AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

Even though Jimmy Carter used human rights as a platform in the 1976 election and it
was central to thinking, Iran seemed to be treated differently than other nations because of their
vital strategic and economic importance. The ISAUS believed that Carter’s human rights policy
was “nothing but a mirage, camouflaged to fool our people…” 508
The Carter administration
reaffirmed “support for a strong Iran, noting that Iran’s security is a matter of the highest priority
for this country.” 509 The reality of Carter’s Iran policy led the ISAUS to believe that “The main
thrust of Carter’s international policy as it regards Iran is to preserve U.S. imperialist domination
over Iran and the Persian Gulf.” 510 While approximately two hundred Iranian students protested
outside the White House in Washington on 31 December 1977, Jimmy Carter was spending his
New Year’s Eve in Tehran where he toasted the shah by reiterating Kissinger’s belief that Iran
was an “island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” 511
By 1977, the inertia of the policy that began around 1967 was too much to stop. William
Stueck noted that “In most government settings, short of a disastrous turn of events or
overwhelming evidence of such a turn on the horizon, policymakers tend to hold rather than alter
established policy.” 512
Jimmy Carter and his predecessors missed the overwhelming evidence
that Iranian students abroad provided them. William Sullivan, referring to some of the younger
members of Congress, said that “They were more closely attuned to the younger generation,
which reflected the dissidence of Iranian students and their American sympathizers.” 513 These
younger congressmen warned Sullivan and other American politicians and diplomats of the
508 ISAUS, U.S. Involvement in Iran, Part 1, 77.
509 “Shah, Shifting Stand, Pledges to Oppose Increase in Oil Price, He Offers to Give U.S. ‘A Break,’ Iran’s Ruler
Makes Promise After two days of Talks with Carter – Invites More Western Goods,” NYT, 17 November 1977, p. 1.
510 ISAUS, Condemn Shah’s U.S. Visit, 3-4.
511 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 437; “Iranians Protest
at White House Against Carter’s Visit to Iran, NYT, 1 January 1978, p. 12.
512 William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton University
Press, 2002), 115.
513 Sullivan, Mission to Iran, 32.
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