AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

Roosevelt of California. 143 Fariborz Fatemi requested the meeting, and while he only wanted to
meet with representatives from the Justice Department. However, the State Department deemed
it necessary to have a representative present because the meeting would have an impact on
American relations with Iran, and foreign policy was in the jurisdiction of the State
Department. 144 Fatemi was particularly upset with the way the police handled the removal of
fourteen students who conducted a sit-in at the Iranian Embassy in Washington on 22 January
1963. He also protested the refusal to renew the passports of six students who were involved in
the protest simply because they were politically active. 145
Historian Richard Cottam notes that by February 1963 the shah had silenced the
nationalists inside of Iran, “but the Iranian student organization representing 25,000 students in
the United States and Europe, always hostile to the Shah, moved into vigorous opposition.” 146
Members of the CISNU in Europe also took up the cause of the fourteen students arrested in the
Iranian Embassy in Washington. On 2 February 1963, two-hundred students who attended Graz
Technological College in Austria gathered to protest the White Revolution, along with the arrest
of the fourteen Iranian students in Washington. 147 Throughout the 1960s, the very vocal
contingent of students in Austria, especially in Graz, was one of the most active groups of
Iranian students studying abroad.
143 Memorandum of Conversation between James W. Symington, M. Gordon Tiger, and Fariborz S. Fatemi, “Anti-
Shah Demonstrations by Iranian Students in U.S.,” 4 February 1963, General Records of the Department of State,
Central Foreign Policy Files 1963, Box 3260, Folder EDX IRAN, RG 59, NA.
144 Memo of Conversation, “Anti-Shah Demonstrations by Iranian Students in U.S.,” 4 February 1963, RG 59, NA.
145 Memo of Conversation, “Anti-Shah Demonstrations by Iranian Students in U.S.,” 4 February 1963, RG 59, NA;
“Problem of Police Protection in Iranian Student Demonstrations at Iranian Embassy,” 6 February 1963, General
Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File 1963, Box 3943, Folder POL 17 IRAN, RG 59, NA.
146 Cottam, Nationalism in Iran, 307.
147 From American Embassy in Vienna (Riddleberger) to Department of State, “Iranian Students Protest,” 6
February 1963, General Records of the Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File 1963, Box 3942, Folder
POL 22, RG 59, NA.
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