During the 1960s and ’70s, the United States supplied Iran with an arsenal of sophisticated weapons. In what must seem a cruel irony to a later generation, the United States even urged Iran to begin a large-scale nuclear power program to save its abundant oil reserves. U.S. leaders’ open embrace of the repressive shah so soon after the CIA had overthrown an extremely popular Iranian leader enraged most Iranians. One leading opponent of the shah and his modernization program, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared, “Let the American President know that in the eyes of the Iranian people, he is the most repulsive member of the human race today because of the injustice he has imposed on our Muslim nation.”49 For this and other outbursts, the shah’s government exiled Khomeini from his homeland in 1964. Over the next fifteen years, the Iranian cleric kept up a steady stream of invective against both the shah and his U.S. backers from Iraq and Paris.
Iranian discontent continued to grow, fueled by the 1970s economic slowdown. Despite the shah’s dismal human rights record, Carter had backed additional arms sales to Iran, which had already been receiving more than any other nation. Ties between Carter and the shah, whom the New York Times described as “a ruler as close to an absolute monarch as exists these days,” seemed to be strengthening, provoking many to decry Carter’s hypocrisy on human rights.50 The Iranian royal couple paid a visit to the Carters in November 1977, staying at the White House. During their discussions, Carter gave preliminary approval to the sale of six to eight light-water nuclear reactors to Iran. When combined with the fourteen to sixteen that the shah was negotiating to buy from France and West Germany, Iran would have a substantial nuclear power program.
Hoping to show support for their beleaguered ally, President and Mrs. Carter shared an ornate and lavish New Year’s Eve with the shah in Tehran as protesters demonstrated in both nations’ capitals. Five crystal wineglasses adorned the place setting of each of the four hundred guests. Carter was effusive in his praise for his host: “Our talks have been priceless, our friendship is irreplaceable, and my own gratitude is to the Shah, who in his wisdom and with his experience has been so helpful to me, a new leader. There is no leader with whom I have a deeper sense of personal gratitude and personal friendship.”51
In subsequent months, huge protests renewed across Iran. In September, the shah imposed martial law. Brzezinski urged Carter to either aggressively support the shah or support a military coup. Fearing that the Soviets would seize the opportunity to move into the Gulf, he asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for the United States to occupy Iran’s oil fields. In December, he warned Carter that the United States faced “the most massive American defeat since the beginning of the Cold War, overshadowing in its real consequences the setback in Vietnam.”52 Brzezinski maneuvered behind the scenes to see if a coup was possible. Ambassador William Sullivan recalled, “I received a telephone call relaying a message from Brzezinski, who asked whether I thought I could arrange a military coup against the revolution…. I regret the reply I made is unprintable.”53
In January 1979, the shah fled his country. Brzezinski feared a Communist takeover. In what turned out to be a colossal failure of intelligence, the CIA and State Department downplayed the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. Henry Precht, the State Department’s Iran desk officer, recounted how he had figured out what was brewing:
Late in November 1978, we called in all the experts on Iran… to discuss what to do about Iran and what was going to happen there… the night before I’d guest-lectured at a class at American University, and… there were a lot of Iranian students there…. when I asked what they thought was going to happen in Iran, they all said: Islamic government. The next day, at our conference, we went around the room all saying what we thought would happen, and people were saying things like, “There will be a liberal government, with the National Front, and Khomeini will go to Qom.” When my turn came I said, “Islamic government.” I was the only one.54
In February, seventy-seven-year-old Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a hero’s welcome and set about establishing an Islamic republic based on Sharia law. The goal was to create a new caliphate. The head of the Iran branch at Langley assured the CIA’s Tehran station: “Don’t worry about another embassy attack. The only thing that could trigger an attack would be if the Shah was let into the United States—and no one in this town is stupid enough to do that.”55 No one, that is, except for Carter, who buckled under pressure from Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Brzezinski, and other friends of the shah. The Iranian public erupted in anger. In November, students burst into the embassy and seized fifty-two American hostages, whom they held for 444 days. Fearing Soviet intervention to quell the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, Carter rushed twenty-five warships to the Persian Gulf, including three nuclear-armed aircraft carriers, and 1,800 marines. He also blocked the release of Iranian assets in the United States and cut off oil imports from Iran.
When those measures didn’t lead to the hostages’ release, the American public grew restive. Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan alerted Carter to the fact that “the American people are frustrated at our country’s inability to do anything to free the prisoners and retaliate in a fashion that makes us feel better about ourselves.”56 But Carter continued to show restraint. Khomeini’s mistrust of the Soviet Union and its left-wing Iranian allies limited the extent to which the Soviets could exploit the situation. Khomeini’s anti-Soviet feelings deepened when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and hardened further after Soviet-allied Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980.
The Americans were lucky in one regard in terms of Iran. As part of Eisenhower’s “atoms for peace” program, the United States had sold dozens of research reactors to countries all over the world, including Iran, and had been supplying highly enriched uranium to fuel them. Some of the reactors used fuel enriched to 93 percent. Shortly before the shah’s ouster, the United States had sold Iran fifty-eight pounds of weapons-grade uranium. Fortunately, the fuel had not yet been delivered when the revolutionary government seized power, and the sale was suspended.57
Crises seemed to be flaring all over. Central America, after suffering decades of poverty under U.S.-backed right-wing dictators, was ready to explode by the late 1970s. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, named after martyred guerrilla leader Augusto Sandino, threatened to overthrow President Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The Somoza family’s brutal and corrupt forty-three-year rule had united the impoverished citizens in opposition. Carter administration officials feared that a Sandinista victory would embolden revolutionary forces in neighboring countries, especially Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Brzezinski argued for military intervention, citing the humiliation of appearing “incapable of dealing with problems in our own backyard.”58 While Carter weighed his options, the Sandinistas seized power in July 1979—Latin America’s first successful revolution since Cuba’s twenty years earlier—and began an ambitious program of land, education, and health reform. They put out feelers for better relations with the United States, and Congress responded by appropriating $75 million in emergency aid to the new government. But as reports surfaced that Nicaragua was transferring arms from Cuba into El Salvador, Carter halted aid twelve days before Reagan took office in January 1981.