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U.S. Military Missions To Iran, 1943–1978: The Political Economy of Military Assistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Thomas M. Ricks
Thomas M. Ricks*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

“Aid to Iran is not recommended primarily because Iran needs economic aid, but because it offers the most effective means of forcing the Iranians in spite of themselves to put their house in order.” Mr. McGhee to the Secretary of State, UM D-97, April 21, 1950 in Foreign Relations of the United States: 1950, Volume V (Washington, D.C., 1978), p. 516.

“The largest, most pervasive source of technical assistance, on manpower problems was the United States foreign aid program, both civilian and military. There was hardly an agency or program of the Iranian Government concerned with training or education that did not have its Point IV experts or U.S. contract group.” George Baldwin, Planning and Development in Iran (New York, 1967), p. 145.

“Taken on balance, all U.S. foreign assistance is ultimately military or paramilitary in nature, even its ostensibly economic aid: it is designed primarily to enable foreign countries to support a military superstructure capable of saving the United States the cost of having to provide military service with its own armed forces.” Michael Hudson, “The Political Economy of Foreign Aid,” in The Myth of Aid, by Denis Goulet and Michael Hudson (New York, 1971), p. 80.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3-4 , Summer-Autumn 1979 , pp. 163 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1979

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 13th Annual Middle East Studies Association Meeting, November 1979, Salt Lake City, Utah, and at the 12th Annual Association of Arab-American University Graduates, November 1979, Washington, D.C. A lengthier version of the present article will be published in a forthcoming volume by A.A.U.G., U.S. Intervention in the Middle East (1981).

References

Notes

1. United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1942, Volume IV (Washington, D.C., 1963), p. 262.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as Foreign Relations: 1942.)

2. Ibid., p. 242.

3. Ibid., p. 259.

4. United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United states: 1945, Volume VIII (Washington, D.C., 1969), p. 534.Google Scholar

5. United States, Department of State, Executive Agreement Series, Nos. 351-400 (Washington, D.C., 1944), p. 3.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 6.

7. Ibid.

8. Foreign Relations: 1942, p. 223.

9. Ibid., p. 248.

10. United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1943, Volume IV (Washington, D.C., 1964), p. 514.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as Foreign Relations: 1943.)

11. United States, National Archives, Records of the office of Strategic Services, Number 61233 “Police, Gendarmerie, and Army,” February 1944, fol. 1 and Number 76263 “The Army and the Gendarmerie,” 16 May 1944, fol. 1.

12. SirSkrine, Clarmont P., world War in Iran (London, 1962), p. 170.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as Skrine, World War.)

13. United States, National Archives, Records of the Office of Strategic Services, Number 73660 “USSR in the Middle East - Activities in Spring 1944,” May 8, 1944, fol. 2.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. United States, National Archives, Records of the office of Strategic Services, Number 109456 “Annual Estimate of Political Stability,” December 19, 1944, fol. 2.

17. Ibid., fols. 2-3 and 7.

18. Ibid., fol. 7.

19. Skrine, world War, pp. 227 and 236.

20. United States, Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts, Series 1650-1699 (Washington, D.C., 1947), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 3.

22. Ibid., p. 10.

23. Foreign Relations: 1947, “‘The Pentagon Talks of 1947,’” p. 577. See Sheehan, Michael K., Iran: The Impact of United States Interests and Policies, 1941-1954 (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1968), pp. 32–43.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as Sheehan, Iran.)

24. United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1948, Volume V (Washington, D.C., 1975), p. 88.Google Scholar Hereinafter as Foreign Relations: 1948.

25. Foreign Relations: 1947, p. 4. See Elwell-Sutton, L. P., Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London, 1955), p. 159.Google Scholar Hereinafter as Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil.

26. Max Weston Thornburg graduated in 1917 from the University of California as an engineer. After three years in the Army, he joined Standard Oil of California in 1920 acting as chief engineer of the manufacturing department from 1924 to 1929, as manager of the Richmond Refinery from 1929 to 1931, and as chairman of the board of engineers from 1931 to 1936; the latter was during the critical years of SOCAL's work in Saudi Arabia's oil fields. Soon after, Thornburg became vice president of Bahrein Petroleum Company (owned by the Texas Company and Standard of California) and, from 1940 to 1943 served simultaneously as the petroleum advisor to the State Department; Thornburg's successor in the State Department was Charles B. Rayner of Socony-Vacuum; the same company which was so intimately involved in the 1944 oil concession “scramble” in Southeastern Iran. In 1946, Thornburg was in Tehran consulting for the Government of Iran on a seven-year plan “for Iran's Reconstruction and Development” along with the industrialization plans. His association, while still an oil executive of his own company and living in the Persian Gulf, with the Supreme Planning Council led him to suggest Morrison-Knudsen International as a survey team of ten American engineers. From 1948 to 1951, he was chairman of Overseas Consultants, Inc. and helped complete Iran's Seven-Year Plan. He returned to Turkey in 1954-1955 to assist in Turkey's industrial plan. Between 1954 and 1960, Thornburg taught at the University of California and was a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs; during his visit at Harvard, Thornburg prepared his book, People and policy in the Middle East and worked with the Harvard Advisory Group and its draft of Iran's Third Plan under the directorship of Edward S. Mason. See Thornburg, Max Weston, People and Policy in the Middle East: A Study of Social and Political Change as a Basis for United States Policy (New York, 1964), pp. ix–xiiGoogle Scholar; Baldwin, George, Planning and Development in Iran (Baltimore, 1967), pp. 25–28Google Scholar; Engler, Politics of Oil, pp. 281-282; and Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, pp. 141, and 159-161.

27. Like Max Thornburg, Torkild Rieber worked closely with international business while associated with an oil company and later consulting for the Government of Iran. Rieber was a “business man of wide interests” having been associated with the Texas Company since 1905 and its chairman from 1935 to 1940. In 1951, Rieber arrived in Tehran on December 31, as the petroleum advisor to the World Bank in the company of Hector Purdhomme, Director of IBRD's loan department; following the CIA overthrow of the Mossadegh Government, Reiber returned to Iran as General Zahedi's OIL advisor in 1955. Mason, Edward S. and Asher, Robert E., The World Bank Since Bretton Woods (Washington, D.C., 1973), pp. 602, fn. 11 and 602-609.Google Scholar See also Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, pp. 276-277; Kolko, Limits of Power, p. 419; Engler, Politics of oil, pp. 200 and 431.

28. Foreign Relations: 1949, p. 559.

29. Ibid., p. 554. See Sheehan, Iran, p. 49.

30. Kolko, Gabriel, The Roots of American Foreign Policy (Boston, 1969), p. 79.Google Scholar

31. United States, Department of State, United States Treaties and Other International Agreements: 1950, Volume I (Washington, D.C., 1952), p. 420.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., p. 421. (The emphasis has been added.)

33. For the scope of MAAG and its relationship to the U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Europe, see United States, General Accounting Office, Profiles of Military Assistance Advisory Groups in 15 Countries (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 26–37Google Scholar and Hammond, Paul, Louscher, David J., and Salomon, Michael D., “Growing Dilemmas for the Management of Arms Sales,” Armed Forces and Society (Fall, 1979), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar

34. United States, Department of State, United States Treaties and Other International Agreements: 1952, Volume 3, Part 4 (Washington, D.C., 1955), p. 4742.Google Scholar

35. Warne, William E., Mission For Peace: Point 4 in Iran (New York, 1965), p. 60.Google Scholar

36. United States, Department of State, Point Four: Cooperative Program for Aid in the Development of Economically Underdeveloped Areas, Publication 3719, Economic Cooperation Series 24 (Washington, D.C., 1950), p. 54.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 99.

38. Foreign Relations: 1950, p. 465.

39. United States, House of Representatives, The Mutual Security Act of 1954, Hearings of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C., 1954), p. 503.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., pp. 504 and 569-570. See Sheehan, Iran, pp. 55-65.

41. As quoted in Horowitz, David, From Yalta to Vietnam (New York, 1965), p. 186.Google Scholar

42. Zonis, Marvin, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton, 1971), p. 85.Google Scholar

43. Smith, Harvey H. et al., Area Handbook for Iran (Washington, D.C., 1971), p. 574.Google Scholar

44. United States, General Accounting Office, Issues Related to U.S. Military Sales and Assistance to Iran (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 9.Google Scholar

45. United States Senate, U.S. Military Sales to Iran, A Staff Report to the Subcommittee on Foreign Assistance of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, July 1976 (Washington, D.C., 1976), p. 34.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as U.S. Military Sales.)

46. Baldwin, George, Planning and Development in Iran (Baltimore, 1967), pp. ix–x:Google Scholar

47. Ibid., p. 200.

48. Ibid., p. 201. See Sheehan, Iran, p. 49.

49. Ibid., p. 99.

50. United States House of Representatives, United States Arms Policies in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea Areas: Past, Present, and Future, Report of a Staff Survey Mission to Ethiopia, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, 95th Congress, 1st Session, December 1977 (Washington, D.C., 1977), p. 141.Google Scholar (Hereinafter as U.S. Arms Policies.)

51. U.S. Military Sales, p. 35.

52. U.S. Arms Policies, p. 141.

53. Ibid., pp. 145-157. See also U.S. Military Sales, p. 36.

54. Ibid., p. 143.

55. United States Senate, “The Middle East and Iran,” Congressional Record, Proceedings, 95th Congress, 1st Session, February 10, 1977 (Washington, D.C., 1977), p. 12.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., p. 13.

57. Bayne, E. A. and Collin, Richard O., “Arms and Advisors: Views from Saudi Arabia and Iran,” American Universities Field Staff Reports: Southwest Asia Series, XIX, 1 (January, 1976), p. 13.Google Scholar