Jimmy Carter’s Vacillating Approach in Foreign Policy Towards Iran

If you asked Jimmy Carter what his foreign policy towards Iran was, you will struggle to get an answer but three things remain clear; he wavered between different opinions hence failed to provide clear guidance to the ‘American’ Shah Mohammad Reza, he was too busy with other key policies to pay attention to Iran and finally it messed him up politically. So who is Jimmy Carter?

Smith (2011) calls him one of the most religiously devout presidents who publicly professed his faith in Jesus Christ from a young age. According to McCrisken (2003), Carter rose from a peanut farmer, nuclear engineer and service to the Navy to run for the presidency as an outsider without the baggage of the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal. His only foreign policy experience was being a member of the Trilateral Commission.  

Moens (1991) asserts that Carter was elected president in 1976 under the banner of human rights and arms control. His was a moral presidency whereby the forceful use of the military to further American interests was off the table. Moens adds that Iranian opposition elements were initially pleased with Carter’s human rights pronouncements while the Shah in pre-empting Carter’s presidency had made some political and judicial reforms. Bill (1978) opines that Carter needed Iran because it strategically borders the Soviet, oil dependence by the West and Middle East peace efforts. The Shah rewarded the United States by spending heavily on military goods, controlling oil prices and reaching out to Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Before tearing further into Carter’s handling of Iran, it is important to turn our attention to his advisors, critically assess a timeline of key events leading up to the Iranian revolution and then finally examine the decision making approaches of the administration using Graham Allison’s Organizational Process Model and Bureaucratic Politics Model as well as Irving Janis’ Groupthink.

The President’s Advisors

This section will look at President Carter’s advisors especially those who were actively involved with Iran and although the list may not be exhaustive it includes Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan.

Cyrus Vance came into the administration from a legal upbringing but also served in the Navy during World War II. He was adopted and mentored by his uncle John Davis who was a diplomat and a failed presidential candidate. His early education was in a faith based school and volunteered in missionary activities where he encountered the less privileged. Laucella (2004) asserts that Vance was affected by the political trauma of the Vietnam war that led him into a depression hence abandoning traditional stereotypes of the enemy and acquiring new images of the world that can be summarized as complex-interdependent that looked at diplomacy beyond East versus West, optimistic-détente with the view that cooperation and peaceful competition as a possibility and lastly empathic which called upon America to walk in the shoes of the nationalists in third world countries. According to McCrisken (2003), he was a patient and persistent diplomat. He held similar views on Iran with the Vice President Walter Mondale and both shared a military background too. 

McCrisken (2003) refers to Zbigniew Brzezinski as a realist with a distaste for Wilsonian idealism. His father, a Polish diplomat enlightened him about Stalin’s purge and show trials in the Soviet Union as early as 9 years. He grew up admiring the impressive Polish military parades hence did not expect them to be crushed by Nazi forces. Upon joining the university, he told his father that his life’s ambition was to liberate Poland from the Soviet occupation and got a boost when John Kennedy employed him to write speeches for his 1960 presidential campaign. (Vaughan, 2008). He made Governor Jimmy Carter a member of his Trilateral Commission where Vance was also a participant.  Brzezinski advocated for use of force in Iran and believed revolutions are won because of tactical errors or concessions by the ruling elite (Moens, 1991)

Just like Vance and Carter, William Sullivan was a military man having served in the United States Navy.  He was a well-known career diplomat with a background in counter-insurgency due to his involvement in the Vietnam war as well as Laos where he executed a secret war whose activities were hidden from the American people and congress. Brzezinski recommended his appointment despite opposition from other experts because it pleased the Shah to have someone who had the CIA stature of the previous ambassador. One editorial claimed that he was best suited to run secret presidential wars and lying to congress (MERIP Reports, 1977).

Graveyard in the Sand: A timeline of Key Events before and After the Revolution

To a neutral, Carter took up the reins of government in 1977 and the revolution happened early 1979 hence it is a bit unfair to put all the blame on him. This calls for a look at the events that led up to the revolution as captured by Moens(1991) and other scholars;

·         In December 1977 Carter praised the Shah as an “Island of stability” on his visit to Tehran and refused to meet the opposition which dashed any hopes the opposition had in the new US presidency.

·         In the summer of 1978 the Central Intelligence Agency held that the riots were not a threat to the regime based on SAVAK analysis of the unrest. The Defense Intelligence Agency predicted stability for another decade.

·         In September 1978, Jimmy Carter took time off his historic Camp David meetings to telephone the Shah and assure him of his support (Bill, 1978).

·         A Department of State memo in October 24^th 1978 calling for more reforms, opposing military takeover and outreach to the opposition never reached Carter because Brzezinski shelved it.

·         Sullivan shocked Washington with a cable on Shah’s desire to resign on November 2^nd 1978 and a week later told them to “Think the Unthinkable” which widened rift with the White House.

·         Khomeini’s strength was noticed when 8 million Iranians turned up for a peaceful protest on December 11^th ,1978 while their leader was exiled in Paris (Cottam, 1979).

·         George Ball was sent to assess the situation in December 1978 and reported that the Shah was damaged beyond repair but Vance and Brzezinski disagreed on solution.

·         On January 2^nd 1979, Sullivan once again told Washington to open contacts with Khomeini. At this point Carter had drifted further away from Sullivan and Brzezinski. Personal relations between Vance and Brzezinski were also in tatters. Meanwhile Carter ignored Sullivan’s advice in January 1979 not to think much of the Bakhtiar government. He had been appointed Prime Minister on January 16^th, 1979 the same day the Shah fled to Egypt.

·         Bakhtiar welcomed Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini back from exile who appointed Mehdi Barzagan in a parallel government. On February 11^th, 1979 a revolution was complete. Jimmy Carter rushed to recognize Bazargan government and promised not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs (Gasiorowski, 2012)

·         On October 22, 1979 the US allowed the shah in for medical treatment which was interpreted in Tehran as an attempt to bring him back to power. Two weeks later, excited militant students seized the US Embassy in Tehran taking 52 employees hostage (Shabafrouz, 2009). Barzagan resigned which ended diplomatic contact between the US and Iran, Carter’s political grave had been dug.

·         On April 24^th 1980 eight US helicopters tried a rescue mission in Iran with a plan to have hostages airlifted to Germany via Egypt. Despite the CIA estimating that 60% of the hostages could end up dead in the process, Carter approved it. The rescue aborted due to bad weather and mechanical failure. Worse still, during the withdrawal one of the helicopters collided with a civilian plane killing 8 men (Brulé, 2005). Earlier, Vance had resigned because of Carter’s decision to solve the hostage crisis in Iran militarily.

An Examination of the Decision Making Process

Carter’s handling of Iran comes down to the decision making process and this is evident throughout a series of events listed previously. This analysis will therefore make use of the Organization Process Model, the Bureaucratic Politics Model and Groupthink.

Allison’s Organizational Process Model defines a government as made up of loosely allied organizations with standard operating procedures that frame the problems decision makers have to resolve (Akoto, 2014).  Unfortunately for Carter, there was trouble with the standard operating procedures that were not only meant to shape the problems for him but also to implement solutions if at all solutions were there. Brzezinski, feeling isolated because of his obsession with the use of force manipulated the process to push his view and preferred working through Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah’s ambassador to Washington instead of William Sullivan. The CIA was also depending on the SAVAK for intelligence information which blinded them to the strength of the opposition and illness of the Shah. Henry Precht, a junior officer broke protocol by approaching Brzezinski directly calling for America to abandon the Shah and go for Khomeini forces but Brzezinski went on to exclude him from SCC meetings. However, the standard operating procedures enabled key cables from Sullivan to get through to Carter although the ambassador got ignored and left without a viable solution to the growing crisis (Moens, 1991).

Bureaucratic Politics Model emphasizes that the government or a state is not a unitary actor but made up of several players who are leaders sitting at the top of the organizations politically pulling and hauling before coming to a consensus on the foreign policy decisions to be implemented (Akoto, 2014).  Brzezinski and Vance practically failed to reconcile their different opinions and clashes between the two created camps that made it difficult for Carter to make a decision. The compromise statements that came out of Washington were too vague for the Shah to make sense of them so much that he kept on seeking clarification for a statement that was meant to clarify previous position. The third party assessment by George Ball claiming the Shah was damaged beyond repair did not help either as the two disagreed on the solution prompting Ball to go on the offensive against Brzezinski (Moens, 1991).

Lastly on Groupthink, Janis states that participants in a group decision making scenario try to conform to the group’s preferences through “concurrence-seeking” by suppressing their own dissenting views (Akoto, 2014). Although the Carter administration does not fulfill all the parameters for Groupthink, there were some aspects of it in dealing with Iran.  This is because key advisors agreed too quickly on liberalization and incorporating the opposition into the government to fend off demonstrations except Brzezinski, nobody believed the Shah could not deal with the unrest hence no contingency plans if threats arose, the announcement of free elections to be held in 1979 blinded them into thinking the opposition should be contented, all believed the Shah must survive for the sake of American interests and despite Carter liking Ball’s ideas of a lesser role for the monarch he did not want to disappoint the Shah (Moens, 1991). Therefore, the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and to a less extent the Department of State advocated for a policy of good relations with the Shah and downplayed the strength of the Iranian opposition (Bill, 1978).

Conclusion

Carter’s foreign policy was neither supported nor understood by the majority of the pubic despite promises during campaigns to have policies the public know about and support. Apart from the Camp David Accords, he leaned towards solving long-term problems at the expense of what was popular (Katz, 2000). Meanwhile Cottam (1979) argues that Carter’s advocacy of human rights indirectly helped destabilize the royalty but he got no credit because he was regarded as grossly hypocritical.

Niccolo Machiavelli stated that “a prince who wants to keep his authority, must learn how not to be good, must be a great liar and hypocrite” (Murray, 1996). Carter was however too good, too honest and even if he was called a hypocrite by Khomeini, he was not a good hypocrite. This was worsened by the battle for his soul between Brzezinski and Vance that left him wavering between foreign policy decisions on Iran, the prince could not survive re-election.

References

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