TY - JOUR
AU - Ng, Jonathan
AB - On November 15, 1977, several thousand Iranians congregated in Lafayette Park. The shah of Iran’s trip to Washington, D.C. prompted a “blitz of competing parades, speeches, picketing, street theater, leafleting and general political huckstering.”1 The Los Angeles Times called it the “most turbulent day” at the White House since the antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s.2 Mounted police surveilled the opposing crowds. Regime supporters traded taunts with students wearing masks to protect their identity from secret police. During the monarch’s 1973 visit, protesters chanted, “Nixon, Don’t Arm the Shah!”3 Now Iran was the largest foreign consumer of U.S. arms. Reflecting the change in times, students carried new placards: “Stop Arming the Shah’s Regime.”4 As the deafening snap of a twenty-one-gun salute announced the monarch’s arrival, demonstrators traded stones and exchanged fists. Policemen melted into the crowd. While a jumble of limbs, flags, and placards dueled, a cloud of tear gas drifted over the White House lawn. “Within minutes, almost everyone was daubing eyes, coughing and reaching for handkerchiefs,” observed the New York Times.5 As police helicopters chopped overhead, U.S. President Jimmy Carter remained upbeat: “This is a wonderful opportunity for us to share experiences.”6 The president emphasized the strong relations between the United States and Iran, noting that 40,000 Americans lived in Iran. Most worked in the arms industry. His guest did not miss a beat. “[Great] numbers of people [are] getting to know each other every day better and better,” the shah opined.7 That night he appeared at dinner with red eyes. As Carter toasted his “enlightened leadership,” the president joked that there was “[one] thing” he could say about the shah: “he certainly knows how to draw a crowd.”8 Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s trip traced the arc of the tumultuous 1970s, as parties realigned and politics polarized, the global economy sputtered, and common sense itself evolved. Iran assumed newfound importance to the United States, as energy shortages ravaged the country and arms makers faced with declining domestic demand sought foreign markets. Successive administrations outfitted the shah to ensure energy security, regenerate military-industrial capacity, and recycle petrodollars. In the process, Iran became the largest arms market in the Global South, importing nearly $30 billion in hardware between 1969 and 1980—one half to two times more than the other nine leading importers.9 Iranian weapons deals help us understand tectonic shifts in the military-industrial complex, grand strategy, and global capitalism during the “pivotal decade.”10 Despite a robust literature on foreign relations and domestic conflicts during the long 1970s, few historians focus on the arms industry—a striking omission given its essential role to the balance of trade, crumbling industrial base, and the decade’s universal preoccupation: oil.11 And while scholars have plumbed U.S.-Iranian relations, most works focus on seminal moments—the 1953 coup, 1979 revolution, or the hostage crisis.12 Many gesture toward arms deals, but few seriously examine them. The principal exception is Stephen McGlinchey’s elegant study, U.S. Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, which rigorously focuses on executive policy in the United States, neglecting the broader significance of sales to the military-industrial complex.13 The arms trade is critical to understanding the evolution of U.S. foreign policy over the decade. Weapons sales allowed officials to overcome new limits to interventionism after the Vietnam War, reconfiguring both the military-industrial complex and U.S. empire during a period of sustained crisis. On the threshold of the 1970s, domestic opposition to militarism, an assertive Congress, and a flagging economy posed novel challenges for policymakers. As the liberal elite wrestled the New Left, and conservatives confronted impediments to executive power, both circumvented restraints, scrutiny, and criticism through weapons exports. Officials outsourced the work and costs of imperialism through arms sales, propelling globalization, while infusing it with dangerous contradictions. Iran occupied the center of these processes, dramatizing the crisis then gripping the military-industrial complex and efforts to reconfigure U.S. hegemony. Building on the work of James Ledbetter, Ann Markusen, and others, I define the military-industrial complex as the web of relations producing and exchanging means of violence. When defining the complex, most historians privilege production, but the arms trade highlights the importance of relations of exchange.14 After the Vietnam War, Iran became the essential arms market, proxy, and frontier for capital accumulation. As one Pentagon official observed, the “same men who were in Saigon” moved to Tehran; under the strategic umbrella of the Nixon Doctrine, Iran rescued the arms industry from the postwar slump and a national economy starved for energy.15 The shah’s military buildup rescued ailing firms, funded weapons development, and revived the defense sector.16 While corporations poured hardware into Iran, salesmen, technicians, and military personnel established colonial enclaves and militarized the economy. Ultimately, the reproduction—the social processes through which historical actors maintain a dynamic system, especially during moments of fluctuation or crisis—of the military-industrial complex proved inseparable from imperialism after the Vietnam War. The military-industrial complex was not static or transhistorical, but rather, required constant maintenance—fresh workers, research, appropriations, markets, etc. As defense budgets stagnated in the 1970s, U.S. policymakers relied on foreign markets to sustain arms makers and, thus, reproduce the military-industrial complex.17 Arms sales at once reproduced and qualitatively transformed the power relations composing the U.S. empire. Exports forged a web of dependency, as countries such as Iran became critically reliant on foreign technology, spare parts, maintenance, doctrine, and training, while becoming imbricated in an increasingly global military-industrial complex. The quintessential proxy, the Pahlavi dynasty effectively subsidized the repressive apparatus of the U.S. empire, while paying the metropole to maintain a conservative geopolitical order aligned with its interests. In the end, the relationship proved exploitative and unstable, exhausting oil revenue and fomenting a social revolution that willful blindness, paid supporters, and ironic asides could not suppress. Oil for Arms: The Shah’s Military Buildup Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was obsessed with arms. Installed by a U.S.-backed coup in 1953, he was intensely aware of external meddling and his own vulnerability.18 As with the title character in Iraj Pezeshkzad’s classic novel, My Uncle Napoleon, the shah was deeply suspicious of the great powers, entertaining fears of the ubiquitous foreign hand and bitterly conscious of the legacy of Western interventionism.19 Personal insecurity merged with geopolitical ambition, as he sought self-preservation, national autonomy, and regional supremacy in a muscular military. Western arms represented a unique fusion of conservative order and modernity that both soothed and inspired. Yet more than rational perceptions of threat and political savvy steeled his commitment to military expansion. An avid aviator and amateur strategist, the shah had a genuine and abiding passion for modern arms, micromanaging purchases and pursuing new technological horizons with special alacrity. As a combination of unflinching realism, personal insecurity, and unaccountable fantasy linked the future of Iran to weapons imports, military aggrandizement increasingly became an end unto itself. In the dwindling days of the administration of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, officials confided that the monarch’s “military ambitions” posed a “major problem.” Nagging arms demands were a “major irritant”—the single “most difficult problem in our relations with Iran.”20 The monarch’s enthusiasm for weapons became an inside joke and chronic headache. While considering a $200 million sales request, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s studious assistant, Walt Rostow, was perilously candid. “Most of us believe the Shah is foolish to spend his money this way,” he mused. “AID forecasts a rapidly growing balance of payments deficit if he pushes both development and heavy arms purchases too hard. His oil revenues will not rise as sharply as he hopes, and AID fears he will end up asking us to bail him out of a foreign exchange bind,” Rostow emphasized. “But since he is determined to buy arms somewhere, the best we can do is lean on the brakes.”21 Policymakers believed that U.S. weaponry was better and cheaper, saving Iran money in the long run. Sales meant profits for corporations and jobs for workers. And by overseeing the military buildup, officials could gingerly apply “the brakes.” Yet the situation quickly spiraled out of control. Under Johnson, arms transfers shifted from a grant to sales basis, as officials ameliorated a balance of payments deficit aggravated by the Vietnam War through aggressive military exports.22 Bureaucrats classified Iran as an “underdeveloped” country to elude loan restrictions. When faced with sales ceilings for poor countries, Iran instantly “developed.”23 In 1968, the administration signed a memo of understanding pledging a minimum $75 million Foreign Military Sales (FMS) credit each year.24 If Congress refused to appropriate funds, the president would solicit private assistance. By the time Johnson left office, Iran was the United States’ largest client, spending approximately $150 million on U.S. military imports every year.25 Official indulgence reached new heights under the administrations of Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, as trade regulations weakened, annual exports increased sevenfold, and sales assumed new geopolitical significance.26 As British forces withdrew from the Persian Gulf, U.S. strategists feared a power vacuum. In 1970, officials polished National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 92, promoting Iranian and Saudi cooperation. Stability was impossible, the authors argued, “without recognizing Iranian preponderance.”27 As growing energy dependency and arms sales shifted geopolitical plates, Iran became the most imposing power in the region. While outwardly assigning equal weight to both gulf states, policymakers favored Iran.28 U.S. Ambassador to Iran Richard Helms called it a near “classic case” of the Nixon Doctrine.29 The doctrine became a blueprint for maintaining the U.S. empire, which was then in a period of crisis. An empire is a system of relations between a stronger political unit and weaker units or societies: a metropole enforces social hierarchies, while incorporating subordinate groups and exercising effective sovereignty over a metaphorical (and often literal) periphery. Since unequal relations compose an empire, the polity is dynamic, changing, and adaptive. Imperialism is the process of maintaining this stratified system.30 On the cusp of the 1970s, the U.S. empire was in a period of transition, and policymakers faced new political and economic impediments to action. A resurgent antiwar movement, congressional ire over the abuse of executive power, and a sputtering economy imposed heavy restraints on presidential power. The Nixon Doctrine was a creative response to these challenges. As Helms understood, Iran became the poster child for the doctrine, which outsourced both the work and cost of imperialism to clients through arms sales. Military exports allowed the foreign policy bureaucracy to elude legislative restrictions and public accountability, while reconfiguring the global web of dependent relations that articulated the U.S. empire. The doctrine promised a more cost effective and adaptive imperialism, outfitting proxies and preserving hegemony through the arms trade. Yet the emphasis on exports also aligned with pressing economic imperatives. Daniel Sargent, Louis Hyman, and others have illuminated the balance of payments crisis, wartime debt, and additional stressors that compelled Nixon to terminate the convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold in 1971, dismantling the Bretton Woods system.31 The systemic crisis and dip in defense spending also immersed the military-industrial complex in shockwaves, while powerfully incentivizing arms exports to mend the balance of payments and save sputtering defense contractors. While policymakers ironed out NSDM 92, Seattle sunk deeper into the “Boeing Bust,” Lockheed faced bankruptcy, and unemployed engineers in Boston scoured classified ads.32 The fall in defense spending marked an end to the Cold War consensus and three decades of robust military Keynesianism.33 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) warned that the “released capacity of the arms industries … [following the Vietnam War] may be used for the production of arms intended for the Middle East.”34 Weapons makers became dependent on foreign markets for the first time since the 1930s, and the Nixon Doctrine, in effect, became an economic stimulus program. As tottering corporations and shrewd bureaucrats fixed their sights on Iran, the institute’s projections proved prescient. While reproducing the military-industrial complex, the Nixon Doctrine consolidated new forms of unequal exchange and technological dependence, reproducing the U.S. empire while infusing relations with potent tensions. The strategy powerfully stimulated the shah’s appetite. Nixon’s generosity climaxed in a trip to Iran in May 1972. During a dramatic meeting with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the president agreed—“in the face of the Pentagon’s reluctance”—to sell F-14 and F-15 fighters.35 He also pledged laser-guided bombs and military technicians. Beyond specific promises, Nixon made a historic commitment. Military Advisory and Assistance Group (MAAG) Director Ellis Williamson recalled that there was a “general understanding”: “anything the Shah wanted to buy and was willing to pay for, if we were producing it, he could have it.”36 The trip inaugurated a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations. Between June and November 1972, the Pahlavi dynasty purchased $3.5 billion in military hardware. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s exchanges with the shah bordered on sycophancy: “If there are any difficulties with the Pentagon, please let me know.” “I do not anticipate any,” he explained. “But the President has told me to make sure that your Majesty gets what you want.”37 Gerald Ford continued the policy with élan. Upon entering office, he assured the energetic statesman that his administration assigned “extremely high importance” to their “special relationship.”38 If the Nixon Doctrine removed obstacles in Washington, the fourfold jump in oil prices that followed the October War in 1973 emboldened the shah’s ambitions. U.S. military exports to Israel during the war prompted Arab producers to freeze oil shipments, dramatizing the increasingly intimate relationship between arms and energy in a period of profound yet tumultuous globalization. Meg Jacobs, Salim Yaqub, Roham Alvandi, and others have examined how the embargo of 1973–4 stimulated heightened economic and strategic investment in the region, as U.S. policymakers sought energy security.39 While the embers of war cooled, the shah skillfully advertised himself as a guarantor of regional stability and non-Arab producer, in order to secure greater industry clout and new arms from the United States. He had long pressed the companies in Iran’s oil consortium to increase production in order to fund military imports. Relations were fraught and tinged with mutual mistrust; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was furious when foreign officials asked him to ease up on consortium members, since he regarded the energy companies as the last vestiges of Western imperialism, infringing upon his royal prerogatives and national sovereignty.40 The embargo transformed their relationship, as Iran seized control of production. Whereas the country’s oil income was $1.1 billion in 1970, it suddenly rocketed to $21.4 billion in 1973.41 Optimistic visions of abundance quickly overwhelmed reality. While economic advisers recommended investing the surplus, the shah prioritized military imports.42 Between 1973 and 1975, official defense expenditure increased from 1.78 percent to 8.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product and 9.61 percent to 25.38 percent of the budget.43 Even those audacious figures were misleading. Before the Nixon Doctrine, officials feared military sales would precipitate a debt crisis. After the president’s trip to Tehran, they reported that Iran manipulated financial reports to hide purchases. In January 1973, the Defense Department estimated that the country dedicated 12 percent of its Gross National Product and 23 percent of the budget to defense.44 “The crucial effect of the military program,” the embassy confided, “is the drain of funds and skilled manpower away from civilian development. With military expenditures totaling about $1.3 billion in the current budget and actual outlay close to $1.8 billion, the ability to continue both military and development programs is hinged on … growth in oil income.”45 Arms imports more than doubled in the mid-1970s, jumping from $2.05 billion in 1973 to $5.17 billion in 1975. Ironically, Iran’s economic performance proved stronger in the decade preceding the oil boom.46 Relations with the United States remained close and rooted in common interests. Iranians grasped Washington’s realpolitik—policymaking driven by perceived national interests, rather than abstract ideals—and regarded it with cynical detachment, speaking ill of U.S. leaders in private.47 The British journalist, Anthony Sampson, observed that Iran became the “salesman’s dream.” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the “patron that salesmen dream of—a warlord who understands the same shoptalk, as fascinated by the gadgets as they are.”48 The monarch reportedly prioritized the industry journal, Aviation Week, over the Iranian press.49 A former MAAG officer recalled him leafing through Jane’s Fighting Ships, fingering the vessels he wanted: “It was as if he was going through a Sears Roebuck catalogue.”50 The shah’s fascination with weapons rendered the throne vulnerable to the intrigue of agents, salesmen, and corporate executives. And they were everywhere. “I was constantly seeing people … with something to sell,” recalled Williamson. “It was called the commercial man’s smorgasbord. It was good, very, very good, and commercial interest was running extremely high.”51 During his two-year stint in Iran, MAAG negotiated approximately seven hundred contracts—$4 billion in military technology. U.S. officers derisively called salesmen the “five percenters.”52 Former Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Gholam Reza Afkhami recalled the “method to their subterfuge.”53 Friends on the payroll of foreign firms liaised between the royal family, officers, and businessmen. Arms dealers also employed “subtler and more sinister” tactics. Courtiers perked the shah’s interest by casually remarking that some country impeded a weapon’s manufacture. Then they described its wondrous capabilities. The trick was “always effective” and “sometimes determining.”54 Before Kissinger visited Tehran in 1974, the president of Lockheed arrived to butter up the shah.55 The wily executive extolled the C-5 Galaxy, an infamous cargo plane that was already a symbol of poor design and inefficiency. After initial formalities, the monarch steered the conversation toward the ill-fated ship, offering $165 million for development. Honest counsel was rare. The proverbial revolving door stretched allegiances. Corporate policy blurred with military strategy, personal profit with national security. The senior U.S. defense official in Iran, Eric von Marbod, won the throne’s enmity after pressing Iran to forgive Northrop for hiding illegal agent fees in fighter contracts.56 The firm encouraged such initiative by feting von Marbod at its hunting lodge in Maryland.57 Vice Minister of War Hassan Toufanian was irate. “Von Marbod … was in his view most certainly representing Northrop, E Systems, and Teledyne Ryan at a minimum,” one U.S. official noted.58 Eventually, von Marbod moved to Paris to work for the arms maker LTV.59 He was in good company. Former MAAG directors traded military fatigues for cushy consulting jobs. Yet Iranian officials also demanded their share of the grease. The embassy lamented that “extensive corruption” permeated the “Royal Family down to the lowest bureaucrat.”60 Commissions and bribes pushed prices upward, eliciting the monarch’s exasperation.61 Air Force Commander Mohammad Amir Khatami amassed a “vast personal fortune” skimming contracts.62 Following Khatami’s death in a hang-gliding accident, the shah privately estimated his assets at $100 million.63 Both Khatami and Toufanian pocketed bribes during the F-14 sales campaign.64 After becoming director of arms procurement, Toufanian collected millions in commissions.65 A “powerhouse in the Iranian military” and favorite of the shah—whom he taught to fly—he was a towering yet discreet presence, modestly calling himself “His Majesty’s chief adviser on arms.”66 Armaments makers were often ruthless. Many ramrodded deals that undercut U.S. policy and Iranian interests. As hapless diplomats tried to reign sales in, they marketed unapproved arms. As Iran struggled to absorb purchases, they whetted the shah’s appetite. “There is no chance at all that any Iranian will be able to maintain the weapons I sell him before they become obsolete,” one salesman admitted.67 Arms merchants decisively shaped Iran’s economy. In turn, the country sustained the military-industrial complex during a period of contraction, rescuing firms from the postwar slump. As Vietnam War spending declined, contracts disappeared and factories hemorrhaged personnel, pushing salesmen abroad. In 1970, the president of Lockheed was blunt. If the United States refused to buy arms, “We sell more of them.”68 And foreign sales in the 1970s meant Iran. That year McDonnell-Douglas pressed the shah to buy F-4 Phantoms. Iran had already submitted over one hundred orders for the fighter.69 The CIA concluded that additional squadrons were unnecessary.70 Yet the firm’s overtures worked. In November 1970, National Security Council (NSC) member Harold Saunders reported the company employed scare tactics.71 Even worse, the financial burden on Iran was excessive.72 “The problem in this instance,” Saunders concluded, “has been created by the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation’s efforts to rush the government of Iran into signing a contract.”73 According to the embassy, the firm struck a “straight and hard commercial line,” leveraging negotiations to press Nixon’s hand on aircraft approval and financing.74 McDonnell-Douglas’s tactics were typical. Months before Nixon visited Iran, Grumman launched an “active promotional effort” behind the administration’s back.75 While funneling bribes to Iranian officers, the firm marketed the ultramodern F-14 Tomcat.76 The State Department had not approved the fighter for export. Company officials distributed $28 million in shadowy commissions to close the deal.77 During his historic visit, Nixon pledged to sell the aircraft.78 His campaign later solicited a bribe from Grumman.79 Corporate pressure and the shah’s arms addiction proved toxic. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi wanted the F-14 package “nailed down” before accurate price and availability information existed.80 Eventually, the Defense Department itself requested the shah place an order. Admiral Isaac Kidd admitted that they misrepresented the Tomcat’s merits. But Grumman was in “severe financial straits.” If the sale fell through, a pillar of the military-industrial complex would crumble. “We needed the aircraft badly.”81 The shah bought more than the Tomcat. In July 1973, the Senate slashed $495.5 million in funding for the F-14.82 Grumman again faced bankruptcy. Helms grimaced that Congress “took the bowels” out of production.83 “[You] could literally hear the loss of morale … in the hangar where the Tomcats were being built,” Sampson claimed. “[The] shriek of drilling, the hammering and clattering, had become fitful and desultory.”84 The Navy wanted to place the burden on Iran before officials agreed to share responsibility. Amazingly, the shah accepted the arrangement “without questions.”85 He ordered fifty more planes and demanded the Bank Melli extend $75 million.86 The loan softened the financial community’s reservations. Within weeks, a bank consortium offered the remaining capital. Iran even agreed to rescue Grumman again if it faced ruin.87 Its benevolence twice saved the firm from bankruptcy and development of the country’s signature fighter. But its generosity was expensive: by November 1975, procurement and support costs surpassed predictions by $335 million.88 Before the Iranian Air Force assimilated the F-14 Tomcat—or its predecessor, the F-4 Phantom—the shah fixed his sights on the F-16 Fighting Falcon. He sought a two-to-one ratio between fighters; 280–300 F-16s to complement 160 F-14s.89 Meanwhile, General Dynamics followed Grumman’s lead. Salesmen lobbied behind the United States’ back and underestimated production costs.90 They informed Iran that 300 fighters would cost $2.1 billion—a figure not cleared by the Defense Department.91 Policymakers estimated the first 160 planes would cost $3.8 billion. The shah was outraged: “he blew his stack.”92 NSC staffer Clinton Granger confessed that he was unsure “how this muddle occurred.”93 “The Shah warns that at this price the entire deal will fall through for lack of funds.”94 He had good reason to be nervous: Iran had exhausted its finances on military imports. In order to surmount the foreign exchange crunch, the shah bartered oil for arms. Private swap deals also allowed him to elude public scrutiny. “This approach would avoid a Congressional debate,” a State Department memo explained. “DOD [Defense Department] has told the companies it has no objection to the arms-for-oil idea.” 95 Before the F-16 price hike, Iran invited the chief executives of General Dynamics, Litton Industries, Boeing, United Technologies, and Westinghouse to negotiate swap deals. Kissinger struck a pragmatic stance. “Let’s not have a theological debate,” he asserted. “Right or wrong, the shah thinks that Iran needs a certain level and certain types of arms. He thinks he needs a certain level of oil sales to finance this program.”96 In the spring of 1976, Helms wrote that “oil-for-arms barter” might be the “only means” Iran could finance purchases.97 The State Department outlined the shah’s new strategy. “Iran has been negotiating with General Dynamics, the F-16 manufacturer, and with Litton Industries, manufacturers of the Spruance destroyers, to arrange a ‘barter’ oil deal. According to this plan, two independent U.S. oil companies will receive Iranian crude,” a memo confided, “and place the sales receipts in a special account tied to the purchase of the F-16s and the Spruance destroyers.”98 In short, Iran’s economy was already under serious stress when General Dynamics boosted F-16 prices. After squandering the country’s financial reserves, the shah turned to oil: the national patrimony. The Ford administration concluded that the F-16 package was a “heavy drain on the civilian economy.”99 Corporate duplicity chagrined policymakers, but senior officials enabled bad behavior. Kissinger and the shah even brainstormed tactics for ramming the F-16 past legislators.100 Publicly, they assured Congress that Iran could foot the bill. Congressional staffer Jerome Levinson evinced skepticism. “This does not square with what von Marbod told us,” he observed, “nor with the ‘bootleg’ copy of the Pentagon’s own briefing material on the F-16.”101 But money changed hands; production already whirred. Again, the sheer volume of Iran’s order ensured corporate survival and development of the latest fighter. Neither jet satiated the shah’s expansive appetite. Only three months after ordering 150 F-16s, he requested 250 F-18 aircraft.102 Again the ambitious monarch floated oil for arms. “The Shah has indicated from the beginning,” the National Security Adviser confided, “that he intended to finance it through an oil-for-arms barter arrangement.” Once more, corporate intrigue proved decisive. Northrop talks with the Ford administration were “very selective in emphasis.” Against serious manpower shortages and insufficient infrastructure, the argument that Iran could absorb the jet was “disingenuous.”103 An NSC staffer wrote that the “strongest rationale” for F-18 production was to “ensure Northrop’s survival.”104 Projected development costs were in the ballpark of $250–300 million.105 Helms confided that the United States could not commit to production. Northrop wanted Iran to fund it. But the country’s finances were already tight. Eager to clinch the deal, company president Thomas Jones manipulated both parties. He neglected to inform Washington that the shah would purchase the fighter through an “oil barter arrangement.”106 Meanwhile, he assured Iranian officials that “Rumsfeld supports my proposals.”107 The Secretary of Defense had not met Jones since taking office. “I do not know what he is talking about,” Donald Rumsfeld retorted.108 In short, Iran funded the development of arms systems the United States could not afford, sustaining vital pillars of the military-industrial complex during the postwar industry crisis. Among the glossy advertisements, leaden policy statements, and bank accounts stuffed with grease money, the military buildup appeared unstoppable. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s inexhaustible demand was clearly the primary spur, and corporate pressure was relentless. But successive administrations were enamored with the shah. His assertive yet aristocratic masculinity, developmentalist rhetoric, and Cold War convictions resonated in Washington. The shah was conversant in the same language of realpolitik; an autocrat who ruled with a latitude that officials envied. Nixon privately referred to him as “our best friend.”109 “He is the one real element of stability,” Kissinger agreed.110 The mercurial strategist relished his proximity to unfettered power, ingratiating himself with Iranian officials. “The Shah has always been our best friend,” he informed Iranian Ambassador to the United States Ardeshir Zahedi.111 From Tehran, Helms waxed rhapsodic, writing that Iran’s head of state was “enlightened, successful and confident.”112 General Williamson was initially skeptical. After a half dozen private meetings, he became a “total convert.”113 The shah personified a paternal order that officials believed imperative. Bureaucrats ensconced in the Pentagon held that authoritarianism was necessary for “unsophisticated” non-whites. Williamson’s perspective was alarmingly typical. The problem with Iran was its people: “They literally crave excitement.” “It’s extremely dangerous, because so many of them are so unsophisticated that they will believe anything that a stranger tells them. The last story is true in their minds,” he warned. “I hate to call them children, but many of them are. When I say that, I am excluding the top five or six percent.”114 Ambassador Helms repeatedly painted Iranians as prone to flights of fancy. “The Oriental mind,” he warned, “can rapidly conjure up elements which do not necessarily exist.”115 When Iranians balked over delayed arms shipments, he hammered the same theme. “As you know, despite Western appearances, we are dealing with Oriental thought processes.”116 The Orientalism latent in U.S. policy was decisive. Discussions behind closed doors reveal that valuations of economic and strategic necessity were never separable from assumptions of racial alterity and civilizational difference. Policymakers believed that the monarchy was necessary because Iranians—ostensibly trapped in nonage and prone to Soviet influence—were supposedly incapable of self-rule. Orientalist assumptions about the region’s allegedly unstable inhabitants made arms exports to guarantors of the status quo like the shah imperative, while justifying the repressive violence that such sales made possible. High strategy was also inseparable from personal interest. Policymakers promoted sales to reproduce the military-industrial complex and fund development. Corporations sold arms to skirt bankruptcy, fund research, and achieve economies of scale. Jobs and profits translated into economic strength; marketing campaigns into defense strategy. Interlocking interests and their constant confusion made the military buildup possible. The revolving door dramatized this confusion, revealing the endurance of a power elite at the commanding heights of the military-industrial complex, as arms sales blurred corporate and state sovereignty across borders. But the biggest lobbyist was the president. Nixon’s home state of California relied heavily on defense spending. Los Angeles was the “arms capital of the world,” and Santa Clara received more military contracts than any other county in the United States.117 After Nixon visited Iran, his campaign solicited payments from Northrop and Lockheed. Supporters also sought money from Grumman in exchange for promoting the E-2C Hawkeye, a special surveillance aircraft, at a diplomatic summit in Hawaii.118 That summer Helms’ predecessor as ambassador, Joseph Farland, delivered a sensitive message to Court Minister Asadollah Alam, the shah’s personal assistant and confidant. “Turning to the practicalities of the [1972 presidential] election, the ambassador put a request to me that even fifty years from now I could never divulge for fear that it would irreparably damage relations between our two countries,” Alam scribbled. The request demonstrated the “extent to which Nixon is willing to rely on HIM.” He assured Farland that they were “only too happy to do all we can to help.”119 Resistance to arms requests crumbled. Imperial Contradictions: The Nixon Doctrine in Iran The Nixon Doctrine outsourced the work and costs of imperialism. Doughty client states, now bristling with U.S. arms, repressed revolutions, protected capitalism, and projected U.S. hegemony. Eventually, the doctrine splintered under the weight of its contradictions. The first resided in the Foreign Military Sales program. Policymakers assumed that arms exports reduced the country’s footprint abroad, as local forces replaced U.S. soldiers. But troops unfamiliar with advanced hardware required training. Expensive weapons systems required maintenance. More arms required additional facilities and engineers. In short, military sales engendered new needs and opportunities. With them came advisers, technicians, businessmen, and their families. A year after Nixon’s historic visit, the embassy reported “latent tensions.”120 Mounting criticism of military expenditures and inflation threatened to undermine relations. By mid-decade, the expatriate community had tripled in five years.121 “I have been concerned for some time now about the growing U.S. involvement in Iran,” confided an Assistant Secretary of Defense, “fearing both that the U.S. presence might become too large, and the equipment too sophisticated to handle without repercussions.” Almost seventy percent of expats were in the military sector; most serviced FMS contracts. The secretary blamed the Nixon Doctrine. Personnel could become targets of “xenophobic feeling” and “political dissent.”122 Others shared the same fears. In 1976, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published a damning study on military exports to Iran. The authors underscored that there was “no such thing as a ‘non-binding’ arms sales agreement.” “Even if the U.S. Government were to play no administrative role … U.S. personnel and inevitably the U.S. Government, would still be involved.”123 They emphasized that back-end considerations—financing, logistics, maintenance, and training—entailed long-term commitments. Personnel might stay ten years after the ink dried on a contract. Congress predicted the expatriate community would reach 50,000–60,000 people by 1980.124 Iran was a “bonanza for U.S. weapons manufacturers.”125 Four thousand employees from Bell Helicopter and Grumman alone tended purchases.126 Over forty U.S. firms sent personnel to work on military contracts. Employees seized prime real estate, driving up rent and inflation, while colonies of freewheeling bachelors provoked “major sociological problems,” scandalizing locals and inflaming “Anti-Americanism.”127 The second contradiction was economic. Policymakers believed that sales were a cheap and effective means to ensure stability. Instead, they sapped Iran’s finances. Former Minister of the Economy Alinaghi Alikhani recalls that the Fourth Development Plan ran over budget “due chiefly to increased military expenditure.”128 The next year defense absorbed eighty percent of the country’s oil income, initiating a dangerous pattern.129 Officials resorted to creative accounting in order to mask arms spending. When the shah ran out of money that spring, he charged Alam with securing a £100 million loan from Kuwait.130 His adviser was discreet. “I cautioned the ambassador that no one except HIM and myself know about these overtures,” Alam jotted in his diary. “They will not appear in any official figures of Iranian borrowing.” In 1973, the embassy uncovered other irregularities. “The GOI’s budget approach,” First Secretary Alexander Rattray concluded, “understates actual spending” and “effectively obfuscates the size of the deficit.”131 Hidden military costs accounted for a substantial increase in general spending and were likely responsible for the thirty-eight percent rise in social expenditures. Rattray warned that Iran’s debt payments were staggering. “I’m at my wits end,” Director Abdol-Majid Majidi of the Plan Organization complained that year. Majidi and the president of Pahlavi University privately agonized over the budget. They pointedly noted that the state allocated $9 million for university construction; the projected military budget was $500 million. “I was forced to reply that this is the PM’s [prime minister’s] duty, not mine,” Alam recalled. “But the PM is terrified to spell out the facts,” Majidi reportedly countered. “His idea is to fob responsibility off on me.”132 That year capital investment in the armed forces skyrocketed by 300 percent.133 Defense expenditures more than doubled. The Pentagon concluded that military spending outstripped investment in every other sector.134 Iran spent over $9.4 billion on defense in 1975—about 1.2 times the amount spent on economic development. Inflation soared and oil revenue stagnated. “The shah has not, however, indicated any cutback in military spending,” the Washington Post observed.135 It increased fifteen-fold in eight years and officially absorbed about half of annual oil revenue.136 Beyond importing sophisticated hardware, the shah sought co-production agreements to build Iran’s arms industry. They proved ambitious, ill-conceived, and wildly uneconomical. The intractable emperor wanted to make Bell helicopters, Northrop F-17 fighters, and the complete range of surface-to-air and ground missiles. “He seems prepared not only to purchase the equipment for production,” Helms mused, “but to hire the services of all necessary expatriate personnel.”137 The shah even wanted U.S. firms to build houses for expats building the defense sector.138 Instead of independence, his agenda deepened dependency. NSC staffers gloated that co-production promised “increased influence” and “potentially longer term leverage.” Iran would manufacture the very arms it bought, but fifty to one hundred percent above market price. “Co-production will … struggle against the limits of skilled Iranian manpower,” they elaborated. “Iran will not gain much independence in arms supply when it must import almost all components and most skilled personnel.”139 Privately, Iranians recognized the disadvantages. Finance Minister Hushang Ansary smarted over the difference in component costs: “They are more than the whole missile bought here.”140 What’s more, end-use agreements dictated weapons use. In other words, the hardware fell under U.S. export law; Iran produced arms without the sovereignty to sell them. While foreign reserves dwindled, the relationship between oil and arms grew increasingly intimate. The oil embargo of 1973–4 exposed and solidified the linkage. As the embargo throttled the globe, major importers visited the Middle East to clinch energy agreements.141 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported numerous “oil-for-arms deals.”142 Even before the crisis, the embassy savored the “significant benefits” of the military buildup.143 After the embargo, officials promoted weapons exports to recycle petrodollars; sales reinvigorated the military-industrial complex, weakened the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and secured cheap oil. Scholars like Timothy Mitchell, Michael Klare, and Toby Jones have broadly emphasized the linkage between arms and oil that emerged during this period.144 Yet a deep dive into the archives illuminates the contradictory and increasingly essential relationship between the two commodities. A month after the embargo, an interdepartmental report portrayed Iran as a vast market ripe for penetration. Policymakers aimed to expand the country’s “important share of the Iranian market.” “Our association with Iran with regard to military supply arrangements is excellent, although we need to preserve our competitive edge,” the authors explained.145 Meanwhile, Kissinger formed a binational commission to strengthen trade. Members pursued energy deals linked to military imports.146 Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and future Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan hoped to break the “OPEC price structure,” while Kissinger called oil-for-arms pacts “insurance against another embargo.”147 The commission never sealed a public barter deal. Human rights advocates, antiwar activists, and fury over Iranian price gouging steeled congressional opposition. Since a diplomatic agreement proved impossible, the shah went directly to arms producers. Kissinger reported in 1976 that Iran planned to “barter with U.S. arms suppliers” in order to bridge costs.148 Corporations long courted the royal family with swap proposals; the shah previously closed an arms deal with Occidental Petroleum.149 As optimistic budget forecasts soured, officials increasingly exchanged fuel for hardware. “The Shah has called executives of seven arms manufacturers … to Tehran,” Kissinger confided, “and proposed barter of Iranian oil for their military equipment.” “Confronted with a choice of barter or else, most of the companies have responded positively.”150 Aware of Iran’s financial difficulties, U.S. officials became perversely complicit. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that Ford welcomed orders with “little or no scrutiny.”151 The armed services hired lobbyists to advertise their own equipment.152 And the military mission was itself a sales booster. General Williamson dreamily recalled sealing a $360 million contract for Boeing. Henry Jackson (D-WA), the “Senator from Boeing,” arrived in Iran two days later. When he broke the news, the senator dropped his fork in astonishment. The memory tickled Williamson: “He just literally turned his fork loose and said, ‘What did you say?’”153 Jackson had tried for years to win a similar contract. These contradictions bled into a third: military modernization alienated the very sectors it supposedly co-opted. Arms became formidable symbols of the regime’s delusions, decadence, and brutality. As Iranians financed their own poverty, the buildup engendered a legitimacy crisis, which increasingly assumed a revolutionary hue. The history of opposition ran deep. In March 1962, the embassy had precipitated a political imbroglio by linking arms transfers to a “status of forces” agreement, which granted diplomatic immunity to military advisers and their families.154 The Majles only accepted the ultimatum in October 1964 after rancorous debate.155 Two weeks later, a cleric from Khomeyn publicly savaged the government. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini argued that the shah prostituted the country for arms. “American … mechanics, technical and administrative officials, together with their families,” he inveighed, “are to enjoy legal immunity, but the ‘ulama of Islam are to live banished or imprisoned.” “What self-respect will remain for the army when an American errand boy or cook has priority over one of our generals?”156 In response, the regime forced Khomeini into exile. Three months later, a band of assassins killed the prime minister.157 A royal guard almost shot the shah that April. As the throne pursued arms proliferation in earnest, Western expats became popular targets of dissent.158 In November 1970, guerrillas attacked the U.S. ambassador after a late-night meeting with Alam; the two had discussed the military buildup. Assailants waited until midnight. “His car was overtaken by another vehicle which then braked, blocking the road ahead,” Alam recorded with palpable emotion. “Two men leaped out and proceeded to spray the car with bullets, shattering every window.”159 When Nixon visited Iran, someone hid a bomb in a military adviser’s car, wounding the officer.160 The revolutionary left literally opposed the Nixon Doctrine at inception.161 Dissidents killed an adviser the following year. Helms explained that the officer was “symbolic of US-Iranian ties” and, consequently, one of the “main bulwarks of [the] Shah’s government.”162 In 1975, a radical organization, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, assassinated two U.S. colonels, in order to inflame opposition to sales.163 Guerrillas argued that arms deals stripped Iran of its wealth and impeded economic development. Radicals later shot three Rockwell International employees. The shah believed that they hoped to incite backlash, “forcing Congress to ban arms sales.”164 Student opposition was just as strident. In February 1973, the New York Times unleashed a maelstrom, revealing that Iran secured “the biggest single arms deal ever arranged by the Pentagon.”165 “When news about the $2 billion arms purchase … was released, the Tabriz University students boycotted classes,” the Iranian Student Association (ISA) reported.166 Helms wrote that protests immobilized “virtually every major college, university or technical training school.”167 A three-day melee erupted in Tabriz University, where police raided the dormitories. Security forces destroyed the National University’s cafeteria in Tehran. Three truckloads of riot police swarmed the campus with plastic shields. In the meantime, the ISA vociferously critiqued the deal in the United States.168 Parviz Asadi of the National University argued that tuition grievances were a screen. Students really opposed arms purchases.169 The embassy emphasized their anti-regime theme—“particularly for US weapons.”170 Deputy Chief of Mission L. Douglas Heck confided that demonstrators were angry because the shah spent “billions for defense but not enough for education, as they see it.”171 Students periodically cracked the placid veneer of authoritarianism. Protests erupted at Tehran University, Aryamehr University, and Tehran’s Polytechnic College that December. “Campus troubles at this time of year have become traditional,” a diplomat commented.172 Opposition peaked as the buildup assumed surreal proportions. The Iranian Student Association claimed the spree was absurd. Weapons were “uselessly stored” until they became obsolete.173 In many cases, there were no facilities for them. Or people to use them. At one point, Williamson informed the shah that he lacked manpower. “I left, and to my very horror, discovered that he had ordered the entire graduating class of a university to be inducted into the Navy.” “He didn’t ask anything about who was graduating,” the general recalled. “He ordered the entire class to go.”174 After Iran agreed to fund F-18 fighter production, an official confessed: “I’d hate to have to write a rationale for why the shah should have F-18s.” “Iran,” he added, “is a light year from assimilating the equipment they’ve got.”175 Defense spending engendered opposition because it affected all spheres of life. Imports diverted funds from education and social services. An expansive military budget incited a fiscal crisis and inflation. Manpower shortages compelled college graduates to enter the military. At a more fundamental level, the regime’s acquisitions were scandalous because most Iranians were poor. In the mid-1970s, the regime spent $73 per capita on defense.176 Health and education combined received $29 per capita. Infant mortality was 120 deaths per 1,000 live births—one of the highest rates in the world.177 On the eve of the revolution, the Aspen Institute claimed that seventy-five percent of the country was illiterate.178 The same year Iran saved the former arms maker Krupp from bankruptcy, the minister of housing declared he would not build homes for citizens living in caves.179 The Tehran Economist reported that eighty percent of the population lacked “minimum proper housing.” 180 At times, the crisis pierced the royal bubble. One of Alam’s diary entries recounts a conversation with his chauffeur. “Yes sir,” the driver opined, “the oil thing is a great success, I don’t doubt.” But, he continued, “how are people supposed to appreciate the fact when there’s no meat.” The chauffeur recently received a permit to build his house. “After all that, though, it turns out I can’t buy cement for love nor money.”181 Alam was flabbergasted. He blamed the prime minister. The shah claimed that a natural gap between supply and demand created the cement shortage.182 Perceptive Iranians blamed military construction.183 As the economy imploded, the government blamed workers. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi contended that exorbitant wages, rather than defense spending, drove inflation. Material progress turned the country into a “paradise of sloth and indolence.” His solution was simple and severe: “Those who do not work, we shall take them by the tail and throw them out—like mice.”184 The regime’s mouthpiece, Rastakhiz, echoed his surly thesis, blaming Iran’s woes on “expensive human labor.”185 In a country with soaring infant mortality and illiteracy, students asserted that the spree was beyond criminal. Expenditures compelled the government to run deficits and accumulate debt. Meanwhile, investment in education, social programs, and development languished. Oil prosperity was empty rhetoric: “The arms manufacturers got all the money.” Iranians got “zilch.” “They had to work harder, eat less and to top it off, they were told to defend the Shah or it would get worse,” the ISA reported with lucid anger. “But since it cannot get worse, these are meaningless threats.”186 The association was strident, yet evoked a damning truth. Iranians who could not afford food subsidized a global military-industrial complex. The Lockheed Scandal: The Military-Industrial Complex on Trial Eventually, the Senate Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations exposed the contradictions, setting its sights on the arms industry in the summer of 1975. The shift was unanticipated. While investigating illicit campaign contributions to Nixon, the subcommittee discovered that Northrop bribed foreign governments. Company officials claimed they followed Lockheed’s example. Between June 1975 and September 1976, the subcommittee questioned representatives from Northrop, Lockheed, and Grumman, while staff investigated the behavior of other defense contractors abroad. Ultimately, the Lockheed Scandal—as contemporary investigators and journalists called the affair—illuminated the striking relationship between arms and oil. The Middle East was the largest weapons market in the Third World. Regional ambitions and the Arab-Israeli conflict propelled an arms race largely funded with oil revenue. After arms transfers to Israel triggered the oil embargo of 1973–4, the income of OPEC members skyrocketed and defense contractors plied the region, imbuing arms with new geopolitical significance in a period of acute energy shortages. Of the subcommittee’s headline-grabbing investigations, the Lockheed Scandal garnered the most attention. Arms makers became symbols of footloose capital in an age of globalization, posing uncomfortable questions about transnational corporations and who ultimately made foreign policy. The sheer quantity of weapons entering the Middle East seized the subcommittee’s attention. Members had scrutinized the oil market since the embargo, and the relationship between the two commodities appeared increasingly nefarious. “Since the increase … in the price of crude,” Chairman Frank Church (D-ID) observed, “the United States has quadrupled its sales of arms.” “[We] seem to be caught in an escalating cycle of higher oil prices followed by massive U.S. arms sales.”187 His legal counsel Jerome Levinson agreed. The United States loaded “sophisticated weapons systems onto people who can’t use them.” Arms sales became the “litmus test” of U.S. support.188 Both Church and Levinson feared blowback. “The Shah may be on his throne today and off tomorrow,” the chairman warned.189 As the hearings progressed, the arms-for-oil equation became alarmingly clear. That very summer Ford nailed the essential elements of a bilateral oil deal with Iran, which assured “petrodollar recycling” by exchanging purchase certificates for fuel.190 His energy adviser, Frank Zarb, later emphasized the arms industry’s health. The swap deal could avert a “severe cutback in Iranian purchases of U.S. military equipment.”191 Beyond cold economic logic, the strategy had a vindictive edge. Levinson pressed Vice Admiral Raymond Peet. “Didn’t [Defense Secretary] Schlesinger tell you that we are going to recover everything we can and are going to make them pay through the nose for the oil—or words to that effect?” “Well, words to that effect,” Peet admitted. “There was no question there was that sentiment.”192 Members noted that Iran pressed for higher oil prices after closing large arms deals.193 Once prices soared, the Defense Department promoted sales to improve the balance of trade. “Doesn’t this little episode indicate the spiraling effect of the arms-oil equation?” Levinson wondered.194 Church posited a direct relationship between military hardware and energy. Iran’s contracts were simply enormous. As the country’s external debt grew, the government applied upward pressure on energy prices. “The only way they are going to pay,” he argued, “is by still further increases in the price of oil.”195 Subcommittee member Charles Percy (R-IL) did not believe sales fed inflation, but agreed the problem was systemic. “It was started by the Guam [Nixon] Doctrine.”196 Behind the scenes, Lockheed and Northrop conspired to dash reform. Former U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers threatened to drown the subcommittee in litigation.197 Privately the graying power broker, now Lockheed’s lawyer, conceded that he lacked grounds to contest its authority. Subcommittee staff also received a call from General Howard Fish of the Defense Department. “Fish told me that they are unable to control Jones’ machinations,” Levinson reported. The Northrop president mounted “tremendous resistance” to change.198 He had reason to avoid disclosure: agents fees and bribes were insidious. As expenses accumulated, firms buried costs in contracts. While jacking prices up, salesmen proportionately increased profit margins. If the United States brokered the deal, firms recorded commissions as tax-deductible costs. Despite the subcommittee’s vault of corporate memos, officials declined to admit wrongdoing. When pressed to explain the difference between a bribe and kickback, Lockheed executive Daniel Haughton was dodgy. “I am not an authority on these matters,” he laconically replied. The chairman remained unmoved: “If you are not one, I don’t know who is.”199 The room burst into laughter. A final detail made Lockheed’s case still more upsetting. In August 1971, Congress approved an unprecedented $250 million loan guarantee to save the firm from bankruptcy. Nixon rallied for the aerospace giant, arguing that the bailout was in the “best interests of all the people.”200 Lockheed was supposedly too big to fail: national security and 60,000 jobs hung in question. As the public gallery hissed, the loan package passed the Senate by a single vote. Afterward, Lockheed admitted paying $172 million in commissions and $30 million in bribes. “One is forced to ask whether the taxpayers were putting up the money for Lockheed to buy the orders it needed to survive,” Church bristled.201 The Lockheed Scandal illuminated webs of corporate, military, and political power that transcended borders. Even as the scandal fizzed, the revolving door spun. After Henry Kissinger retired from public life, he founded a consulting firm with ties to Lockheed and ITT.202 Richard Helms also formed a consulting agency after leaving Tehran.203 Only two blocks from the White House, the Safeer Company advertised cozy connections to power. The firm’s name—“safeer” means “ambassador” in Persian—blurred boundaries between public service and personal profit. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger became chair of the MITRE Corporation, a research institute specializing in military technology, and director of numerous energy corporations—underscoring the linkage between oil and arms.204 After investigating the scandal, General Howard Fish joined the arms maker LTV.205 Military-industrial ties deepened under Carter, culminating in the shah’s disastrous visit. “I presume Carter has sufficient intelligence not to rush to hasty judgments,” Alam waxed expansively. “We’re spending so much money on US military supplies that no US government, let alone the arms manufacturers, could afford to deny us.”206 Privately, the royal court worried the new president would be an “even greater ass than Ford.”207 But members had little reason to worry. As Barbara Keys demonstrates, the Carter administration largely invoked human rights to relegitimize U.S. hegemony, while maintaining close relations with strategic violators.208 And as a Pentagon auditor noted, the former Georgia governor was “Lockheed’s best-known traveling salesman.”209 The firm was the largest manufacturer in his state, and Carter was an aggressive industry lobbyist. He glad-handed clients at the Paris Air Show, and even escorted Lockheed officials across Latin America.210 A letter to the firm emphasized his “admiration”: “I have carried this message of admiration to our national leaders in the State Department, Defense Department, and the Congress and will continue to do so.” He wanted to “help in an active way.”211 Once in the White House, Carter promoted vigorous sales. During his first year in office, the United States sold the shah a record $5.7 billion in arms.212 The new president repeatedly violated the Arms Export Control Act, bundling deals and promising weapons without congressional consent.213 The Iranian Student Association argued that Carter reduced human rights to a “propaganda weapon.”214 Even the flinty cold warrior Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) denounced his “selective criticism of human rights abuses.”215 Yet the situation was untenable. “We’re broke,” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi admitted that year. “Everything seems doomed to grind to a standstill.”216 By then, he understood the buildup was his principal legacy: “My political testament consists of little else.”217 The next year the country was ablaze. The economic crisis crescendoed into a social revolution. Again, the shah blamed workers for the turmoil. “The real problem,” the sociologist Misagh Parsa argues, “was the regime’s failure to commit sufficient resources to society’s needs. Instead, resources were spent, or rather wasted, on military buildup.”218 Strikers in the Ministry of Economy and Finance demanded the expulsion of military advisers.219 At one point, thousands of defense workers converged on Tehran University. The crowd sought redemption: “We made machine guns to kill enemies, but overlooked the fact they would kill brothers.”220 Protesters burned homes of advisers and seized a munitions factory.221 In January 1979, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran, prompting the mass exodus of expats. The Washington Post called it the “largest and most dramatic movement of U.S. personnel since the evacuation of Saigon.” “Defense contractors,” the daily explained, “are moving quickly to airlift out their employees.”222 Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar publicly repudiated the Nixon Doctrine; Iran would no longer be the “gendarme of the Persian Gulf.”223 His successor Mehdi Bazargan canceled remaining arms orders. Iran dramatized the problem of reproduction. More than any other client, the shah rescued firms reeling from the post-Vietnam War slump. Iranian demand saved corporations from bankruptcy, underwrote arms development, recycled petrodollars, and enabled firms to achieve economies of scale. And while reproducing the military-industrial complex, Iran regenerated the U.S. empire. The drama of the military buildup was shocking but hardly unprecedented. Historically, most states rely on export markets to sustain their military-industrial base; industry corruption is endemic; and revolutions are often inseparable from the economic and political costs of militarism. Roham Alvandi convincingly portrays the shah as a hardheaded realist, expertly jockeying to protect Iranian sovereignty and preserve his throne. Yet he was also a creature of contradiction: a dangerously empowered autocrat that pursued visions of geopolitical supremacy and martial grandeur. As the Iranian philosopher Ali Shariati observed, capitalism colonized the imaginary.224 Educated in Europe and installed by the United States, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a fiercely independent ruler enamored with Western modernity. He personified the forces he mistrusted, seeking autonomy in neocolonial relations—arms imports—that rendered Iran perilously dependent on the United States. The Nixon Doctrine heightened these contradictions. Arms sales recycled petrodollars, yet applied upward pressure on oil prices; exports outsourced the work and cost of imperialism, while undermining the Iranian economy and stimulating revolution. Within the international division of labor, the colonized underwrote the affluence of a power elite residing at the commanding heights of a global military-industrial complex. They funded arms development, saved corporations, and subsidized the military might of the metropole. An international division of violence was implicit in this division of labor. This was, in reality, the essence and appeal of the Nixon Doctrine. As civilians swelled the streets, the doctrine culminated in strategic failure, but failure was profitable. The tumultuous but intimate relationship between arms and oil would only deepen over four wars in four decades in the Persian Gulf. And as policymakers confronted limits to military spending and interventionism, they continued outsourcing imperialism through arms sales: accumulating crises, in order to overcome crises of accumulation. Footnotes 1 Paul Valentine, “Pro-, Anti-Shah Partisans Begin Demonstrating,” New York Times, November 15, 1977. 2 Don Irwin, “Riots, Tear Gas Greet Shah at White House,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1977. 3 Judith Martin, “The Shah Knows the Way,” Washington Post, November 15, 1977. 4 Resistance 6, no. 1 (December 1977) in University of Michigan Special Collections, Ann Arbor, Michigan (hereafter UMSC). Resistance is available in multiple repositories at the University of Michigan; researchers can request it by issue at University of Michigan Special Collections, whereas it is sorted into folders and boxes as a part of the Janice Terry Papers at the Bentley Historical Library. 5 Linda Charlton, “Clashes and Tear Gas Mar Shah’s Welcome in Capital,” New York Times, November 16, 1977. 6 Irwin, “Riots, Tear Gas Greet Shah at White House.” 7 Ibid. 8 Donnie Radcliffe and Jacqueline Trescott, “Back-Door Diplomacy at the White House,” Washington Post, November 16, 1977. 9 See the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI’s) arms transfers database, last accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/databases. 10 Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven, CT, 2010). 11 For example, the arms trade illuminates how the military sector defied deindustrialization after the Vietnam War; the origins of the global human rights movement, as activists targeted arms to errant regimes; and how the U.S. recycled petrodollars during the energy crisis. For overviews of this era, see: Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford, 2013); Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, NJ, 2013); Mark Bradley, The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2016); Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York, 2010); Meg Jacobs, Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and Transformation of Energy Politics in the 1970s (New York, 2017); Barbara J. Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA, 2014); Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston, eds., Nixon in the World, 1969–1977 (Oxford, 2008); Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 updated edition (Berkeley, CA, 2005); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (New York, 2018); Daniel Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York, 2015). 12 Roham Alvandi, ed., The Age of Aryamehr: Late Pahlavi Iran and Its Global Entanglements (London, 2018); Roham Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War (Oxford, 2014); Michael Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic (Oxford, 2016); Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York, 1984); Darioush Bayandor, Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited (New York, 2010); James Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT, 1988); Kristen Blake, The US-Soviet Confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962: A Case in the Annals of the Cold War (Boulder, CO, 2009); Richard Cottam, Iran and the United States: A Cold War Case Study (Pittsburgh, PA, 1988); David Farber, Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America’s First Encounter With Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ, 2006); David Houghton, US Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis (Cambridge, 2001); Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ, 2003); Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven, CT, 2007). 13 Stephen McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran (London, 2014). 14 James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex (New Haven, CT, 2011); Ann Markusen, Peter Hall, Scott Campbell, and Sabina Deltrick, The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (Oxford, 1991). 15 Walter Pincus and Dan Morgan et al., “Arming the Shah: U.S. Interests Confused by Push for Profits,” Washington Post, January 20, 1980. 16 See, for example, Anthony Sampson, The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Lockheed (New York, 1977), 271–292. 17 For more on reproduction see Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (New York, 2014). 18 Indeed, the British military originally installed him in September 1941 after compelling his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, to abdicate the throne. For more on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s ambivalent relationship with foreign powers such as the United States and Great Britain see Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah, 28–64. 19 Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon, trans. Dick Davis (New York, 2006). 20 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1958–1960, Near East Region, Iraq; Iran; Arabian Peninsula, Volume XII, ed. Edward C. Keefer (Washington, D.C., 1993): doc. 235. 21 Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, May 21, 1966, FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. XXII, Iran, ed. Nina D. Howland (Washington, D.C., 1999): doc. 141. Emphasis in original. 22 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 1. 23 George Thayer, The War Business: The International Trade in Armaments (New York, 1969), 187. 24 Memo: June 1968, U.S. Military Credit Sales Program for Iran, Folder: Iran Vol. 1 (Jan. 20, 1969-May 31, 1970) 1 of 3, Box 601, NSC Country Files (Iran), Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, CA (hereafter RNPL). 25 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 1. 26 For statistics on annual exports, see SIPRI’s arms transfers database, last accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/databases. 27 NSDM 92: U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf, Folder: NSDM 92, Box H-289. NSC Institutional Files, Records of the Staff Secretary (1969–1974), National Security Decision Memorandum Working Files, RNPL. 28 The Ford administration confided that any policy of “military parity” between Iran and Saudi Arabia was “foredoomed to failure.” Telegram: Tehran to Washington, November 27, 1974, Folder: State Department Telegrams to Secretary of State – Exdis (1), Box 14, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, MI (hereafter GFPL). 29 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, June 26, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, Iran; Iraq, 1973–1976, ed. Monica L. Belmonte (Washington, D.C., 2012): doc. 62. 30 I employ Michael Doyle’s distinction between an “empire” and “imperialism,” while incorporating the insights of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. See: Michael Doyle, Empires (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 12; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 8. 31 Sargent, A Superpower Transformed; Louis Hyman, “American Debt, Global Capital: The Policy Origins of Securitization,” in Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, eds. Niall Ferguson et al. (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 128–142. 32 Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt, 148; “Coffee, Tea or Bust: The Lockheed Story,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1970; Rachelle Patterson, “Recession holds Massachusetts in economic doldrums,” Boston Globe, December 12, 1971. 33 Richard Oliver, “Employment Effects of Reduced Defense Spending,” Monthly Labor Review 94, no. 12 (1971). 34 SIPRI, Oil and Security (New York, 1974), 46. 35 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 76. 36 Ellis Williamson, interviewed by William Burr, Oral History Research Office of Columbia University/Foundation for Iranian Studies, February 10-April 13, 1988, 77, lasted accessed September 13, 2021, https://fis-iran.org/en/content/williamson-general-ellis. 37 Memcon: Shah, Zahedi, Kissinger, Helms, and Saunders, July 27, 1973, File: President/HAK, Memcons, April to November 1973, 3 of 5, Box 1027, NSC Files, Nixon Presidential Materials Project, RNPL. 38 Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Iran, August 9, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 72. 39 Jacobs, Panic at the Pump; Salim Yaqub, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Ithaca, NY, 2016); Alvandi, ed., The Age of Aryamehr; Alvandi, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah; McAlister, Epic Encounters; Craig Daigle, The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969–1973 (New Haven, CT, 2012); Paul T. Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford, 2012); Rashid Khalidi, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Boston, MA, 2010). 40 Asadollah Alam, The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969–1977, Alinaghi Alikhani ed., Alinaghi Alikhani and Nicholas Vincent, trans. (New York, 1991), 173–4. 41 Alam, The Shah and I, 273. 42 Ibid., 16. 43 For these statistics, see SIPRI’s military expenditure databases, last accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.sipri.org/databases. 44 Airgram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, January 9, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 1. 45 Ibid. 46 Alam, The Shah and I, 16. 47 Ibid., 440. 48 Sampson, The Arms Bazaar, 5. 49 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Military Sales to Iran: Staff Report to the Subcommittee on Foreign Assistance of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 94th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C., 1976), 7. 50 Pincus and Morgan et al., “Arming the Shah: U.S. Interests Confused by Push for Profits.” 51 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, Part 17, 94th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C., 1976), 191. 52 Gholam Reza Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley, CA, 2009), 312. 53 Ibid., 316. 54 Ibid., 315. 55 Message from Secretary of State Kissinger to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft), November 3, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 89. 56 Bob Woodward, “IBEX: Deadly Symbol of U.S. Arms Sales Problems,” Washington Post, January 2, 1977. 57 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings of the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Political Contributions to Foreign Governments, Part 12, 94th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C., 1975), 212. 58 Woodward, “IBEX: Deadly Symbol of U.S. Arms Sales Problems.” 59 Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, “The Arms Pushers,” Counterpunch, June 15, 1999, last accessed June 16, 2021, https://www.counterpunch.org/1999/06/15/the-arms-pushers/. 60 Airgram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, January 9, 1973. 61 Memorandum of Conversation, May 16, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 126. 62 Alam, The Shah and I, 439. 63 Ibid., 460. 64 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 5. 65 Afkhami, 310; Klare, “Arms and the Shah: The rise and fall of the surrogate strategy.” 66 Afkhami The Life and Times of the Shah, 310. 67 Resistance 4, no. 3 (December 1976) in Folder: Publications—Resistance, 1976–1977, Box 2 Janice Terry Papers, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, MI (hereafter JTP). 68 “Coffee, Tea or Bust: The Lockheed Story,” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1970. 69 Memo: Saunders to Kissinger, November 4, 1970, Folder: Iran Volume II. June 1, 1970 to December 1970, 1 of 2, Box 601, Country Files—Iran, RNPL. 70 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 71. 71 Ibid.; Memo: Memo: Saunders to Kissinger, November 6, 1970, Folder: Iran Volume II. June 1, 1970 to December 1970, 1 of 2, Box 601, Country Files—Iran, RNPL. 72 Memo: Saunders to Kissinger, November 4, 1970, RNPL. 73 Memo: Saunders to Kissinger, November 6, 1970, RNPL. 74 Telegram: Tehran Embassy to Defense Secretary in Washington, November 1970, Folder: Iran Volume II. June 1, 1970 to December 1970, 1 of 2, Box 601, Country Files—Iran, RNPL. 75 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 90. 76 Ibid., 5, 99–100. 77 Klare, “Arms and the Shah: The rise and fall of the surrogate strategy.” 78 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 111. 79 Ibid. 80 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State and the Department of Defense, September 25, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 36. 81 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 60. 82 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 82. 83 Ibid. 84 Sampson, The Arms Bazaar, 286. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid.; Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State and the Department of Defense, September 25, 1973. 87 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 82. 88 Backchannel Message from the Ambassador to Iran (Helms) to Secretary of Defense-Designate Rumsfeld, November 17, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 148. 89 Memorandum of Conversation, May 16, 1975. 90 State Department Memo for the President, September 1975, Folder: Iran [6], Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 91 Memo: Jerome Levinson, Karin Lissakers, and Ira Nordlicht to Frank Church, September 22, 1976, Folder: 8, Box 4, Series 10.6, part I, Frank Church Papers (hereafter FCP), Boise State University Special Collections, Boise, ID (hereafter BSUSC). 92 Ibid. 93 Memo: Clinton E. Granger to Brent Scowcroft, September 2, 1976, Folder: Iran (12), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 94 Memorandum From Clinton E. Granger of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft), September 3, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 187. 95 Memorandum from the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Robinson) to Secretary of State Kissinger, February 13, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 164. 96 Memorandum of Conversation, March 29, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 170. 97 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, August 1, 1976 FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 180. 98 Action Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Atherton) to Secretary of State Kissinger, July 29, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 179. 99 Memo: Alfred Atherton, Jr. to Henry A. Kissinger, July 29, 1976, Folder: Iran (11), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 100 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, August 8, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 183. 101 Memo: Jerome Levinson, Karin Lissakers, and Ira Nordlicht to Frank Church, September 22, 1976, Folder: 8, Box 4, part I, Series 10.6, FCP. 102 Action Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Atherton) to Secretary of State Kissinger, July 29, 1976; Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft) to President Ford, October 27, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 190. 103 Memo: Robert Oakley to Brent Scowcroft, November 10, 1976, Folder: Iran (13), Box 13, Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 104 Memo: Robert Oakley and Robert Plowden to Brent Scowcroft, November 16, 1976, Folder: Iran (13), Box 13, Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 105 Alam, The Shah and I, 486. 106 Memo: Robert Oakley to Brent Scowcroft, November 10, 1976, GFPL. 107 Telegram: Rumsfeld/Washington to Tehran Embassy, September 2, 1976, Folder: Iran (13), Box 13, Presidential Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 108 Ibid. 109 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 65. 110 Ibid. 111 Memorandum of Conversation, August 21, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 75. 112 Telegram: Ambassador Helms to Secretary of State, July 21, 1973, Folder: Iran Vol. V, May 1973-Dec. 1973, Box 603, NSC Country Files – Middle East, RNPL. 113 Williamson Oral History, 2. 114 Ibid., 17. 115 Backchannel Message from the Ambassador to Iran (Helms) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), August 20, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 33. 116 Backchannel Message from the Ambassador to Iran (Helms) to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft), September 4, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 76. 117 Sampson, The Arms Bazaar, 231, 237. 118 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 111. 119 Alam, The Shah and I, 233. 120 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 37. 121 Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation (Sullivan) to Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Clements), FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 99. 122 Ibid. 123 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Military Sales to Iran, viii. 124 Ibid., vii. 125 Ibid., ix. 126 Ibid., 36. 127 Ibid., 17. 128 Alam, The Shah and I, 81. 129 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 71. 130 Alam, The Shah and I, 154–5. 131 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 9. 132 Alam, The Shah and I, 283. 133 Ibid., 13. 134 Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Schlesinger to President Ford, September 2, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 142. 135 Andrew Borowice, “Iran Attacks Price-Gougers,” Washington Post, August 6, 1975. 136 Ibid.; Memorandum from Secretary of Defense Schlesinger to President Ford, September 2, 1975. 137 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 70. 138 Backchannel Message from the Ambassador to Iran (Helms) to the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Scowcroft), September 4, 1974. 139 Memorandum from Clinton E. Granger and Robert B. Oakley of the National Security Council Staff to Secretary of State Kissinger, January 17, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 98. 140 Memorandum of Conversation, March 4, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 110. 141 SIPRI, Oil and Security, 36. 142 Ibid. 46. 143 Airgram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, January 9, 1973.1 144 Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (New York, 2013); Michael Klare, American Arms Supermarket (Austin, TX, 1984); Toby Craig Jones, “America, Oil, and War in the Middle East,” Journal of American History 99, no. 1 (2012): 208–218. 145 Paper Prepared by an Interdepartmental Working Group, April 25, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 59. 146 Memorandum of Conversation, March 4, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 109. 147 Memorandum of Conversation, June 16, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 134. 148 Memo: Henry Kissinger to Gerald Ford, March 25, 1976, Folder: Iran (9), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 149 Alam, The Shah and I, 163. 150 Memo: Henry Kissinger to Gerald Ford, March 25, 1976, Folder: Iran (9), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 151 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Military Sales to Iran, 41. 152 Ibid., 42. 153 Williamson, Oral History, 103. 154 Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah, 373. 155 Ibid., 375. 156 Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley, CA, 1981), 186–7. 157 Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah, 377–80. 158 Airgram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, January 9, 1973. 159 Alam, The Shah and I, 177. 160 Ibid., 223. 161 For more on the revolutionary left see Ervand Abrahamian, “The Guerrilla Movement in Iran, 1963–1977,” MERIP Reports, no. 86 (1980): 3–15; Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven, CT, 1989). 162 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, June 5, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 18. 163 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, May 21, 1975, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 128; Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, August 28, 1976, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 186. 164 Alam, The Shah and I, 503. 165 “Iran Will Buy $2-Billion in U.S. Arms Over the Next Several Years,” New York Times, February 22, 1973. 166 Resistance 1, no. 2 (April 1973), UMSC. 167 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, March 19, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 11. 168 Resistance 1, no. 2 (April 1973), UMSC. 169 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, March 19, 1973. 170 Ibid. 171 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 9. 172 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, December 6, 1973, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 47. 173 Resistance 5, no. 3 (April 1977), UMSC. 174 Williamson, Oral History, 39. 175 Resistance 5, no. 2 (January 1977), UMSC. 176 Misagh Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989), 52. 177 Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, 78. 178 Resistance 4, no. 4 (January 1977) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 179 Resistance 4, no. 3 (December 1976) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 180 Resistance 5, no. 1 (November 1976), UMSC. 181 Alam, The Shah and I, 307–8. 182 Resistance 4, no. 3 (December 1976) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 183 Telegram from the Embassy in Iran to the Department of State, December 16, 1974, FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, doc. 92. 184 Resistance 4, no. 3 (December 1976) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 185 Resistance 4, no. 4 (January 1977) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 186 Resistance 4, no. 4 (January 1977) in Box 2, Folder: Publications – Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 187 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Second Session on Lockheed Aircraft Corporation: Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, Part 14, 94th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C., 1976), 423. 188 Taped interview of Jerome Levinson, August 2, 1984, LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Collection on Frank Church, 1850–1993, BSUSC. 189 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 87. 190 Memo: Henry Kissinger to Gerald Ford, August 1975, Folder: Iran (5), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 191 Memo: Frank G. Zarb to Gerald Ford, January 13, 1976, Folder: Iran (8), Box 13, Presidential Country Files for the Middle East and South Asia, GFPL. 192 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Grumman Sale of F-14’s to Iran, 72. 193 Ibid., 74. 194 Ibid., 74, 68–9. 195 Ibid., 78. 196 Ibid., 173. 197 Memo: Jerome Levinson to Charles Percy, April 5, 1976, Folder: 8, Box 4, Series 10.6, part II, FCP. 198 Ibid. 199 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings of the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations on Political Contributions to Foreign Governments, 367. 200 Eileen Sheehan, “Senate Backs Lockheed, 49–48,” New York Times, August 3, 1971. 201 News release from Frank Church, August 1, 1975, Folder 16, Box 14, Series 2.2, FCP. 202 Jeff Gerth and Sarah Bartlett, “Kissinger and Friends and Revolving Doors,” New York Times, April 30, 1989. 203 “Helms to Open Company to Advise on Iran Trade,” New York Times, November 18, 1977. 204 Robert McFadden, “James R. Schlesinger, Willful Aide to Three Presidents, is Dead at 85,” New York Times, March 28, 2014. 205 As director of the Defense Security Assistance Agency (1974–1978), Fish was ultimately responsible for arms sales policy. See: St. Clair and Cockburn, “The Arms Pushers.” 206 Alam, The Shah and I, 524. 207 Ibid., 486. 208 Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue. 209 A. Ernest Fitzgerald, The Pentagonists: An Insider’s View of Waste, Mismanagement, and Fraud in Defense Spending (Boston, MA, 1989), 109. 210 “Carter Flies from Paris to Israel,” Atlantic Constitution, May 25, 1973; Duane Riner, “Lockheed Will Give Carter a Ride South,” Atlantic Constitution, April 4, 1972. 211 Fitzgerald, The Pentagonists, 109. 212 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 139. 213 Ibid., 154–5. 214 Resistance 4, no. 6 (June 1977), Box 2, Folder: Resistance, 1976–1977, JTP. 215 McGlinchey, US Arms Policies Towards the Shah’s Iran, 141–2. 216 Alam, The Shah and I, 535. 217 Ibid., 523. 218 Parsa, Social Origins of the Iranian Revolution, 79. 219 Ibid., 148. 220 Ibid., 154. 221 Ibid., 233, 237, 245. 222 Jim Hoagl, “Most Americans Ordered by U.S. to Leave Iran,” Washington Post, January 31, 1979. 223 Klare, “Arms and the Shah: The rise and fall of the surrogate strategy.” 224 Ali Shariati, “Extraction and Refinement of Cultural Resources” in Man and Islam, trans. Fatollah Marjani (Houston, TX, 1974), 34–43. Jonathan Ng graduated from Northwestern University in June 2021, receiving his PhD in history, and recently became a postdoctoral fellow in the History Department at the University of Tulsa. He is a historian specializing in the contemporary history of the international arms trade and U.S. interventionism. Currently, he is writing a book titled, The Unquenchable Fire: The Arms Trade and Reproduction of the US Empire, 1960–1988, which examines how corporate and government officials outsourced the work and costs of imperialism after the Vietnam War through arms sales. Author notes * I wish to thank Michael Allen, Daniel Immerwahr, Sylvester Johnson, Michael Sherry, and the U.S. Dissertators’ Workshop at Northwestern University. © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Exporting Imperialism: Arms, Iran, and the Military-Industrial Complex, 1969–1979*
JF - Diplomatic History
DO - 10.1093/dh/dhab095
DA - 2021-12-09
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