Introduction

Abstract

On February 1, 1979, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini arrived in Tehran from French exile to a tumultuous welcome, the culmination of a revolution that had swept away the shah. The demise of the Pahlavi dynasty shocked the world and most keenly stupefied the United States, where it contributed to President Jimmy Carters reelection loss and has continued to preoccupy policy makers ever since. The inability to predict the advent of Islamists has loomed large in the pantheon of American intelligence failures, and Washington’s fundamental lack of understanding of Iranian politics has also hampered formation of effective policies. Prediction and foreign policy are intertwined; decision making intuitively entails judgment about current and future events, a dictum that places a premium on political intelligence. In the high-stakes post–World War II world, tremendous energies have been expended to identify sources of such strategic predictive lapses.