The Illusion in Iran:

...after that the Shah might take care of himself...

...The Shah's belief that he could get away with it is eccentric, even bizarre...

...Fifteen or twenty years of the status quo was the equivalent of a bird in the hand...

...The burden of this message naturally fell heaviest on Turner, since the CIA is supposed to be at least one jump ahead of the game when it comes to domestic troubles threatening important allies...

...The vocation of Of several minds: Thomas Powers THE ILLUSION IN IRAN BEHIND U.S...

...TI for wrong paper is more paper...

...Was this a reasonable goal...

...The judgment of even the most hardened diplomat can be clouded by the long walk over a resound- ing marble floor toward a man sitting on a throne...

...The re- suits of that earlier gesture should have served the Shah as a warning, but he chose to trust the panoply of power, his secret police, his billions of barrels of proven oil reserves, American arms and the force of his own ambition...

...in- tended to establish a dynasty which would pass his power undiminished to his son~ a practice which had disappeared from all but a few out-of-the-way corners of the world centuries ago...

...The President may now confi-dently expect a flood of new paper citing potential troubles threatening important allies, and a proliferation of the condi- tional tense which is the curse of intelligence--the maybe, could be, would be's with which analysts attempt to insulate their predictions from the sheer cussedness of the world...

...he insisted the CL~ the courage of its convictions, an~ them clearly...

...Back and forth it goes...

...The first was the lack of any immediate alterna- tive, the all-purpose excuse of govern- ment...

...JOHN GARVEY I took power in Cuba, the buildinl~ Berlin Wall, the Tet Offensive i nam in 1968, the Arab-Israeli war tober, 1973...

...The billions of dol worth of arms acquired by the Shah be turned in one direction as easil another...

...All this is part of the eternal giv take of government...

...When in doubt create a com- mittee...

...Was it reasonable for the Shah to expect that all those businessmen...

...The Shah had a modern industrial state in mind, with a large army and navy among the world's most sophisticated, huge pet- rochemical plants, major corporations to rival the great multinationals, a whole new class of technicians, managers and civil servants educated at Harvard, MIT~ the London School of Economics, the Sorbonne...

...To be a follower of Jesus, do I have to know how I feel about it, or have a crystal clear sense of what it means to say that much of the creed...

...The Shah was creating, virtually overnight, a huge new middle class of the sort' which, in ever), other country, had insisted on a share of power as the first order of business...

...The huge South ~ namese army was inherited by Hanc billion dollars' worth of Russian ; sold to Egypt were destroyed in onll days in 1967, or (worse yet, frorr Russian point of view) captured inta~ second army to replace the first sli l out of Russian control when Sada~ cided that only the United States c help him to settle with Israel...

...Kis was a weeder...

...The American policy which over- looked the obvious risks of the Shah's gamble and armed him as a bulwark seems to have hadtwo sources...

...One might have expected that the Shah would strike every American official paying attention as an uncertain allz, at the very least, but that is not the way things turned out, He was taken at his word...

...The paper was in error...

...Carter is apparently in a mood to blame the sur- prise on the CIA, which sent him a piece of hopeful paper last summer saying that the Shah of Iran had everything under control...

...A few years ago the Shah held an elabo- rate ceremony in the ancient city of Per- sepolis to commemorate the 2500th an- niversary of the founding of the Persian empire...

...Does this need to involve a feeling of certainty or secu- rity...

...experience has taught CIA anall write an escape hatch into ever mate, a subordinate clause or stt conditional verbs, which, in retn might be cited as a warning flag...

...The Shah had a lot of oil on his own, and intended to buya world role with it whether or not the United States went along...

...It is not easy to grasp the enormity of the Shah's ambition...

...Of course the CIA has been through all this before...

...This makes the paper e, read, but it doesn't make it any likely to be right...

...The world had not wit- nessed an act of such naked imperial reaching since Napoleon placed an em- peror's crown on his own head...

...of belief, as if it meant little or nothing that in the garden of Gethsemane "Jesus's soul was filled with dismay and dread...

...Eventually a s.L comes along and the old charges newed...

...What is downright incredible is the fond willing- ness of the United States to go along with this transparently nutty scheme, and to depend on the Shah's continued success for defense of the Middle Eastern oil which fuels the economies of Western Europe and Japan...

...There is something impressive about palaces...

...The central illusion of policy-makers-- the reason for the surprises--is to be found in the notion that these two very different things are the same...

...The second reason for American faith in the Shah is a bit more elusive...

...The lesson in this for C; and his principal advisors, is that v the Shah may go, or survive witt minished authority, his Army will main...

...They call for weer the thickets, a paring back of the growth to reveal what the paper, af is supposed to be about--the out the future...

...Too much recent evan~gelism has stressed the reassuring aspec...

...The Shah has the army under control, for the moment, but not much else...

...To say that I am sure of my salvation may be to try to hold on to something we are not allowed to keep, and to make of Jesus something merely comforting...

...What it will be used for in future can no longer be taken as certain...

...Thus reas- sured by the panoply, and lured b) prospect of 20 years' access to the oil United States has committed itself only to the Shah but to the absc monarchs of the Persian Gulf and S Arabia, who are no less threatened b: men they have imported or traine spend their money...

...Once it was depended upon bulwark of stability in the Middle I Now it may become what is known disturbing factor...

...The oil would pay for the panoply, the arms would protect the oil, SAVAK would secure the loyalty of the Army, and the Crown would direct them all...

...FAITH IN THE SHAH a religion which is so intimately involved in the scandal of incarnation is a willing- ness to accept the agony of any flesh, including the darkness of unbelief and the knowledge of forsakenness...

...In the course of time the thicket., conditional grow so dense they b~ resemble the late novels of Henry...

...foreign-educated technicians and gener- als would be content with such crumbs of the imperial power as might be secured through palace intrigue...

...Iran is supposed to be the bulwark of the Persian Gulf...

...If religion is finally therapy, that makes sense...

...American officials seem to have reasoned that the short-term "urgency of oil overruled any doubts about the thousand-year dynasty planned by the Shah...

...every country can have but one, after all...

...For thirty year United States and the Soviet Union host of lesser entrepreneurs have arming the world, using proxy armi build bulwarks, in seeming corn I confidence that the future would al' resemble the past, and that not would go wrong...

...The Agency was severely criticized for failing to predict the "Bogotazo" in Colombia in 1948, the entrance of the Chinese into the Korean War, a revolution in Iraq in the mid- 1950s, Castro's leftward turn after he Commonweal: 806 one exists on paper, while the other exists in the world...

...The Shah was not planning a dusty feudal kingdom like the archaic states along the southern edge of the Arabian peninsula, where the local sheiks live in cities built of mud, and the royal authority runs thin more than a few miles from the sea...

...He did not intend merely to be his country's leader...

...But go back a bit...

...This is wor- rying the President...

...High ceilings, uniformed guards, mod- em offices With whirring Xerox ma-chines, state dinners,parades and fly-bys all inspire confidence...

...The troubles caught them by surprise, as troubles tend to do...

...On November l lth, Carter addressed a handwritten note to three of his principal advisors--Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Director of Central Intelligence--telling them, "I am dis-satisfied with the quality of political in- telligence...

...The very fact the man can get away with this sort of thing for 24 hours suggests he may do it for 20 years, and 20 years, to an American President forever worried about the election 18 months hence, seems like a long time...

...The files of the N Security Council are chock full o criticizing the CIA for failing to the surprise of the moment, of q special studies of the intelligenc, munity, and of the CIA's volta responses to unhappy officials...

...Carter's note will back the conditional undergrowtl cause he is asking the CIA to do tl thng it can't do--tell him what is gc happen...

...From all over the world the pow- erful, the rich and the famous were in- vited to attend...

...But it appears that the Shah's tw years are up...

...Busy officials have not got tit Henry James...

...Nor did he Stop at a claim of unrestricted sovereignty, which is also common enough...

...This is not the first time an ally's has slipped its mooring...

...This may sound deliberately, even gratuitously obscure...

...Or can I be led on, often in the dark, by the hope his words inspire, and the hope shown in his life, death, and resurrection...

...The lesson in this ought to be th~ future is always full of unPleasant prises, but it's unlikely Carter an~ principal advisors are going to gra,, Instead, they are still tinkering witl machinery, as if another turn of the s here, a new watch committee tl might ensure that the concrete, var unpredictable world will correspol the figments of their hopeful paper THOMAS PO~ 22 December 1978:807...

...The AmeJ arms sold and given to Pakistan ' used against India...

...The one is an arrangement, while the other is a locus of unruly fact...

...There is a reason why the ( at Delphi spoke in riddles...

...Or is there a danger in asking for these emotions...

...After receiving Carter's note, but before its message was confided to William Sa- tire of the New York Times, Turner re- sponded with an announcement he was setting up a new crisis-prediction center in the CIA...

...The 'I and Greeks have threatened each with American arms intended as a wark against Russia...

...It's not surp that Carter should be distressed 1~ CIA's misreading of events in Irat that the CIA should defend itself a~ a request to do what no one can do problem is not analytical timidity presidential importunity, nor even tt ture's inscrutability', The real reasc the CIA's failure to predict the S troubles, like the reason why no me, ieal adjustment of the estimating pr can be expected to give better resu the future, is to be found in the gap separates lran as American po makers want it to be, from lran as The one is abstract, like the geopol strategy of which it is a part, whii other is concrete, various and real T HERE'S a lesson to be learned from the troubles of Iran, but it doesn't look as if President Carter and his principal advisors are going to grasp what it is...

...It is profoundly wrong, maybe even a surrender to evil, to expect to avoid dismay and dread...

...If it is not therapy, but clarity (which isn't necessarily so cozy a thing), then the people who have made Jesus the nicest talk-show host of them all will be in for a surprise which could awe them, delight them, or terrify them, but in any case will make them feel as foolish as we all ought to feel when we are too clear about what God wants of us...