The Carter Administration and the Fall of Iran’s Pahlavi Dynasty

Beschreibung

During the first two years of Carter's presidency, Iran entered a spiral of violence and unrest that ended with the exile of the Shah and the establishment of an Islamic Republic. The Iranian revolution was first neglected by American diplomats and intelligence officials. When Carter finally became aware of the extent of the disturbances in Iran, he refused to explicitly back the iron fist policy sought by the Shah. The Iranian monarch was unwilling to decisively tackle the protests without Carter's blessing and thus he proceeded with a failed policy that mixed concessions with repression, which only served to postpone the inevitable. This book looks at recent declassified documents from several archival resources that provide an unprecedented picture of the Carter administration's uneasiness regarding the Shah's Iran. Gil Guerrero analyzes the disputes between Washington and Tehran concerning human rights and arms exports, the divisions inside the White House, and the Shah's uncertainty regarding Carter's support. The sources gathered all point to a late process of political liberalization encouraged by American officials that only served to weaken the Shah's authority while emboldening the opposition, in the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, to 'seize the moment." They offer an unprecedented picture of the forces that enabled Khomeini's triumph, altered America's perception of Islam, and fundamentally changed the United States' relationship with Iran.

This book is a tale of loss: the loss of Iran as America's main ally and agent in the Middle East and the downfall of the short-lived Pahlavi monarchy and America's inability and unwillingness to prevent its demise. Khomeini's triumph altered America's perception of Islam and fundamentally changed its relationship with Iran.

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Javier Gil Guerrero

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Carter Khomeini Persian Gulf Shah U.S.-Iran Relations Iranian Revolution foreign policy human rights Iran Policy politics revolution

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“Guerrero’s work is written well and documented thoroughly. The resources accessed are valuable in and of themselves. It is a welcome work to the political history of American-Iranian interaction.” (Philip O Hopkins, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 21 (1), 2017)

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