The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

Cultural conflict. Similarly, com- pulsory Westernization was a threat to Iranians’ national identity. The over- throw of the shah in 1978 not only brought liberation from an oppressive regime, but freedom to be Iranian again. Unfortunately, in their euphor- ia, liberal Iranians forgot that the only political structure that had survived years of repression was the exceed- ingly illiberal Islamic clergy. Foreign intervention/imperialist misconduct. The British and, later, the Americans viewed themselves, not the Iranians, as the prime actors in the country. In 1907, for instance, the British and the Russians effective- ly partitioned Iran into spheres of influence. And in the early 1950s, when Iranian Prime Minister Mo- hammad Mossadeq nationalized Brit- ish Oil (now British Petroleum), the CIA intervened to overthrow him and restore the exiled shah. That was not forgotten. Later, in 1956, a status-of-forces agreement exempted all American military personnel from the Iranian justice system. A then-obscure mul- lah named Ruhollah Khomeini pro- tested strongly against this exemption as a violation of Iranian sovereignty, and was exiled to Iraq. As we all know, two decades later he returned, with momentous consequences. Corruption, oppression and in- competence in the ruling institution. Washington supported the shah, as Henry Kissinger explained, because he was modernizing his people, was pro-American and was against the Russians. Essentially, Cold War con- siderations made us support a regime that was corrupt, enforced its so-called reforms through oppression, and was deeply incompetent to boot. Amnesty International character- ized the shah’s regime as among the worst violators of human rights in the world. When President Jimmy Car- ter declared human rights to be the centerpiece of his foreign policy, the shah’s regime took him seriously, and eased up on the dissidents. But as soon as the Carter administration made it clear that it would support the shah at all costs, the regime resumed its crackdown. Some of my captors, S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 What kept everyone going was the belief that relief was on the way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t — at least not yet.