After Empire: Britain, the United States, and the Iranian Revolution

Mark Gostkowski is a professor of political science at Tulane.

And today he is going to talk to us about the antecedence and the course

of the Iranian revolution. This has a direct British

connection because it was following the British lead in 1953

that the CIA overthrew the Iranian government.

The consequences of this and the connection between the

revolution of 1978 79 is an open question. But you

can see from the quotation in the announcement that some people at the

time believed that it was very direct hominy, lift his beard and

you will see made in England. Now, this is a

comment that indirectly indicates a phenomenon.

Albert Hourani in Oxford, the famous historian of the Arabs,

once said the four conspiracy theories of Iranians win

the prize, that there is nothing like it. And I remarked at the time that that sounds to me

something like a national stereotype. And he said, yes, perhaps, but it’s true.

So perhaps you can also address yourself to conspiracy theories

in the course of the I will part.

Well, thank you, Roger, and thanks for inviting me here. As I’ve told a few people as

my second time at University of Texas, Roger and Jim, Bill very graciously

invited me here. Thirty something years ago to a wonderful conference they had in nineteen

eighty five. And it’s nice to be back here. So thanks to Roger and thanks to the British

studies program for inviting me. I’m not going to be talking about the origins of the revolution.

What I’m going to talk about here is basically

U.S. policy. Mostly things CIA was doing, but U.S. policy toward

Iran in the 10 month period after the revolution culminated.

So this is the period from February 1979 when the shah

fled and a new provisional government was established under

Medhi Bazargan, who I mentioned him a few times today. So I’m going to cover

from February 1979 until the U.S. embassy was taken in

early November 1979, beginning the infamous U.S. embassy

hostage crisis. So this was a key time period. The new

regime that resulted from the revolution was beginning to establish itself

and the U.S. was trying to create some kind of a new a new

relationship with Iran after the previous

period of 25 years or so from the 1953 coup that Roger mentioned,

in which the U.S. was very much that sort of hegemonic power in Iran.

So the title that I gave Roger for this class begins with the expression

after empire. So this was an after empire, period after the U.S.

had had this head romantic relationship with Iran. The revolution ended that. And so now

the U.S. was in a position of trying to establish some kind of different relationship.

There have been a lot of after empire periods, as Roger mentioned, the British had won in 1953.

They had been thrown out by Prime Minister Mossadeq. The British embassy closed. Then

after the 1953 coup, they were allowed to come back into Iran and reopen

their embassy in December 1953 with a very different posture

toward Iran, a much more conciliatory, constructive posture. And, of

course, many other hegemonic powers out there, Britain and many other places, the

French in Algeria and so many other places. The Soviets also have had

these after empire experiences. Anyway, I’m

not going to talk about all of those. And I’m not going to say very much about Britain in 1953.

Mainly what I’m going to talk about is what were some key things

that the United States was doing and its policy toward Iran in this time period of February

through November 1979. And in doing so, I’m going to be summarizing

two articles that I published about this in Middle East journal and Middle Eastern studies,

which if you want to see them in there, they’re really good reads. I would say

you can easily find my Web site. Well, if you can spell my name, you can find my Web site at Tulane

and download them from there. And I sent copies to Roger as well.

So. So let me first begin by

just kind of sketching the background a little bit of this period of February through November

power, the dominant power, the great power exercising influence in Iran in

sort of secular nationalist government and created

a very different era, an era that was a lot more repressive and in which Iran became

sort of a battleship on the picket line around the Sino Soviet

periphery. Iran was a key player in the U.S.

strategy of containment toward the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.

And Iran, you know, was very, very useful to the United States

in this capacity after fifty three through the 60s and

into the 70s until the Iranian revolution occurred. So the U.S. had been

the hedge harmonic power before the revolution, much as Britain had been the haeju monarch power in Iran

prior to 1953.

During this time of U.S. hegemony in Iran, all kinds of wild

sort of conspiracy theory scenarios emerged among

Iranians. So they increasingly, during this 25 years, came to see the U.S.

as what they still call today, the Great Satan, and partly for good reason. I mean, this was very

much blown out of proportion and exaggerated by Iranians. But the US

had done in the 1953 coup and continued to do things that were pretty harmful

to Iran during this period, especially in propping up the regime of the Shah,

who was not a hugely brutal dictator, but he was a dictator nonetheless.

And a lot of Iranians pretty rightly blamed the United States for

propping him up so that by the time of the Iranian revolution

in 1978, 1979, there was a great deal of anti-Americanism

in the United in Iran. And then during the course of the revolution,

this was greatly magnified. And the revolution was almost as much about

anti-Americanism as it was about creating an Islamic regime. And of course,

Iran remains very anti-American today, 40 years later.

So the this twenty five year or so period of American hegemony was a period

in which there was a growing antipathy by Iranians toward the United States.

And then it all came crashing down with the Iranian revolution in 78, 79.

And then in mid-February, 1979, suddenly the United States was faced with

a very different situation, a situation where we had

little capability to do anything in Iran, where our clients and puppets

had either fled into exile or were, you know, cowering somewhere underground

inside Iran. And where Iran’s leaders were ranged

from pretty damn anti-American to extremely anti-American.

So it’s a very different situation that the US faced in this 10 month period.

The U.S. had basically three main goals during this period, I’m not going to dwell on this, but let me just quickly

go through it. First of all, the U.S. wanted to keep Iran, as

you know, the battleship in this picket picket line around the Sino-US Soviet

periphery. They knew that Iran was no longer going to be, you know, working

closely with the U.S. on anything. But they certainly wanted to maintain Iran’s territorial

integrity, which they were a lot of challenges to during this period. And they did not want

any further instability. They wanted Iran to be stable

and to maintain its integrity so that, you know, the Soviet Union couldn’t somehow start

expanding in the south westerly direction toward the Persian Gulf.

And so, again, the U.S. very much wanted to maintain Iran’s territorial integrity

and political stability. Many Iranians thought it was quite the opposite.

Many Iranians thought the United States was fomenting the political instability and was trying

to break up Iran in this period. It was quite the opposite. Secondly,

the U.S. was trying to resolve many outstanding disputes between

the U.S. and Iran that existed. There were huge numbers of arms sales contracts

that had not been fulfilled. Billions and billions of dollars. There are many other kinds of commercial

deals that were sort of languishing unfulfilled. Another very important

issue, which I’ll briefly come back to a little bit later on. The U.S. had established very important

listening posts in northeastern Iran that were situated to

monitor the Soviet missile testing sites. And what I think is now Kazakhstan

up in Central Asia, and there are not too many places that you can, you know, monitor

radio traffic and stuff like that. The U.S. had been doing that. The CIA

had been doing that in Iran since the late 1950s. Those listening

posts were shut down soon after the revolution. The U.S. was hoping that they could

be reestablished. And U.S., as I’ll talk later on, was even trying to get the

Iranians to agree. And, you know, the U.S. would share intelligence. This is especially

important. This is an era of first assault, one at this time. The salt to agreement.

These listening posts were vital for monitoring those arms control agreements. And the U.S.

very much wanted to try to reestablish them. Thirdly, the U.S., of course, wanted to

encourage moderates. There were plenty of radicals in Iran at this time of all different kinds.

But there were also moderates. You know, the revolution had been carried out by a coalition of,

you know, very diverse forces in Iran. The moderates populated

the provisional government, prime minister, foreign minister, other key positions like

that. And so the U.S. wanted to help them out and try to strengthen and solidify

them, although, of course, without appearing overtly to do so, because, you know, any

hint of U.S. intervention in Iranian domestic politics

would have made the radicals just see red at this time.

So, you know, these were the things the U.S. was trying to achieve. U.S. officials fully understood,

you know, that their time of hegemony in Iran had come to an end. They understood

that the Iranians were very furious at the United States for various things the U.S. had done.

The U.S. was trying to make something of the new situation. And after Empire

situation, what Britain faced in 1953 was, of course, in many

ways quite different. You know, the leadership in Iran after the 1953

coup was quite open to the British, and it wasn’t particularly hard for the British

to work out an arrangement whereby they would reopen their embassy. And they also,

like the Americans were in 79, pursued a constructive, conciliatory posture.

And the British managed to come out pretty well after 1953 in the after

empire situation, of course. That didn’t happen with the United States in 1979.

Just the whole thing blew up. And today, 40 years later, we’re still having severe tension

with Iran. So that’s kind of general background. Let me just say a few things

about what the CIA was doing in Iran at this time, because most of what I’m going to talk about today

is stuff the CIA was doing.

You know, for one thing, since the U.S. did not want to foment instability

in Iran and the U.S. certainly did not want to be found out to be plotting with

any Iranian factions. The US very strongly for

Baid, the CIA, from carrying out any kind of covert political operations

in Iran. That was just not something that Washington was going to tolerate. And I’m going to

come back to that more. However, this was a situation that desperately, desperately

needed intelligence. You know, the Iranian revolution, this is a totally

new phenomenon. There had not been an Islamic revolution. There had not been an Islamic republic

created anything of that sort. This is entirely, you know, a new game. U.S.

desperately needed intelligence to figure out what was going in Iran. So, you know, U.S. policy

could be guided appropriately. And of course, that’s for the CIA to do especially.

So while Washington did not want CIA to be doing covert operations, covert political

operations. It certainly wanted CIA to gather intelligence and CIA

did. As you’ll see, you’ll be amazed at some of the things I’m going to say about that.

So CIA was in Iran. It had a small presence that had most

of the time for CIA officers undercover in the U.S. embassy

in this period from February through early November of 1979.

What they were doing was gathering intelligence, not carrying out covert

political activities. There were two main problems that the CIA

station in Iran labored under in this time period. As you can imagine, first

of all, intense anti-Americanism. This is a very dangerous time for any American to be in

Iran now, let alone a CIA officer. It was an extremely

dangerous situation. It may well be that there’s never been a place where the CIA

has had a station that has been more difficult to operate, even the Soviet Union.

I mean, if you get picked up by the KGB and you’re a CIA guy, well, they’ll just deport you.

In Iran, when CIA people got captured, they weren’t deported. They were kept as hostages and tortured.

So it was an extremely tense situation for Americans in general

and especially for the CIA in Iran. And indeed, when

the U.S. embassy was taken in, 53 Americans were taken hostage. Three

of them were CIA officers, and they were treated pretty badly, tortured, kept

in solitary confinement, subject to mock executions and things of that sort.

So that’s just an illustration of, you know, the difficulties that CIA faced.

These difficulties made

it necessary to have some pretty strict restrictions on what CIA was doing.

They had to do just intense security precautions like, for example, making sure they weren’t being

monitored. Staying away from any contacts, things of that sort. So very,

very strict security precautions for most of this time

period. CIA officers were rotated in and out of Iran on very

brief assignments, typically three months. As far as I know, only one CIA officer

stayed longer than three months in this period. He stayed for four months and then was taken hostage.

No CIA officers with prior experience in Iran could be deployed there because,

of course, they would be known, which meant no one with any expertise on Iran. No one with Persian

language capabilities or anything like that. So CIA was laboring under very,

very severe restrictions in Iran in this 10 month period.

Furthermore, as you can imagine, with the intense anti-Americanism that existed,

the many, many contacts at the CIA had previously had in Iran, you know,

hundreds, probably thousands of people were many of them left Iran.

Some of them were thrown in prison and executed during this period. Those others

who survived stayed far, far away from their CIA contacts.

And so almost all of the contacts the CIA had previously for intelligence gathering

and things like that had melted away in one way or another. And so the CIA

people who were there were faced with having to develop a whole new sets of

intelligence contacts inside Iran. So it’s very, very difficult situation for CIA

to operate. And in fact, it’s amazing that that they did as much stuff as they did, which I’m going to explain

in a minute. Given these severe problems. So now

let me sketch out these two papers that cover US policy toward

Iran in this period. I’m not going to go into all the

juicy details, which there are a lot of in these papers, if you like, spy stories. These are good reads. I

would say so. Let me begin with a paper that I published in Middle Eastern Studies

in 2014. This paper gives an overview

of CIA activities in Iran and especially CIA contacts in Iran

in this period February through early November 1979.

It’s based on a an incredible resource that Iran people have, but almost

nobody uses. And that is when the radical Islamist students seized

the U.S. embassy in November 1979, they seized a huge amount

of U.S. government documents, including CIA documents that had not yet

been destroyed. The embassy personnel destroyed some documents, but

most of it they didn’t because this happened so quickly. So these students who took the embassy

had just mountains and mountains of U.S. government documents, including

what in the end were hundreds of pages of CIA cables, many of which had been shredded,

but shredded in a way that they could be piece back together. So the students who took the embassy,

they basically got a bunch of Iranians with carpet weaving skills and

taped together these shredded CIA documents, which you have to be very meticulous to do.

And there’s this whole treasure trove of this kind of material. This was

gradually published by the Iranians in the course of the 1980s. They published about 73 volumes

of U.S. government documents. And it’s fascinating stuff. It was

pretty hard to get hold up for a long time and was illegal to have. But now it’s on the Internet, of course.

And so all of it’s out there and it’s been out there for, you know, easily accessible for about 10

years. And this material just provides incredible detail on especially

CIA activity. I mean, anybody here ever seen the CIA cable? It’s not something you come across

every day. But there is just a wealth of this material for Iran in this time

period. So it’s mainly that that is the basis for this first of the two

papers going to be talking about. I did, however, supplemented with interviews with various

people. I interviewed two of the three CIA guys who were taken hostage,

several other CIA people who were involved in this kind of stuff, and a bunch of the State Department people

and also actually several of the Iranians who were involved in taking the hostages, one

of whom was a student of mine when I taught at Tehran University in the late 90s.

So documents supplemented with interviews is. My

source for this first paper and pretty much the second paper, too. So let me just

quickly go through the main brunt of this paper, which is

I go through five categories of Iranians that the CIA was basically

spying on gathering intelligence on in this time period of 1979.

And I’ll just sort of sketch out what they were trying to do and what they were not doing and then kind of

summarize that very quickly. First category, Iranian government officials.

The US had a lot of contact with the Bazargan government in this period, February

through November 1979. Most of all of this was carried

out not by CIA officers or most of this was not by CIA officers,

but by the regular embassy diplomats. The ambassador, while they were still the

U.S. ambassador there and then his replacement and others.

The main point of contact who soon emerged was a guy named Abbas Amir and

to. He was deputy prime minister for most of this time period. But then

in about July or August, he was sent off to be Iran’s ambassador to

five Scandinavian countries. He was

a key figure, not actually in what I’m talking about now, but the second paper that I’m going to talk about in a few

minutes. So I’ll come back to him. There was also a fair amount of contact with Prime Minister Bobb’s Argon

himself, also very much with the foreign minister during most of this period.

Ibrahim Yazdi and various other officials,

the CIA tried to recruit several key Iranians

as intelligence sources in this period, not the ones I just mentioned. The most important

person they tried to recruit was a guy named Abdul Hossein Bonny’s Saad, who in 1980

was elected Iran’s first president. CIA tried very hard

to recruit him as a paid agent. In the course of 1979

and unsuccessfully, he wouldn’t really bite on their offers, although he actually

also did not fully reject them. It’s not even clear that he understood that this was the CIA,

but they were trying to recruit him. The problem is that

the documents on this were not destroyed when the embassy was taken. And so the hostage takers

pretty quickly found all this stuff and used it to discredit Bonny Saad.

And they quickly published a volume of CIA reports on these efforts

to recruit him. And it hurt him very much and undermined him. And eventually he was forced to flee

into exile. CIA also tried to recruit a couple of high ranking

military officers, one in Hong Kong, another in Italy.

Both of those also did not pan out. The one Iranian government official

who they do seem to have recruited was an Iranian Christian woman named Victoria

Basri, who was in the Iranian foreign ministry. They recruited

her, put her on the CIA payroll. She, in the end, didn’t really provide

much information. But unfortunately, the documents on this were found

by the Iranians who seized the embassy and she was arrested and later

executed for this. So, you know, going on the CIA payroll

is something you need to be careful about. And she’s not the only one I’ll be talking about a few more.

So some efforts to recruit Iranian government officials, nothing really panned out there.

The second category of Iranians the CIA really tried to recruit were various

moderate opposition activists inside Iran. And a few minutes, I’ll talk

about people in exile outside of Iran. As you can imagine, all kinds of Iranians

who were at all pro-American, you know, approached the U.S. embassy in various

ways at this time. Many of them had plots that that they were

undertaking, most of which were just totally pie in the sky. You know, this

was sometimes even things like a cab driver, you know, coming up to an American saying,

I can tell you how to overthrow the Khomeini regime. So the

U.S. embassy was constantly being approached by these kinds of people. You know, most of them were

not at all serious. Most of them, you know, U.S. was very

politely rejecting. But there were two important, very important Iranians

that CIA did very extensively pursue in this period

in the realm of moderate opposition figures inside Iran.

The first was people surrounding Granda. Ayatolla Shariatmadari

Shariatmadari was pretty much the only other Iranian cleric

of high rank and popularity to match Khomeini’s and Shariatmadari

and Khamenei were very, very different. Chari that moderate was a moderate,

believed in separation between church and state, did not want an Islamic republic, all

of which Khomeini wanted. So we can say that these were two major rivalries at

the highest levels of the Shia clergy. Anyway, people around Shariatmadari

began approaching the U.S. embassy in various ways. In this period beginning

in February 1979 and of course the U.S. government was very

interested in this, and so they had CIA pursue these various approaches

and they met with various intermediaries, one of whom was even

Shariatmadari son about this, to try to find out what Shariatmadari

was up to. What did he want to do? What kind of capabilities did he have in all these kinds

of things? As these contacts progressed, Chari out moderates,

people began asking for U.S. support. You know, basically millions of dollars in support,

even though Shariatmadari had an awful lot of money. And

so the CIA station Kable this back to CIA headquarters saying, look, you

know, the Shariatmadari people are asking us for money and other kinds of assistance. We think

that this would be a really good opportunity to engage in covert operations, CIA

headquarters, cable back and said, no, don’t do it. We are not doing covert operations

in Iran. Just pursue these people for intelligence gathering purposes.

And so in the end, nothing really came of this. But there is a huge

paper trail of this kind of stuff which the captors of the embassy found

and pieced together. This is more than one whole book worth of CIA

documents on this. So, you know, this was revealed in 1980,

stripped of his clerical rank, which is roughly equivalent to stripping the pope

of his rank in the Catholic Church and put under house arrest

until he died in 1986. So a major CIA effort to

collect intelligence on the Shariatmadari network.

Second one that was parallel to this involved

a guy named Khosro Gosh guy. The goche guy were and still are today,

a pretty important tribe located in south central Iran and the area around Shiraz.

They’re Turkic people. They speak a Turkic dialect. The CIA

had had extensive dealings with him back in the 40s and early 50s, which I’ve written another paper

about. I won’t even go into it now. So he had been a very close contact for the U.S. government

in the late 40s and early 50s. He was then driven into exile and spent 25 years

or so living somewhere in the United States. He came back to Iran when the revolution

culminated and pretty quickly made contact with the U.S. embassy and began offering

his services. And he was very much a secular

nationalist, very appalled at the idea of an Islamic republic in Iran. So he

basically began plotting against the Islamic regime, working

especially with another prominent Iranian, a guy named Ahmad Madani,

who had been an admiral in the Iranian navy, but then was fired for basically anti-Shia activity

and was a pretty prominent secular nationalist in this era.

So Gasquet and Madani began plotting and talking to the Americans.

Gradually, they also began asking for assistance of various kinds. So

again, the CIA station Tehran cabled CIA headquarters and said, look, we think

this could be a really good opportunity to do covert operations inside Iran. Again,

CIA responded and said, we’re not doing that. Just maintain contact

with these guys for intelligence gathering purposes, see what they’ve got. But do not give them any

kind of assistance. So two major, major efforts. The CIA

turned down to deal with relatively powerful

opposition factions at this time. Madani modernly.

Well, Hauser gosh, guy, he was thrown in prison once

after, you know, the embassy was seized. Once the students who took the embassy

piece together, some of these CIA documents, they used those to incriminate. Him and,

you know, they are pretty incriminating, frankly. And he was eventually executed.

Armand mahtani, the Navy guy who was working with him, escaped across

the Turkish border into exile. The America he quickly went to the American

embassy in its consulate in Istanbul. The US started giving

him millions of dollars in 1980, 1981. So he

was really the first of the Iranian exile groups that the US was supporting.

After the embassy was seized. But eventually he was too independent and they cut him off.

And the Iranian government actually tried to poison him twice when he was in exile, but they never managed to kill him.

He died a few years ago, you know, out in California. So two major efforts

by the CIA to gather intelligence, but not to carry out

covert political operations to these two networks. I should just mention one other person

in this category. There was an Iranian Jewish guy named Simon Farzat, me,

who apparently had been a longstanding contact of the CIA.

There were some documents on him. These were also found by the hostage takers

and they arrested him and had him executed as well.

The third category, and it gets more and more interesting, there was the radical left.

There were various different radical leftist factions who were sort of late comers to the

revolution. But by early 1979, they had seized a lot of weapons. They were rapidly

recruiting on Iran’s campuses. And during the course of 1979, they became powerful

actors and real threats to the Islamic regime. So much so that in basically

in 1981, they launched a counter-revolution against the Islamic regime that failed.

So there was a rapidly emerging radical leftist opposition in 1979.

Now, these people hated the United States. Needless to say, and some of them had they killed six Americans

in the mid 1970s and the United States was totally against these kinds of people.

Despite what Iranians charged, lots of Iranians believed that the US was backing. These

kinds of people didn’t make any sense at all. But, you know, these were the kinds of conspiracy theories that Iranians

had at this time. So the US, you know, was not remotely interested

in helping these groups. And they probably wouldn’t have taken help from the United States, at least not at this time anyway. But

the US was very interested in gathering intelligence about them because they were

rapidly increasing increasingly important actors in Iran.

And so the embassy documents provide details on three

sets of three informants that managed to actually gather a lot of intelligence

about one of these radical leftist groups, the Fedi on a Houk.

One of them was a PLO guy who was on the CIA payroll, who

the CIA had evidently recruited him in Lebanon sometime earlier than this. He

then happened to be the head of a PLO team that was sent to Iran in 1979

to help train Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And so now he began reporting back to

his CIA handlers from Iran about, you know, things that he saw

in this capacity of heading a training mission to the Revolutionary Guards. So that was

one source. The other two were two Iranians who CIA managed

to persuade to go and gather intelligence. I’ll talk more about them in a minute.

So the U.S. had penetrations of the radical left in Iran in this period and actually gathered quite

a bit of information about them forth and very much in parallel with the radical

left. There were various ethnically based guerrilla

groups that were emerging in Iran in this period. Most importantly, Kurds, which Iran has

a lot of, but also ethnic Arabs in southwestern Iran and

was a staunch Turkomans in the northeast, Baluch in the southeast.

And later on, gosh, guys and others. So there was rapidly growing ethnic

unrest, ethnically based guerrilla movements that were starting to clash with the Iranian

security forces by April or so of 1979. So the U.S.

wanted to gather intelligence on these groups.

And some of these groups, particularly the Kurds, were connected with a radical leftist, as you know,

longstanding connections there. So the three

people who the CIA had reporting on the radical left, the PLO guy and

two others, also reported on the ethnic or relative area of sorts.

The PLO guy reported information to CIA on the Arab guerrillas

who are beginning to emerge. And then the other two informants reported on

Kertz. One of them was even wounded in a clash between Kurds and

the Revolutionary Guards. In addition to those three informants

inside Iran. CIA had a lot of good connections in Europe

that reported mainly on the Kurds, but a little bit on Arabs as well. There

were several connections that they had in Europe, mostly in Germany

with Iranian Kurds. And they began to get evidence of these connections

that Iraq was beginning to help Iranian Kurdish guerrillas against

Iran. This was about mid-September, 1979. And, of course, this was

an extremely important issue and very explosive. And also, the CIA saw

this as, you know, valuable intelligence we can give to the Iranian government, tell them that the Iraqis

of supporting these Kurdish guerrillas, that will further ingratiate us with the Iranian government,

on the other hand. CIA also got intelligence, evidently from them, IE6, British intelligence

service, that Iran was supporting Iraqi Kurds. So this was going

both ways. Last set of Iranians at CIA

was cultivating were various exile opposition groups during the course

of 1979. Lots of pro monarchist or otherwise

anti Islamist Iranians were escaping the country, mostly

showing up in Europe. And a lot of them, as soon as they did approach the

U.S. embassy in country X or country Y, saying that they had all kinds of

connections back in Iran and they were ready to launch a coup or a guerrilla movement or something like that.

So the U.S. was increasingly bombarded with requests from these Iranian exiles

for support for these various opposition movements.

There got to be so many that at a certain point the State Department sent a cable around

to the major European embassies, basically telling them, don’t deal with these Iranians. We’re getting

so many of these requests from these Iranian exiles. Just show them the door.

So there were a lot of approaches to the U.S., but U.S. basically believed that

none of these Iranian exile groups had any capability to overthrow the Islamic regime.

There’s very clear sighted analysis by the US and therefore we should not really

have any dealings other than, you know, politely talking to them a little bit. We certainly should not support

them. Of course, after the embassy was taken, the U.S. did begin to support exile opposition

groups. As I said, first modern day, they gave him several million dollars later on various

others. And through about 1996, the U.S. was supporting exile

groups. It never amounted to much of anything, but the U.S. probably spent $20 million or so,

but not during the period before the hostage crisis that I’m focusing

on. So anyway, you know, the CIA was busy, as you can see, they were having

dealings with all different kinds of people. This is dozens and dozens of contacts that I’ve just been

sketching, all for the purpose of gathering intelligence,

not supporting opposition to the Islamic regime. Many of these contacts were asking

the U.S. for support. And in my going through the documents, I identified

at least 16 occasions on which CIA or State

Department officials refused or declined to give support

to Iranian plotters. Some of these were more than

once for the same guy. But there were at least 11 Iranian plot would be plotters

who were denied support by the United States on a total of at least 16 occasions, probably

many more than those 16. So the U.S. had plenty of opportunity in this period

to foment trouble in Iran. But this was not what the United States wanted to do. And the

U.S. turned down lots of opportunities to do so anyway. That’s the first paper. Second paper.

I’ll talk about more quickly because I’m running out of time. The other really interesting

thing that the United States was doing in this time period in Iran was

gradually gearing up and intelligence sharing relationship with

the Bazargan government. So I published an article in the Middle

East Journal in 2012 that details this. And so I’ll sketch it out now.

In the early months after the revolution, the Bazargan government,

they were as desperate for information about what was going on as the U.S. was or anybody

else. I mean, this was really the fog of revolution. And, you know, it was quite

unclear what all was happening. And so the beginning, basically, in

May 1979, Bazargan himself and other key top

officials in the provisional government began asking U.S.

embassy officials for intelligence on certain threats

to the new regime. Initially, they were asking for any intelligence

the U.S. had on these ethnic uprisings that were occurring, the Kurds, the

Arabs and others. Iranians didn’t have much information on that. They, of course, assumed that the CIA

knew everything and that CIA then would be able to give them some stuff.

And so they began asking for that within a month or so. They also began

asking for intelligence from the U.S. on Iraq’s intentions toward Iran.

By this time, Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq. He was intensely hostile toward

Iran. He was very much fomenting unrest, especially among Kurds

and among Iranian Arabs. And, of course, eventually he invaded Iran in September

embassy and they were not in direct contact with CIA people. These were State Department

diplomats. They were asking for intelligence on the ethnic uprisings

and on Iraqi intelligence. So the U.S. began to give them sort

of small amounts of stuff, sort of small intelligence reports. But as these

requests persisted, the embassy contacted

the State Department and said, look, we think this would be a good idea. We think we should really step up

this intelligence provision stuff that we’re doing now. Give the Iranians some really

good stuff. They’ll really appreciate it. It will help us, you know, improve our relations with

them. And so the State Department and agreed. So in July 1979,

the number two person in the State Department, David Newsome, approved this

and began working with the CIA to set up a series of

intelligence briefings by CIA personnel in Tehran

to top members of the Bazargan government.

So this was mostly to this was to be done by CIA officers

and the intelligence was intelligence that the CIA acquired. But the

State Department was overseeing these briefings. So two briefings occurred. The first

was in late August when the guy who was at this time,

the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, his name was Robert Ames. He was later

killed in one of the terrorist bombings in Beirut. He went to Tehran

and delivered sort of a broad overview to the Bazargan people.

This was mainly meant to be sort of a meet and greet initiation

of what would be. A long term series of briefings. So the first briefing

was in August, didn’t really amount to very much after this briefing, the US began

providing additional written reports to the embassy that were passed on to the government,

particularly about Soviet activity in Afghanistan, which was beginning to ramp up in

summer and fall of 1979. The second briefing and the last briefing is

the important one. This occurred in October on October 15th,

of a familiar name. He was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and various other things. He

had done a total of nine or 10 years in Iran. He was the CIA operations

side, kind of foremost expert on Iran, fully fluent in Persian, very,

very experienced. He was sent to Tehran

to give a briefing on October 15th. There were four people at this briefing cave

himself, Foreign Minister Yazdi, Ambassador N2

zom, who flew back from Scandinavia for this, and the U.S. chargé

d’affaires, Bruce Lang at SUPPOR. People were at this briefing and I talked one

way or another to all four of them and verified the following story.

So then the main purpose of the briefing was to give a warning to Iran that Iraq

was making preparations to invade Iran. This was concrete’s

concrete intelligence that the U.S. had gathered with satellite photographs and things of that sort

about things like that. The U.S. that Iraq was practicing military exercises

that could only be for an invasion of Iran. They were pre-positioning

military equipment in that area. They were carrying out military engineering

projects like making roads, dirt roads. The tanks could go on through

the marshes and things of that sort. And they were supporting the Iranian Arab

rebels inside Iran just across the border from Iraq. So the

U.S. by October had been acquiring information about

Iraqi invasion preparations. And this really worried the United States because

the U.S. wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of Iran. So

the U.S. gave this briefing to the Iranians. Foreign Minister

Yazdi didn’t believe it and thought that this was sort of a CIA provocation

operation or something like that. But Amir antes believed it and actually met again with

CAVE later on and got additional information. The other thing that CAVE did in

this briefing was to tell the Iranians who were there about

an electronic eavesdropping system called IBEX that CIA had partially

set up by the time of the revolution. This was a series of listening posts and

also intelligence collection airplanes that the U.S. had been providing

to Iran before the revolution to enable the Iranians to monitor

what Iraq was doing across the border. And so it was really perfect for

enabling the Iranians to monitor these invasion preparations that the

Iraqis had begun to make. So the U.S. not only warned the Iranians that

the Iraqis were preparing for an invasion, but told them that they could use

these electronic listening capabilities to monitor for themselves

and gather intelligence for themselves about these Iraqi invasion preparations.

Unfortunately, five days later, the U.S. made the decision to admit the shah

into the United States. The former king for medical treatment,

that this was then announced a few days later. And this began a period of about 10 days

of growing tension inside Iran, which culminated on November 4th

in the seizure of the U.S. embassy by these radical Islamist students

and taking hostages, including these CIA guys. So there was no follow up

to this CIA warning of the invasion preparations.

The events, you know, leading to the hostage crisis precluded it.

After the embassy was taken, the Bazargan government resigned further,

making impossible any possibility of follow up on this. Also, the Bazargan people

did not tell their successors that the U.S. had delivered this warning. So

fast forward 10 months. September 1980, Iraq indeed does

invade Iran right in the area where the CIA had been, you know.

Warning the Iranians about the Iranians. You know, the successor government

had not gotten information about this. So Iran was entirely unprepared. They didn’t

even have troops within 50 miles of the border when the Iraqis invaded. So the

Iraqi invasion initially was quite successful. If the U.S. warning

had been passed on to Bazargan successors, the Iranians could have prepared extensively

for it. And Iraq was actually not much straw. It was not really any stronger militarily than

Iran at this time. So probably if the Iranians had taken appropriate

precautions as a result of the U.S. warning, the Iraqis wouldn’t even have invaded. They would have

probably been deterred from invading. Who knows? But, you know, it’s hard to say.

But this was, you know, a major missed opportunity. The key

interlocutor, Abbas Amir, antes on soon.

The students found documents on this whole series of events.

They saw that Amir and Tooism had played the central role as go between. So they recalled

him from Sweden and promptly arrested him. And he then served 25

years in prison. He has been Iran’s foremost political prisoner since

the revolution 40 years ago. Twenty five years in prison, in which basically he lost his mind.

So he paid a very high price. He was he was tried in 1981. And in fact,

at the trial, Bazargan testified that the US had given a warning

of this sort. And, you know, actually reveals some of the details of this. But of course, by this time, the

Iraqis had already invaded. So that’s the other really interesting CIA story in this

period, although also with a very tragic set of consequences to it.

OK. Let me just say a few quick words of conclusion, because I’ve gone way over.

You know, what really should be clear from what I’ve been talking about is that the U.S. was actually acting

with great restraint toward Iran in this time period. The CIA was not at all

trying to destabilise Iran or help opposition groups, anything like that.

What it was doing was gathering intelligence and providing some intelligence

to the Iranians, including what could have been crucially important intelligence about the Iraqi invasion

preparations if that had been passed on. So the CIA really was not at all

doing anything dangerous to Iran. And as I said before, the US on at

least 16 occasions had rejected Iranian requests

for assistance to plot against the Islamic regime. So entirely the opposite

of what most Iranians thought at this time. U.S. was actually trying to be

helpful and not trying to undermine the new Islamic regime.

What conclusions can we draw about after empire situations? Well, unfortunately, this

is a very idiosyncratic situation. I wouldn’t really try to draw any conclusions from this.

I mean, there are plenty of good grad students here. Maybe one of you wants to do like a p._h._d dissertation

on after empire, you know, sort of comparative after empire studies.

Is a very interesting topic. Iran could be one of those cases. But just from the Iranian case itself,

I think they can’t really say very much. You can quickly or I can quickly compare

this situation with the British after 1953. The main thing is that,

you know, Iran’s leaders in 1953, 54, when the British came back, were

much more open and conducive, whereas in 1979, the US was dealing with

intensely hostile interlocutors on the Iran were not the interlocutors. But, you know,

intensely hostile radical Islamists who soon overtook everything.

You know, there may have been opportunities during the revolution or after this time period, particularly,

say, during the Iran contra era or subsequently, when the US might have been able to

make the after empire experience in Iran, work a little more effectively

for whatever set of reasons. We’ve missed those various opportunities. And here we are 40 years later

with very tense relations with Iran. So that’s my story.