AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

further radicalized the opposition. Towards the end of Johnson’s administration, the blueprint
for American foreign policy regarding Iran was written. Every decision regarding U.S. – Iranian
relations from that point forward reinforced the widespread notion among Iranian students
abroad and large segments of the Iranian population at home that the shah was a puppet of
Western imperialism. Even as Iranian students were joined by the global student movement of
the late 1960s, and their activities reached a fever pitch by the 1970s, Washington further
entrenched itself with the shah. As students became a major factor in revolutionary activity,
American policymakers could only speculate whether they would have had better fortunes if they
heeded the calls of secular nationalists during the previous decade. As the U.S. government
recognized, Iranian students abroad were a conglomeration of discontented Iranian citizens who
were united in their hatred for the shah. During the 1960s their numbers grew, and by the 1970s,
as less wealthy Iranians began to study abroad in larger numbers, they represented a microcosm
of Iranian society that eventually toppled the shah’s regime. Students abroad were also one of
the only outlets for political dissent by Iranians, because of the severe political oppression inside
of Iran. However, the United States made the same mistake that the shah did in believing that
student discontent was only present in “a small handful of foreign-inspired troublemakers.” 549
This belief contributed to twenty-five years of U.S. support for the shah’s regime which had
extreme repercussions for American foreign policy, the politics of Iran, and for Iranian students
abroad. Contrary to the beliefs of the shah and policymakers in Washington, the Iranian student
movement was very large and influential. Piedar noted, “most of the revolutionary cadres from
the 1950s through the 1970s had risen from this very movement.” 550
549 Parsons, The Pride and the Fall: Iran 1974-1979, 34.
550 “Interview with Payman Piedar,” http://www.nefac.net/node/1731 (accessed on 1 August 2008).
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