Reading Iran: American Academics and the Last Shah

Abstract

Despite the nature of American influence in postwar Iran, and despite the fact that Iranian studies has grown into a flourishing field in the United States, scholars have not explored the field's origins during the Cold War era. This article begins with the life of T. Cuyler Young to trace the critical genealogy within the field as it developed, in cooperation between American and Iranian scholars, during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. It proceeds to analyze two cohorts of American scholars whose political inclinations ranged from liberal reformism to revolutionary Marxism. As revolutionary momentum swelled in Iran in the late 1970s, critical scholars broke through superpower dogmas and envisioned a post-shah Iran. However, Cold War teleologies prevented them from fully grasping Iranian realities, particularly Khomeini's vision for Iran. This article argues that the modern field of Iranian studies in the United States was shaped by multiple generations of critical voices, all of which were informed by historically situated encounters with Iran and expressed through a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives.

Notes

1 Cable from American Embassy Tehran (US/Tehran) to State Department (State), “Conversation with [Excised],” February 8, 1979, Digital National Security Archive (DNSA), Iran Revolution (IR)02263.

2 Goode, The United States and Iran, 4‒5.

3 Ricks, “Iran and Imperialism,” 267‒8; Cottam, Foreign Policy Motivation, 10.

4 Morrison, “‘Applied Orientalism’”; Halpern, “Middle Eastern Studies,” 110‒11; Said, Orientalism, 9‒15.

5 Nabavi, “The Changing Concept of the ‘Intellectual’.”

6 Bill, The Eagle and the Lion; Cottam, Iran and the United States.

7 Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah; Collier, Democracy.

8 Byrne and Gasiorowski, Mohammad Mosaddeq; Abrahamian, The Coup; Heiss, Empire and Nationhood.

9 Goode, “Reforming Iran”; Nemchenok, “In Search of Stability”; Summitt, “For a White Revolution.”

10 Emery, US Foreign Policy; Gil Guerrero, The Carter Administration.

11 Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy; Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah; Johns, “The Johnson Administration.”

12 Offiler, US Foreign Policy, ch .4.

13 Gil Guerrero, “Human Rights and Tear Gas”; Trenta, “The Champion of Human Rights.”

14 Garlitz, A Mission for Development; Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds. The seminal study on the student movement is Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah.

15 Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East; Lockman, Field Notes; Khalil, America's Dream Palace. See also Makdisi, “After Said”; Mitchell, “The Middle East.”

16 Engerman, Modernization from the Other Shore; Engerman, Know Your Enemy; Gruber, Mars and Minerva.

17 Bonakdarian, “Iranian Studies in the United Kingdom”; Kuroda, “Pioneering Iranian Studies”; Sandler, “Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto.” On Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, see the special issue of Iranian Studies 48, no. 5 (2015). One possible exception is Schayegh, “'Seeing Like a State,’” 44‒8.

18 Dabashi, Persophilia; Davidson, America's Palestine; Vitalis, America's Kingdom. Another example is Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers. On the broader question of perception, see Ansari, Perceptions of Iran.

19 Bonakdarian, Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; Bonakdarian, “Edward G. Browne.”

20 Khalil, America's Dream Palace, ch. 2.

21 Frye, Greater Iran, 78.

22 Edwin Milton Wright personnel file, Record Group (RG) 360 Series III, Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS), Philadelphia, PA.

23 Wilber, Adventures in the Middle East; Wilber, “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran.”

24 Frye, Greater Iran.

25 Theodore Cuyler Young personnel file, RG 360, Series III, PHS.

26 T. Cuyler Young, personal report 1930-31, RG 91, box 7, folder 1, PHS.

27 Luther, “In Memoriam: T. Cuyler Young,” 267.

28 Brown, “Comment: T. Cuyler Young”; “T. Cuyler Young, 76, Expert on Near East,” New York Times, September 3, 1976; Luther, “In Memoriam: T. Cuyler Young”; Lockman, Field Notes, 73‒4, 89‒90, 147‒9.

29 Frye, Greater Iran.

30 Little, American Orientalism.

31 Young, “The Race between Russia and Reform in Iran,” 279 and 282.

32 Foran, “Discursive Subversions,” 157–82.

33 Heiss, “Real Men Don't Wear Pajamas,” 178‒94.

34 The Reminiscences of George Lenczowski in an interview with Gholam-Reza Afkhami, November 30, 1984, 5, in the Oral History of Iran Collection of the Foundation of Iranian Studies.

35 Milani, The Shah, 151.

36 Richard Frye, “Anti-Americanism in Iran Denied,” New York Times, September 24, 1952.

37 Frye, Greater Iran, 142, 148.

38 “Middle East Experts Report on Iran, Israel, Arabs, Turkey,” Washington Post, March 22, 1952.

39 “Prof. Young Going to Iran,” New York Times, February 10, 1951; “Middle East Experts Report on Iran, Israel, Arabs, Turkey,” Washington Post, March 22, 1952; Lockman, Field Notes, 132.

40 Gasiorowski, “The CIA's TPBEDAMN Operation,” 6, 10‒11.

41 Lockman, Field Notes, 133.

42 Young, “The Social Support,” 140.

43 Lockman, Field Notes, 132; Roosevelt, Countercoup, 79, 127; Cottam, review of Countercoup, 269.

44 Young to Walt Rostow, April 19, 1961, National Security Files (NSF), Countries, box 115A, folder: Iran General 4/61, John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), Boston, MA. On Rostow, see Collier, Democracy, 187‒93.

45 Harold Saunders to Rostow, “Talk with Professor T. Cuyler Young,” November 24, 1961, NSF, Countries, box 116, folder: Iran General, 11/10/61‒12/10/61, JFKL; Saunders to Robert Komer, “Near East Conference: ‘Iran and the U.S.,’” December 20, 1961, NSF, Countries, box 116, folder: Iran General, 12/11/61‒12/31/61, JFKL. See also Komer to Phillips Talbot, December 20, 1961, NSF, Robert W. Komer, box 424, folder: Iran 1961‒1962, White House Memoranda, JFKL.

46 Young, “Iran in Continuing Crisis.”

47 Philip Mosely to John Gerhardt, January 13, 1960, box 3, folder 3, James Bill Papers (JBP), College of William and Mary Special Collections, Williamsburg, VA.

48 John Campbell to Young, September 23, 1959, box 3, folder 1, JBP.

49 Campbell to Young, July 23, 1970, box 3, folder 1, JBP; Young to Campbell, August 29, 1970, box 3, folder 1, JBP; Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 175‒6.

50 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds.

51 Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, ch. 9.

52 Dorman and Farhang, The U.S. Press and Iran.

53 Alfred Friendly, “Liberal-Minded Shah Runs Tight Ship,” Washington Post, July 5, 1966.

54 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 133‒43.

55 Jaafari, “Here's How Andy Warhol.”

56 Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, ix; Lenczowski, the Oral History of Iran Collection of the Foundation of Iranian Studies, 2‒4.

57 Khalil Maleki to Young, June 22, 1965, box 3, folder 4, JBP. According to Young's wife, a double agent with SAVAK, Iran's National Intelligence and Security Organization, attended the conference and got a paper to Iran within a day. Cuyler Young Jr. traveled to Iran shortly thereafter and he “got off the plane in Tehran to be greeted with … a copy of his Father's speech!”

58 Jacobs, Imagining the Middle East.

59 Jacobs, The Sociology of Development; Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society. For context, see Latham, Modernization as Ideology.

60 D. H. Finnie to Young, May 14, 1965, box 2, folder 21, JBP. On Iran and the “global sixties,” see Shannon, “‘Contacts with the Opposition.’”

61 Lockman, Field Notes, 158‒9, 177; Loss, Between Citizens and the State, ch. 5; McCaughey, International Studies and Academic Enterprise, 105, 140, 200‒201.

62 Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, vii.

63 Binder, Iran, viii; Bill, The Politics of Iran, viii.

64 Helen Young to James Bill, October 28, 1980, box 3, folder 4, JBP. Bill would use those papers in the 1980s to inform The Eagle and the Lion.

65 Goode, The United States and Iran, viii, 154, 174.

66 Robert H. Johnson to Rostow, “Discussion of Iran with Professor T. Cuyler Young,” April 3, 1961, NSF, Countries, box 115A, folder: Iran General 4/61, JFKL.

67 Young, review of Iran, 509.

68 Bill, The Politics of Iran, 156.

69 Gasiorowski, “Richard W. Cottam”; “Richard Cottam,” University Times, September 11, 1997, http://www.utimes.pitt.edu/?p=3177 (accessed August 25, 2017); Hooglund, “Dedication”; Akhavi, “Richard W. Cottam”; Martha Cottam et al., “In Memoriam”; Siavoshi, “Richard Cottam.”

70 Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, 2, 231, 226.

71 Harold Saunders to Robert Komer, “Near East Conference: ‘Iran and the U.S.,’” December 20, 1961, NSF, Countries, box 116, folder: Iran General, 12/11/61‒12/31/61, JFKL.

72 Young, “The Problem of Westernization,” 53‒5, 59.

73 Binder, Iran, 4‒5.

74 Bill, “Modernization and Reform from Above,” 19.

75 Bonakdarian, “Iranian Studies in the United Kingdom,” 277‒8, 288‒9.

76 Between 1947 and 1967, the Middle East Journal published twenty-seven articles on Iran. Two Iranian authors—S. Rezazadeh Shafaq and Reza Arasteh—wrote three of them.

77 Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds, 50‒51, 70‒71.

78 Chehabi, “The International Society for Iranian Studies”; Society for Iranian Studies Newsletter, October 7, 1969, Association of Iranian Studies, http://associationforiranianstudies.org/about/newsletters (accessed October 30, 2017).

79 Richard Frye and Majid Tehranian to William Douglas, March 15, 1965, box 1720, folder 1, Papers of William Douglas (PWOD), Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

80 Program, “Problems of Contemporary Iran,” Harvard University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, April 16‒17, 1965, box 1720, folder 1, PWOD; Program, “External and Internal Factors in Iran's Political Development,” University of Maryland, College Park, April 8‒9, 1966, Record Group (RG) 59, Records Relating to Iran (RRI) 1964‒1966, box 17, folder: Iran 1966 POL 13-2, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD. These two documents are cited hereafter as “Programs 1965/1966.”

81 Programs 1965/1966; Frye, Greater Iran, 102‒3, 174; Chehabi, “The International Society for Iranian Studies.”

82 Frye and Tehranian to Douglas, March 15, 1965, box 1720, folder 1, PWOD.

83 O’Donnell, Garden of the Brave in War, 17.

84 Franklin Crawford to Martin Herz, April 14, 1966, RG 59, RRI 1964‒1966, box 17, folder: Iran 1966 POL 13-2, NARA.

85 Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin; Vahabzadeh, A Guerrilla Odyssey.

86 See, for instance, Lenczowski, Iran Under the Pahlavis.

87 US Congress House Subcommittee, New Perspectives on the Persian Gulf, 93.

88 Halliday, “What to Read on Iran,” 35.

89 Ricks, “Iran and Imperialism,” 270, 274.

90 Johnson and Tucker, “Middle East Studies Network,” 5.

91 Bill, “Elites and Classes,” 150; de Groot, “Empty Elites.”

92 Binder, Iran, 349; Johnson and Tucker, “Middle East Studies Network,” 9.

93 Statement of Thomas M. Ricks, US Congress House Subcommittee, Human Rights in Iran, 15.

94 Halliday, Iran, 7.

95 Lockman, Field Notes, 187; Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 162; Johnson and Stork, “MERIP: The First Decade.”

96 Mattison, “A Celebration of Power,” 1, 3‒6.

97 MERIP staff, “Nixon's Strategy in the Middle East,” 3‒8. See also MERIP Reports no. 51 (October 1976): 15‒18, and no. 71 (October 1978): 22‒23.

98 Richards, “America's Shah, Shahanshah's Iran,” 18, 9; Theberge, “Iran,” 7‒8. For context see Doenecke, “Revisionists, Oil and Cold War Diplomacy,” 23‒33; Iranian Student Association and Arab Students in Northern California, Dhofar.

99 “Iran Program Summary, 1967‒1972,” RG 490, Office of International Operations, Country Plans 1966‒1985, box 42, folder: Iran 1967‒72, NARA; “Peace Corps in Iran: Volunteers,” Peace Corps Iran Association , http://www.peacecorpsiran.org/history-of-pcia-in-iran/volunteer/ (accessed June 2, 2016); Park Teter and Richard Wandschneider, “Overseas Evaluation: Iran,” April 30, 1968, 20, 27, 1, RG 490, Office of Evaluation, Program Evaluations 1968‒1969, box 4, NARA.

100 Georgia Mattison biography, http://ppuf.org/about-us/founder-and-staff-bios/georgia-mattison-project-coordinator/ (accessed June 8, 2016).

101 US Congress Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, May 11, 1977, 65; “Thomas M. Ricks,” Peace Corps Iran Association, http://www.peacecorpsiran.org/thomas-m-ricks/ (accessed October 21, 2017).

102 Ricks, “Contemporary Persian Literature,” 4.

103 Ricks, “Three Drops of Blood.” Ricks later edited Critical Perspectives on Modern Persian Literature.

104 Ricks, “Towards a Social and Economic History,” 113 and 123n. 1.

105 Ricks, review of Twentieth-Century Iran.

106 Ricks, US Senate House Subcommittee, Human Rights in Iran, 25, 16.

107 Bradley, The World Reimagined.

108 See the documents in the Papers of William Butler, Robert S. Marx Law Library, The University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH.

109 US Congress House Subcommittee, Human Rights in Iran, 8‒15; Cottam, “The Case for Iran.”

110 Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West, 49‒51; Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism, 230‒34.

111 Committee Against Repression in Iran, Iran.

112 Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah.

113 Baraheni, “Terror in Iran”; Mohassess, Life in Iran.

114 CAIFI, “Fact Sheet on the Cases of Imprisoned Iranian Writers and Artists,” December 25, 1975, American Civil Liberties Union Records (ACLU), Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, box 226, folder 17.

115 Millett, Going to Iran, 16, 12‒13.

116 “USPCI Statement of Purpose,” 1977, James F. Hitselberger Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, box 1, folder: American Political Materials on Iran; USPCI, “A Report from Iran: An American Perspective,” May 3, 1978, Hitselberger Papers, box 2; The Stanford Daily, November 22, 1977 and January 17, 1979.

117 “William H. Sullivan: A Major Opponent of Human Rights,” in US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, May 11, 1977; George Wilson and Alfred Lewis, “16 Arrested in Protest Over Arms,” Washington Post, October 18, 1978.

118 Robert Wesley to Martin Meyerson, May 22, 1978; Norman Glickman, “Ties with Iran: Questioning the Morality of Involvement,” Daily Pennsylvanian, February 23, 1977, in Martin Meyerson Papers, University of Pennsylvania Archives and Records Center, Philadelphia, PA, box 295, folder 20.

119 Moghadam, “Socialism or Anti-Imperialism?” 10.

120 Seliktar, Failing the Crystal Ball Test.

121 Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 9.

122 Witt, “Can the Shah of Iran Survive?”; State Department Memorandum by Myles Greene, “Iran as Seen by Two Academicians,” March 29, 1979, DNSA, IR02423.

123 Lenczowski, “Iran: The Awful Truth.” See also Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards.”

124 US Senate House Subcommittee, Human Rights in Iran, 16.

125 Trenta, “The Champion of Human Rights”; Shannon, Losing Hearts and Minds.

126 Gil Guerrero, “Human Rights and Tear Gas”; “The Year of Human Rights,” in Gastil, ed., Freedom in the World 1978, 64‒70.

127 Precht, “A Reply,” 667‒8.

128 Ricks, “Background to the Iranian Revolution,” 16.

129 John Washburn, [Comments on the Iranian Character, Post-Shah Iran, and Shiite Islam], September 18, 1978, DNSA, IR01529.

130 Huyser, Mission to Tehran.

131 “U.S. Intelligence Experts Warned of Collapsing Monarchy in Iran,” Spartanburg Herald, January 15, 1979; “Alumni Profile,” 16‒17.

132 Bill, “Iran and the Crisis of ’78,” 324‒5, 329, 335; Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, 87; Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 245‒6.

133 Richard Frye, “The Shah's Dilemma,” Washington Post, November 19, 1978.

134 MERIP Reports, no. 69 (July‒August 1978) and no. 71 (October 1978).

135 Ricks, “Iranian People Challenge Pahlavi.” Emphasis in original.

136 Bill, “Iran and the Crisis of ’78,” 335.

137 Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, 309.

138 Malley, The Call from Algeria, 171; Falk, “One of the Great Watersheds”; Richard Falk, “Iran: History in the Making,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1979; Falk, “Iran's Home-grown Revolution.”

139 Keddie, “Iran: Change in Islam,” 527‒8.

140 Bill, “Iran and the Crisis of ’78,” 336.

141 Moghadam, “Socialism or Anti-Imperialism?” 5‒6, 13.

142 Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution.

143 Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, 58, xiii, 5.

144 Ibid., 55, 6‒7. Emphasis in original.

145 Falk, “Was it Wrong to Support”; Millett, Going to Iran. Millett would have been informed by fellow CAIFI member Reza Baraheni's “masculine history.” Baraheni, The Crowned Cannibals, 19‒84.

146 Ghamari-Tabrizi, Foucault in Iran, xiii, 1, 58. Emphasis in original.

147 Ibid., 4.

148 Mary McGrory, “A New US Envoy in Iran would Help,” Boston Globe, February 21, 1979.

149 Department of State, Iran Update of November 17, 1979, RAC Project Number NLC-128-8-9-4-8, Jimmy Carter Library (JCL), Atlanta, GA, Carter Presidential Papers Remote Archives Capture Project.

150 US Embassy Tehran to State Department, “Cottam on Khomeini, Liberation Movement, and National Front,” January 2, 1979, DNSA, IR02002; State Department Memorandum by Myles Greene, “Iran as Seen by Two Academicians,” March 29, 1979, DNSA, IR02423. See Emery, U.S. Foreign Policy.

151 Folder, “[Iran]—Ghotbzadeh-Cottam,” located in Carter Presidential Papers, Staff Offices, Chief of Staff, Jordan, box 35, JCL; Moses, Freeing the Hostages; Martha Cottam, email message to author, January 8, 2016.

152 “Richard Cottam,” University Times.

153 Gheissari, Iranian Intellectuals in the 20th Century.

154 Atabaki, “Historiography of Twentieth Century Iran,” 1‒4; Nabavi, “The Changing Concept of the ‘Intellectual’.”

155 Moghadam, “Socialism or Anti-Imperialism?,” 6.

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Notes on contributors

Matthew K. Shannon

Matthew Shannon is an Assistant Professor of History at Emory & Henry College. His recent book, Losing Hearts and Minds: American‒Iranian Relations and International Education during the Cold War, is published with Cornell University Press. He has written on US‒Iran relations and the Cold War in Diplomatic History, International History Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and The Sixties. This article is part of a larger project on the relationship between perception and power in American‒Iranian relations. The author thanks James Goode and his fellow panelists for comments on an early draft of this paper at the 2016 meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Thanks also to Ali Gheissari, Ranin Kazemi, and the anonymous reviewers for their expert assistance in sharpening the analytic framework.