AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

CHAPTER V – CONCLUSION
While the increased radicalization of the Iranian student movement bore similarities with
its American and Western European counterparts, it demonstrated an important difference.
Many scholars of the American student movement of the 1960s argued that it achieved no real
political change. 498
Richard Nixon, vice president during the conservative 1950s, was president
by the end of the 1960s. The social and cultural issues that the student movement believed in,
such as women’s rights, gay rights, African-American civil rights, and environmental protection,
were the real legacies of the 1960s. In contrast, the Iranian student movement did contribute to a
revolution that ousted one of the world’s most powerful monarchs. While the outcome of the
Iranian Revolution was unpalatable to secular nationalists and moderate Islamists, many Iranian
students played a large role in creating and maintaining the revolutionary momentum that boiled
over in late 1978.
American foreign policy played a consequential role in giving the Iranian Revolution a
severely anti-American tone. The May 1972 trip had an important impact on both American
foreign policy and Iranian students. For years, Washington had many chances to rethink and
revise its policy regarding Iran. The Kennedy administration did rethink its policy. However,
the policies that Kennedy encouraged the shah to enact created negative results and radicalized
both the secular left and the Islamists. Although the Johnson administration faced many
challenges early on as a result of Iranian rapprochement with the Soviet Union and vocal student
protest, the relationship between the shah and Washington was consolidated around the time of
the Six Day War. By 1967, “Clearly, the more peaceful and optimistic days when ISAUS
leaders appealed to the better judgment of Kennedy and other ‘leaders of the Free World’ were
498 For a comprehensive examination this phenomenon in America and Western Europe reference Arthur Marwick,
The Sixties; for a discussion on the lack of political results from the unrest in France in 1968 refer to Michael
Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution.