Failures in Analysis: U.S. Intelligence and the Iranian Revolution
Matthew Conlin

“Unless we think about the dynamics of political, social and economic change and how we relate to it, we (the United States Government) will not be influential in this world. The Iranian Revolution is a good case in point”.
-Harold Sunders, former National Security Council staff member, and former U.S. State Department staff under Carter

Introduction
Toward the end of the 1970’s, American foreign policy directors started to finally change their stance on the stability of the Shah of Iran, but not before ostracizing the religious opposition leaders that had gained popular appeal. Breakdowns in communication and analysis in 1978 and 1979 further confused the matter, as CIA and embassy officials mistakenly aligned reformist religious leaders with revivalists. This paper seeks to explore the lessons American policy makers can learn from their involvement with the Shah and Iranian Politics, and what implications these analysis mistakes and consequent policy decisions had on shaping the course of events in late 1978 and early 1979.

Theoretical Overview
Historically, the capitalist change that occurred in Iran was like most, from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and took place under pressure from internal and external sources. External developments are explained as the expansion of global capital and the consequence of its influence on pre-capitalist social institutions. Underdeveloped economies such as the one in Iran were linked to the exchange of global capital before, and especially since the nineteenth century. This resulted in the dependence of Iran on the world-economy and the peripheralization of its economy to that of the more developed global economies. This period is seen as the beginning of the undermining of the traditional and local economy and the interdependence of the political system. Internal developments are long historical trends that took place as class-formation occurred as a result of the process of capital accumulation. This is what Amineh calls, modernization from above, or an imposition of social classes based on wealth, accompanied by an accelerated speed. The Shah’s attempt at rapid development and capitalist expansion took place between 1961 and 1977. It resulted in massive industrialization projects and land reform measures that drastically increased social tensions. The end result of these developments was the reaction to this process which manifested itself by means of an economic crisis and political divide that caused the Islamic Revolution in 1978-79.
The Shah was pursuing a capitalist-oriented process of socio-economic development while attempting to position the monarchy as pivotal to Iranian politics. He tried to build an independent, strong and prosperous country that could become a world capitalist power in its own right. The process of development however, created conditions opposite to those required for the monarchy to be at the center of politics. The development process the Shah had embarked on needed a governmental system that would allow increasing political and economic decentralization, public participation and individual initiative. This would have the effect of putting more emphasis on the redistribution of wealth and on social development. However, the modernization process was extremely unbalanced. The state could not create modern political institutions and therefore could not integrate the political forces that came to bear after Iran’s modernization. Conversely, the rapid development of the 60’s and 70’s was not able to completely divorce itself from the traditional sector, which caused a glaring contradiction both politically and economically, thus the powers of the economic sector grew without incorporating the traditional sector (the bazaar). At the same time, the secularization process had little influence on the power of the ulama as an ally of the bazaar. The Iranian state class also failed to create an alternative ideology to the suggested social transformation in place of what was destroyed that was a result of the growing economy. Therefore, the Shah had created a fundamental problem that would not be resolved without eventually abandoning his absolute power or turning towards a more centralized and strict development policy.
Additionally, in the Iranian context, this crisis of cultural and social values was not only relegated to one concerning the urban poor, who had well-formed traditional values formed from their frequent association with mosques and other religious foundations. Although these foundations were central in their ability to communicate common religious concerns and promote religious observance, the Iranian revolution differed than other important historical revolutions, because of its broad appeal to many segments of the population. It was thus not the lack of emphasis on economic development as opposed to economic growth that was the true cause of the problem. Rather, it was the rapid and uncontrolled rate of development that made Iranians from many different backgrounds feel alienated in their own country.

Pre-Revolutionary Iran
The late 1960’s to the early spring of 1978 entails very little US interest in the internal affairs of Iranian politics, but the spring of 1978 to the flight of the Shah on the 16th of January 1979, is categorized by a significant increase in US policy makers interest in the Shah’s inability or unwillingness to control civil disturbances. In the early 1960’s, a series of riots occurred in Iran, many of these were instigated by the radical cleric Ruhollah Khomeini and were supported by the bazaris (merchants). With the subsequent exile of Khoemeini and a security crackdown by the Shah following the assassination of Prime Minister Ali Mansur in 1965, William Daugherty, the former CIA Director of Operations notes that an assumption developed in the US intelligence community that the, “clergy/bazaar power nexus had been broken”. He continues by asserting that, “from that time forth, little was heard from Washington analysts about the clergy”.
Many events leading up to the Iranian Revolution as explained by Ervand Abrahamian in his book, Iran, between Two Revolutions, had an effect on the political opposition’s ability to become more vocal and consequently influential. Many of these events were not fully understood by US officials. For instance, Abrahamian notes the importance of the Shah’s loosening of political controls in 1977 as an opportunity for the opposition to be increasingly vocal in their dissent. As professional and human rights groups were able to function as of the summer of 1977, old and new political organizations began to emerge. The Society of Socialist revived the National Front calling it the Union of National Front Forces (Ittehad-I Niruha-yi Jeb’eh-I Melli), while Mehdi Bazargan revived the Liberation Movement. It worked closely with the Union of National Front Forces and the bazaar community and called for the implementation of the 1905-1909 constitution. Also, a group aligned with Ayatollah Shari’atmandari brought together a group of secular professionals called the Radical Movement (Nahzat-i Radikal), while the Tudeh (pro-communist) party re-emerged and activated some of its cells. It’s important to note that at this time, all of these groups stressed that their immediate goal was to re-establish the 1906-1909 fundamental laws. If US intelligence officers had a better understanding of these groups and their political ambitions at this stage, the confusion that erupted in the ensuing months would have been far less severe.
Instead, the US intelligence community was woefully under-educated on the manifestos of the Iranian opposition parties. Charles Naas, the Deputy Chief of the US mission to Tehran in the late 1970’s explains the lack of knowledge the US officials had of Iranian society in a correspondence with Daugherty in April 2000. He claims that while many State Department officers had served in the Islamic world, “none of us were schooled in Shi’ism and did not grasp until quite late in the day what the clergy was up to”. When the revolution began, “few in the Tehran embassy had any length of experience in Iran, spoke the language, or understood its culture, and so the mission was ill equipped for the storm of 1978-79”.
Abrahamian notes that the liberalization policies of the Shah, which had been introduced to curb political unrest, were in actuality proving to be a potent stimulant. Street protests were beginning to multiply just before a publication was released calling the clergy “black reactionaries” while accusing them of assisting the communists in undoing the achievements of the Shah’s “White Revolution”. Seminaries and the bazaar in the city of Qom, a major religious center closed, in demand of a public apology. Some 4,000 theology students and sympathizers clashed with riot police, as they demanded the return of Khomeini, and a return to the constitution. The death tolls that were released largely varied, with government statistics at the time accounting for two deaths, while according to the opposition, upwards of seventy were reportedly killed. On January 24th the US Embassy reported that:
As a result of the Qom incident, the Muslim establishment is in potentially the strongest position since 1963 vis-à-vis the GOI (Government of Iran). Muslims far from wholly united, but GOI demonstrating considerable uncertainty in facing up to the challenge…In coming months embassy will be attempting to work at inherently difficult task of learning more of religious elements of opposition movement, including doctrines being espoused by both progressives and reactionaries.
Additionally, the embassy gave the first biographical sketch of the leading figure responsible for the disturbances, Ayatollah Shariatmadari. This push to learn the spectrum of Iran political landscape, however, would prove too late a start while being mired in analysis failures. One week after this telegram, Ambassador William Sullivan dispatched a lengthy message, delineating and describing the various opposition movements. Prominently mentioned were Karim Sanjabi, Shahpour Bakhtiar and Mehdi Bazargan of what he deemed was the National Front. Sullivan also mentioned two groups that were coming together around Shariatmadari, while noting that the groups recognized Khomeini as the “true leader of the Shi’ite faithful”. Sullivan further described the intellectual legacy of Khomeini and Ayatollah Montazari, but in a critical mistake, he located them incorrectly as allied to Ayatollah Muhammad Taleqani. Taleqani was the most respected and beloved of the leading ayatollahs, and Khomeini had used good judgment in not alienating him. However, Taleqani was far less extreme, and disagreed with Khomeini’s radical conception of an Islamic state led by velayat-e-faqih, a supreme arbiter of God’s law. Khomeini’s true leading priority was to promote and articulate political Islam as the leading ideological power, by focusing on Islam as a social alternative. Therefore, by not realizing the nature of what Khomeini was advocating, the urgency to address the current Iranian Islamic social forces was never appreciated, making the policy recommendation at this time greatly diluted. This conclusion is endemic of the assessments of Iranian political and religious figures that the US embassy espoused, causing them to underestimate the power of the clergy and the central role they would play in the demise of the Shah.
Some analysts argue that the fall of the Shah could not have been prevented even if the US administration was adequately prepared. Taking Samuel P. Huntington’s development gap theory into context, the Shah only allowed economic and social development and worked against political integration. The Shah’s economic and social reforms had alienated all facets and strata of the population that left him faced with an Islamic revolution that was decidedly anti-Western and anti-modernization. The administration did not see this overall picture and while it did not enjoy the benefit of adequate intelligence. In actuality, the administration response was poor as well, as they pursued only a few options. Sullivan and Carter advocated initially for additional political reforms and liberalizations to appease the Shah’s opponents, and the proposal of a civilian government was only accepted after the reforms did not work to end the political unrest. The only other recourse was a military crackdown favored by Bzezinski which Carter morally opposed.

Conclusion
The failure of intelligence in Iran in the late seventies was not due to the information and communication problems that the US administration encountered, but was more a matter of analysis. The problems in analysis in turn were largely affected by a failure in policy. Commitments to the Shah impeded the US from recognizing the extent of Iranian dissatisfaction and as a result, the administration did not properly assess the volatility and strength of the Shi’ite opposition. Had American officials been able to foretell a scenario in Iran without the Shah that included the religious establishment in the post-Shah Iran, it’s likely that US policy toward Bakhtiar’s provisional government would have been more balanced. It underscores the need for a coherent analytical base for involvement in foreign affairs that is necessary to be able to give policy makers real choice, but the political leaders must also be able to think in terms of the economic and social interests that could affect political dynamics. The failures in analysis in 1978-79 have therefore ultimately proven to hold lessons and ramifications far beyond that of the fall of the Shah.

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