Iran's Three R's:
LOVE, KENNETT
Old Crisis in New Persia Iran's Three Rs By Kennett Love THE three Rs of Iranian politics are Reform, Revolution and Russia. If reform fails, revolution is certain. The third R, the...
...Captains, majors and colonels, given a national outlook by Army service and imbued with the urgency of technological and administrative modernization, have been the mainsprings of revolt in the Middle East...
...IN his first weeks as Premier Amini arrested scores of officials, including five rich and influential generals, and retired more than 300 officers, including 30 generals, in an anti-corruption purge...
...His private fortune is big enough to insulate him from the temptation to plunder the national treasury, as is commonly the case with Iranian premiers...
...These officers will undoubtedly be neutralists but they will also be Westernizers like the successful juntas in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and the Sudan and the unsuccessful ones in Yemen and Jordan...
...In the happy event that Dr...
...It is not that we are reactionary, but if reaction is part of the package containing a pro-Western regime we will take it all despite our dislike...
...The presence of the Red Army on adjacent territory is, of course, a grave threat...
...Neutralism, therefore, is a concommitant of genuine stability in Iran...
...Two major conspiracies have been discovered in the Iranian Army in the past seven years...
...He has launched an austerity program to cure the aid-sick and corruption-sick economy...
...There were few complaints about the unconstitutionality of the dissolution, partly because the Majlis was so discredited, partly because of Amini's reputation and partly because the Shah had long since established his readiness to do what "the nation wants despite the law and despite the limits of my constitutional powers...
...These reform measures appear to be more effective than anything that has been done in the past decade...
...Neutralism, or at least a balancing of foreign influences, is an old and deep-rooted tradition in Iranian relations with the world outside...
...The agreement restored Iran's place in the world oil markets, with income now nearing $300 million...
...If Amini attempts to subordinate the Army to the general pattern of his reforms (having already purged more than 300 officers), the Army chiefs may make his dismissal the price of their continued loyalty...
...The United States "crash program" of emergency aid, ladled into Teheran with sloppy enthusiasm as soon as our people had disposed of Mossadegh in August 1953, was far in excess of what could be absorbed by any economy of comparable size...
...Predatory Russia was offset by predatory Britain during the 19th century...
...Fears would feed their own fulfilment...
...investigators alleged, some American aid officials...
...Unlike most of them, he has made it his primary objective, if his first months in office are any portent...
...That is the Shah's uneasiness with strong premiers...
...They cheered impassioned demands for Iranian decisions "made in Teheran and not in Washington, London or Moscow...
...A third complot of young officers, led perhaps by an idealistic colonel or a general whose ambitions are too big for the Army, may even now be preparing to seize power...
...Four years ago the Shah tried to institutionalize the concept of a governing party and a loyal opposition by sponsoring the creation of two parties, the Melliyun (National) and the Mardom (People's) parties...
...Corruption would run rampant in a prediluvian atmosphere of sauve qui peut...
...One was Mossadegh, nationalizer of the powerful AngloIranian Oil Company in 1951 and now a folk hero whose name is a rallying cry for the "real" opposition...
...Thus, any revolution is far more likely to take Iran into the neutralist Afro-Asian bloc than into the Soviet camp, provided the West resists its tendency to panic at the first bulletins and write the revolution off immediately as Red...
...But the junior officers are the brothers and cousins of the New Middle Class civilians...
...Mossadegh repaid his aristocratic backers by stopping the Shah's land reform measures...
...The aristocrats tend to take a parochial, self-interested position against the Shah's concept of what is in the national interest...
...A well-justified case of the jitters delayed the arrival of Morteza Bayat, one of the Iranian signers...
...does today...
...How effectively will he seek political, economic and social reforms...
...This dispute was one ol the currents that swept Mossadegh into office against the Shah's better judgment in the chaotic spring of 1951...
...Not even in the bad old days of the Qajars has a single foreign power so freely exercised so much influence in Iran as the U.S...
...In general, however, the "establishment" has decided the winner beforehand, sometimes going so far as to decide how many votes he will get...
...The power, wealth and influence of the Amini family—and the interposition of the craggy Elburz mountains between the family lands and the seat of the Central Government— makes the new Premier almost as independent of the Shah and the Royal Army as he is of his fellow grandees...
...Significantly, they have engendered an atmosphere of expectation that the reform movement will continue...
...In this setting, the Parliament has provided a constitutional forum where the struggles within the establishment can be conducted without a crude reversion to violence...
...Some 80,000 demonstrators turned out to praise Dr...
...If the local zamindar is strong enough, he will be elected no matter what the Government thinks of him...
...He is a serious economist, acutely aware of the social and political effects of economic developments...
...Even the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh party men, appear to be too nationalistic for the tastes of the Kremlin...
...But can he utterly exempt so important a body as the Army from his national reforms...
...The loyalty of the senior officers, based on family and class ties for the most part, has been enhanced by favors and perquisites...
...What has kept balloting from beingdiscarded as a mere formality is the fact that the component parts of the Iranian establishment are often at cross purposes, sometimes hostile to each other...
...The Aminis are cousins of the Qajars, the dynasty displaced by the Shah's father in 1925, and they rank in the top two per cent of what are known as Iran's "1,000 ruling families...
...Amini was the key negotiator for Iran in the 1954 agreement that placed oil operations under an international consortium while maintaining Iran's formal national ownership...
...THIS brings us to yet another pitfall that may bring Amini and his reforms to naught...
...Furthermore, the Army officers who must conduct any revolution have been partly Western trained, either in the U.S., Europe or Iran...
...I recall the signing late one summer night at Elahiyeh villa outside Teheran...
...It is a constitutional moulting period in which an outgrown form has been shed and a freer-fitting one must now be put on...
...This is the class of technicians, businessmen, professional people, labor leaders, white collar workers and, most important of all, the middle-echelon Army officers who have risen on the tide of Westernization that began in World War II...
...Amini was relieved in 1958 of his last official post—that of Ambassador to the United States—for an "unauthorized" public suggestion that Middle Eastern oil countries pool resources to create a regional development fund benefiting the poor and rich countries alike...
...Discontent over the conduct and results of elections had brought down the two preceding premiers...
...But will the King and his chief minister cooperate...
...This was a mere fraction of the total outlay of the aid profiteers...
...Nevertheless, one of the easiest ways to curry extremist favor in Iran, even today, is to say that its oil was betrayed back to the foreigners...
...But the Army, vastly expanded in Iran with American weapons, money and instruction in the past eight years, reflects in its composition the people from which it is recruited...
...Iranians still too young to vote can recall Stalin's ugly reluctance to disgorge the present northern province of Azerbaijan after the wartime Soviet occupation...
...effort to restore the status quo ante would certainly be weighed as a likely pretext...
...It could happen overnight...
...citizens and the American Embassy may sorely tempt Washington toward military "fire brigade" action...
...But both were headed by the Shah's friends and the pre-election bargaining for seats remained confined to the same groups within the establishment...
...Another took the life and throne of King Faisal in Iraq three years ago...
...A misstep or two and we will have the third R to reckon with...
...The U.S.-Iranian military pact was denounced a few weeks ago at the boldest nationalist rally in nearly eight years...
...What sort of relationship with the Soviet Union will he obtain...
...He has not forgotten that his own father climbed onto the throne of the Qajars from command of the Army by way of the premiership...
...The third R, the vast Russian presence on Iran's northern border, is a constant factor in any reckoning of Iranian events...
...Iran would then become a pressure cooker of revolution...
...An armed U.S...
...The new Premier is 56, a year older than the Persian Constitution...
...Bearing in mind that his father stepped from the premiership to the throne, the Shah has repeatedly broken with strong premiers...
...Resentment against the Shah's dependence on the U.S...
...Thus, the next few months are a danger period as well as an opportunity for Amini and the Shah, provided they cooperate, to achieve reforms that were made impossible by the erstwhile Majlis with its counterbalancing makeweights of zamindars, clerics, court and government proteges...
...But oil money is only one of the wellsprings of ill-gotten wealth...
...Who else should his peasants vote for...
...None have had comparable Soviet contacts...
...at persons notorious for new and unexplained riches...
...The same thing could happen to the Pahlevi throne...
...Iranians are well aware of the hand American agents and diplomats had in the overthrow of Premier Mossadegh and in nourishing what followed with money, arms and advice...
...Revolutionary danger to U.S...
...The Royalist coup in 1953 might have failed if Mossadegh had not divested himself of the Majlis shortly before...
...LIKE the Russians during the Persian Revolution of 19061911, the U.S...
...Will he be able to control revolutionary pressure...
...Elections in Iran have always been manipulated, some more effectively than others...
...should not be misconstrued as entirely Communistinspired hostility...
...But Amini, with more at stake than anyone present, appeared the most imperturbable...
...The new mood lends urgency to the main item on the Premier's agenda, revision of Iran's 50-yearold electoral law to give more adequate representation to the New Middle Class...
...He earned his Doctorate of Laws at the University of Paris in 1932...
...Otherwise it will come with revolution, if we keep cool enough to let it stop at that...
...The possibility (not the probability but the possibility) that revolution would make Iran a vassal of the Kremlin provides the strongest motive for reform...
...Any group preparing a revolution will find better chances of success in the absence of the Majlis, traditionally the staunchest defender of the Constitution since the bad old Qajar days when Russian mercenary officers bombarded the Majlis building...
...Admittedly, the introduction of revolutionary elements into positions of power may itself produce an uncontrolled chain-reaction leading toward the revolutionary chaos characteristic of Mossadegh's last days in office...
...The Red Army would love to find a pretext in revolutionary chaos to move in...
...Taxpaying versus tax-evading is another such issue...
...The retired officers were promptly recruited by the Shah and the U.S...
...General Zahedi likewise lost the premiership in 1955 on this issue...
...A sign of the times is the new boldness of the man in the street, who has taken to shouting "Where did you get it...
...And the Shah is likely to pay the price, even though it means jettisoning the reform program...
...The restoration of Iran's oil revenues, for which the new Premier deserves much of the credit, nourished the corruption that he is now called upon to remedy...
...Amini is undoubtedly too wise to ruin his program by courting a certain clash with the Shah...
...Like his predecessors, he came to the premiership with a promise of reform...
...In 1959 Iranians spent $22.5 million to import automobiles...
...Just such a band of conspirators ended the reign of King Farouk in Egypt nine years ago...
...First of all, Persians fear Russia as a predator today as much as they did in the time of Peter the Great 350 years ago, when much of what is now the southern Soviet Union was Northern Persia...
...Amini is expected to have about six months to formulate electoral procedures that will permit the election of a Majlis willing to approve them and endorse other reforms that have been set afoot...
...The hand-picked Majlis fared no better...
...One of the greatest diplomatic shocks in Iran's modern history was the 1907 agreement between the two powers to stop competing and divide Iran into spheres of influence...
...Kennett Love, a staff writer of the New York Times, reported from the Middle East for a number of years...
...Ali Amini, who accepted on May 5 the anxious invitation of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi to form a government, is the first Premier since Mohammed Mossadegh with a mind of his own and the boldness to speak it...
...Every new premier of Persia (the Shah recently restored the name officially to parity with Iran) must be assessed in the broad terms of these three Rs...
...The house had been searched for bombs...
...The Russians have been progressing toward direct land access to the Persian Gulf for centuries...
...In addition to the Shah, the aristocracy, the Premier and the Army, the Shiite Moslem clergy constitute another major element in the establishment...
...It would probably be impossible to hold an honest election by American standards...
...since 1953 has been on the side of the status quo in Iran...
...The dark surrounding shrubbery was alive with owl-eyed guards...
...But whatever the risks of constitutional action, the greater dangers of continued inaction were what induced the Shah to swallow his aversion and call Amini to power...
...He is a rich, powerful, aristocratic landowner, the zamindar of vast tea, rice, fruit and grain plantations in the rich Caspian provinces...
...As for revolution, there is no reason to assume that it would automatically mean the loss of Iran to the Soviet world...
...Premier Sharif-Imami was so discredited that he fell at the first subsequent disturbance: police mishandling of a teachers' strike in which four teachers were wounded by bullets, one fatally...
...The specter of revolution will not be exorcized except by giving a constitutional outlet to revolutionary forces...
...Unlike these two powers, the U.S...
...is not regarded as predatory, which probably is why our predominance has been accepted by the Shah and tolerated, albeit reluctantly, by the "real" opposition...
...The Shah dissolved it on May 10 and gave Amini temporary power to govern without legislative obstruction...
...Should such a crisis occur, Teheranis are speculating, General Timur Bakhtiar, who made a brutal reputation as Military Governor, will probably be made premier to keep the lid on overt discontent...
...The Shah was worried enough to override constitutional barriers and cancel last year's elections...
...is so identified with the regime that any revolution necessarily will be anti-U.S...
...A great part of the emergency infusions of roughly $100 million a year went into the pockets of members of the post-Mossadegh regime of Major General Fazlollah Zahedi, the regime's favored Army officers, civilian friends, and, U.S...
...The rank and file are docile peasant boys...
...The innovation failed to provide a place for the real opposition, the articulate and increasingly frustrated political elements outside the establishment, that is, the New Middle Class...
...The Shah refused to relinquish his prerogative of naming both the top brass and the Defense Minister and of keeping the military responsible to himself alone...
...Mossadegh as "our beloved leader...
...It took skill, patience and wile to get every inch and penny that could be gotten out of the consortium companies...
...Previously he had served in the cabinets of six premiers, usually as Finance Minister...
...Land reform is one issue on which the Shah and the zamindars have long been at odds...
...He has begun drives to eliminate tax evasions and to enforce labor and land reform laws...
...He replaced Premier Manucher Eqbal with Jaafar Sharif-Imami, who ran the election over again early this year—with no better results...
...The trouble is that moulting is always a vulnerable period...
...Modern weapons, it may he argued, have made civilian revolutions all hut impossible...
...Mossadegh succeeded briefly in putting his men into the top posts and in retiring senior officers who stood in his way...
...True enough, if the Army remains loyal and proves willing to turn its weapons against rebellious civilians...
...Its leaders will probably have made clandestine arrangements for Soviet recognition and protection— at arm's length if possible...
...The U.S...
...Their demands for modernization, liberalization and national dignity have underlain all postwar political upheavals in the Middle East...
...In most elections enough mavericks have been allowed into the Majlis from urban constituencies to keep it from becoming a complete mockery...
...A Western education freed Amini from the traditionalism of his class...
...at the outset...
...Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Mossadegh...
...These are the people who will turn to revolution if they cannot aehieve their domestic and foreign goals through the evolutionary vehicle of a parliament...
...Premier Qavam es-Saltaneh failed twice to shift control of the Army from the palace to himself as the civilian head of government...
...Uncounted millions have gone into anonymous, numbered Swiss bank accounts...
...Amini was the bluntest spokesman of that discontent...
...It took nerve to sign the agreement and defend it in the Majlis (Parliament...
...Sometimes the Shah turns to the aristocrats to counterbalance an overpowerful premier or an ambitious general...
...By the end of 1954 the chief visible results of dollar aid were incipient traffic jams of new American and West German automobiles...
...Amini's reforms succeed in opening the constitutional door to the New Middle Class, which is undoubtedly the wave of the future, neutralism will come by evolutionary means...
Vol. 44 • July 1961 • No. 29
