The “age of ayatollah Khomeini” witnessed important changes in Iran’s political domain. One of the developments that had a long-term impact on the political and international situations was the beginning and deepening of tension with the United States of America. Dr Ebrahim Yazdi, the Foreign Minister of Iran in the provisional government of the early years of the 1979 revolution, who resigned with the government in protest to the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, reviewed some of the highlights in the relations between the two countries in his talk with Rooz Online, dating back to the days of the victory of the revolution up to the time when the ayatollah passed away. He believes that many of the policies pursued by the US during this period were because of a lack of proper understanding of Iran. Read on for the excerpts.
Rooz Online (R): To what extent did the understanding of Iranian and American officials about each other’s country during the ayatollah Khomeini years effect the deterioration of relations between the 2 states?
Ebrahim Yazdi (EY): In Iran these individuals were those who according to themselves, wanted to export the Iranian revolution to the outside. I saw them as “Muslim Trotskyites”. Some of these individuals believed that to achieve this, they should attack American interests any where in the Middle East. They were basically against any improvement or even having relations with the US. Another group, comprising the traditional leftists in Iran such as the Tudeh communist party, also was against having diplomatic relations with the US.
R: The understanding that post-1979 revolution Iranian political forces had of the US is known to Iranian observers. But on the American side, what examples do you have of their lack of understanding of the conditions in Iran?
EY: Many. Even at the onset of the Islamic revolution [in 1979] they did not know that Iranian society was on the verge of change. When just a year before the victory of the revolution, US President Jimmy Carter came to Iran, he called this country “an island of stability” in the turbulent Middle Eastern region. After the victory of the revolution, the most important indication that the American still did not understand Iran emerged when they admitted the Shah to the US for medical reasons. They had wrong interpretations of the consequences of such a development. When I was the Foreign Minister, I told American diplomats that the US would be playing with fire if they admitted the Shah to the US, clarifying that they would be responsible for the consequences. But they still did it and allowed the Shah into the US, believing that nothing serious would come out of it. It was clear in those days by looking at the conditions in Iran that if the Shah were admitted into the US, serious consequences would follow. Especially as America was held responsible for every single explosion or act of sabotage that took place in Iran in those days.
R: What other options did the US have rather than letting the Shah go to the US?
EY: Take into account that the Shah had been ill for some time and under the treatment of a French physician. His cancer had been identified and so he could be treated in other countries as well. So there was no need for him to go to the US for treatment. When the Shah was taken to the US, Mehdi Bazargn, the then Prime Minister of the provisional government wrote a letter to the Shah asking him to abdicate so that if he went to the US, Iranian public opinion would not be negative, suspecting that the US would try to return him to the throne like it did in the 1953 coup d’etat. The Americans did not even pass this letter to the Shah, thus preventing his abdication. This was another mistake that fueled conflict in Iran. There are other examples of such mistakes during the Shah’s trip to the US. For example, as representatives of the Iranian government, we requested the Americans to allow Iranian medical experts working in the US to visit and confirm the Shah’s illness. The US refused. American representatives did not even grant us permission to have our trusted physicians review the Shah’s medical records. Given this environment, it was only natural that the lack of trust between the two sides would grow.
R: After the hostage crisis, did Americans utilize their experience to become more realistic about Iran?
EY: No! A very clear example of their unrealistic assessment of the situation in Iran, based on innacurate information, was the attempted use of military force to free the American hostages. The dispatch of a military group from US ships in the Indian Ocean, expecting a few helicopters and planes to cross the Tabas desert to Tehran and free the hostages, was an unrealistic plan, more like a drama. Even if the sand storms had not taken place in Tabas and the mission had not failed in its initial stages, the the whole idea of US forces getting to Tehran, and the envisioned helicopter attacks on the US embassy to release the hostages, are more reminiscent of a fantasy and an action movie, rather than reality.
R: In your opinion, what elements contributed to the incorrect information and to miscalculations by the US officials regarding Iran?
EY: Regarding miscalculations by the US, one should not underestimate the role of pressure groups within the US. For example, the Rockerfeller-Kissinger lobby played a critical role. David Rockefeller was head of Chase Manhattan bank at the time. Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, and a few other banks had lent billions of Dollar to Iran (largely to the Shah’s inner circle), four billion of which was given by Chase Manhattan Bank alone. However, since these loans had not been approved by the Majlis, according to article 25 of the Constitution (which emphasised that no obligation existed for Iran unless the Majlis had approved it) these transactions were not considered loans to the government, and thus were not binding on the Iranian government. As a result, American banks could not legally collect these loans from the Iranian government after the 1979 revolution. In March of 1979 Chase Manhattan gathered a group of lawyers to examine what could be done to collect its loans from the new Iranian government. An Iranian lawyer who attended this gathering explained that the current regime in Iran would not repay these loans, because even though the Central Bank of Iran had guaranteed them, the loans were not considered a government commitment as they had not been approved by the Majlis. The only way Chase Manhattan Bank and David Rockefeller could collect their debts was for the US President to intervene on the basis of a crisis and freeze Iran’s assets in the US, following which American nationals and institutions would receive their debts from the Iranian frozen assets. And this is exactly what happened after Shah’s admitance in to the US and the hostage crisis. It is not surprising that the Rockefeller-Kissinger lobby which was concerned about losing Chase Manhattan’s 4 billion Dollars in Iran were precisely the very same group that exerted the most pressure on the US government to admit the Shah to America.
Another group that was influential over US policies towards Iran and was responsible for a number of bad US policies towards Iran was the pro-Israel lobby in the US. Right from the beginning of the victory of the 1979 revolution, this lobby was against the recognition of the new Iranian government by the US, which was one of the roots of Iran’s negative views towards the US. In addition, there are other indications of the role of this lobby in formenting tension between Iran and the US later on. To cite one specific example one can mention the role that Israel and groups supporting it played in the illegal sale of American weapons to Iran (commonly known as the Iran-Contra affair), which has been detailed in the Tower Commission’s report, which I will refrain from getting into.
R: In your opinion, what was US’s decision to trade arms with Iran based on? In view of the post 1979 revolition enimosity?
EY: As you know, at the time the US pursued the policy of dual containment towards Iran and Iraq. Through it, they pursued a policy that preferred neither Iraq nor Iran to be the winners of the Iran-Iraq war. Their reasoning was that the weakening of both countries ultimately favored the US. It is important to keep the historical perspective in mind. The Cold War was at its height in those days. Syria and Iraq were the Soviet Union’s military allies in the region, and a pro-Soviet communist government had come to power in Afghanistan. Given this polarized environment, some US military officials concluded to help Iran by providing it with arms. Their intention was not to support Iran to win the war, but to implement their dual containment strategy.
R: Do you have any specific personal examples of American wrong information on Iran?
EY: I remember that on the eve of the revolution US decision-makers generally had very limited information regarding the Shah’s opposition groups. In January of 1979, I was invited to appear on American public television for an interview. My interviewer told me that Kissinger was scheduled to appear at the interview as well. He never did, but his deputy did and we both had the interview. After the interview, during dinner, the person in charge of Iran desk at the State Department came to see me to talk about the Islamic revolution. I was surprised at the rudimentary knowledge that American officials had about Iran. So that when I spoke about some of the social movements in Iran and mentioned names such as Bazargan and Shariati, they were really ignorant about them.
I recall telling them that while their vital interests were tied to the oil-rich Persian Gulf region, their knowledge and understanding of Iran was so limited and shallow.
If you carefully examined the internal documents published by the students who took over the American embassy in Tehran, you would come across numerous errors, indicating inaccurate information of US agencies about Iran. Even the American ambassador to Tehran, William Sullivan, presents various mistakes in his memoirs (Mission to Iran). For example he says that Iranians go to Mashhad on a pilgrimage to visit the12th Shiite Imam (who Shiites believe is in occultation), or states that Bazargan (an engineer) is a dentist. Included in these mistakes is that I, Yazdi, have an American wife, although I have never had an American wife. This is faulty information which indicates that reports that were prepared on Iran did not enjoy sufficient precision, but which were used by American decision-makers to make their decisions.
