The Last Moderate Iranian

Excuse me, Muhammad Mosadeq, for invoking your shadow when you're already decades in your grave. But I must talk to a moderate Iranian, not one of those 1400 mythical "moderates" in the Khomeini regime that Israel offered to introduce to us. You're right to be suspicious of me, for the United States has the habit of using Iran for its own purposes. But this time we'll actually help: By forcing an end to the Iran-Iraq war.

When you were prime minister in Tehran in the 1950s, we mistakenly called you a dangerous leftist, even a "crypto-communist." In fact you were an Iranian nationalist and a conservative landlord. Your not-so-revolutionary idea was that Iran should control its own oil. You won control of the government fairly, and the Shah fled to Rome. But we decided to cut you down. That was unfair, but we thought we knew what we were doing. If you'd succeeded, the Arabs would have wanted to control their oil too. And the Western countries would have had to pay a fair market price to the oil-producing countries then, rather than 20 years later. That would have been revolutionary!

I admit that it's clear now that we should have left you in charge. As an Iranian patriot, you'd never have let the Soviets in. Instead, we used our then-almighty dollars to put paid mobs in the streets to demonstrate against you, the only moderate Iranian leader in more than 30 years. We brought back from exile your weakling Shah, with all his dreams of turning Iran into an industrial giant in a decade, and his delusions of military grandeur. Our vision was flawed, but our motivation in the 1950s was simple: Greed. You wanted more money for your oil. We (and the British) said no.

We were wrong-headed about you, but don't forget that you set yourself up by feeding our prejudices: Wearing pajamas in the day-time and shedding tears in public. Weeping over the fate of your people only proved you were emotional and unreasonable, not at all our Anglo-Saxon stiff-upper-lip kind of guy. Let's face it: About your country, Persia, we've never been able to agree. You named the man we call Alexander the Great—because he carried Greek civilization to the Orient—Alexander the Terrible just because he destroyed your great Persian Empire in the 4th Century BC. We think of Omar Khayyam as a poet while you think of him as a mathematician and an astronomer. We still don't know anything about your poet-heroes, Ferdosi and Sa'idi.

If you thought the situation was bad enough when you were still alive, my friend, let me tell you that after 1967 things really went downhill. That was the year Israel launched its "preemptive" attack against the Arabs and went expansionist. The very next year the US embassy in Tehran stopped talking at all to the Shah's opposition. These two events were assuredly linked. An aggressive, bully-boy Israel was suddenly losing its international friends, from De Gaulle's France to all of the states of Black Africa. So Israel sank its hooks deeper into the United States, eagerly laid court to the Shah, and convinced Americans that no matter how bizarre his thinking, they needed the Shah as their "policemen" in the Middle East. Honest embassy reporting from Tehran would have shown the folly of placing all US bets on a leader who was increasingly megalomaniacal. Instead, American ambassadors in Tehran learned that a whole succession of White House occupants were only interested in hearing that their new friend and ally, the Shah, was an enlightened reformer.

You might call May 30, 1972 our "Last Supper" in Tehran. Although the Shah was host and Richard Nixon was the guest, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rolled out a pastry table he knew the Iranian monarch couldn't resist: All the non-nuclear US weapons Iran wanted to buy. The offer was manna from heaven to a ruler whose unrealistic ambition was to recreate a new Persian empire that would surpass the one destroyed by Alexander.

You can be glad, Agha Muhammad, that you weren't around for that hot-house era. The Shah used $25 billion from your country's oil reserves to finance grotesquely excessive purchases of American arms over five and a half years. If you had been present you would have denounced the sycophants in the Shah's entourage and the American embassy. You would have shed more tears over the spectacle of Iran's rural economy sinking and peasants pouring into the cities because of the Shah's disastrously mismanaged "land reform." His court was corrupt beyond belief. His family stole perhaps $20 billion in public funds. It even ripped off the religious foundations, last hope of destitute Muslims. Meanwhile, the dread SAVAK secret police kept critics in line, or in the cemetery. This grossly perverted society was an Oriental version of George Orwell's 1984 come to life: Black was white, war was peace. Meanwhile, in the US and Israel, government spokesmen fed new Orwellian phrases to media moguls who wrote of a "White Revolution" directed by a wise and benevolent Shah.

You can ask, friend, what motivated my country back then. It was the usual pervasive ignorance of anything east of Suez and south of the Mediterranean, of course. Plus, Henry Kissinger. He was America's Secretary of State, but he proudly proclaims today that he never lost sight of Israeli interests. He thought that an alliance between a militarized Israel and a powerful Iran would so intimidate the Arabs that Israel could retain its 1967 conquests of Arab lands. But Henry was an ignoramus about the Middle East. Iran will not be anyone's "chosen instrument." The Iranian people are independent, just as you were. In fact, the "dangerous vacuum" Iran was to fill as Britain withdrew from east of Suez was more facile phrase than hard reality. It justified Kissinger's goal, however, to ally the United States, Iran, and Israel against the Arabs.

You would have understood, Agha Muhammad, that an Iran-dominated Gulf was never in America's best interest. Iran is too big for its smaller neighbors there. Selling Iran all the weapons it would buy would enable Iran to manipulate the whole area, which contains perhaps two-thirds of the world's oil reserves outside the Soviet Union. Even when the Shah was still in charge, it was Iran that was the "hawk" on petroleum prices.

After 25 years of tyranny, the Shah's whole house of cards collapsed. He fled, and after ignominious roaming from Morocco to Panama to Egypt, his life mercifully came to an end, leaving the Mullahs and the Ayatollah Khomeini in charge.

Now, my learned friend, down to brass tracks. You understand geopolitics, both in the Middle East and on a world scale. No single power, in the Gulf or in the world, can be allowed to dominate the Gulf. The superpowers cannot and will not allow Iran to win. The Iran-Iraq war must end. Now. Iran either volunteers to end it, or the United States and its allies, hopefully with the support of the Soviet Union and a United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution, end it with economic sanctions and an arms embargo against whichever side does not comply.

You remember Hitler and Stalin fell out over who would control the Gulf. Stalin said it would be a Soviet sphere of influence. Because of that, Hitler attacked his one-time Soviet ally in 1941, and 40 million died. In 1961, Iraq laid public claim to Kuwait and its oil. The other Arabs, supported by then-powerful Britain, said no, and Iraq backed down.

Khomeini may have thought he could gain the whole. He's always had Israeli support, because the Israelis believe he neutralizes their Arab enemies. In return, Khomeini depended upon Israeli tricks and the intervention of Israel's shadow government in Washington to neutralize US hostility to his rule in Iran. But these tricks were like the Biblical chaff which the wind driveth away. With Israeli prompting and help, we sent "black" arms to Khomeini. But that's all ended now. At last we woke up and the president, with increasing support from Congress, has signaled that we will not allow Iran to win. By UN action if possible. By putting US flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers, if necessary. Either way with Soviet support, or at least without Soviet opposition.

Pray God, Agha, that after all our false starts, the US may stay the course this time. The end result can someday be real moderates, like you, ruling your country after all of the excesses of the past. Long ago your country was at peace with all its neighbors. And long ago our countries were real friends, who didn't interfere in each other's affairs. It can happen again, Agha, but only if the US and Iran reject bad counsel, false friends, and the temptation to interfere in each other's domestic affairs. Pray God, Agha, that your country's remaining sons are soon back alive from the war fronts, our hostages are soon back with their families, and that we all will have learned from the mistakes of a shameful past.—Andrew I. Killgore

Andrew I. Killgore, former US Ambassador to Qatar, is president of the American Educational Trust.