نیکسون، کیسینجر و شاه؛ روابط ایالات متحده و ایران در جنگ سرد

by Roham Alvandi, غلامرضا بابایی (Translator)

بحث سیاسی بر ادبیات روابط بین ایلات متحده و ایران سایه افکنده است که بخش اعظم آن در پی انقلاب ایران و ماجرای گروگان‌گیری تهران به رشته تحریر درآمده است.

پس از سقوط شاه، انگشت اتهام جمهوری‌خواهان و دموکرات‌ها در آمریکا به سوی همدیگر نشانه رفته بود که «چه کسی ایران را از دست داد؟» جمهوری‌خواهان، کارتر را مسئول سقوط شاه می‌دانستند و دموکرات‌ها نیز نیکسون و کیسینجر را محکوم می‌کردند. برخی روایت‌های تاریخی، تا حدود زیادی قصور دولت‌های آمریکا را مسئول سقوط شاه می‌دانند که شاید بزرگ‌ترین عقب‌نشینی سیاست خارجی آمریکا در خلال جنگ سرد باشد.

محمدرضا پهلوی در دهة آخر سلطنتش، مشارکتی را با نیکسون و کیسینجر شکل داد که نفوذ اتحاد شوروی را محدود کرد و برتری منطقه‌ای ایران را در خلیج فارس به نمایش گذاشت. در پرتو دکترین نیکسون، ایران به شریک ایالات متحده در جنگ سرد تبدیل شد؛ شراکتی که نمونه‌ای دیگر از روند جنگ سرد، نه‌تنها در روابط بین سیاستمداران مسکو و واشنگتن بود بلکه بر روابط متحدین آن‌ها در جهان سوم نیز تاثیر نهاد.

این کتاب، سه رویداد تاریخی را که موجب ظهور و سقوط شراکت نیکسون – کیسینجر – پهلوی شده‌اند، به نمایش می‌گذارد. فصل اول به بحث درباره سرچشمه‌های روابط ایران و امریکا در دوران جنگ جهانی دوم و بحران‌ آذربایجان در سال 1946 می‌پردازد. فصل دوم به خیزش ایران از یک دولت فرودست به شریک ایالات متحده و سپس اعلام خروج انگلستان از منطقه خلیج فارس در سال 1968 تا پایان نخستین دوره ریاست جمهوری نیکسون در 1972 می‌پردازد. در قلب این شراکت، دوستیِ شخص ریچارد نیکسون و محمدرضا پهلوی قرار دارد. فصل سوم به اوج روابط ایالات متحده و ایران و مشارکت نیکسون و کیسینجر – در طول دیدار آنان در ماه مه از ایران – پرداخته است. در نخستین روایت مبسوط از عملیات پنهان سیا در کردستان عراق (از 1972 تا 1975) نشان داده می‌شود که چگونه دولت نیکسون دوشادوش ایران و اسرائیل از شورش کردها علیه رژیم بعث عراق پشتیبانی کرد اما بعد اتفاقاتی دیگر رقم خورد. سرانجام اینکه فصل چهارم، در جریان افول مشارکت ایران و ایالات متحده پس از ماجرای واترگیت و استعفای نیکسون از ریاست جمهوری، به شکست مذاکرات بین شاه و دولت جرالد فورد از 1974 تا 1976 و نیز صادرات هسته ای امریکا به ایران می‌پردازد.

این کتاب از سوی روزنامه فایننشیال تایمز به عنوان برترین کتاب تاریخی سال 2014 انتخاب شد.

رهام الوندی – نویسنده کتاب – دانشیار دانشکدة اقتصاد و علوم سیاسی لندن و مدیر گروه دانشکدة اقتصاد و علوم سیاسی لندن در کلمبیاست. او تالیفاتی بسیار دربارة تاریخ روابط خارجی ایران داشته و پژوهش‌های جاری وی بر فعالیت‌های حقوق بشر جهانی و ریشه‌های انقلاب 1357 ایران متمرکز است.

Genres: History, Middle East, Iran, Politics, Nonfiction, American History

356 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2014

Reviews

[Mostafa Bushehri · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب به بررسی اوج روابط دوستانه ایران-آمریکا در تاریخ زمانی که نیکسون رییس‌جمهور و کیسینجر وزیرخارجه ایالات متحده بود می‌پردازد.
اگر تا به حال جملاتی از قبیل اینکه شاه همیشه بله قربانگوی آمریکا بوده و هیچ استقلالی در تصمیمات خویش نداشته است، شنیده اید این کتاب نه تنها با استناد به منابع و اسناد موثق خلاف این گزاره را ثابت میکند بلکه تاحدودی میشود گفت برعکس آن را نیز به اثبات میرساند.
تاثیری که جنگ سرد بر ایران و خاورمیانه گذاشت اگر بیشتر از دو جنگ بزرگِ قرن بیستم نباشد کمتر نیز نخواهد بود و کتاب تاثیر این جنگ را بر ایران و رابطه‌اش با کشور عراق بررسی میکند.
اگر به دنبال سرنخ‌هایی از علل انقلاب ایران و همینطور جنگ ایران-عراق هستید این کتاب کمک شایانی در این امر میکند.

[BenAbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book challenges the traditional image of the shah as a mere instrument of American power, a US client who upheld American interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf in return for Washington’s economic and military support for his unpopular regime. Yet, as the author shows, the shah was a far more complex figure than the caricature his critics drew. Whatever his shortcomings at home (manifested in a series of disastrous political and economic decisions) he managed to compensate for them through an extremely calculating and confident conduct of diplomacy, displaying a pragmatism and prudence entirely absent from his arbitrary domestic leadership. His relationship with the United States is also critically examined and revealed to be deeper, more layered, and altogether different from the rigid, frozen-in-time perception of a patron–client relationship.


The work covers the evolution of the Iran–US relationship starting from the 1946 Azerbaijan crisis, but it is not a comprehensive history of the US–Iran bilateral relationship. Instead, it focuses on three key historical episodes that trace the rise and fall of the Nixon–Kissinger–Pahlavi partnership. More than a study of bilateral ties, it is a study of Iran’s impact on how the United States fought the Cold War. The shah emerges as a significant Cold War actor in the 1970s, one who used his extraordinary influence within the Nixon White House to shape American foreign policy in regional conflicts stretching from the Middle East to South Asia.

We get to see the evolution from the patron–client relationship that had defined the US–Iran bond (as epitomized by the 1953 coup) toward a partnership that reached its peak during the Nixon administration. This transformation wasn't just the result of geopolitical realities but also of the shared worldview between Nixon, Kissinger, and the shah. All three were committed to preserving global order in a time of revolutionary tensions. Unlike his predecessors, Nixon did not see the shah as a megalomaniac wasting Iran’s oil wealth on stockpiling weapons. He saw him as a modernizing, anti-communist statesman who shared his strategic views on the Cold War and his disdain for liberal intellectuals.

The impression one gets while turning the pages is of a shah with genuine agency. Far from being a passive bystander, he was an active participant in regional politics. His aggressive and tireless lobbying in the White House led Nixon to abandon the Johnson-era policy of balancing Iran and Saudi Arabia as twin pillars of Gulf security. Instead, Nixon came to favor and recognize the preponderance of Iranian power in the region. While Saudi Arabia was seen at the time as unreliable and internally fragile, the shah was perceived as having both the will and the capacity to assert himself as the region’s guardian, protector of shipping lanes, and a bulwark of stability against communist subversion and radical Soviet-backed Arab movements.


"Nixon and Kissinger resolved this dilemma in the Persian Gulf by looking to Iran to fill the vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the region in 1971. For eight years, this strategy seemed to work. The Soviet Union made few inroads into the Gulf; Saddam Hussein’s Ba’thi regime in Iraq was cowed, signing the Algiers Agreement with Iran in 1975; and Arab radicals failed to topple conservative Gulf rulers like Sultan Qaboos of Oman, who defeated a rebellion in Dhofar with the help of the shah."


The book is a valuable addition to one’s understanding of the geopolitics conducted on what are often perceived as the sidelines or margins of the Cold War. It challenges the tendency to view the Cold War purely as a contest between two opposing poles while overlooking the Third World actors who, in their own ways, exerted real influence over its course. The reality of the shah’s Iran, far from being a simple, subservient, slave-like proxy to its Western allies, is presented here as quite different. It was a country that, at times, played both sides and acted from its own self-interest. This glimpse into the conduct of diplomacy behind closed doors is an interesting niche topic, and one I found especially engaging.


Books I’d recommend alongside this one, as they cover roughly the same topic, namely the Nixon administration’s (and by extension, the US’s) dealings in the region but from different perspectives, would help provide a comprehensive, bird’s-eye view of events in their broader context:

David R. Morse’s Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War focuses on the administration’s diplomacy during the 1973 Arab–Israeli War. It examines the back-and-forth between the parties and provides insight into Kissinger’s rationale and his understanding of America’s role in the region, as well as the place of regional players within US strategy.

The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty by Ray Takeyh deals with the broader history of Pahlavi Iran. It touches on Iran’s newfound sense of mission in the Gulf, but where Takeyh only passingly mentions elements such as the shah–US nuclear deal or the covert US–Iranian support for the Kurds against Ba’athist Iraq, Alvandi’s book goes into them in more detail. In that sense, the two works complement each other and, taken together, offer a fuller understanding of the shah’s ambitions and the trajectory that ultimately ended in his overthrow.


To conclude, I will leave the final word to the author himself:

"Through his partnership with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi achieved a level of regional primacy and global influence for Iran that no other Iranian ruler has enjoyed in the modern era. While some have referred to the “flawed genius” or “majestic failure” of the shah in light of his overthrow in 1979, perhaps one day he will come to be remembered as the best foreign minister Iran never had."



Rating: 4/5

[Schuyler]

This assigned reading was sponsored by tears, goldfish crackers, and early mornings.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roham Alvandi’s Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah seeks to challenge the well-established view that the Shah of Iran was simply a client state of the United States. Alvandi contends that the “American proxy” model accurately characterizes the US-Iran relationship of the 1950s, but that the early 1970s represented a brief period where the Shah was an “active agent of history who often abetted and manipulated the superpowers in the pursuit” of regional interests. Relying on declassified documents in the Nixon and Ford papers, as well sources from Kissinger and the CIA under Richard Helms, Alvandi weaves a compelling but analytically-faulty narrative. Split into four chapters, chronologically organized, Alvandi takes the reader from the “client model” of the 1950s through the “zenith” of Iranian power 1972 under the “Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi” partnership. According to the author, it was the personal relationships forged by this triumvirate that allowed the Shah to exercise a level of political agency hitherto under appreciated.
In chapter one, Alvandi begins by assigning a rather benign intent to U.S. empire. He suggests that the U.S. relationship with Iran was an “empire by invitation,” as Mohammad Reza Shah encouraged American hegemony to offset British and Soviet intentions. For the author, American imperialism was a reluctant one, tempered by Roosevelt’s ideal of “self-determination” and a “liberal vision of modernity.” In contrast, the Soviets were menacing and driven by material avarice. Stalin is presented as “furious” and resentful that the Iranians would not grant an oil concession, while U.S. leaders are calm and mild-tempered. Alvandi spends most of chapter one exploring the Azerbaijan crisis of 1946, as well as the military coup that ousted Mohammed Mossadeqh in 1953. The former established the “empire by invitation,” while the later cemented the “Iran as US client state” model, which is often projected onto to later periods by historians who, according to Alvandi, fail to register the shift in Iran and the Shah’s power by the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Chapter two explores the period from 1969 to 1972 period, where Alvandi posits that the shah convinced Nixon and Kissinger to abandon the US’s former “twin pillars” policy and “tilt in favor of Iran.” Nixon had uttered “protect me,” the chapter’s namesake, to the Shah while trying to convince him to “understand the purpose of American policy” and encouraged him to not look at “détente as something that weakens you but as a way for the United States to gain influence.” Alvandi maintains that this shift in Iranian influence came about because the Nixon administration placed relations with Iran as more integral to their foreign policy agenda than a “broad Gulf policy.” Notably, Alvandi is distancing his position from Kissinger, who himself argued that “America’s friendship with Iran reflected not individual proclivities geographic realities.” Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf, a new “one pillar policy,” was favored by both Nixon and Kissinger as a cost effective method of containing the Soviets and maintaining some semblance of “stability” (on the empire’s terms). In Iraq, on the other hand, Kissinger was glad to promote instability. Alvandi notes that The Ba’ath “regime” was one “whose instability we should continue to promote.” This desire for Iraqi instability was a result of the Nixon administration’s reliance upon the shah’s analysis, one claiming that the Ba’athists were simply Soviet stooges. Nixon and Kissinger embraced this view, even against state department advice (the Ba’ath had made overtures towards the U.S.). Alvandi maintains that the reason Nixon and Kissinger were convinced of Iraq as a Soviet menace was because the “nature of the relationship between Nixon, Kissinger, and the shah.”
Iraq and the separatist Kurdish movement backed by Iran, Israel, and the U.S. form the core of Alvandi’s most intriguing and important chapter. The Nixon-Kissinger-Pahlavi triumvirate reached its “zenith” with the presidential visit to Iran in 1972. By aiding the US in both overt and covert operations across the region (Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Oman), Iran had transitioned from a client state to a “partner” in the global Cold War, “able to contribute to American strategies of containment.” Chapter three revolves heavily around the Iranian-Israeli-US intervention in (and facilitation of) the Iraqi-Kurdish conflict. In essence, Alvandi argues that the US was reluctantly drug into the Kurdish situation by the Shah. Both the Mossad and SAVAK had ties with Barzani and the Iraqi Kurds as early as 1958, with both intelligence agencies bent on destabilizing the revolutionary Qasim government and, later, the Ba’ath government. The “reluctant Americans” were brought in only later, and US aid started flowing in large quantities in 1972. As late as September 1974, Ford approved Israeli support in the form of anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles of Soviet manufacture. In Alvandi’s narrative, the shah drug the US into the Kurdish-Iraqi conflict and then, when convenient, betrayed the Kurds (to Kissinger’s dismay) in 1975 in exchange for a border deal with Iraq. Alvandi fails to explain why the US suddenly cared about the Kurds (or rather, why they were any less expendable to the US than they were to the Shah), except that Kissinger faced some domestic questioning about it.
The Shah’s haggling with Ford over the Iranian nuclear program, the subject of chapter four, is distinguished from the 1969-74 period by the fact that the “personal relationship between the president and the shah… was now missing.” After years of skillful political maneuvering, the Shah was still able to secure nuclear contracts from France and West Germany. His turning to these powers, a shift away from the US but still deeply entrenched in the Western camp, was a result of Ford “treating the shah as a client, rather than a partner, of the United States.” Alvandi, quite fond of the Shah’s realpolitik over a generation, ends on a hagiographic note, arguing that instead of simply “flawed genius” or “majestic failure,” one day the shah ought to be “remembered as the best foreign minister Iran ever had.” Indeed, his suggestion to the current Iranian administration is that they must acknowledge that “enmity with the United States is the greatest obstacle to the rise of Iranian power,” and that the “Pahlavi doctrine of strength through partnership” with the U.S. is more salient than ever before.
As with all post-modern academic phrases of dubious design and intent, Alvandi easily employs the “agency” brush to paint the Shah of Iran as something other than a client of US empire. Whereas authors like Salim Yacub and Osamah Khalil assign a preponderance of political power to metropole imperial actors like Kissinger, Alvandi maintains that the Shah as a “third world actor” was able to maneuver through the halls of US empire to manipulate it for regional initiatives. The logic rests on tenuous grounds, notably on the fact that no “partner” can so seamlessly be reduced again to a “client” in a span of a few years, with the shifting of a few individuals in government. Furthermore, Alvandi’s suggestion that the Shah took some small-scale prerogatives on his own hardly qualifies as a negation of client-state status. Iran was integral to maintaining US empire in the region, both during the “twin pillar” and “one pillar” periods. The shah’s selling of the Kurds down the river was, in the long term, negligent to US empire, who a few years prior cared little about the Kurdish question. Alvandi significantly overstates his case when attempting to blur the lines between the non-aligned and aligned players in the global South. While Kissinger and Nixon may have maintained a more personable relationship with the shah, Iran received nothing on either the scale or scope of the secret memorandum signed by the U.S. and Israel in 1975. As such, his grandiose claims about the Shah’s partner status is hardly warranted. Undoubtedly 1979 was a major blow to US imperial prerogatives. The shah’s illusions aside, the empire lost a client state, not an imperial partner.

[Matin Pyron · Rating 5 out of 5]

خب اول از همه باید بگم که کتاب فوق العاده ای بودش و تنها دلیل نایاب بودنش هم همین موضوع هستش
مواردی که از این کتاب آموختم:
اینکه شاه عامل دست ایالات متحده نبود
اینکه کارتر هیچ نقشی در انقلاب سال 57 ایفا نکرد ولی من به جد با این عقیده مخالف هستم
اینکه خودبزرگ بینی و تصمیمات اشتباه شاه اوضاع کشور رو به هم ریخت
اینکه جنگ سرد در تبریز شروع شد سال 1946
اینکه پرزیدنت کندی باعث اصلاحات ارضی ایران شد
اینکه آیزنهاور فقط برای اینکه مملکت دست چپ های سوسیالیست نیفته کودتای سال 32 رو با همکاری سیا انجام داد
اینکه افزایش قیمت نفت در سال 1973 توسط شاه باعث شوک خیلی بزرگی به اقتصاد تمامی کشورهای ایالات متحده و اروپایی کرد,و البته این موضوع رو در کتاب سلاطین نفت خوانده بودم ولی خوبی ماجرا اینه که این کتاب توسط فردی ایرانی نوشته شده و از منابع درجه اولی آقای الوندی استفاده کرده بودند
By the way I highly recommend this brilliant book to all the people out there who widely believe that Iran's notorious revolution of 1979 was the conspiracy of President Carter and the Jewish community, however this belief is absolutely made by a brain washed conspiracy theorist person and the good thing about this book is that it's both well written and SO SO INFORMATIVE !!!
I enjoyed it more that the book The Oil Kings written by Book by Andrew Scott Cooper.
5/5

Dec 2021 IRAN/Tehran

[Farshad Shahkarami · Rating 4 out of 5]

شاه بله‌قربان‌گو و عمله‌ی آمریکا بود؟

این کتاب با استناد به شواهد و مدار‌ک تاریخی ثابت می‌کنه که نه!

شاه در طول چند دهه تبدیل به سیاست‌ورز قهاری شده بود که بعضا آمریکا رو هم به بازی می‌گرفت، و ایران رو تبدیل به قدرتمندترین کشور منطقه کرده بود.

در دهه‌ی ۵۰ ارتش ایران امنیت خلیج فارس رو تامین کرد، پادشاهی عمان رو از شورش ظفار نجات داد، به پاکستان برای درگیری با هند اسلحه رسوند، و جهت زمین‌گیر کردن ارتش صدام و همین‌طور حل کردن اختلاف مرزی، کردهای عراق رو سال‌ها علیه رژیم بعث پشتیبانی کرد.

شاه فقط سیاست‌های آمریکا رو اجرا نمی‌کرد؛ بلکه به اونا شکل می‌داد و در مواردی که منافع ملی ایران ایجاب می‌کرد، منافع آمریکا رو زیر پا می‌گذاشت.

واقعا کتاب جالبی بود. تصویر مخدوشی که از شاه داشتم رو شفاف‌تر کرد.

[Okan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good one. Alvandi presents three moments or episodes from the US-Iran relationship during the Cold War to develop the argument that far from being a passive automaton that takes orders from the superpower and duly implements them, the Shah of Iran was a strategic powerhouse in his own right that negotiated, altered and even shaped the US' Middle East policy. This position of the Shah essentially came from the personal relationships he formed with Nixon and Kissinger, and the ways in which the latter two made policy in the US. Nixon and Kissinger disregarded the Congress as much as they can and even ignored advice from within the executive to accept almost everything the Shah put on the table. The zenith of this relationship in action is the episode of the Kurdish insurgency in Iraq, which the Shah supported in order to keep the Iraqi army bogged down in Kurdistan so that his primacy in the Persian Gulf would not be challenged. (What a godless sell-out was the deal he eventually struck with Saddam Hussain, it felt bad.) In the other two cases Alvandi discusses (the struggle for supremacy in the Gulf after the withdrawal of the British; and the Ford- and Carter-era negotiations between the US and Iran about Iran's nuclear program), the argument does not fall in place as convincingly; because the actors on the other side of the partnership are no Nixons or Kissingers and the relationship comes closer to good old superpower domination -especially in the last case.

If you're in the market for a well-documented, robustly researched but accessible academic study about the history of the Cold War in one of its many side-theaters, this is good. The narration is quite gripping and there are interesting anecdotes here and there.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

این کتاب، سه رویداد تاریخی را که موجب ظهور و سقوط شراکت نیکسون – کیسینجر – پهلوی شده‌اند، به نمایش می‌گذارد. فصل اول به بحث درباره سرچشمه‌های روابط ایران و امریکا در دوران جنگ جهانی دوم و بحران‌ آذربایجان در سال ۱۹۴۶ می‌پردازد. فصل دوم به خیزش ایران از یک دولت فرودست به شریک ایالات متحده و سپس اعلام خروج انگلستان از منطقه خلیج فارس در سال ۱۹۶۸ تا پایان نخستین دوره ریاست جمهوری نیکسون در ۱۹۷۲ می‌پردازد.

در قلب این شراکت، دوستیِ شخص ریچارد نیکسون و محمدرضا پهلوی قرار دارد. فصل سوم به اوج روابط ایالات متحده و ایران و مشارکت نیکسون و کیسینجر – در طول دیدار آنان در ماه مه از ایران – پرداخته است. در نخستین روایت مبسوط از عملیات پنهان سیا در کردستان عراق (از ۱۹۷۲ تا ۱۹۷۵) نشان داده می‌شود که چگونه دولت نیکسون دوشادوش ایران و اسرائیل از شورش کردها علیه رژیم بعث عراق پشتیبانی کرد اما بعد اتفاقاتی دیگر رقم خورد. سرانجام اینکه فصل چهارم، در جریان افول مشارکت ایران و ایالات متحده پس از ماجرای واترگیت و استعفای نیکسون از ریاست جمهوری، به شکست مذاکرات بین شاه و دولت جرالد فورد از ۱۹۷۴ تا ۱۹۷۶ و نیز صادرات هسته ای امریکا به ایران می‌پردازد.

[Mhmd Mosawi · Rating 4 out of 5]

رفتار آمریکایی ها با ایران در دولت های قبل از نیکسون رفتار یک دولت فرادست با دولتی فرودست و آلت دست بود (نمونه اش تحمیل کاپیتولاسیون) اما وضع در دولت نیکسون تغییر کرد. روابط بسیار خوب نیکسون و کیسینجر با شاه ایران را از یک دولت فرودست به یک شریک ارتقا داد و به رغم این که در مسائلی مانند کردستان و حمایت از بارزانی ایران از آمریکا استفاده می کرد، در سطح راهبردی همچنان «کشور تحت نفوذ» و به نوعی «آلت دست» آمریکا محسوب میشد.
به رغم این که اطلاعات تازه ای در کتاب ارائه شده اما نویسنده تحلیل شخصیت شاه و تأثیر آن بر روابط دو کشور را تا حد زیادی فراموش کرده است. شخصیت شاه این گونه بود که از پنجه در پنجه آمریکایی ها و انگلیسی ها انداختن می ترسید و یا توان آن را در خود نمی دید. هر چند که لفاظی زیاد می کرد و این و آن را تهدید و تحقیر می کرد اما عملاً خبری نبود.
نهایتاً پس از استعفای نیکسون و روی کار آمدن کارتر و در غیاب روابط و اعتماد عمیق بین نیکسون و شاه ماه عسل روابط پایان یافت و دوباره به حالت «دولت فرادست-فرودست» بازگشت.

[maria logothetis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

Very informative great read good detail .Give you a good insight on the Shahs world political view and US IRAN relations during his reign.

[Beatrice Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

honestly boring but i think i just don't like books like this.

[Kaden Hammond · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this for an assignment but actually found it really interesting - minus two stars because it didn't shit on Kissinger enough