AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

ecause they were active members and leaders of student organizations abroad they became
targets of persecution by the shah’s police. 260
Eight more were arrested in the plot, bringing the total to 14, and the CISNU drew
international attention to the trial in Iran. On 7 May 1965, 50 members of the British Parliament
sent a letter to Ardeshir Zahedi that protested the alleged torture of the accused and the secrecy
of the trials. Extracts of the letter were published in The Times of London and Zahedi expressed
his displeasure. 261 The CIS sent a letter to the Human Rights Commission of the U.N. on 25
October 1965 protesting the trial in Iran. 262
They also conducted demonstrations, highlighted by
a well-coordinated hunger strike that lasted nine days and was conducted throughout the United
States and Western Europe. 263
The Iranian government claimed that they were motivated by their “communistic
extremist” ideas. 264 The shah stressed the communist ideologies of Iranian students abroad in a
conversation he had with American diplomats in an attempt to get the U.S. government to crack
down on its own group of Iranian students. 265
The CISNU believed that because almost all
political opposition to the government had been banned, Iranian students studying abroad were
the only “pillar of freedom left,” and they would let their voices be heard. 266 They believed that
the shah’s attempt to blame the students for the assassination attempt was simply “A Conspiracy
260 CIS, Was it a Plot to Kill the Shah or is it a Conspiracy to Silence the Students, 3, 7; To read the recollection of
one of the arrested members of the CISNU see Zohreh T. Sullivan, “interview with Professor Ali (pseudonym)” as
seen in Exiled Memories: Stories of Iranian Diaspora (Temple University Press, 2001), 188.
261 The letters back and forth between British Parliament and Zahedi are in CIS, Documents on the Pahlavi Reign of
Terror in Iran, 81-5.
262 25 October 1965 letter from CISNU to the Human Rights Commission of the U.N in CIS, Documents on the
Pahlavi Reign of Terror in Iran, 65-9.
263 CISNU press release of 3 November 1965 in CIS, Documents on the Pahlavi Reign of Terror in Iran, 108-9.
264 CIS, Was it a Plot to Kill the Shah or is it a Conspiracy to Silence the Students, 3.
265 Memorandum of Conversation, “Call on the Shah of Iran,” 18 May 1965, FRUS 1964-1968, Vol. XXII, 150.
266 CIS, Was it a Plot to Kill the Shah or is it a Conspiracy to Silence the Students, 8.
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