Word: shahs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...documents were carefully selected by the Iranians to support their charges of U.S. subversion. Yet what emerges from the papers that came from the "nest of spies," as the Iranian annotations put it, is a contradictory and confused attempt by U.S. diplomats to comprehend the Shah's regime, the rebellion and the post-revolution government of Ayatullah Khomeini. Some analyses were chillingly prescient, others dangerously naive...
Throughout the early 1970s, as Iran's importance as a U.S. ally grew, Washington remained generally confident about its ties with Tehran. "Iran-U.S. relations with the Shah are excellent," wrote U.S. Ambassador Richard Helms in 1974. But Helms also advised that embassy officials take "great care" in talking to dissidents lest the Shah be offended. U.S. intelligence thus remained fragmentary, crippling U.S. efforts to under stand the growing opposition that would eventually topple the Peacock Throne...
...there were mixed reports on the Shah. He was characterized as weak and isolated, his advisers as venal and immoral. Claimed one 1976 CIA report: "In the Shah's family are an assortment of licentious and financially corrupt relatives, notably his twin sister Ashraf, a lady possessed of a greedy nature and nymphomaniac tendencies...
...religious riots began to erupt across Iran, Washington still believed the Shah to be in firm control, but the embassy's political officers were decidedly more pessimistic. Concluded a report that June: "The U.S. is supporting the Shah, hence religious ideologues attack the U.S. There are situations in which the U.S. could turn very swiftly into a scapegoat for Persian problems...
Through the fall of 1978 the cables sent to Washington by U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan remained optimistic. He wrote on Oct. 19: "The Khomeni star seems to be waning." But by late December, Sullivan was admitting that the "situation is fast approaching anarchy." On Jan. 16, 1979, the Shah left the country, and two weeks later Ayatullah Khomeini was in Iran...