Word: airing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Niavaran Palace, the royal family's winter quarters in Tehran, there is a deceptively peaceful air these days. Beyond the gates guarded by paratroopers, gardeners tend the roses and manicured lawns as usual; inside, household footmen dressed in tail coats go about their duties. The Shah's private office is in a small, cheerfully wallpapered room on the second floor, where the telephone rings almost constantly. Because of the crisis, the Shah is not giving on-the-record interviews, but he did agree to talk with Cairo Correspondent Dean Brelis and TIME'S Parviz Raein. Brelis...
Every morning the 413,000 members of Iran's armed forces recite a pledge of allegiance to Xoda, Shah, Mihan (Persian for God, Shah and Fatherland). Significantly, in this tripartite loyalty oath, King comes before country. Iran's army, navy and increasingly sophisticated air force have two missions. One is to defend a nation ringed by potential enemies. The other is to protect the person, prestige and power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who once observed, "In this country, if the King is not the commander in chief of the armed forces, anything can happen...
...military has not been tested in combat, but it is awesomely equipped. In the past two decades, Iran has bought $36 billion in weaponry, most of it from Britain and the U.S. The total includes 2,200 tanks, 400 jet fighters, nearly 30 naval vessels, as well as air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Iran, moreover, is one of the few nations in the world to have fleet of military hover craft. Although the latest crisis forced the Shah to delay or cancel $7 billion in current purchases, about $12 billion worth of equipment is in the delivery...
...fragment individual power bases, making it much more difficult for dissident elements to mount a cohesive opposition." A graduate of Tehran's Military College, the Shah has involved himself deeply in the promotion of all officers, even at middle-grade levels. Liaison between the army, navy and air force, which were separated into three military bureaucracies in 1955, is handled at the top by a royal military staff. That makes it much more difficult for officers of the three services to get together-and possibly conspire against their commander in chief. Beyond that, leaders have been promoted as much...
DEFENSE. China's military force is hardly a match for the Soviet Union's 43 divisions and 100,000 crack KGB troops that confront the Chinese along a 4,500-mile frontier. China's air force relies on the aging MiG-21 as its front-line interceptor and on the ancient TU-16 and the Il-28 as its penetration bombers; its nuclear warheads are mounted on intermediate missiles with a range of no more than 4,000 miles. Its navy, though the world's third largest, is equally antiquated: its two nuclear-powered submarines carry...