Abstract
John F. Kennedy had barely settled into the Oval Office when he was forced to consider US policy towards Iran, a country in increasing turmoil. In February 1961, Iran held its second nationwide election in just seven months. Widespread accusations of fraud led to riots, strikes, and protests, which in turn were followed by a severe police crackdown.1 In Washington, the chaos emanating from Tehran provided apparent confirmation of Nikita Khrushchev’s view that it was only a matter of time before Iran collapsed, precipitating a communist takeover.2 In fact, despite American fears that Moscow would seek to subvert the government in Tehran in order to expand its influence into the Middle East, Iran was rarely very high on the Soviet agenda. The 1946 Azerbaijan crisis and the communist spectre during the nationalization crisis had caused US officials to exaggerate the Soviet threat to Iran. Certainly, Moscow engaged for many years in an extensive anti-Shah propaganda campaign, but the Soviet Union’s priorities lay elsewhere.3 Even so, the prospect of Iran descending further into chaos and collapse was deeply concerning for US officials.
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Notes
“The Press: The View from the Villa,” 28 Apr. 1961, Time Magazine. On Soviet policies towards the developing world, see Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Moscow’s Third World Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988; 1990); Roy Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Muriel Atkin, “Myths of Soviet-Iranian Relations,” in Nikki R. Keddie and Mark J.Gasiorowski, Eds., Neither East nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 100–114; Richard Hermann, “The Role of Iran in Soviet Perceptions and Policy, 1946–1988,” in Ibid., pp. 63–99; Robert G. Irani, “Changes in Soviet Policy Toward Iran,” in Robert H. Donaldson, Ed., The Soviet Union in the Third World: Successes and Failures (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 192–209.
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 197; Gary A. Donaldson, The First Modern Campaign: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960 (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), p. 95.
That is, until the emergence of Fred Greenstein’s “hiddenhand” thesis, which argues that Eisenhower actually played a more active role in his administration’s foreign policy than had previously been assumed; Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (John Hopkins University Press, 1984).
Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (London: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 170.
David Webster, “Regimes in Motion: The Kennedy Administration and Indonesia’s New Frontier, 1960–1962,” Diplomatic History, 33.1 (Jan., 2009), p. 100. Robert Dean, using a gender framework, comes to a similar conclusion about the activist nature of Kennedy and his officials; Robert D. Dean, “Masculinity as Ideology: John F. Kennedy and the Domestic Politics of Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History, 22.1 (Winter, 1998), pp. 29–62.
On efforts to create professional networks among potential leaders in developing countries, see Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 97–220.
John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), pp. 92–97.
On US interventions in the Third World, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Zachary Karabell, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999).
Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, pp. 190–197; Mark H. Haefele, “Walt Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth: Ideas and Action,” in David Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele and Michael E. Latham, Eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), pp. 81–103.
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969; 1972).
Prados, Keepers of the Keys, pp. 57–91; Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 39–40.
“Senate Approves Holmes as Envoy to Iran,” 9 May 1961. Washington Post.
“Iranian Cabinet Quits Under Fire,” 6 May 1961. New York Times (All New York Times articles have been retrieved using institution access from ProQuest Historical Newspapers).
“Iran’s Shrewd Premier: Ali Amini,” 30 May 1961. New York Times, p. 2.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History (Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein and Day, 1980), p. 23.
Mohammad Gholi Majd has argued that because much of the middle classes’ wealth was tied into land investments (although they were not landowners themselves), the confiscation and reform of land also contributed to the demonstrations: “the protests reflected the anger and alienation of the urban middle classes who were faced with the loss of their savings, inheritance, and source of income”; Mohammad Gholi Majd, “Small Landowners and Land Distribution in Iran, 1962–71,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 32.1 (Feb., 2000), p. 147.
“Paper Prepared for the Iran Task Force,” undated but it was intended for a meeting of the Task Force on 2 Aug. 1961. FRUS 196 1–1963 XVII, p. 200.
“Memorandum from the Department of State Executive Secretary (Battle) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” 11 Aug. 1961. Ibid., pp. 227–228.
“Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” 11 Aug. 1961. Ibid., p. 228.
“Memorandum from the Administrator of the Agency for International Development (Hamilton) to the National Security Council,” undated but written in response to NSC Action 2447, which was taken on 18 Jan. 1962. Ibid., p. 512.
“Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy,” 28 Mar. 1962. Ibid., pp. 548–549.
“Memorandum from the Department of State Executive Secretary (Battle) to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” 8 Mar. 1962. Ibid., p. 516, 518.
“Record of Briefing for the NSC Standing Group Meeting,” Mar. 23, 1962, pp. 539–540; “Record of Debriefing of the NSC Standing Group Meeting,” 23 Mar. 1962. Ibid., pp. 541–543.
“Memorandum from the Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget (Hansen) to President Kennedy,” 7 Apr. 1962. Ibid., p. 581.
“Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy,” 16 Jul. 1962. Nina J. Noring, Ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XVIII: Near East, 1962–1963 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1995), p. 99 (hereafter referred to as FRUS 196 1–1963 XVIII), p. 10.
“Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy,” 18 Jul. 1962. Ibid., p. 11 (italics in original).
“Memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy),” 19 Jul. 1962. Ibid., p. 16.
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© 2015 Ben Offiler
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Offiler, B. (2015). The Kennedy Administration, Internal Disputes, and Modernization. In: US Foreign Policy and the Modernization of Iran. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482211_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482211_3
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