Carter Sold out Iran 1977-1978
By: Chuck Morse,
the author of Why Im a Right-Wing Extremist
As if a light were switched
off, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, portrayed for 20 years as a
progressive modern ruler by Islamic standards, was suddenly, in 1977-1978,
turned into this foaming at the mouth monster by the international left media. Soon
after becoming President in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a deliberate campaign
to undermine the Shah. The Soviets and their left-wing apparatchiks would
coordinate with Carter by smearing the Shah in a campaign of lies meant to
topple his throne. The result would be the establishment of a Marxist/Islamic
state in Iran headed by the tyrannical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian
revolution, besides enthroning one of the worlds most oppressive regimes, would
greatly contribute to the creation of the Marxist/Islamic terror network
challenging the free world today.
At the time, a senior Iranian diplomat in Washington observed, President
Carter betrayed the Shah and helped create the vacuum that will soon be filled
by Soviet-trained agents and religious fanatics who hate America. Under the
guise of promoting human rights, Carter made demands on the Shah while
blackmailing him with the threat that if the demands werent fulfilled, vital
military aid and training would be withheld. This strange policy, carried out
against a staunch, 20 year Middle East ally, was a repeat of similar policies
applied in the past by US governments to other allies such as pre Mao China and
pre Castro Cuba.
Carter started by pressuring the Shah to release political prisoners
including known terrorists and to put an end to military tribunals. The newly
released terrorists would be tried under civil jurisdiction with the
Marxist/Islamists using these trials as a platform for agitation and
propaganda. This is a standard tactic of the left then and now. The free world
operates at a distinct disadvantage to Marxist and Islamic nations in this
regard as in those countries, trials are staged to show the political faith of
the ruling elite. Fair trials, an independent judiciary, and a search for
justice is considered to be a western bourgeois prejudice.
Carter pressured Iran to allow for free assembly which meant that
groups would be able to meet and agitate for the overthrow of the government. It
goes without saying that such rights didnt exist in any Marxist or Islamic
nation. The planned and predictable result of these policies was an escalation
of opposition to the Shah, which would be viewed by his enemies as a weakness. A
well-situated internal apparatus in Iran receiving its marching orders from the
Kremlin egged on this growing opposition.
By the fall of 1977, university students, working in tandem with a
Shiite clergy that had long opposed the Shahs modernizing policies, began a
well coordinated and financed series of street demonstrations supported by a
media campaign reminiscent of the 1947-1948 campaign against Chinas Chiang Ki
Shek in favor of the agrarian reformer Mao tse Tung. At this point the Shah was
unable to check the demonstrators, who were instigating violence as a means of
inflaming the situation and providing their media stooges with atrocity
propaganda. Rumors were circulating amongst Iranians that the CIA under the
orders of President Carter organized these demonstrations.
In November 1977, the Shah and his Empress, Farah Diba, visited the
White House where they were met with hostility. They were greeted by nearly
4,000 Marxist-led Iranian students, many wearing masks, waving clubs, and
carrying banners festooned with the names of Iranian terrorist organizations. The
rioters were allowed within 100 feet of the White House where they attacked
other Iranians and Americans gathered to welcome the Shah. Only 15 were
arrested and quickly released. Inside the White House, Carter pressured the
Shah to implement even more radical changes. Meanwhile, the Soviets were
mobilizing a campaign of propaganda, espionage, sabotage, and terror in Iran. The
Shah was being squeezed on two sides.
In April 1978, Moscow would instigate a bloody coup in Afghanistan and
install the communist puppet Nur Mohammad Taraki. Taraki would proceed to call
for a jihad against the Ikhwanu Shayateen which translates into brothers of
devils, a label applied to opponents of the new red regime in Kabul and to the
Iranian government. Subversives and Soviet-trained agents swarmed across the
long Afghanistan/Iran border to infiltrate Shiite mosques and other Iranian
institutions. By November 1978, there was an estimated 500,000 Soviet backed
Afghanis in Iran where, among other activities, they set up training camps for
terrorists.
Khomeini, a 78-year-old Shiite cleric whose brother had been imprisoned
as a result of activities relating to his Iranian Communist party affiliations,
and who had spent 15 years in exile in Bath Socialist Iraq, was poised to
return. In exile, Khomeini spoke of the creation of a revolutionary Islamic
republic, which would be anti-Western, socialist, and with total power in the
hands of an ayatollah. In his efforts to violently overthrow the government of
Iran, Khomeini received the full support of the Soviets.
Nureddin Klanuri, head of the Iranian Communist Tudeh Party, in exile
in East Berlin, stated, The Tudeh Party approves Ayatollah Khomeinis initiative
in creating the Islamic Revolutionary Council. The ayatollahs program coincides
with that of the Tudeh Party.? Khomeinis closest advisor, Sadegh Ghothzadeh,
was well known as a revolutionary with close links to communist intelligence. In
January 1998, Pravda, the official Soviet organ, officially endorsed the
Khomeini revolution.
American leaders were also supporting Khomeini. After the Pravda
endorsement, Ramsey Clark, who served as Attorney General under President
Lyndon B. Johnson, held a press conference where he reported on a trip to Iran
and a Paris visit with Khomeini. He urged the US government to take no action
to help the Shah so that Iran could determine its own fate. Clark played a
behind the scenes role influencing members of Congress to not get involved in
the crisis. Perhaps UN Ambassador Andrew Young best expressed the thinking of
the left at the time when he stated that, if successful, Khomeini would
eventually be hailed as a saint.
Khomeini was allowed to seize power in Iran and, as a result, we are
now reaping the harvest of anti-American fanaticism and extremism. Khomeini
unleashed the hybrid of Islam and Marxism that has spawned suicide bombers and
hijackers. President Jimmy Carter, and the extremists in his administration are
to blame and should be held accountable.