AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

a blank check to purchase any non-nuclear military equipment from the American arsenal in
order to act as America’s surrogate in the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. government monitored and consistently reported on the behavior of Iranian
students as their protests became a global phenomenon throughout the 1960s. Instead of viewing
Iranian student unrest as a sign of a flawed policy, Washington escalated its level of cooperation
with Tehran. A study of the Iranian student movement clearly shows how American support for
the shah alienated a large majority of the Iranian population and helped to make the country ripe
for revolution. Many authors, such as Stephen Kinzer, have pointed to the overthrow of
Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 as the major factor in creating revolutionary fervor in Iran. 2
While the coup did produce a revolutionary sentiment that was both anti-shah and anti-
American, it did not make revolution in Iran inevitable. James Bill contended that “although the
American image was tarnished severely by its actions against Musaddiq, the United States had
numerous opportunities to rethink and revise its policy towards the shah’s Iran in the quarter
century before the revolution. Instead, however, America slowly tightened its relationship with
the Pahlavi regime.” 3 This paper corroborates Bill’s argument by showing that as Iranian student
protests in the United States, Europe, and even in Iran grew very strong by the early 1970s, the
United States pushed ahead with more support every year in favor of the shah’s single-handed
rule in Iran. In many instances Iranian student demonstrations in the United States were within
shouting distance of the shah’s entourage and American officials, yet they had no impact.
2 Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 2003).
3 James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (Yale University Press, 1989), 97.
3