Framing the Revolution as a Cold War Crisis

Abstract

Given Iran’s long-standing importance to US Cold War strategy, and the worrying decline in US—Soviet relations, it was inevitable that the Iranian Revolution would be framed as a Cold War crisis. At the same time, Carter was being told by some of his advisors, including Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Brzezinski, that ‘the trend in strategic forces has favoured the Soviet Union since the mid 1960s’.1 Richard Lehman, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, warned that ‘Even without Iran, the power balance will be exceptionally delicate in the early to mid 1980s. In this period Soviet military strength will grow substantially relative to that of the US.’2 The week before Khomeini landed in Tehran, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David Jones stressed the danger of Soviet advances in strategic and conventional forces and asked Congress to support an increase in military spending. Presenting his military posture statement for FY 1980, Jones warned that the Soviet emphasis on military power threatened to upset the delicate balance of stability in the global power arena.3KeywordsForeign PolicyLeftist ActivityLeftist GroupNational FrontNational Security CouncilThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.