“But perhaps the most poignant loss is that of the Iranians themselves. Their country…has been wrenched back hundreds of years in its values and standards. The people have suffered deeply.”
So wrote US Air Force General Robert Huyser, in his book Mission to Tehran – which makes for interesting reading in light of what is going on in Egypt.
Huyser was sent by the Carter White House to Iran (then a US ally) in 1979. His mission was to determine if Iran’s major institutions, particularly the armed forces, could survive the turmoil gripping the country, as demonstrators demanded the ouster of the Shah (King) of Iran.
Instead of holding together, the institutions built up by the Shah over his long rule fell apart under the stress of a political earthquake – the return to the country of the Ayatollah Khomeini, following the Shah’s fall from power.
Huyser wrote his book to explain his role in this intriguing story, and also offer some ideas on how, in the future, the US could better deal with situations where an important ally gets mired in political instability.
From the tone of the book, Huyser wrote Mission to Tehran in part to (diplomatically) settle a few scores. More specifically, he wanted to preserve in print a reference to the cool attitude prevailing in some elite Washington circles on the question of who would take the place of the pro-US Shah, as his grip on power weakened.
In 1979, as Huyser tells it, some Americans in high positions felt a period of military government in Iran, after the fall of the Shah, could stabilize the country. Others wondered if perhaps a constitutional monarchy could be fashioned out of the wreckage of the Shah’s regime – an option Huyser seems to feel could have been tried.
Then there were those who thought Iran’s pro-American military high command and like-minded elements of the country’s civilian leadership could be encouraged to work together, as a way to (in Huyser’s words) “preserve some form of the established Iranian government” and block the Ayatollah.
But instead of getting US support and encouragement to do just that, as Huyser shows, the Iranians who could have saved their country from Khomeini were on the receiving end of mixed messages, confusing double-talk and a demoralizing overall indifference from the US.
General Robert Huyser is no longer with us – a shame, because it would be interesting to know his reaction to recent remarks by President Obama about Egypt and the situation there.
What would Huyser make of President Obama’s statement yesterday that “we believe that meaningful negotiations with the broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions confronting Egypt’s future…”
Would Huyser point to this statement’s clear indifference to the influence of religious fanatics over Egypt’s “broad opposition and civil society,” as an ominous echo of the Carter-era blasé attitude towards the Khomeini gang?
Isn’t now precisely for the time for President Obama to caution the Egyptians not to allow extremists to make political capital out of the changes underway in their country?
Huyser isn’t around to draw the connections for us. We can only read his book, and use it to think about what the Iran experience has to teach us about events in Egypt.
And we can wonder about Huyser’s warning that if the lessons of Iran were not learned, “it could all happen again.”
