In search of stability amid chaos: US policy toward Iran, 1961–63

Abstract

The theme of political reform has come to dominate the literature on US–Iranian relations during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. This article argues that undue attention to political reform has obscured the thinking of US officials, mischaracterised the nature of their reform efforts, and has forged connections between Iran's Islamic Revolution and the Kennedy Administration's foreign policy that are historically tenuous. It seeks to provide a corrective to the literature by highlighting Washington's search for stability as the paramount objective of US policy toward Iran.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Melvyn P. Leffler, as well as the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Cold War History, for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

  [1] ‘Final Report of Politico-Military Game – Olympiad I-62: Mid-East’, 3 December 1962 (Declassified Documents Reference System, 1b).

  [2] Rubin, Paved With Good Intentions, 90–123; Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 131–53. For an extended discussion of the United States' limited ability to apply leverage on the shah, see Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah.

  [3] Goode, ‘Reforming Iran during the Kennedy Years’. Goode's article subsequently appeared as a chapter in Goode, The United States and Iran, 161–81. For a discussion of Kennedy's policy in Iran that follows the contours of Goode's article while employing additional primary source material, see Summitt, ‘For a White Revolution’.

  [4] For the views of one prominent New Frontiersman, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., on traditionalists in the State Department and the Foreign Service, see Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 376-89.

  [5] Goode, ‘Reforming Iran’, 13, 28.

  [6] The cultural shift in the attitudes of the Iranian clergy is a persistent theme in Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions. Nikkie Keddie presents a discussion of the diverse trends in Iranian political thought after 1960 in Modern Iran, 170–213. For an examination of these trends as reflected in the vision of Ali Shari'ati, long considered the ideological father of the Islamic Revolution, see Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian. Rahnema suggests that Shari'ati, despite the internal contradictions in his thought, was a ‘modernist Islamic intellectual’ whose ideas were shaped by the Median School of Islam. The Median School held that Islam was neither communist nor capitalist, but an ideology in itself that formed a buffer between East and West. It was not a school of traditional Shi'a Islam. See pp. 61–66.

  [7] Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 515.

  [8] Early examinations of the Kennedy years, emphasising a break from earlier Cold War foreign policy, include Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, and Sorensen, Kennedy. Thomas Paterson has provided a more critical interpretation, suggesting that Kennedy officials ‘remained attached to the core of Cold War thinking’ – ‘the containment doctrine, domino theory, zero-sum game, anti-Communism’. See Kennedy's Quest for Victory, 22. The theme of a desire for peaceful coexistence, however, has recently re-emerged. See, for example, Freedman, Kennedy's Wars, 419; Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 336–37, 243, and Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 255, 283.

  [9] Latham, Modernization as Ideology, 209.

 [10] Latham, Modernization as Ideology, 209

 [11] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 12: 604–15. On 6 July 1960, NSC 5821/1 was incorporated into NSC 6010, a restatement of U.S. policy toward Iran with minor changes to reflect subsequent events. See NSC 6010, ‘U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 6 July 1960, FRUS, 1958–1960, 12: 680–88. The latter remained America's expressed policy toward Iran until the formation of Kennedy's Task Force on Iran in the spring of 1961.

 [12] The educated middle class has often been referred to as a ‘modern’ middle class comprised of ‘clerical workers, administrators and managers, teachers, and other professionals’ in opposition to a ‘traditional’ middle class made up of the clergy and bazaar merchants. See Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah, 147.

 [13] Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah, 102, 104.

 [14] Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 421–22.

 [15] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 12: 611–12.

 [16] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 609.

 [17] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 612.

 [18] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 613.

 [19] NSC 5821/1, ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward Iran’, 15 November 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960, 605.

 [20] Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah, 97.

 [21] Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 1941–1973, 282.

 [22] Rubinstein, Soviet Policy Toward Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, 66-68.

 [23] ‘Central Intelligence Bulletin’, 7 February 1961, CIA Records Search Tool (CREST).

 [24] ‘The Current Political Situation in Iran’, 11 February 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [25] In a paper he drafted on 20 March 1961, Bowling separated the urban middle class into three elements – the ‘upper middle class’, the ‘middle middle class’, and the ‘lower middle class’. The ‘middle’ middle class was the same group of people that dominated the National Front, while the lower middle class was ‘typified by clerks, skilled workers, taxi drivers, and that portion of the urban proletariat which has been cut adrift by long city residence from the thought patterns of traditional society…. It is literate but otherwise poorly educated’. See FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 66.

 [26] ‘The Current Political Situation in Iran’, 11 February 1961, (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [27] Goode, ‘Reforming Iran’, 16.

 [28] ‘Memorandum for the President – Desire of the Iranian Ambassador and the Special Emissary of the Shah to Call Upon You to Deliver a Letter to You from the Shah’, 16 February 1961, (Declassified Documents, 4).

 [29] ‘National Intelligence Estimate 34–61 – Prospects for Iran’, 28 February 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 38.

 [30] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – Conversation Between President Kennedy and Lieutenant General Teimur Bakhtiar’, 1 March 1961, ibid., 40.

 [31] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 14 March 1961, ibid., 44–45.

 [32] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – Meeting on Iran with Ambassador Harriman’, March 27, 1961, ibid., 54.

 [33] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – Meeting on Iran with Ambassador Harriman’, March 27, 1961, 55.

 [34] The debates over who should directly control Iran's military forces had been a constant source of tension since World War II, until the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953. See Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 176–83, 189, 203–05, 260–73.

 [35] ‘The Current Political Situation in Iran’, 11 February 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [36] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – Meeting on Iran with Ambassador Harriman’, 27 March 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 55.

 [37] ‘Some Notes on the Situation in Iran’, 20 March 1961 (Declassified Documents, 7a).

 [38] Goode, ‘Reforming Iran’, 15, 19; Summit, ‘For a White Revolution’, 574.

 [39] ‘Central Intelligence Bulletin’, 5 May 1961, CREST.

 [40] ‘Teachers Strike in Iran Described’, 5 May 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [41] ‘Draft Record of Actions – 483rd NSC Meeting’, 5 May 1961 (Declassified Documents, 19).

 [42] Summitt, ‘For a White Revolution’, 563.

 [43] See Editorial Note No. 41 in FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 99.

 [44] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961, ibid., 105–10.

 [45] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961, 106.

 [46] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961, 107.

 [47] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961, 108–09.

 [48] ‘Record of Action No. 2427 – Taken at the 484th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 19 May 1961, ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961ibid., 120.

 [49] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 18 May 1961, ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 10 May 1961ibid., 118.

 [50] ‘Central Intelligence Bulletin’, 6 May 1961, CREST.

 [51] ‘Record of Action No. 2427 – Taken at the 484th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 19 May 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 120.

 [52] An example of this kind of thinking can be found in a memo from Walt Rostow to Chairman of the Policy Planning Council George McGhee. Rostow suggested that a good way of ‘inducing the Shah to win the confidence of the urban middle class’ was ‘to bring in some of the best new middle class elements as project officers’ into economic development organisations. This was an approach distinctly different from that advocated by middle-class Iranians themselves, and was not meant to liberalise the political atmosphere. See ‘Memo from W.W. Rostow to George C. McGhee’, 28 March 1961 (Declassified Documents, 123B).

 [53] ‘A Review of Problems in Iran and Recommendations for the National Security Council’, 15 May 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [54] Part of what made Mosaddeq so unpalatable to the traditionalists was the fact that he flouted the constitutionalism for which the National Front had been fighting by extracting from the Iranian majles two six-month terms of emergency powers to implement his agenda. Because the modern middle class agreed with Mosaddeq's agenda, it considered his extra-constitutional methods necessary. See Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 272–78, and Azimi, ‘Unseating Mossadeq’, 90, 92–93.

 [55] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 18 May 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 118.

 [56] For an alternate interpretation, suggesting that internal conflicts within the Kennedy administration produced ‘a confusing mixture of conflicting approaches’, see Summitt, ‘For a White Revolution’, 573.

 [57] ‘Telegram from the State Department to the Embassy in Iran’, 3 June 1961, ibid., 152.

 [58] ‘Telegram from Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 6 June 1961, ibid., 153–54.

 [59] ‘Telegram from Julius Holmes to Dean Rusk’, 4 July 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1).

 [60] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 4 August 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 213.

 [61] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 4 August 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 214.

 [62] ‘Letter from Julius Holmes to Armin Meyer’, 27 August 1961, ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 4 August 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963ibid., 237.

 [63] ‘Summary of Proceedings of a Meeting of the Iran Task Force’, 7 September 1961, ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 4 August 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963ibid., 245–53.

 [64] ‘Central Intelligence Bulletin’, 12 September 1961, CREST.

 [65] ‘Memorandum by Robert Komer – Contingency Planning for Possible Soviet Move or Demonstration Against Iran’, 13 September 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 257–58.

 [66] Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 404–14.

 [67] ‘Memorandum from Lucius Battle to McGeorge Bundy’, 4 October 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 284.

 [68] ‘Report by the Chairman of the Iran Task Force Phillips Talbot’, 14 October 1961, ibid., 293. A source footnote notes that, although the report was not forwarded to the White House, Dean Rusk nonetheless discussed it with Talbot and indicated to Kennedy thereafter that he approved the courses of action it proposed.

 [69] Talbot came to focus on Iran's economic programs like the Third Development Plan and the Five Year Plan, in addition to economic organisations like the Agency for International Development (AID) and hypothetical international lending consortiums that could help fund those programs. His analysis paid scant attention to political, social, and institutional reform. Ibid., 294–95.

 [70] Talbot came to focus on Iran's economic programs like the Third Development Plan and the Five Year Plan, in addition to economic organizations like the Agency for International Development (AID) and hypothetical international lending consortiums that could help fund those programs. His analysis paid scant attention to political, social, and institutional reform, 300–01.

 [71] Department of State, Central Files, 611.88/10-1661.

 [72] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 30 October 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 316.

 [73] ‘Report of the Chairman of Iran Task Force Phillips Talbot’, 18 January 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 423.

 [74] ‘Letter from Julius Holmes to Dean Rusk’, 22 January 1962, ibid., 433–34.

 [75] ‘Airgram from Chester Bowles to President Kennedy and Dean Rusk – Urgent Need for Action in Iran’, 17 February 1962 (Declassified Documents, 14a).

 [76] Department of State, Central Files, 788.11/3-562.

 [77] ‘Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the State Department’, 7 March 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 509.

 [78] ‘Memorandum from Lucius Battle to McGeorge Bundy’, 8 March 1962, ibid., 517.

 [79] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 28 March 1962, ibid., 548–49.

 [80] According to ‘Memo from Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy’, 2 April 1962 (Declassified Documents, 18), Robert Komer was adamant on this point. By 9 April, the issue was settled to his liking. See ‘Memorandum for the Record – Second Preparatory Session for the Shah's Visit’, 9 April 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 583.

 [81] ‘Memorandum from Phillips Talbot to George McGhee – NSC Standing Group Meeting on Iran, 23 March 1962: Recent Developments on Aid to Iran and the Shah's Visit’, 22 March 1962, (Declassified Documents, 1807).

 [82] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – United States–Iran Relations’, 12 April 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 593.

 [83] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – United States–Iran Relations’, 12 April 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 595–96.

 [84] Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah, 106. Cf. this to Eisenhower's short-term approach to Iran in light of the shah's flirtation with the Soviets in Carr, ‘The United States-Iranian Relationship, 1948-1978’, 65.

 [85] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – United States–Iran Relations’, 12 April 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 17: 597.

 [86] ‘Telegram from the State Department to the Embassy in Iran’, 31 October 1961, ibid., 319.

 [87] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – United States–Iran Relations’, 13 April 1962, ibid., 609–10.

 [88] Alam, The Shah and I, 4; Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah, 211.

 [89] ‘Telegram from the State Department to the Embassy in Iran’, 15 June 1962, ibid., 726.

 [90] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 16 July 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 10.

 [91] Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 460. Ironically, James Goode (‘Reforming Iran’) cites Abrahamian to support the opposing view that ‘[t]he Second National Front offered a viable alternative to the shah’ because it ‘represented a broad alliance of autonomous organizations whose members came from the urban middle class… and it had some support among bazaar merchants and clerics as well.’ See Goode, p. 17, fn. 14.

 [92] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 18 July 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 11; ‘Letter from President Kennedy to the Shah’, 1 August 1962, ibid., 22.

 [93] ‘Research Memorandum RSB-160 – Soviet–Iranian Exchange of Notes on Exclusion of Foreign Missile Bases in Iran’, 21 September 1962 (Declassified Documents, A38).

 [94] See, for example, ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy’, 14 September 1962, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 98, in which Komer wrote, ‘I don't see much harm in [the] Iranian declaration. We can back Iranian argument that this proves Iranians have no ‘aggressive’ intentions and aren't serving as US stooges’.

 [95] Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 259.

 [96] Ansari, ‘The Myth of the White Revolution’, 2.

 [97] ‘The Current Political Situation in Iran’, 11 February 1961 (Declassified Documents, 1a).

 [98] ‘Airgram from Chester Bowles to President Kennedy and Dean Rusk – Urgent Need for Action in Iran’, 17 February 1962 (Declassified Documents, 14a).

 [99] ‘Memorandum for the Record – Minutes of Meeting of the Special Group (CI)’, 5 November 1962, ibid., 202.

[100] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy’, 13 November 1962 (Declassified Documents, 461).

[101] ‘Memo from Dean Rusk to President Kennedy’, 20 April 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 477.

[102] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy’, 16 May 1963 (Declassified Documents, 1); ‘Special National Intelligence Estimate 34-63’, 10 April 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 459.

[103] ‘Memo from Kenneth Hansen to Robert Komer’, 7 May 1963 (Declassified Documents, BCB2).

[104] ‘Telegram from the State Department to the Embassy in Iran’, 16 July 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 646.

[105] Rubin, Paved With Good Intentions, 106–7; Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 151; James Goode, ‘Reforming Iran’, 13 April summitt, ‘For a White Revolution’, 573–4.

[106] Richard Herrmann has sought to complicate Soviet behaviour vis-à-vis Iran, noting that Soviet policy was ‘far more variable and tentative than the usual picture of single-minded domination aims would suggest’ and that the US consistently played down ‘the importance that geostrategic security considerations have played in shaping Soviet policy’. See Herrmann, ‘The Role of Iran in Soviet Perceptions and Policy, 1946-1988’, 63.

[107] Robert Komer's statements from a March 1962 memo is a telling example: ‘As Khrushchev's remarks at Vienna demonstrate, Moscow is counting on such a revolutionary situation emerging in Iran. Iranians, while not neglecting external threat, would do well to focus on strengthening counter-insurgency apparatus and equally important generating sufficient domestic progress to forestall ripening of revolutionary situation’. See DDRS, ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer’, 24 March 1962 (Declassified Documents, 15a).

[108] In Iran's dispute with Great Britain following the nationalisation of Iranian oil, Mosaddeq predicated his actions on the assumption that America ‘would rush immediately to Iran's assistance’ to prevent his turn to the Soviets. The US, however, decided to oppose Iran in the conflict. Although Mosaddeq's government handled the crisis better than most observers had expected, popular unrest within various movements did increase. See Heiss, ‘The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mosaddeq Coup of 1953’, 189, 191. See also, Keddie, Modern Iran, 126.

[109] Keddie, Modern Iran, 143.

[110] John F. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Box 115A, ‘Iran General, 3/21/61–3/31/61’ folder, Letter, T. Cuyler Young to Walt W. Rostow, 19 April 1961.

[111] JFKL, National Security Files, Box 116, Iran General, 8/15/61–9/9/61' folder, Report, ‘Embassy Comments on NEA Study of Possible U.S. Actions Re The Long-Term Political Situation in Iran’, Undated.

[112] Sick, All Fall Down.

[113] ‘Memorandum from Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy’, 3 December 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, 18: 820–21.