AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

were the result of high unemployment and intolerable living conditions. Many Iranians faced
these same issues. 443
A CIA study on student dissent in the United States entitled “Restless Youth” reached
President Johnson’s desk in September 1968. The CIA also conducted an investigation of
student unrest abroad that was completed by September 1970. 444 The CIA report misread the
nature of the Iranian dissent to the shah’s regime. While the study recognized that student
protest began to emerge in Iran in the late 1960s, especially around issues such as education and
public transportation, it argued that the lack of student unrest inside Tehran in the mid-1960s was
the result of university graduates obtaining jobs and becoming part of the shah’s bureaucracy.
However, the primary reason was that during these years that the shah systematically eliminated
all of his political rivals. The shah cracked down on protest in his own country. However,
dissent simply emerged in other nations. Consequently, the Iranian student movement became
truly global in scope. The transnational nature of the CISNU provided the group with a wide
audience to which it could air its grievances. Some of their grievances were related to the shah’s
developmental programs, which were decided by, and aimed, at the highest echelons of the
Iranian society. Therefore, many students felt no sense of identification with the government.
These students “felt that the regime had been taken from them.” 445
Anti-establishment sentiment was prevalent among students throughout the world by the
late 1960s. However, it was especially inflamed in the case of Iranian students, and their
sentiment was derived from the fact that there was effectively no political opposition to the
shah’s regime. In Iranian universities, there were no political or social organizations, with the
443 ISAUS, SDS, Progressive Labor Party, (Flyer) Demonstrate.
444 Helms to Kissinger, “Student Unrest Abroad” 2 September 1970, FRUS 1969-1976, Vol. E-4,
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/ (accessed on 26 February 2008).
445 Mottahedeh, The Mantle and the Prophet, 66.
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