The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  Moreover, the Shah made sure the embassy knew where he stood on the issue of nonalignment. In 1955, he had been one of the chief advocates of Iran’s forfeiting its century-old declared neutrality and joining what was then called the Baghdad Pact (later renamed CENTO). In a meeting with the American Ambassador in 1961, the Shah emphasized that he was still adamantly opposed to “views on a neutral Iran” and considered such ideas absolutely indefensible. He indicated that in his view, Iran “must stay tied to the West, and if and when those ties should be broken, he would cease being Shah.”21 Though Amini was in many ways anathema to the Shah, he had at least the virtue that, like the Shah, he was a firm believer in the idea that Iran must not only stay in the Western orbit, but also become ever closer to the United States. Amini, too, had been a fervent advocate of Iran’s joining the Baghdad Pact.

  As these events unfolded in Iran, the United States was seriously studying its options with the Shah. On May 24, 1961, in a meeting of the National Security Council, President Kennedy, based on the recommendation of the Talbot Task Force, approved a new U.S. policy for Iran. For the immediate future, the new policy advocated that the United States “make a major effort to back” Amini as the “best instrument in sight for promoting orderly political and economic, and social revolution” in Iran, and ensure that there were no military coups against him. Moreover, to give Amini more room to maneuver, it was decided “the US should be prepared to tolerate certain seemingly anti-American actions by Amini which do not really damage any major American interest.”22

  Not only did continued American support for Amini not bode well for the Shah, but the long-term elements of the new American strategy did not favor him either. It was decided that while the United States supported “monarchy as the symbol of unity and a stabilizing influence in Iran,” it should “more actively encourage the Shah to move toward a more constitutional role.”

  It was a measure of the Shah’s resilience as a politician that, in spite of the great chasm that separated his own vision from the new policy prescribed by the Americans, the Shah not only stayed a close ally of the United States for the next seventeen years, but also gradually forced a reconsideration of that policy. The irony is that, ultimately, his success in defying the American push for democracy and finding his own independent path proved to be his undoing. Had the Shah remained a constitutional monarch, as the American policy proposed in 1961, instead of becoming a modernizing, albeit authoritarian monarch as the Shah wished, he might have been able to save his throne and the monarchy.

  But in 1961, the Shah also had to contend with the fact that the new American policy suggested that “the US should encourage the formation and growth of broadly based political parties in Iran.” Up until that time, the Shah had willed into existence a semi-official two-party system modeled on that of the United States. In the Iranian incarnation of this system, the Shah directly controlled the affairs of both parties by appointing reliable politicians to head the two listless organizations. In due course, the Shah found a solution for this problem as well.

  Finally, lest the Shah be tempted to again blackmail the United States by using the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip, the new American strategy called for the United States to impress upon Iranian officials “the risk which may be involved in Iran rapprochement with the USSR.”23

  Not only the opposition, but also elements within the regime itself sensed the changing political climate. While traditional opposition parties suddenly became more active and aggressive, new groups also began to emerge. The most successful such new group was launched by Dr. Mostafa Mesbahzadeh, publisher of Tehran’s most popular daily, Keyhan. He called his group the Rastakhiz, or “the resurgence.”

  Mesbahzadeh was a man of tact and had many connections amongst Iran’s political cognoscenti and the intelligentsia. He was also close to such powerful political figures as Alam, and even to the Shah himself—particularly given the fact that in 1941 the Shah had provided some of the initial capital for launching Keyhan itself. Most important of all, as he had shown throughout his adult life, Mesbahzadeh had an unfailingly sharp nose for detecting changing political winds.

  His Rastakhiz movement prompted people to converge on rented rooms, offices, and storefronts to talk about the situation in the country—discussions that often had a subtext critical of the regime. The organization rapidly spread throughout the country, and there was a clear sense of spontaneity about the movement’s burst of energy and expansion. What afforded the meetings an even more unusual political air was the absence of the Shah’s portrait in the halls where the group met. By then, having a portrait of the Shah in each office and store was virtually mandatory. Every movie began by showing a portrait of the Shah while the royal anthem was played, and audiences were expected to stand at attention while the portrait was on the big screen.

  If the absence of royal portraits was, in the minds of the people, a sign of the movement’s authentic spontaneity, it was also the cause of Rastakhiz’s demise. As soon as the Shah was told about the meetings in halls with no royal portrait, he found a way of showing his displeasure to Mesbahzadeh, who was nothing if not cautious. Before long, he pulled the plug on his movement.

  The Shah’s relationship with Amini was far more complicated. He had to make sure that Amini did not amass too much power, but he also had to at least appear to still be supporting the cabinet. The Shah had still not met with Kennedy but was fully aware of his firm support for Amini.

  For his part, Amini also knew that so long as he enjoyed the support of the United States, he would be safe in his seat of power. Early in June 1961, he dispatched his trusted advisor Khodadad Farmanfarmaian on an exploratory journey. Tehran was in those days awash with rumors that the Shah “intended to replace Amini by [Teymour] Bakhtiyar.”24 Farmanfarmaian met with a State Department official and pointedly asked whether in fact the “United States was cooling off in its support of Amini.” The State Department “categorically denied” the allegation. The National Front refused to support Amini while using the freedoms he had provided to organize increasingly militant demonstrations against him and the regime. The Shah’s support for Amini was at best tentative and temporary. In addition, the military and SAVAK, both staunchly royalist and worried about what Amini might do to their budgets, were also no friend of his cabinet. These factors made the Americans virtually Amini’s sole source of support.

  In early May 1961, the United States received intelligence that General Teymour Bakhtiyar was planning a coup against the Amini government. The General was brazen about his coup plans. He had even decided on the composition of his cabinet and began meeting with each of them separately in a garden near Tehran. To each he described his plans, offered them a portfolio, and sought their support.25 The list of his designated ministers was eventually published in Bakhtar Emrooz—an opposition paper that belonged to the National Front. Many of those who remained powerful ministers in the next fifteen years, including Jamshid Amuzegar, were on the list.26

  There were also rumors about General Bakhtiyar’s attempt to form an alliance not only with the National Front, but with the Marxist Tudeh Party, as well as with the landowners opposed to the land reform and finally with the clergy. On May 17, the United States “took all steps necessary to discourage General Bakhtiyar against initiating any action against Amini.”27 With no support from the United States, with the Shah waiting for the right moment to rid himself of the dangerously meddlesome General, and with Amini keen on getting rid of this overambitious foe, Bakhtiyar’s days were now clearly numbered.

  But Bakhtiyar was not the only general conspiring against Amini. On May 15, around the same time that Bakhtiyar was planning his coup, General Hajj Ali Kia, who had been jailed on charges of financial corruption, sent a trusted emissary to the U.S. government with a message that suggested they should either plan a coup, “in which case General Kia promised the full support of his assets,” or at least support a coup, “which he planned to initiate on his o
wn.” The United States responded that the “US government completely supports the current government,” and has “no desire to encourage activities directed” against Amini, and would in fact “strongly discourage such activities.”28 It is not known whether the Shah knew about, or was later informed about these attempted military coups.

  But at the same time, while the United States deterred ambitious generals from attempting a coup against Amini, they also decided that a “public declaration of support” for him would be the “crystallization of the Shah’s fear and suspicion of Amini”29 as “America’s boy.” Eventually, they decided to send Edward Mason to Tehran. He had been the head of the Harvard Advisory Group that had in 1958 helped develop a stabilization program for Iran.30 Mason’s mandate was to appraise the situation and estimate Amini’s chances of survival.

  The Shah, on the other hand, was still trying to arrange for a speedy meeting with President Kennedy. In addition to his two long personal notes—the first on January 26 and the second through General Bakhtiyar on March 1, 1961—he pressured the American Embassy in Tehran for an early invitation for a state visit to the United States.

  The Kennedy White House was less than enthusiastic about proffering such an invitation to the Shah. They did not want the Shah to erroneously assume that the United States was now content with the situation in Iran. In other words, they wanted to keep the Shah both anxious and guessing about America’s intentions. Robert Kennedy was particularly opposed to the idea of inviting the Shah anytime soon. The Shah, he said, was “not a beloved figure” in his country and there was little “advantage in having him here.” According to Kennedy, there was even a chance that the Shah “may be ousted.”31

  The embassy in Tehran, sensing White House reluctance, tried to change the administration’s mind by pointing to the Shah’s dangerously fragile state of mind. The embassy reminded the White House that the Shah was now in one of his “periodic moods of depression.”32 Finally, the White House relented and offered to invite the Shah to visit Washington in November 1962.

  But the Shah simply could not wait that long. When he heard about the November date, he demurred, arguing that in light of the country’s dire situation, the proposed date was too far in the future. The American Embassy in Tehran once again supported the Shah’s claim, suggesting that he was in no psychological state to wait that long. Ultimately, the White House gave in once more, and it was decided to invite the Shah for an official visit to the United States on April 10, 1962.

  Then there was the question of how best to convey the invitation to the Shah. Some in the White House argued that since Robert Kennedy was planning a tour of Asia, he should make a stop in Tehran and personally deliver the invitation. The purpose of inviting the Shah, according to these officials, “was to build [the Shah] up,” and thus a visit from the Attorney General would certainly help boost the Shah’s shaken confidence.

  But the State Department and Robert Kennedy himself were, for different reasons, against the idea. The Attorney General personally disliked, even despised, the Shah and insisted that should he be asked to visit him, he would insist on also “meeting with some of the [opposition] student groups there.” The Iranian Embassy in Washington was by then already entangled in something of a conflict with the Justice Department over the fate of some of the Iranian students living in the United States who actively opposed the Shah.

  In the late 1950s, thousands of Iranian students had begun to converge on European and American universities. Until then, educational sojourns in the West had been a privilege limited to the children of the elite. Indispensable to the Shah’s modernization plans was a large, trained technocratic class. But Iran lacked the educational infrastructure to train such a class. A sociologist has called the late fifties the age of the technocrats. American policy in Iran also advocated that new young technocrats gradually take the place of traditional politicians. Starting in the late 1950s, cheap bus and train service from Iran to Europe became available and, before long, students from all social classes began to arrive in the West. Some of the more radical new students used their newfound freedom in Western democracies to create the Confederation of Iranian Students33—an international organization that became a formidable foe of the Shah throughout the rest of his tenure.

  One of the first signs of the coming troubles took place in March 1960 during the party celebrating the Persian New Year. Till then, the Iranian Embassies in Western capitals had hosted these parties. Even before becoming Iran’s ambassador to the United States, while he still lived in Iran, Ardeshir Zahedi had been put in charge of making sure Iranian students studying abroad received adequate help and assistance. When he was named Iran’s ambassador to the United States, he showed particular interest in forging friendships and alliances with as many of these students as he could. He went out of his way to make the 1960 New Year celebration a success. But as he and his wife, Shahnaz, the Shah’s daughter, arrived at the party, radical students began anti-Shah chants, and one of them threw a plate that hit Shahnaz. She was not hurt, but her already-strong aversion to appearing in official ceremonies only increased, becoming a point of tension between her and her husband. One of the students who turned the Persian New Year party into a political demonstration was Sadeq Qotbzadeh. In 1979 he was for a while the country’s foreign minister, and in that capacity he was to figure prominently in the Shah’s life during his pariah days of exile. In the early 1960s, Qotbzadeh was a peculiar problem for the Kennedy administration.

  On February 20, 1961, the White House received a memorandum that registered one official’s perplexing encounter with Qotbzadeh. For advocates of conspiracy theories, particularly those who claim that the Islamic Revolution was the work of the United States, the contents of the memo would be nothing short of a “smoking gun.” The official had met at Georgetown University

  a flashy young Iranian student named Qotbzadeh . . . [who] says he is a Mosadeqist but . . . looks like a communist, and acts like a communist . . . even smells like a communist. He is failing his courses, will not work at his studies, and has a new girl in tow every few days. . . . This man sees people like Senator Humphires [sic], Justice Douglas, and even the Attorney General regularly. He tells everybody about how the smart men in the highest levels of the American government are all against the shah and sympathetic with Qotbzadeh and his friend, and how it will be only a little while before there will be an American-sponsored revolution in Iran and the Shah will be killed or exiled. . . . He says he will then be a cabinet minister. . . . He said long before the announcement of the cancellation of the Attorney-General’s visit to Iran that the Attorney-General had promised him personally that he would not go to Tehran.34

  The Shah’s regime attempted to have Qotbzadeh extradited to Iran. Robert Kennedy was instrumental in making sure this never happened. Nearly three decades later, Qotbzadeh was a key player in the saga of the new Islamic regime’s attempt to force Panama to send the Shah back to Iran. Eventually, Qotbzadeh’s flamboyant, grandiose, and ambitious ideas put him on a collision course with Ayatollah Khomeini, who ordered his once-docile aide and de facto spokesperson executed.

  Before the Shah’s hopes for a journey to the United States became reality, as political tensions and economic difficulties continued to plague Iran, and as the political impasse between Amini and the Shah over the size of the military budget and the extent of the Shah’s power continued, as Amini rebuffed the Shah’s offer to “change his cabinet,” getting rid of some of the more controversial ministers but staying on as prime minister, the Shah toyed with the idea of firing Amini and “acting as his own prime minister.”35

  The American Embassy was quick to disabuse the Shah of the wisdom of the idea of doing that. The message from the United States was clear: “The Shah should continue [to] support Amini and not assume direct responsibility.”36 In the same note, the embassy was instructed to tell the Shah that any additional U.S. economic assistance would be predicated on “the continuation of [
the Amini] program,” and that he should be kept on the job for “at least six months.”37 For the Shah, this must have been at once a blessing and a blight. He had to live with Amini for a few more months. But now there was at least light at the end of the tunnel, a conceivable date for getting rid of Amini, and as it happened, he kept Amini in his post until July 1962, exactly six months from the date of that American “advice.”

  The Shah did offer Amini an olive branch when he agreed to his wish to get rid of General Bakhtiyar. Early in his tenure, Amini had insisted on arresting Bakhtiyar for conspiring against the government. The Shah was happy to oblige, but only partially. After his dismissal as the head of SAVAK in 1961, Bakhtiyar had set up offices, ostensibly for business, but actually as a de facto headquarters for forces working against Amini. Generals and landlords, dismayed at the government reforms, gathered there and openly conspired against Amini. But then on January 21, 1962, students demonstrated at Tehran University, and the army entered the campus without even consulting the chancellor of the university and left behind one dead and 200 injured students—including three American young men studying in Iran at the time. Amini saw Bakhtiyar’s hand behind the incident. Some sources have claimed that in fact no one, including Bakhtiyar, could have used the military without the direct consent of the Shah. They point to the Shah’s apparent use of the military in 1942 to rid himself of Qavam, another of the Shah’s foes.38

  Amini, too, seemed to harbor such ideas, but when he met with the Shah, he blamed it all on Bakhtiyar and sought permission to arrest him. The Shah demurred, reminding Amini of Bakhtiyar’s role in “fighting [the Communist] Tudeh Party members” and suggesting that instead of arresting the General, he should be allowed to leave the country. The next day, the Shah called Bakhtiyar to the Court and ordered him to leave the country immediately.39 If the Shah assumed that in this way he would use one enemy to rid himself of another, he was badly mistaken.