AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

demonstrators and killed three students. Many more were wounded and several hundred
arrested. 383 7 December was later recognized as “the Day of Solidarity with the Iranian Student
Movement,” and is also known as Student Day. 384
The election of Richard Nixon as president
combined with the behavior of the shah to exacerbate the already tense relations between Iranian
students, the shah, and the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Nixon’s Middle East policy placed great emphasis on the shah. The Nixon Doctrine was
outlined in Guam on 25 July 1969 and called for surrogates to take up the cause of the United
States so that American troops would not have to be employed. 385
Nixon’s enunciation of his
foreign policy in Guam was first indicated in the plan of “Vietnamization,” which was an attempt
to turn the ground fighting in Southeast Asia over to the South Vietnamese. However, the Nixon
Doctrine also produced a special relationship between Washington and Tehran that came full
circle by May 1972. Even though the Nixon Doctrine was designed to lessen the burden on
American troops in Vietnam, its emphasis on regional allies that could uphold American interests
was most visible in the Persian Gulf. In the process of applying the Nixon Doctrine to the
Middle East, Washington ignored clear warnings of discontent that were voiced by the growing
number of dissident Iranian students both at home and abroad.
By 1969, both the shah and Richard Nixon wielded immense power on the international
stage. However, the Iranian student movement also exercised great influence after interacting
383 CISNU, Iranian Peoples’ Movement, 1953-1973, Iran Report, no. 2, June 1974, 3; The underlining of “at all
costs” was done in the original publication, and is not the author’s emphasis. The students killed were reportedly
engineering students at Tehran University. Kambys Shirazi (pseudonym) discusses the political atmosphere of the
school of engineering at Tehran University in Sullivan, “interview with Kambys Shirazi (pseudonym)” as seen in
Exiled Memories, 15.
384 CISNU, Iranian Peoples’ Movement, 1953-1973, Iran Report, no. 2, June 1974, 3-4.
385 “Informal Remarks in Guam with Newsmen,” 25 July 1969, The Public Papers of Richard Nixon,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ (accessed on 14 July 2008); Editorial Note in FRUS 1969-1976, Vol. I, 91-2;
For works that thoroughly discuss the Nixon Doctrine see: Fain, American Ascendance and British Retreat in the
Persian Gulf Region; Jeffrey Kimball, “The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstanding,” Presidential Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1 (March 2006), 59-74; Robert Litwak, Détente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign
Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
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