The Shah's détente with Khrushchev: Iran's 1962 missile base pledge to the Soviet Union

Abstract

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran is commonly portrayed in Cold War historiography as a loyal client of the United States. Yet, the shah also pursued détente with Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, culminating in Iran's September 1962 pledge to the Soviet Union that no foreign missile bases would be permitted on Iranian territory. Drawing on American and British documentary sources, as well as the memoirs of several Iranian participants, this article suggests that the shah's 1962 pledge was not simply a ploy to leverage more arms from the United States. Rather, it represented the shah's first modest step towards a more independent foreign policy during the Cold War.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Houchang Chehabi, Mark Gasiorowski, Eliza Gheorghe, Homa Katouzian, Vlad Zubok, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

¹ David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 187–193.

² See Kristen Blake, The U.S.-Soviet Confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962: A Case in the Annals of the Cold War (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009), 118–127; Shahram Chubin and Sepehr Zabih, The Foreign Relations of Iran: A Developing State in a Zone of Great Power Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 56–69; Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East: From World War Two to Gorbachev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 178–179; Hormoz Hekmat, “Iran's Response to Soviet-American Rivalry, 1951–1962; A Comparative Study,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1974, 222–241; Richard Herrmann, “The Role of Iran in Soviet Perceptions and Policy, 1946–1988,” in Neither East Nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union and the United States, eds. Nikki R. Keddie and Mark J. Gasiorowski (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 70–72; Rouhollah K. Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy 1941–1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1975), 315–328.

³ See, amongst others, Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985); Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe, 1962–1975,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 2: Crises and Détente, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 198–218.

⁴ James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 150; James F. Goode, The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Musaddiq (Basingtoke: Macmillan, 1997), 175–176; Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 108.

⁵ See Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2014); Andrew Johns, “The Johnson Administration, the Shah of Iran, and the Changing Pattern of U.S.-Iranian Relations, 1965–1967: ‘Tired of Being Treated Like a Schoolboy,’” Journal of Cold War Studies 9, no. 2 (2007): 64–94.

⁶ On the 1946 Azerbaijan crisis see Louise L. Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jamil Hasanli, At the Dawn of the Cold War: the Soviet-American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

⁷ Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Mission for my Country (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 124; Ahmad Mirfendereski with Ahmad Ahrar, Dar hamsayegi-ye khers: Diplomasi va siyasat-e khareji-ye Iran, az 3 Shahrivar 1320 ta 22 Bahman 1357 [Neighbouring the bear: Iranian diplomacy and foreign policy, 1941–1980] (Tehran: Elm, 2003), 90.

⁸ See Mark J. Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Mark. J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, eds., Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004).

⁹ Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 219–250, 256–260, 274–278.

¹⁰ Behçet Kemal Yeşilbursa, The Baghdad Pact: Anglo-American Defence Policies in the Middle East, 1950–1959 (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 110–120.

¹¹ See Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 290–328; Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 43–69.

¹² Pahlavi, Mission for my Country, 120.

¹³ Tehran to State, 28/2/59, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume XII: Near East Region, Iraq, Iran, Arabian Peninsula, ed. Edward C. Keefer (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1992), Doc. 229. See also Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The Qarani Affairs and Iranian Politics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 4 (1993): 625–644.

¹⁴ See Roham Alvandi, “Flirting with Neutrality: the Shah, Khrushchev, and the 1959 Soviet-Iranian Negotiations,” Iranian Studies (forthcoming 2014).

¹⁵ Geneva 3 to the Foreign Office (FO), 20/5/59, FO 371/140802, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, United Kingdom.

¹⁶ Lykourgos Kourkouvelas, “Denuclearization on NATO's Southern Front: Allied Reactions to Soviet Proposals, 1957–1963,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 4 (2012): 207; Philip Nash, The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957–1963 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 65–68.

¹⁷ Abdul Hoseyn Masud Ansari, Khatirat-e siyasi va ijtima'i: Mururi bar panjah sal-e tarikh [Political and social memoirs: A review of fifty years of history], (Tehran: Entesharat-e Elmi, 1995), 836–841.

¹⁸ Richards to Brown, 27/5/59, FO 371/140803.

¹⁹ Iraq formally withdrew from the Baghdad Pact in March 1959, following the military coup that toppled the Iraqi monarchy on 14 July 1958. The alliance was renamed CENTO and its headquarters was moved to Ankara.

²⁰ Harrison to Hiller, 19/6/59, FO 371/140803.

²¹ Moscow 990 to FO, 6/7/59, FO 371/140803.

²² Reilly to Stevens, 7/7/59, FO 371/140804.

²³ Harrison to Stevens, 15/9/59, FO 371/140807.

²⁴ Central Intelligence Bulletin (CIB), 16/9/59, US Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room (CIA-FOIA), available on-line at < http://www.foia.cia.gov/>.

²⁵ Editorial Note, FRUS 1958–1960, XII, Doc. 277.

²⁶ Tehran 921 to FO, 22/9/59, FO 371/140807.

²⁷ Harrison to Stevens, 24/9/59, FO 371/140808.

²⁸ Tehran 939 to FO, 25/9/59, FO 371/140807.

²⁹ Tehran 958 to FO, 28/9/59, FO 371/140808; CIB, 26/9/59, CIA-FOIA.

³⁰ Tehran 1038 to FO, 19/10/59, FO 371/140808.

³¹ CIB, 27/10/59, CIA-FOIA.

³² Tehran 1155 to FO, 11/11/59, FO 371/140808.

³³ Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah, 112.

³⁴ Tehran 1173 to FO, 14/11/59, FO 371/140829.

³⁵ Reilly to Stevens, 22/12/59, FO 371/140808.

³⁶ See Alexander Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of An American Adversary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 260–291.

³⁷ James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: America's National Security Agency and its Special Relationship with Britain's GCHQ (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982), 180.

³⁸ Richard J. Aldrich, GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency (London: Harper Press, 2010), 112, 302; Paul Lashmar, Spy Flights of the Cold War (Stroud: Sutton, 1996), 83; Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 264.

³⁹ Richard Helms with William Hood, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003), 417.

⁴⁰ A second facility, TACKSMAN II, was established at Kapkan in north-eastern Iran in 1965–66. See Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 33, 88.

⁴¹ Lashmar, Spy Flights, 151.

⁴² Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 54.

⁴³ “Soviet Warns Iran on U.S. Acts; Sees Air Manoeuvres as ‘Hostile,’” New York Times, 15/5/60. See also, Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 54.

⁴⁴ Tehran to FO, 18/6/60, FO 371/149765.

⁴⁵ Tehran 771 to FO, 11/7/60, and Tehran 775 to FO, 12/7/60, FO 371/149766.

⁴⁶ Tehran 753 to FO, 8/7/60, FO 371/149765.

⁴⁷ ‘SAVAK’ is the acronym for the Sazman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (National Intelligence and Security Organisation).

⁴⁸ CIB, 6/7/59, CIA-FOIA. See Abbas Milani, “Seyyed Zia Tabataba'i” in his Eminent Persians: The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, vol. 1 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 311–320.

⁴⁹ Tehran 884 to FO, 14/9/59, FO 371/140806; Harrison to Stevens, 17/9/59, FO 371/140807.

⁵⁰ On the crises that gripped Iran between 1960 and 1962 see T. Cuyler Young, “Iran in Continuing Crisis,” Foreign Affairs 40, no. 2 (1962): 275–292.

⁵¹ CIB, 18/6/60, CIA-FOIA.

⁵² Editorial Note, FRUS 1958–1960, XII, Doc. 290.

⁵³ Tehran 800 to FO, 20/7/60, FO 371/149767.

⁵⁴ Tehran 801 to FO, 20/7/60, FO 371/149767; Editorial Note, FRUS 1958–1960, XII, Doc. 295; CIB, 23/7/60, CIA-FOIA.

⁵⁵ Tehran 849 to FO, 29/7/60, FO 371/149767.

⁵⁶ Tehran 848 to FO, 29/7/60, FO 371/149767.

⁵⁷ Tehran 855 to FO, 31/7/60, FO 371/149768.

⁵⁸ Millard to Hiller, 2/8/60, FO 371/149768.

⁵⁹ The Jebhe-ye Melli (National Front) had been the name of Mosaddeq's political coalition.

⁶⁰ H. E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990), 143–145.

⁶¹ Tehran 930 to FO, 22/8/60, FO 371/149768.

⁶² Tehran 957 to FO, 30/8/60, FO 371/149768. See also, Editorial Note, FRUS 1958–1960, XII, Doc. 299; Tahmouress Adamiyat, Gashti bar guzashtah: Khatirati az safir-e kabir-e Iran dar shoravi [A journey through the past: Memoirs of an Imperial Iranian ambassador to the Soviet Union] (Tehran: Ketab Sera, 1989), 168–175.

⁶³ Abbas Milani, “Ja'far Sharif-Emami,” Eminent Persians, 1: 305–310.

⁶⁴ Ja'far Sharif-Emami in an interview with Habib Ladjevardi, May 24, 1983, New York, Tape 8, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project (HIOHP), accessible at: < http://www.fas.harvard.edu/∼iohp/>.

⁶⁵ Tehran to FO, 6/9/60, FO 371/149768.

⁶⁶ Tehran 1010 to FO, 9/9/60, FO 371/149768.

⁶⁷ Tehran 25 to FO, 27/9/60, FO 371/149769.

⁶⁸ Tehran 1057 to FO, 23/9/60, FO 371/149769.

⁶⁹ Tehran 1061 to FO, 24/9/60, FO 371/149769.

⁷⁰ Tehran 1082 to FO, 27/9/60, FO 371/149769.

⁷¹ Millard to Hiller, 4/10/60, FO 371/149769.

⁷² Tehran to FO, 4/10/60, FO 371/149769.

⁷³ Tehran 1162 to FO, 21/10/60, FO 371/149769.

⁷⁴ Tehran 1198 to FO, 31/10/60, FO 371/149770.

⁷⁵ Millard to Hiller, 3/11/60, and Tehran 1222 to FO, 8/11/60, FO 371/149770.

⁷⁶ State to Tehran, 1 November 1960, FRUS 1958–1960, XII, Doc. 302.

⁷⁷ John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, ed. Allan Nevis (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 107, 219. See also Goode, United States and Iran, 168–169.

⁷⁸ Abbas Milani, The Shah (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 248.

⁷⁹ Tehran 1244 to FO, 12/11/60, FO 371/149770.

⁸⁰ Harrison to Hiller, 25/11/60, FO 371/149770.

⁸¹ Memorandum by Hiller, 2/2/61, FO 371/157617.

⁸² Tehran 175 to FO, 15/2/61, FO 371/157617.

⁸³ CIB, 7/2/61, CIA-FOIA.

⁸⁴ Tehran 215 to FO, 23/2/61, FO 371/157617.

⁸⁵ Chehabi, Iranian Politics, 151.

⁸⁶ Tehran 239 to FO, 28/2/61, and Tehran 3 to FO, 21/3/61, FO 371/157617.

⁸⁷ Walter Lippmann, “Interview with Khrushchev,” Survival 3, no. 4 (1961): 154–158; Speares to Ure, 19/4/61, FO 371/157617.

⁸⁸ Tehran to FO, 27/4/61, FO 371/157618.

⁸⁹ Chehabi, Iranian Politics, 153.

⁹⁰ Ali Amini in an interview with Habib Ladjevardi, December 4, 1981, Paris, Tape 3, HIOHP; Iraj Amini, Bar bal-e bohran: Zendegi-ye siyasi-ye Ali Amini [On the wings of crisis: The political life of Ali Amini] (Tehran: Nashr-e Mahi, 2009), 227–230.

⁹¹ On the Kennedy administration and Iran see James F. Goode, “Reforming Iran During the Kennedy Years,” Diplomatic History 15, no. 1 (1991): 13–29; Victor V. Nemchenok, “In Search of Stability Amid Chaos: US Policy Toward Iran, 1961–63,” Cold War History 10, no. 3 (2010): 341–369; Roland Popp, “Benign Intervention? The Kennedy Administration's Push for Reform in Iran,” in John F. Kennedy and the ‘Thousand Days’: New Perspectives on the Foreign and Domestic Policies of the Kennedy Administration, eds. Manfred Berg and Andreas Etges (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2007), 197–219; April R. Summit, “For a White Revolution: John F. Kennedy and the Shah of Iran,” Middle East Journal 58, no. 4 (2004): 560–575; and Andrew Warne, “Psychoanalyzing Iran: Kennedy's Iran Task Force and the Modernization of Orientalism, 1961–3,” The International History Review 35, no. 2 (2013): 396–422.

⁹² Robert B. Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 152–162.

⁹³ Record of Action No. 2427, 19/5/61, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XVII: Near East, 1961–1962, ed. Nina J. Noring (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994), Doc. 51.

⁹⁴ CIB, 2/6/61, CIA-FOIA.

⁹⁵ Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 34.2–61, 23/5/61, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 52.

⁹⁶ Memorandum of Conversation (Memcon), 3/6/61, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume V: Soviet Union, eds. Charles S. Sampson and John Michael Joyce (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1998), Doc. 85.

⁹⁷ Tehran 871 to FO, 24/7/61, FO 371/157618.

⁹⁸ Tehran to FO, 26/7/61, FO 371/157618.

⁹⁹ Tehran 895 to FO, 1/8/61, FO 371/157618.

¹⁰⁰ Vladislav M. Zubok, “Spy vs. Spy: the KGB vs. the CIA, 1960–1962,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 4 (1994), pp. 28–29.

¹⁰¹ CIB, 12/9/61, CIA-FOIA.

¹⁰² Tehran 1017 to FO, 11/9/61, FO 371/157618.

¹⁰³ SNIE 11-12-61, 4/10/61, CIA-FOIA.

¹⁰⁴ FO to Tehran, 8/12/61, FO 371/157619.

¹⁰⁵ Moscow 2312 to FO, 22/12/61, FO 371/157619.

¹⁰⁶ Tehran 1280 to FO, 29/12/61, FO 371/157619. See also, Mahmoud Foroughi in an interview with Habib Ladjevardi, March 6, 1982, Palm Beach, Tape 3, HIOHP.

¹⁰⁷ FO 4 to Tehran, 12/1/62, FO 371/164190.

¹⁰⁸ Tehran 83 to FO, 22/1/62; Tehran 137 to FO, 5/2/62; Tehran 155 to FO, 9/2/62; Tehran 156 to FO, 9/2/62, FO 371/164190.

¹⁰⁹ Tehran 5 to FO, 14/2/62, FO 371/164190.

¹¹⁰ Memcon, 12/4/62, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 243.

¹¹¹ Aide-Mémoire by Rusk, 13/4/62, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 248.

¹¹² Memcon, 12/4/62, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 243.

¹¹³ Memcon, 13/4/62, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 246.

¹¹⁴ Kellas to Hiller, 17/8/62, FO 371/164191.

¹¹⁵ Tehran 53 to FO, c. 24/8/62, FO 371/164191.

¹¹⁶ SNIE 34–62, 7/9/62, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XVIII: Near East, 1962–1963, ed. Nina J. Noring (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1995), Doc. 35.

¹¹⁷ Tehran 756 to FO, 12/9/62, FO 371/164192.

¹¹⁸ Tehran 760 to FO, 13/9/62, and Tehran 768 to FO, 14/9/62, FO 371/164192.

¹¹⁹ Tehran 63 to FO, 17/9/62, FO 371/164192.

¹²⁰ Memcon, 28/9/62, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Robert W. Komer Files (RWKF), Box 424, John F. Kennedy Library (JFKL), Boston, MA.

¹²¹ Yatsevitch to Holmes, 18/9/1962, RWKF, Box 424, JFKL.

¹²² Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 64–69; Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 316–318.

¹²³ Homa Katouzian, The Persians: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Iran (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 278.

¹²⁴ Komer to Bundy, 14/9/62, FRUS 1961–1963, XVIII, Doc. 42; Hilsman to Rusk, 21/9/62, RWKF, Box 424, JFKL.

¹²⁵ Sepehr Zabih, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 239–241.

¹²⁶ Record of Action No. 2427, 19/5/61, FRUS 1961–1963, XVII, Doc. 51.

¹²⁷ Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 61–85; Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 311–328.

¹²⁸ Homa Katouzian, “Mosaddeq's Government in Iranian History: arbitrary rule, democracy, and the 1953 Coup,” in Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup (see note 8), 23.

¹²⁹ Harrison to Hiller, 15/9/62, FO 371/164192.

¹³⁰ On the shah's conspiratorial views about the British and Alam's reputation as an Anglophile see Denis Wright, The Memoirs of Sir Denis Wright 1911–1971 in Two Volumes, vol. II, unpublished manuscript, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 385–388, 400–402.

¹³¹ Gholam Reza Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 335–341; Ramazani, Iran's Foreign Policy, 330–344.

¹³² See Frédéric Bozo, “France, ‘Gaullism,’ and the Cold War,” in Cambridge History of the Cold War (see note 3), 158–178. On the shah's esteem for de Gaulle see Chubin & Zabih, Foreign Relations of Iran, 66–67; Sébastien Fath, L'Iran et de Gaulle: Chronique d'un rêve inachevé (Neuilly-sur-Seine: EurOrient, 1999).

¹³³ Roham Alvandi, “Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah: The Origins of Iranian Primacy in the Persian Gulf,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 2 (2012): 341.

Roham Alvandi is Assistant Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War, published by Oxford University Press in 2014. Email: [email protected]