Could the Shah's health have altered American policy toward Iran?
Knowledge of the seriousness of his condition and his limited probable life span might well have altered American policy toward Iran and, with it, the course of events (see ''The Shah's Health: A Political Gamble,'' page 48).
How did the Shah of Iran deal with the United Arab Emirates?
In return, Iran took full control of Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa in the Strait of Hormuz, three strategically sensitive islands which were claimed by the United Arab Emirates. During this period, the Shah maintained cordial relations with the Persian Gulf states and established close diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia.
What disease did the Shah of Iran suffer from?
In 1974 the Shah's doctor, Dr. Ayadi, diagnosed the Shah with splenomegaly after he complained of a swollen abdomen. On 1 May 1974, French Professor Georges Flandrin flew into Tehran to treat the Shah. Upon the first visit, Georges was able to diagnose the Shah with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
How did the Shah of Iran persecute dissenters?
To counter rising discontent, the shah gave his security forces carte blanche to ferret out and halt the dissidents; serious human rights issues ensued, further alienating the Iranian regime from its own citizens.
What was the relationship between the Shah of Iran and the United States?
The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, maintained close ties with the United States during most of his reign, which lasted from 1941 until 1979. He pursued a modernizing economic policy, and a strongly pro-American foreign policy; he also made a number of visits to America, where he was regarded as a friend.
What effect did Reza Shah have on Iran?
Reza Shah introduced many social, economic, and political reforms during his reign, ultimately laying the foundation of the modern Iranian state. Therefore, he is regarded as the founder of modern Iran. At the age of 14 he joined the Cossack Brigade, and also served in the army.
Did the U.S. support the Shah of Iran?
The Johnson administration continued the Kennedy administration's support for Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran and its emphasis on buttressing Iran's internal security by encouraging a far-reaching program of political, social, and economic reform—the Shah's so-called “White Revolution.” U.S. policymakers, who agreed ...
What happened to the Shah of Iran in 1979?
How did Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi die? Mohammad Reza traveled to Egypt, Morocco, The Bahamas, and Mexico before entering the United States on October 22, 1979, for medical treatment of lymphatic cancer. Before he passed away on July 27, 1980, he traveled to Panama and then Cairo, seeking asylum.
What caused the fall of the Shah of Iran?
The protests rapidly intensified in 1978 as a result of the burning of Rex Cinema which was seen as the trigger of the revolution. On 16 January 1979, the Shah had fled Iran in exile as the last Persian monarch, leaving his duties to a regency council and Shapour Bakhtiar, who was an opposition-based prime minister.
What happened to the Shah of Iran and his family?
Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini. The Shah died in exile in Egypt, where he had been granted asylum by President Anwar Sadat.
Why did the United States support the Shah of Iran quizlet?
Iran was caught in the larger battle between the US and USSR during the Cold War, and became an important ally for the US. Iran shared a border with the Soviet Union, and so was logistically important. It also had oil. So the US supported the Shah of Iran, even though he was a dictator because he was anti-communist.
What did the Shah of Iran do?
Considered the founding father of modern Iran by contemporary historians, Army General Reza Shah Pahlavi replaced Islamic laws with western ones, and forbade traditional Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes and veiling of women (hijab).
Why did the US interfere with Iran in the 1950s?
The primary reasons behind the Anglo-Soviet invasion was to remove German influence in Iran and secure control over Iran's oil fields and the Trans-Iranian Railway in order to deliver supplies to the USSR.
What was the outcome of the Iran hostage rescue attempt?
On April 24, 1980, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Tehran ends with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued.
How was the Shah killed?
At 9.45 am on the morning on July 27, 1980, the Shah finally lost his long battle with cancer.
Which of the following was a result of the Iran hostage crisis?
Which of the following was a result of the Iran hostage crisis? The hostages were never returned, even after Carter left office.
What is the standard argument for admitting the Shah?
My standard argument was that if you admit the Shah, you do the right thing in human terms, but you have to abandon any hope of reconstructing a political relationship with Iran. It was clear that Carter was trying to meet the obligation to the man and also reconstruct a relationship.
What would we tell the Iranians if it was?
If it was, we would tell the Iranians that they now had their government, no longer a provisional arrangement – they were big boys – and both of us need to settle down and make some definite arrangements for the future. We would tell them we are going to admit the Shah and we expect our embassy to be protected. Embassy security was the key to making the decision on the Shah….
What was Carter concerned about?
Carter was very concerned about that… People were encouraging him to allow the Shah in for health care and he asked them all: “If the Iranians react negatively, if they should seize our State Department officials there and make them hostages, then what is your policy?” The room went dead, if not ashen.
Where did Mohammed Reza Pahlavi flee?
Every Form of Refuge has its Price. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, departed Iran on January 16, 1979, fleeing political unrest led by the Ayatollah Khomeini and seeking medical treatment for lymphoma. Pahlavi first flew to Aswan, Egypt, where Anwar Sadat welcomed him, and would spend the next ten months moving among Morocco, Mexico, ...
Why did Carter hesitate?
Carter was hesitating, because this would complicate our relations with the new revolutionary government in Iran….I said if the Shah is admitted to the States, I’m afraid that we ought to evacuate all of our people from Tehran first, because I’m afraid that there will be those who will see them as potential hostages, used as a bargaining lever to press us to turn the Shah over to revolutionary justice. What they wanted most was to get the Shah back in Iran where they could try him for crimes against the people of Iran.
What did the junior officers say to the bazaar?
Over the weekend some of the junior officers said they had never been to the bazaar so I blithely said, “Let’s go down to the bazaar.” It probably was not a smart thing to do. The mood of the bazaaries was not what it had been. There was a kind of resentment that you could sense. When you joked with the people in the shops they didn’t joke back. There was a kind of ill feeling towards us – obvious Americans that we were.
Did Yazdi ask for participation in the diagnosis?
He, in particular, pressed for participation in the medical diagnosis by Iranian designated doctors–that they be permitted to send a doctor to the United States to participate. I couldn’t give them assurance of that, although I communicated that to Washington. In response to that, all the Department was prepared to do was to assure Yazdi and his government that we would inform them of the diagnosis by medical doctors in the United States.
What is the controversy over the decision to admit the former shah?
There are two continuing controversies of major import over the decision to admit the former shah that still require exploration. The first revolves around the true state of the shah’s health in October 1979 and what exactly the president was told about the shah’s condition. On this point, there are not only significant differences among the accounts of the principals, but also the key participant, former President Jimmy Carter, has contradicted his own earlier account of the event. And a second important figure, the State Department’s senior physician at the time, has yet to present any public account, thus depriving scholars of a defining perspective.The second unresolved controversy lies within attempts to determine precisely why the president made the ultimate decision that he did. Here, again, there are significant contradictions. Most intriguing is an apparent — and perhaps decisive — reliance by Carter and his senior advisors on a positive security assessment supposedly contained in a cable from Tehran, but which is in fact completely absent from the content of this consequential document. Until all of the materials which pertain to this event — cables, White House phone logs, sensitive memoranda — are released to the public and thoroughly scrutinized, a definitive understanding of the decision permitting the shah to enter the United States will remain elusive.
When did the Shah leave Iran?
When the shah left Iran on 16 January 1979, it was expected that he would quickly seek asylum in America, the nation that had been his strongest supporter and stalwart friend. Even Khomeini had “expressed no objections” to the shah’s exile in the United States at this time.
Why did Laingen and Precht leave?
Laingen collected Precht and left to see the prime minister. Because of the eight-hour time difference between Tehran and Washington, the response from Laingen and Precht arrived in Washington following their meeting with Barzargan, Yazdi, and Abbas.
How did Washington find assurances in the cable?
One possible explanation is that the absence of a clear warning was sufficient for policymakers merely to assume the Iranian government would take appropriate measures . A second possibility, again, is that there was already in the minds of senior officials the belief that, since the Iranians — and Yazdi personally — had intervened back in February to protect the embassy, they and he would obviously do so again. And there is a third possibility: whatever Laingen said simply didn’t matter. Both diplomats realized that the decision to admit the shah had already been made and that, no matter what they reported back, it would not affect the president’s approval. The cable could have relayed nothing but risqué Irish limericks transliterated to an obscure Mongolian dialect and the effect would have no doubt have been the same.
Why did the US not request Barzargan to provide security?
Undeniably, the president and his advisors were already well aware of the probable Iranian reaction, so the most reasonable explanation for neither requesting Barzargan to provide security nor for awaiting reassurances, is that it just wasn’t worth the additional time. For one thing, the decision to admit the shah was firm. In Brzezinski’s mind, it made no sense to “consult” with the Iranian government or to “bring them into the decision making process.” As he saw it, the United States was a sovereign nation and no other nation had the right to exercise a veto over any person whom the United States wished to admit, for whatever reason. And, too, underlying the whole idea of keeping Americans in the embassy was the belief, reinforced by the events of the previous February, that the Iranians would protect the embassy, come what may. Still, Vance and Christopher had made a reasonable recommendation, but somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, the president decided an additional security assessment was superfluous.
Why did the Shah give his security forces carte blanche?
Simultaneously, the shah’s regime was becoming increasingly and egregiously corrupt. To counter rising discontent, the shah gave his security forces carte blanche to ferret out and halt the dissidents; serious human rights issues ensued, further alienating the Iranian regime from its own citizens.
What was the final blow for Hassan?
The final blow for the former monarch landed when King Hassan decided he had had sufficient time with the depressed and dispirited shah; he asked his guest to leave. The shah now sent word to Washington that he was ready to accept the U.S. government’s invitation.
How long did Shah rule Iran?
Mohammed Reza Shah’s rule of Iran from 1942 until 1979 spanned eight U.S. presidents. His desire for military supremacy over his neighbors and his distrust of the Soviets led him to seek a military relationship with the United States following the end of the Second World War. As the U.S.-Iranian relationship developed, ...
What would have happened if the Shah had not been overthrown?
If the Shah had not been overthrown by the Iranians themselves in 1979, it is likely that wider regional opposition would have manifested to the Shah’s ambitions as his plans became ever grander. For those reasons, Nixon’s blank check and the policy package that surrounded it was an extremely risky bet.
How much did the Shah buy in 1972?
Within the space of a few short months in 1972, the Shah purchased over $3 billion dollars of arms from the United States—a twentyfold increase on the prior year. For the remainder of the 1970s, the Shah continued to buy arms in the multibillions per annum, dwarfing all other U.S. allies such as Israel and the NATO nations.
Why did Nixon do the blank check?
Nixon did this for two reasons. Firstly, the British decided to withdraw their military forces from the Gulf, leaving behind a vacuum of sorts.
Why did Nixon resign?
When Nixon was forced to resign to avoid impeachment over the Watergate affair, the successor Gerald R. Ford administration found itself the steward for an Iran-arms policy that was under threat from within the administration and from Congress.
What was Nixon's Middle Eastern policy?
By late 1972 Nixon leveraged U.S. Middle Eastern regional policy primarily around the focal point of a militarily strong, pro-American Iran.
What was the significance of Ford's full approval of the military and strategic relationship with Iran?
Ultimately, Ford’s full approval for the military and strategic relationship that Nixon initiated with Iran ensured that the events of the early 1970s became the norm, rather than an irregularity. It was the act that sealed the fate of the United States in its relationship with the Shah.
What would happen if Carter refused to allow the Shah?
Anti-Shah demonstrations were already endemic around the country. If Carter refused him admission, there would have been a furor on the right, where the Shah was seen as a long-standing ally.
Where did the Shah move to?
In the second week of March, the Shah moved to a palace in Rabat, the Moroccan capital.
How did Rockefeller help the Shah?
He and his staff helped to find the Shah a home in the Bahamas, to secure visas, to engineer his transportation by chartered jet, to facilitate his medical care. He also played a leading role in the campaign to persuade the Carter Administration to admit the Shah.
What issue was the memo on Oct. 21, 1979?
21, 1979, had been nagging the Administration for months: Should Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, the exiled Shah of Iran, be allowed to enter the United States? Despite the risks such a move would entail, especially for the skeleton crew of Americans manning the embassy in revolutionary Teheran, most of Carter's advisers were for it. The President himself had been adamantly opposed and had lost his temper more than once on the subject. But now a new and urgent development had changed the situation and Vance was on the telephone from Washington asking for a decision. Eighteen months later, in his first and only substantive interview on the Iranian crisis since leaving office, Jimmy Carter described the exchange.
What did Jimmy Carter say to his foreign policy advisers?
Carter recalled a breakfast with his foreign-policy advisers in the late summer of 1979 when Mondale and Brzezinski were pressing him to change his mind. ''I don't curse much, '' the former President said, ''but this time I blew up . I said: 'Blank the Shah! I'm not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he'll be safe.' '' (Recounting the story, Carter used the word ''blank'' rather than the four-letter word itself.)
What was Carter's decision?
Carter's decision involved important foreign-policy considerations as well. Establishing relations with the new Iranian Government was a priority, as was the resumption of the interrupted oil flow to the West. There was also concern that the Khomeini Government might collapse and be followed by a regional splintering of the nation, a situation ready-made for exploitation by the Soviet Union.
What made Kissinger's intervention particularly sensitive?
What made Kissinger's intervention particularly sensitive was the fact that it came just as the Administration was completing the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks with the Soviet Union and preparing for what it expected to be the biggest political battle of Carter's first term. The President knew that Kissinger's position on SALT would influence the outcome of the ratification debate in the Senate. Both men say they never linked the two subjects in their discussions about the Shah, but explicit linkage was hardly necessary. ''SALT,'' Hamilton Jordan, White House chief of staff, observed later, ''was the background for all our discussions in those days.''
When did Mohammad Reza become the Shah of Iran?
Ascension to the throne. The inauguration of Mohammad Reza as Shah of Iran, 17 September 1941. On 16 September 1941, Prime Minister Forughi and Foreign Minister Ali Soheili attended a special session of parliament to announce the resignation of Reza Shah and that Mohammad Reza was to replace him.
What was the impact of Operation Barbarossa on Iran?
This had a major impact on Iran, which had declared neutrality in the conflict. In the summer of 1941, Soviet and British diplomats passed on numerous messages warning that they regarded the presence of a number of Germans administering the Iranian state railroads as a threat, implying war if the Germans were not dismissed. Britain wished to ship arms to the Soviet Union via Iranian railroads, and statements from the German managers of the Iranian railroads that they would not cooperate made both Moscow and London insistent that the Germans Reza Khan had hired to run his railroads had to be sacked at once. As his father's closest advisor, the Crown Prince Mohammad Reza did not see fit to raise the issue of a possible Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, blithely assuring his father that nothing would happen.
What did Mohammad Reza say about his father?
Mohammad Reza expressed concern for his exiled father who had previously complained to the British governor of Mauritius that living on the island was both a climatic and social prison. Attentively following his life in exile, Mohammad Reza would object to his father's treatment to British at any opportunity. The two sent letters to one another, although delivery was often delayed, and Mohammad Reza commissioned his friend, Ernest Perron, to hand-deliver a taped message of love and respect to his father, bringing back with him a recording of his voice.
What was the relationship between Iran and Turkey?
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey suggested to his friend Reza Khan during the latter's visit to Turkey that a marriage between the Iranian and Egyptian courts would be beneficial for the two countries and their dynasties, as it might lead to Egypt joining the Saadabad pact. In line with this suggestion, Mohammad Reza and Princess Fawzia married. Dilawar Princess Fawzia of Egypt (5 November 1921 – 2 July 2013), a daughter of King Fuad I of Egypt and Nazli Sabri, was a sister of King Farouk I of Egypt. They married on 15 March 1939 in the Abdeen Palace in Cairo. Reza Shah did not participate in the ceremony. During his visit to Egypt, Mohammad Reza was greatly impressed with the grandeur of the Egyptian court as he visited the various palaces built by the Isma'il Pasha, aka "Isma'il the Magnificent", the famously free-spending Khedive of Egypt, and resolved that Iran needed palaces to match those built by Isma'il.
What is the name of the Persian name that Reza Khan gave to his father?
This led Reza Khan to pass a law ordering all Iranians to take a surname; he chose for himself the surname Pahlavi, which is the name for the Middle Persian language, itself derived from Old Persian. At his father's coronation on 24 April 1926, Mohammad Reza was proclaimed Crown Prince.
When did Israel get de facto recognition?
On 24 July 1959 , Mohammad Reza gave Israel de facto recognition by allowing an Israeli trade office to be opened in Tehran that functioned as a de facto embassy, a move that offended many in the Islamic world.
Where did Mohammad Reza go to school?
Education. Mohammad Reza entering Madrasa Nezam, a military school in Tehran, 1938. By the time Mohammad Reza turned 11, his father deferred to the recommendation of Abdolhossein Teymourtash, the Minister of Court, to dispatch his son to Institut Le Rosey, a Swiss boarding school, for further studies.