American Policy and the Iranian Crisis

Abstract

Anyone familiar with Iranian history would not have been surprised by the uneasy coalition of religious leaders, secular intellectuals, and bazaar merchants that spearheaded the antishah movement in Iran. Once each generation in this century such a coalition has attempted to gain political control of the nation. Each time, including this one, their efforts have met the determined resistance of one or more external powers. There appears to be a cruel geopolitical determinism at work. Iran, standing at the meeting point of competing imperial interests, is not allowed for long the luxury of chaotic development. Internal chaos threatens the delicate balance of external competitors—each fearing the other will take undue advantage of the situation. And since the kind of regime the coalition claims to seek, liberal and democratic, is certain to be at least initially unstable, it has been consistently the negative target of the external competitors.