AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

The Iranian student movement evolved at the same time as American policymakers were
forging a closer relationship with the shah. During this time, they became intimately involved in
the global protest movements of the 1960s. Iranian students and members of SNCC took part in
sit-ins contemporaneously. In the first half of the decade, Iranian students were in the vanguard
of student protest. Anti-shah demonstrations helped instigate the German student movement,
and by the end of the decade they were joined by, and protested alongside groups such as SDS
and the Black Panthers. During the 1960s the ideologies of Iranian students abroad became
radicalized. While at first National Front and minimal Tudeh influence was present, Maoism and
Guevarism became prevalent by the end of the decade. By the 1970s support for guerrilla
warfare became the way to measure one’s commitment to the revolutionary cause. The
radicalization of the Iranian student movement took place among both secular leftists and
Islamists. While the two groups cooperated in the 1960s, divisions emerged by the 1970s. Just
as the student protestors of the West attempted to forge a new political discourse in nations such
as the United States, France, and Germany, secular leftists as well as Islamists developed their
own alternatives to the status quo in Iran. Because of American foreign policy, the new political
discourse in Iran contained a high degree of anti-Americanism. The ISAUS argued in the late
1970s that “one of the major responsibilities of Iranian revolutionaries is to sharpen and deepen
the attacks against the regime and the U.S.” 548
Throughout the 1960s, Washington had many opportunities to rethink and revise its
policy with Iran. However, there was such a fundamental misunderstanding of Iranian culture,
and a complete disregard of the desires of the Iranian citizenry, that it continued to tighten the
relationship with the shah. Even the progressive-minded Kennedys, who questioned the shah’s
leadership and who attempted to revise its policy, ended up encouraging a reform effort that
548 ISAUS, U.S. Involvement in Iran, Part 1, 77.
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