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>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
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>> Chris Murphy: Okay. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you all for coming this afternoon. I'm Dr. Chris Murphy. I'm head of the Near East section here and you've come to one of the division -- the African Middle Eastern Division of which the section is part, along with the African section and Hebraic section. You've come to one of our noontime presentations. These presentations are seen as part of our task of making the areas for which we are responsible better known to the public. And to that end, we've also videotaped and plan later to mount today's presentation on the web. The Near East section is responsible for developing the collections from and about countries ranging from Morocco in the west, to Western China in the east, from Cazon on the Volga in the north to Cartoon, on the Nile in the south. We hold materials, print materials, in the local languages approximately 400,000 volumes, half of which are Arabic, about 75 to 80,000 are in Persian and other Iranian languages, about the same number in Turkish and other Turkish languages, then followed by Armenian, Georgian and languages of the caucuses. The specialists for those areas are also resident in the section and we invite all of you to come to this reading room and make use of our services in your research. In a moment, I'm going to ask one of the staff of the section, Mr. Hirad Dinavari, who is the senior reference librarian and is responsible for developing the collection from and about the Iranian world, to introduce today's presenter. Before I do that, I also would like to ask you at the end of Professor Milani's presentation, there will be a question and answer period and I ask that you please ask questions rather than make comments. And Professor Milani will be available after the talk to sign books and with that please Hirad.
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[ Applause ]
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you Chris and Dr. Abbes Milani as the Hamed and Christina Moradam [assumed spelling], Director of Iranian studies, at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran democracy project at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is Iran, U.S. Iran relations, Iranian cultural, political and security issues. I can sit here and get into a lengthy introduction and take all the allotted time and giving a biography of Dr. Milani, but he is a well known entity and instead I will save us time for the lecture. I will add that over the years many of his books have been very useful to researchers and myself included. Some of his ground breaking titles are: "Tales of Two Cities: A Persian Memoir"; "The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda -- Riddle of the Iranian Revolution"; "Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Iranian Modernity in Iran"; "Eminent Persians", which we have in the back; "The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979"; and finally, we have the new book "The Shah." In addition to his books, he's also translated a number of the books into Persian and English and has been the author of many, many articles in many magazines and journals. A little bookkeeping notes, after the lecture you'll have a question and answer portion. And we encourage you to ask questions, but be aware that by asking questions you're being filmed and that the material will be disseminated on our web casts online and will be available for further use. And you're consenting by asking and standing up. And also, at the end of the program Dr. Milani will be having a little book signing in the back. His gentleman in the back, selling two of his recent books, "The Imminent Persians", which is a two-volume piece and also "The Shah." Thank you very much for everyone who came from far and a lot of people here that are not from the library I really appreciate that you're taking time out of your busy schedule to come in during the weekday. Thank you very much. Dr. Milani.
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[ Applause ]
>> Abbes Milani: Good afternoon. I have to say that every time I come to this place I am absolutely awed and intimidated by the majesty of the place, the beauty of this place and the sublime wisdom that is accumulated here. It is, I think a sign of the highest signs of our civilization that places like this exist and I think we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to everyone who has worked in this place and has made this possible. I think it's fair to say that right now one of the best places to do research on Iran is right here. And that is a great, I think, indication of the remarkable work that has gone into accumulating this. They never cease to surprise me in terms of what they have. I've rarely been disappointed in finding out that they don't have something but I keep getting remarkably surprised by how rich their coding is. I'm going to talk about a couple of issues. Why a biography of the Shah and why now? And what is the significance of the event culminating or the events culminating in his fall. I think events of the last two weeks in Egypt and a number of comparisons that have been made between Iran and Egypt ad nauseum is indicative of how contemporary still the fall of the Shah is. How the shift that occurred, the kind of a tectonic shift that occurred in the Middle East. Is it still having revelations [assumed spelling] and we keep hearing and we keep seeing the consequences of it. I think it is not exaggeration to say, as one reviewer of this book said, in the Wall Street Journal, that the only event in twentieth century that is comparable to the fall of the Shah in terms of his consequences, is the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. That's how many scholars have now come to view the event and to view the seriousness of the consequences of his fall. So I think it needs very little argument to see that it is important to know the Shah as one of the pivotal figures I think of the second half of twentieth century. And I am -- I think not exaggerating, if I say that nearly everything that has been written about him has been written either to demonize him or lionize him has been written by detractors or written by defenders and the man and the complexities of his character, the evolution of his political views over a 37 year period -- that's how long he was on the throne -- are often times in my view, lost in these hagiographies or demonologies. The real character, I think, very much needs to be understood and very much needs to be also understood and analyzed further in the future. I will explain why I think that will necessary and possible. In a sense writing an impartial biography of him is virtually possible only now, only in the last couple of weeks and that's because our [inaudible] material relating to the fall of the Shah have become declassified only in the last year and a half. Written the public record office, the American archives here, some of the presidential libraries here, have a 30 year rule and that means that documents relating to Iran for example, were not declassified until 2009. Some of the documents I have used in the book were declassified even later. For example, the issue of Iran's nuclear program, the documents about Iran's nuclear program were declassified no more than six or seven months before this and almost [inaudible] a thousand pages of new documents were suddenly declassified and fundamentally, I think, focuses and reshapes what we have often thought about the Shah's nuclear program and about the U.S. relations with the Shah on the nuclear program. So even if we had intended earlier to write an impartial and in depth biography of him, we could not because many of these documents were not available. Why did we need to rely on American, British, French, German and Russian archives as I have tried to do here?  Because we do not, unfortunately, have access to archives in Iran. The Islamic regime has produced very little by way of useable archival material on the Shah. What they have produced has been very much a political process and one of the most important sources for understanding the Shah, which are the documents of his office that's very much used. They are completely missing. When the Shah decides that he is about to leave Iran, he orders a copy of these documents made and that's very much used because of the way the Shah has concentrated power in his own hand was in the last 15-20 years virtually the phase where every major foreign policy decision was made, every major oil decision was made, every nuclear decision was made, every domestic decision was made, every economic decision was made, so it was very much used of the office of the king was the center of decision-making in the country and it was very organized. It was managed in the last almost decade and a half by Moi Leon [assumed spelling] one of the most impeccable managers of Iran in that generation, an impeccably honest man. He managed to have a very clear line, every document that enters it has a stamped when it was entered, when the Shah saw it, what the Shah ordered. The few of them that I have seen indicate how very precise his whole bookkeeping process was. The Shah orders one of his generals to burn one copy of these documents, if the Shah leaves the country and that general does and he pays for it with his life. He gets executed. But it is very likely that another copy has left Iran and is somewhere in the West. At one time, I even received a phone call in asking whether I had $5 million available in my pocket to purchase this collection. They said, "We hear you're writing a book on the Shah. You want these documents?" I said, "I do want them, but I haven't gotten paid this week yet, so wait for next week and I'll get $5 million and write you a check for it." So if that material becomes available I think we will have that Iranian version of many of these American, British, Russian documents. The Shah has met with Nixon, there is an American report of this and the presidential library here and I know for a fact there's also a Persian version of it in that archive. Sometimes there's a third version in the foreign ministry if it was for example, a foreign ministry meeting. We don't have access to those. So once we do it might well be that we would need to reconsider many of the issues that we now think we know from the American or the British or the Russian archives. I have accumulated about 50,000 pages of these archival material from the British, American, German and have used them in the book and I'm trying to make them available for other people to use. I'm trying to see if we can put a digitalized version of it online but I'm certainly putting it all at Stamford so that people can use it. It is most of what was most relevant to the Shah in these archives, in these several archives. And they cover virtually the entire period of his life. In other words, from the moment he is declared to be the crown prince when he was six years old, we have reports from the British Embassy for example, describing him, offering a profile of him, giving us a list of the kinds of friends that he had, when he goes to Switzerland and the British Counsel follows him and occasionally goes to the school and writes reports about him, writes about who his friends are and when he comes back the same thing. So there is a rich tapestry that we can use in attempting to get to the man behind the mask and there was a mask I think. The Shah was a very private man, forced to live a very public life. The Shah was a very paradoxical character, he was a very reluctant monarch, but he clung to power for 37 years. He almost escaped the country when his father was leaving. That's how unwilling he was to be a king. Nevertheless, he stayed for 37 years and outlasted several people who clearly were gunning for him from Hevron [assumed spelling] to the few coup attempts against him. So he was a very shy man again, forced to live a life where he was constantly under the glare of the camera and these documents and some of the memoirs that people have written are all histories that are available, one here at the Foundation for Iranian Studies, another one at Harvard. They do offer us occasional glimpses. I myself, between the Shah book and The Imminent Persians, have interviewed over 400 people, some of them many, many times. Some of them for literally a couple of hundred hours. I have probably interviewed General [inaudible] one of the founders of Sava [assumed spelling] at least a hundred hours. I have interviewed Al des hier Hadid  [assumed spelling] probably twice as many hours. Part of the great lacuna in finding archive material from Iran was fortunately for me alleviated when Al des hier Hadid decided a few years ago to give me access to his private papers. These private papers, which have been donated to Stamford, are coming to Stamford, some of it has already arrived, is a remarkable collection. Al des hier Hadid was an activist by instinct and by nature, collected everything that went through his hand, every note, every letter and has kept them in very neat files and he gave me access to them and some of these are very crucial in understanding the Iranian side of this. Many of these reports were so sensitive that Al des hier Hadid wrote them in his own hand, would not even trust his secretary with them. Would write them in his own hand, put it in a special briefcase that was made for him, had two keys, one was with the Shah in Tehran, he had the other key in Washington. He would put the material in there, his courier would carry it to Iran and just like James Bond films, there would be a handcuff to the briefcase literally, it's not exaggeration, and if you read some of them you would realize that they were very sensitive material and the Shah wrote his responses on the margins. And I had access to several hundred of these and the pages of these reports and there are a remarkable window into both the Shah's thinking during this period, what he thought the American's were up to, what the Iranian Embassy thought the American's were up to and how the Shah responded to some of these early signs of concern. If you look at the life of the Shah, in my view, if you take his 37 years in power, at almost every stage of his life, if you scratch a little below the surface, if you decide not to accept the sugar lets that have been common, the received opinions that have been given either by his defenders or his detractors, if you decide to truly follow what the cards suggested and scholars must follow, doubt everything except doubt, accept nothing. Accept nothing as fact unless you can find evidence for it. If you do this in my view virtually nothing that we know about the Shah withstands the test scrutiny. At almost every phase, he is different than what the common caricature of him indicates. Sometimes to his benefit and sometimes to his criticism. Sometimes he emerges less virtuous, sometimes he emerges far more brave and virtuous than anybody has given him credit for. At least in my view, that was certainly the case. In some cases, his very strong stance, for example, on oil negotiations is remarkable. He completely stands up to the British, stands up to the Americans, and the issue of Iran becoming the dominant force in the Persian Gulf completely stands up to the British and has a long drawn out battle with the British for almost four years. At one time Al des hier Hadid declares the British Ambassador in Iran persona non grata and only after [inaudible] intervenes and the Shah intervenes did they allow Sir Denis Wright to stay. On another occasion, again, the foreign ministry threatens the British ships if they do not abide by Iran's orders in terms of how they should announce themselves where they can land and Iran says next time you do this, next time you come to our territorial waters without telling us, our planes will fly over and strike and will hit you so there is that period, for example, where he is in clash I think with the British. And then from '71 on, he is in a serious confrontation with the U.S. over the price of oil. He is also contrary to again virtually everything everybody has written about this, he was also in serious conflict with the U.S. on the nuclear issue. The idea that the United States gave him a pass and allowed him to have everything and only it is now that the United States is not in favor of Iran's nuclear program. It's not absolutely I can say with certainty, it's not the reality. The reality is far more complex, there were far more contentious issues between Iran and the United States over the nuclear issue. The minute the United States began to think that the Shah might be doing it for [inaudible] or at least going for a dual use technology making Iran a virtual nuclear state which was, in my view, at least what the Shah intended to do. The minute the United States found that out they tried to put a stop to it. They tried to convince the Shah to give up some of his enrichment. They convinced him to give up his plutonium processing. So on virtually every important issue, if you take this approach, I think one comes away convinced that we need to rethink our appraisal of him, and rethink both his strength and his weakness. In my view, he truly did want a modern Iran. I think he did want a greater and more powerful Iran. But the problem was that he increasingly began to think that only he knew what was good for Iran and only he could determine how Iran should achieve this end. That he wanted good things for Iran, I no longer have for myself any doubt. I think he was very much [inaudible] on making Iran as powerful as Iran could be. He took great pleasure in becoming a player on the international scene. Again, as Kermit Roosevelt, his very close friend, the CIA operative who by 1970s was making hundreds of thousands of dollars as middleman in oil and wheat fields, and arms deals. He had left the CIA and like many other stationed troops in Iran and like the head of CIA itself they decided to get into the business of acting as middlemen for American companies and began raking it in. He was one of them, Roosevelt. And Roosevelt comes to Iran in 1972 and writes a report to Kissinger after he returns. And the report is really remarkable. He says I talked to the Shah for two hours, he didn't mentioned Iran's domestic problems for one minute. He wasn't interested. He talked about international problems. He talked about Soviet threats. He talked about the encroaching Soviet influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, things that were real, things that were I think clearly a threat to what the Shah at least perceived to be Iran's interests, but domestic issues zero and Roosevelt says and Roosevelt was very sympathetic to the Shah at this time. This was the man who buttered his bread essentially. He said he writes to Kissinger I think that the letter is sent to Kissinger. He says, "When I came out of the court and talked to all of my friends, Iranian friends," he said, "Their concern was universally domestic." They were concerned about Iran's situation. They were concerned about the fact that people no longer believed what the Shah says. These are Iranian top politicians confiding to Kermit Roosevelt. They say these Iranian politicians tell Kermit Roosevelt that the country is in serious trouble. People no longer believe what the government tells them and the Shah is preoccupied with things international. So in this phase, for example, his reluctance to attend to these domestic issues or at least attend to them as much as they needed to be attended to, I think prepared the ground for what happened in '79. In the book I make the argument that essentially what happened in Iran and what resulted in Islamic revolution was a combination of two things. A very peculiar path of modernization that the Shah chose. The Shah, once he came to power, essentially adopted his father's model. The father's model was modernize Iran, have the state play a critical role in this process, try to create an industry, try to create a steel mill, begin to bring women into the social process but on one key issue, father and son had a very, very radically different view and that was on the role of the clergy. The father believed that the clergy are an impediment to progress in Iran, that they're impediment to modernization and thus, he went out of his way to limit the number of seminaries, the number of seminarians, the number of mosques. The son, virtually from the day he came to the throne, reversed that policy because he believed that the threat was now communism and after 1953 the threat was communism and defenders of [inaudible], Iranian democrats, Iranian nationalists. More than once he said, "These two are the main enemies of Iran, particularly the communists." And in this, what he thought determining battle of his period, he assumed that the clergy were his allies. That's why he brought back [inaudible] almost immediately after he came to the throne. That's why his strengthened the hands of the clergy. That's why he gave into almost every demand the [inaudible] had when he returned. That's why we have the largest recorded increase in the number of mosques in Iran in the last decade of the Shah's reign. The rate of increase is simply remarkable and if one knows anything about Iran in that period, one would know that if the regime didn't want this, this would not have happened. And we know very -- from many, many, many sources that the Shah believed that the clergy, not the radical clergy, but the clergy are his allies in this determining battle of his time. Now, to his credit, one you should say, he was not alone in making this mistake. This was the era of the Cold War. American government was making the same mistake. In fact, American government probably followed the same vision in Afghanistan after the fall of the Shah. But the basic philosophy was to not allow this middle to grow, to certainly not allow the communists to grow and only allow this religious antidote to communism to grow and when the regime went into a crisis as it did in 1978 the only network capable of holding the country together, the only network that had a national reach was the religious. When the Americans began to look for an alternative to the Shah, as they did in the late '78 around September to November of '78, the Americans and the British in very close proximity in terms of time, decide that the Shah is no longer in a psychological state to rule. He had become virtually catatonic, moments of catatonic silence and depression. There's several reports from some people who were very much his close friends, for example, the head of the French Intelligence, Count de Marenches to a convoy from Carter to an envoy from Callahan, they all come back saying that when they met the Shah, he was catatonic, he wouldn't look us in the eye. He had ups and downs and these documents clearly show the ups and downs, but it was mostly downs and he was beset with a kind of paralysis, a kind of indecision and as I indicated before by '77 he was the brain and the center of every major decision in the country. I have quoted American state department document that lists all the things the Shah must pass on, must decide on. And it is a remarkable list. You wonder how could he ever do all of these things. Well, he did it because he was a very hard worker, he was very disciplined, he worked every day sometimes well into the night. I think he probably, in one year worked more than some [inaudible] teams did in their entire reign. You know, we have stories of how the [inaudible] teams spent their time and their years and one of the best example is the Shah's office itself at Sahebgraniyeh. Sahebgraniyeh was the pleasure dome for Nasir al-Din Shah he had built for himself in Sahebgraniyeh and had ordered I think about 20 or 30 different departments around and these were for his women, the harem and he would go to his office, to his Sahebgraniyeh and at night would call one of the ladies that was their turn and they would meet his majesty provide the services that they must provide as good wives and then go back to their apartments. The Shah turned this into his office what was really a virtual pleasure dome into a very Spartan office and worked almost, as I said, everyday so that's how he got it done when he was capable of getting it done, but then when this paralysis set in, this indecision set in, the whole system went into paralysis, the whole system went into a crisis. It was at that time that the Americans began to look for an alternative. And it was at that time that for a combination of reasons that we can talk about and it has to do with the role that the Iranian opposition played, the role that intellectuals like Jalal Al-e-Ahmad played, the ignorance of the American Embassy about what the clergy wanted to do, the inability of the Iranian intelligentsia to find him and his books and understand what he had actually written, all of these things. And the fact that in the context, which in the American Embassy, with Iranian opposition figures with eye to [inaudible] and his allies in Tehran and in Paris. He offered of himself a completely different image than everything he had written before. He had a very clear track record of where he stood politically. What he wanted to create is what we have in Iran today, what he wanted to create in writing. There is a very long record but in '78 he changed, he realized that's not the time to articulate this. People wanted democracy. In 1978, the '79 Revolution in Iran was the democratic revolution. The word [inaudible] rule of the [inaudible] was never mentioned during Count de Marenches tenure in Paris, because he understood that what the Iranian people need and what the American government will support is not a radical religious government but a moderate democratic government. So who does he appoint as prime minister was [inaudible] one of the national front figures. The government is essentially a coalition government with the national front, but then once in Iran of course he changes his views. But if you look at it historically, when there was no middle, when there was no political organization, it was self-evident that when the system goes into crisis that is going to be that organization that exists. It's going to be the only one that can hold the country together and that's exactly what happened. Ironically, in '72, '73, the Shah realizes that he is in trouble politically. He begins to have a very lengthy negotiations, discussions with a man by the name of Mahir Samid [assumed spelling], one of Iran's most impeccable, most honest officials, a man who just recently died in a two bedroom apartment, a man who worked until he was 84 years old, a man who handled multi, multi million dollar contracts and never once took, as I could see from the way he lived, a penny of illicit gains. The Shah calls him and says, "We need a political institution that can mobilize the people." Go create a political party and for almost six months they meet and Samid, may he rest in peace, because he passed away if he is watching many thanks to him. He took hopeless notes of these meetings about these meetings. Every night he came home, he wrote these notes and he wrote them in English because I think he was worried that Savak [assumed spelling] might get his hands on them and he would get into trouble. That's at least what he told me. And you could clearly see that the Shah is worried about politics, about people wanting a part in the political process, but is at the same time unwilling to let go and Samid keeps telling him that you can't have a party if you want to control everything. We can't have a party if you want to dictate everything. You've got to give me some freedom. And as they are negotiating for the space that this party can have, the price of oil quadrupled again. And the Shah pulled the plug on it. And the Shah literally said that I will put so much money in the life of the middle class that they won't need this political party. Instead of opening the system as his instinct told him to do in '73, he drastically in one of the most I think, destructive decisions of his life decided to create a one party system. Instead of opening the system, he closed it. He created a pseudo fascist party and to their discredit the Iranian technocrats, the Iranian politicians, who knew this was an illegal act, who knew the Iranian constitution was not, could not allow a one party system, none of them as far as we know objected, instead they completely wooed one another to get a better seat at the table of this one party system, a one party system that the Shah virtually overnight decided to declare without telling anybody. Savak didn't know about it, the prime minister didn't know about it, the Queen as far as we know didn't know about it, certainly, the leaders of the two parties that he had himself created, didn't know about it and if you have read anything about the history of that party, you would know that it was a monster at birth and very soon it had to be dismantled. It became a laughing stock and it became the exact opposite of what it had promised to do. It had tried to get political participation. It simply got people more politically angry and more disgruntled. The middle class became more disgruntled, the [inaudible] became more disgruntled and then American policy changed again in Iran with Jimmy Carter. And Jimmy Carter talked of human rights and the Shah decided that he must open the system politically after he had just closed it, after he had just tightened the screws. He decided to loosen it again. From the time of Aristotle, Aristotle wrote that the most dangerous time for an authoritarian regime is not when it is authoritarian, but when it tries to open it up. It is the most difficult transition very few countries have made it successfully. It takes enormous planning. But the Shah decided to make this perilous decision at arguably the worst possible time because it coincided with an economic decline. The Iranian economy that had been growing 20% GNP increase per annum, one of the fastest growing industries industrializing countries at the time, the country that in '75, the Shah gave away $1.4 billion in what the CIA called sarcastically the Shah's lending binge. That same economy in '77 was in the international market borrowing money, borrowing $700 million from Chase Manhattan. An overheated economy suddenly took a dip. So the normal traumas of transition from an authoritarian regime to modern autocratic regime were now added with the traumas of an overheated economy suddenly taking a dip. And if that wasn't enough to create the perfect storm, what truly created the perfect storm was that this two factors was augmented by the Shah's sickness. The Shah, indecisive by nature, unable to decide on times of crisis by nature as he had shown in 1953 and many other times. The Shah whose first instinct in times of serious crisis was to leave the scene, as he had shown repeatedly from '41 to '77 was now faced with the most serious crisis of his kingdom -- of his era and he was facing it when he was undergoing chemotherapy. When he was taking medications that create, if you look at their indications, create paranoia, indecision, depression, someone who is given to depression, someone who we have repeated records of him being given to bouts of depression and anxiety disorder. He was hospitalized in Vienna for several weeks in 1965 for an anxiety disorder. That person was now taking a medication that made him more anxious, made him more depressed, made him more indecisive. That combination created the perfect storm that was the 1979 revolution. In my -- I think I should stop here. A perfect storm is a good place to stop. Thank you.  
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[ Applause ]
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions?  I have one request. When they ask if you could retell the questions that they can record it. 
>> Absolutely. Thank you very much.  
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[ Inaudible audience question ]
^M00:44:46
>> Abbes Milani: The question was could I comment on the Shah's relationship to Rockefeller and their recommendation to bring the Shah into the country. You laugh because I think you probably know that there was a great conspiracy theory about this whole episode. The Rockefeller loan was an illegal loan. The Shah told the Rockefellers that he doesn't want to go through the Parliament to get this loan. Rockefeller's lawyers told them Chase Manhattan's lawyers told them don't let this loan, if anything happens there's nothing to get it, but the Shah decides to make -- Rockefeller decides to make the loan anyway, first of all because Iran had billions of dollars in Chase Manhattan. Furthermore, Rockefeller was the Shah's private banker. He was the executor of the Shah's Will. So there was a lot of close ties. When the hostage crisis occurs, it is Rockefeller and Kissinger who are very much active in telling Carter to allow the Shah to come into the United States and the conspiracy theorists concocted this theory that the reason Rockefeller did this is because Rockefeller knew as the CIA knew, as the British knew, that if the Shah is allowed diplomats might be taken hostage. Britain -- Margaret Thatcher had taken an oath to the Shah, saying that if I become prime minister, I would let you into England. The Shah's head of security had gone to -- the Shah had an estate in there outside London. They had reconfigured security there to make the Shah [inaudible]. The Shah went so far as to promise that he would have no contacts with anyone in Iran, he would have no contacts with officers, he wouldn't bring too many people with him, he was really promising hermetic life but the British didn't do it because they were worried about the hostage. So the theory is that Rockefellers knew that if they bring the Shah here, Iran would take hostages and that the first reaction that the U.S. would have would be to freeze Iran's assets and once the assets are frozen they banks will be the first ones to be paid off, which in fact did happen in that sequence. But this is a kind of close factum reconstruction. There was a congressional hearing about this. There was a congressional hearing into the Rockefeller conspiracy theory and the conclusion was that there is no evidence that there was a conspiracy.  
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[ Inaudible audience question ]
^M00:49:50
>> Abbes Milani: He said the book was fascinating. He asked me to repeat what he said. He said the book is very fascinating and he has read it cover to cover and recommends all of you read it cover to cover. He is asking about the process where the Shah became -- what the Shah became. And the assumption, the underlying assumption of the question is that if we had a different Shah before August '53 and we had a different Shah after August '53 must have dealt with such a bad thing to him that he changed his character and decided when I come back I'm going to become a dictator. I don't think that's what happened at all. I think the Shah tries to get as much of his father's power back almost immediately after he comes to power. One of the received opinions is that from '41 to '53, the Shah was basically happy with his constitutional monarchial role. That's actually not true. It is precisely in this period that the Shah, contrary to the wishes of British and the American Embassy, changes the Constitution giving himself more power, gives himself the power to dismiss the Parliament, gives himself more power over the Parliament by forcing the creation of the Senate, 60 member Senate, 30 of which he appointed. So even before '53, he was bent on seizing as much power as he could. When he came back, he very soon decided that he could become his own prime minister. On several occasions, he literally talks to the British and American Embassy and says, "The only way I'm going to get things done is if I become prime minister." And they tell him, "That's not a good idea. Don't do it." And he faced stiff resistance from Za Hadid [assumed spelling]. Za Hadid was not going to take any nonsense from the Shah. Za Hadid was insistent on his full constitutional rights and thus, there was virtually constant clashes between Za Hadid and the Shah. And the Shah was trying to get rid of Za Hadid virtually from the third month he came back and it's a remarkable story and I've tried to recount it on how much the Shah tried to get rid of Za Hadid and what arguments he used and eventually he succeeded only after two years. But once he got rid of Za Hadid he really did determine to become his own prime minister. He appointed [inaudible] a weak, sick man who couldn't even come to office more than a couple of hours a day and basically his office, the Shah's office, became the virtual prime minister's office in Iran. And the way he did it, again, I have tried to describe it. When Sir Denis Wright comes to Iran, he wasn't Sir then, when Denis Wright comes to Iran in December '53 to reopen the British Embassy in Iran. [inaudible] had closed ties in December they decided to renew -- they decided to renew earlier. In December they decided time was ripe to now send an emissary [assumed spelling]. Denis Wright was the man they sent. The first night -- full night he was in Iran he receives two emissaries from the Shah, Ernest Perron, the Shah's friend from Switzerland, and Shahrough [assumed spelling], a famous speaker of Nazi propaganda during the Nazi era. By then, he had come back to Iran and was a close ally of the Shah. They tell Denis Wright any important discussion you want to have you go through us to his Majesty. Denis Wright said, "The hell with you I'm not going to do that," and went told [inaudible]. Two days later they came back, this time with a letter they claimed was the Shah's writing. Again, Denis Wright refused. Precisely this process that Denis Wright refused the next time Denis Wright came back to Iran, as an Ambassador, was the process of deciding everything important. Read [inaudible] memoirs. Every important decision doesn't go through the prime minister, doesn't go through the oil minister or the head of the oil company. It goes through this special office, the Shah decides, sends it back to this process. How he did it I think is a combination of several factors. He did have psycho fans that he chose. [inaudible] both had a very influential role in making this possible. [inaudible] kept insisting that we must have the Shah in cabinet meetings. He kept insisting that he is really [inaudible]. That kind of degrading language was very much the [inaudible]. After '55, the only period where there is a literal prime minister in Iran and not the Shah's chief of staff is [inaudible] and the Shah does it gradually, does it through a combination of force and after '60s, he does it, I think, through what again the CIA calls nothing succeeds like success. When he did change Iran, and he did, I mean he made remarkable strides. In 1961 Iran needed a $35 million loan. The Shah says they forced [inaudible] on me for $35 million. That same Shah for 10 years later gave away $1.4 billion.  
>> [inaudible] oil?  
>> Abbes Milani: Of course, it was oil but he had an important role in increasing the price of oil. He played a very critical role in the price of oil. So it is a very, I think, complicated process, his own desires and psycho fans combined.  
>> [inaudible]  It's true that the American Embassy did [inaudible] during the '70s and largely because the Shah didn't want us to know about Iran. But the fault [inaudible] difficult years that the Shah was favorable to the clergy until [inaudible]. In '78, he [inaudible] on other people lead by the clergy [inaudible]. The Shah was also as you described in the book a weak, indecisive [inaudible] where I think is basically unfit to rule. Now, you have a [inaudible] American Embassy [inaudible], who was operating against that [inaudible] potentially would influence American policy. I would say by the time [inaudible] the Americas and Iranian Ambassador in the United States who had a special relationship with [inaudible] decision. He influenced Dr. [inaudible] in such a way that American policy was [inaudible].  
>> We don't have that much time.  
>> Okay.
>> Abbes Milani: Henry Precht was the head of the Iran desk at the State Department during the time of the crisis and the Shah considers him personally responsible for the revolution. In one of the interviews I really mean that. He uses a nasty term if I may be allowed. He says that, "SOB Precht who was a mcgoverned [assumed spelling] radical, he had it out for me and he overthrew me." And you're right that Al des Hier Hadid, he did have close ties with Brzezinski and there was paralysis between Brzezinski and Vance and between your office and the office of the national security counsel in charge of Iran, but I think the responsibility for that paralysis is not on Al des Hier Hadid, it's on you American diplomats who are in charge of American foreign policy. If you allow an ambassador to fool the entire infrastructure of foreign policy in this country that fault Brutus lies in us, not in the stars. You're absolutely right that Iranian -- that the Shah did not want Americans to know about Iran. The Shah puts his foot down in '65 and demands that the CIA and the American Embassy stop contacts with the opposition. The American Embassy analysis -- the state department analysis of Iran up to '65, in my view, are brilliant. It is from '65 to '78 that the CIA that was predicting a revolution in '58, in '78, I think, August '78 said Iran is not even in a pre-revolutionary stage. Part of that responsibility clearly lied with the Shah, because he really did not make it possible for these contacts. He wouldn't allow the American Ambassador to invite Ali Amini, an ex prime minister to his house. That's how far he had gone and I think the paralysis in foreign policy establishment here, compounded by the paralysis of the Shah created that vacuum. While I fully agree that some of the clergy were put in prison, but the number of the clergy that were put in prison was very small. The more important thing is that enormous infrastructure of organizations that were allowed to be created and it was the only organization that was allowed to be created. The Shah thought that if push comes to shove the moderates will take over this and will save him. In fact, the radicals dominated it. And [inaudible] the likes of [inaudible] who wanted to save the Shah could absolutely do nothing.  
>> One more question?  
^M00:59:28
[ Inaudible audience question ]
^M00:59:54
>> Abbes Milani: The question is did Carter have any role in ousting the Shah?  I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I have found no evidence. Zero, that the American government wanted consciously to overthrow the Shah. Even Henry Precht didn't want to overthrow them contrary, to the Shah's belief. The American policy until November '78, at least the documents I have been able to see, was to try to save the Shah. It was only after the Shah, they saw that the Shah is in this paralysis that they decided he is not savable and then, only then, did they look for an alternative. And it is there that the ignorance of Sullivan, his infamous telegram from Tehran saying that the clergy will create a democratic process becomes influential. The notion that the Shah was overthrown by a conspiracy of the British or the Americans to me is not without with any foundation. The notion that the Americans were worried about the Shah, the size of the Iranian economy was no bigger than a GM. And what threat was the U.S. [inaudible] Iran to the [inaudible]. What better ally could the United States have in the region? Some royalists even have a theory that Israel overthrew the Shah. What could conceivably have Israel achieved from overthrowing it's staunchest ally in the Muslim world?  Conspiracy theories -- let me end by an unhappy note. Conspiracy theories begin to develop in Iranian consciousness about the time Iranians begin to smoke opium. I honestly mean that. The time is almost exactly the same and they have the same function. They're a false self-soothing, self-medicating, self-absolving medication, but they get you addicted. We've got to kick this addiction.  
^M01:02:09
[ Applause ]
^M01:02:15
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you very much for everyone for coming and there's a book signing in the back and Dr. Milani will be with you shortly. Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
^E01:02:31