Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Iranian radicals, some of Washington's Middle East experts predicted that this outrageous violation of international custom would brand Ayatullah Khomeini as a pariah in the Islamic world. The experts were wrong. Certainly the majority of Khomeini's neighboring rulers disapprove of the embassy invasion and the holding of diplomatic hostages. But the denunciations of the Ayatullah have not been as loud or as specific as the U.S. would like. That is partly because Khomeini's skill at rousing Iranian mobs to a pitch of zealotry...
Last week, as the war of nerves between Tehran and Washington continued, U.S. policymakers were pondering three questions: 1) What was the impact of the crisis on other key states in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia? 2) What role was being played by the Soviet Union? 3) How would other nations respond in the event of retaliatory action against Iran...
During the embassy siege in Tehran, the Soviets have played an ambiguous role. On the one hand, their Ambassador at the United Nations, Oleg Troyanovsky, both by oratory and vote supported the Security Council resolution demanding the immediate release of the American hostages. On the other hand, Soviet propaganda has done what it could to make mischief. At first the Soviet Farsi-language broadcasts, beamed from Baku into northern Iran, harshly criticized the U.S. These were toned down after Washington protested. But last week, in its harshest volley to date, Pravda accused the U.S. of trying to "blackmail Iran...
...Soviets also need a stable regime in Tehran if Iran is to become a secure source of energy for them in the future. They are rapidly running out of oil of their own and will need to import large amounts of foreign oil beginning in the early 1980s. Under the Shah, the Soviets profited from cheap natural gas pumped from the Iranian fields through the Caucasus. To Moscow's chagrin, the Khomeini regime quickly canceled the deal after it came to power...
...most discouraging aspects of the Iranian crisis is how little it has moved the U.S. Government to counter the energy threat by taking dramatic action to conserve oil. Not only does the trauma in Tehran threaten at any moment to choke off deliveries of nearly 3 million bbl. of crude per day to an oil-thirsty world, but it increasingly jeopardizes petroleum supplies throughout the Middle East. U.S. Government officials calculate that a widespread upheaval in the Persian Gulf could quickly cut U.S. imports by 4 million bbl. per day, or more than 22% of total consumption. On another front...