AN AUGURY OF REVOLUTION: THE IRANIAN STUDENT ...

shah would be a surrogate for British influence. Further, although this author does not stress
economics, Robert McNamara emphasized that “…a large number of jobs and substantial profits
are attributable to U.S. military sales abroad.” 375 As a result, the United States sold Iran $385
million worth of military equipment form 1967-1970, and this figure skyrocketed in the 1970s. 376
“Although the Johnson administration had drafted the blueprint, Richard Nixon gave the
new U.S. strategic doctrine in the Middle East its name.” 377 The Twin Pillars policy took on new
form under the Nixon Doctrine. With the continued growth of the shah’s control in Iran, and
steady growth in the number of Iranian students abroad, the United States was faced with a
growing student movement within its own borders that was adamantly opposed to its policies
regarding the shah. Despite their protests, Washington escalated its level of cooperation with the
shah in the late 1960s, and this continued throughout the 1970s. The imperatives of America’s
Cold War foreign policy were evident in Iran. Washington desired a strong ruler who was anticommunist
and who could keep markets open to American business. As a result, U.S. policy
makers paid scant attention to the fact that the shah had fallen out of favor with the majority of
the Iranian citizens. The rift between the shah and the people of Iran had grown so wide that the
CISNU believed that any attempt at reform at this point would be like “trying to heal a bullet
wound with a band-aid.” 378
375 Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 173.
376 Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 173.
377 Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (University of North
Carolina Press, 2002), 143.
378 CISNU, Iranian Peoples’ Movement, 1953-1973, Iran Report, no. 2, June 1974, 22.
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