Shah, for many reasons, including U.S. pressure to liberalize, did it too fast when at last he moved...
When he was in the spy business, Helms learned early not to look back. That is his idea now. He believes the U.S. should pull all the backstage levers it can, should let the world know that Iran is critical to our interests, should send the Shah a public message that the U.S. still cares, and that it still knows a few tricks in the big power game. It has always been Helms' view-one his detractors call simplistic-that we are only as helpless as we think...
...dilemma is this: on the one hand, U.S. policy of all-out support for the Shah has discouraged both contact with and knowledge of the Shah's opposition. On the other hand, the nature of his opposition-which is deep rooted, wide spread and home grown-has precluded U.S. intervention on his behalf...
There are other, exacerbating dimensions to the problem. Indeed, there are exquisite ironies. The Shah is very much a creation of the U.S. He regained the Peacock Throne 25 years ago as a result of the bold but covert exercise of American power (a CIA-engineered countercoup against leftist Premier Mohammed Mossadegh). But two things make such intervention impossible now that he is threatened again...