known as Persia was like a fish between two cats, the object of unwanted attention from rival imperialistic powers Great Britain and Russia. Each of the two powers attempted to acquire or control, and then exploit, Persian resources and territories, just as other invaders had done for centuries before. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, America remained aloof from this competition while the Persians maintained their independence by playing each of the rivals against the other.1 Only with the onset of the Cold War did Iran, as it was renamed in 1935, come to sustain the concentrated attention of the U.S. government. And as a result, the United States eventually moved, in Iranians’ view, from a likable and benevolent friend to just another foreign oppressor: “The protector [became] the exploiter” as one Iran scholar states it.2 But this occurred neither quickly nor—as is popularly now claimed in Iran—because of the role played by the United States in the 1953 coup that restored the shah to power.3
From the 1830s, when Americans were first known to have set foot in Iran, until the late 1940s, the United States was content to leave Iran (and all of Southwest Asia, for that matter) to the British, in whose area of influence that region lay. U.S. policymakers studiously ignored periodic importuning from Iranian leaders for closer ties or material assistance, particularly military equipment. When World War II made it necessary for the United States to send troops to Iran in support of the occupation by Great Britain and the Soviet Union, it did so only minimally and withdrew them within six months after the end of the war. What was it about the Cold War that placed Iran “at the vortex of history,” as Henry Kissinger has it, and what combination of events finally pushed Iran and the United States into a relationship that created intensely hostile anti-Americanism in Iran?4 Conventional wisdom holds simply that it was oil, but that is not correct. While oil was indeed a small part of the American calculus, the far better answer is: geography.5
Situated between the communist Soviet Union and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, its southwestern border the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Iran could not fail to become strategically vital to both sides in the Cold War. In the period immediately following World War II, Iranian oil fueled Western Europe’s economic recovery; likewise, Iranian oil exports to the West would certainly be consequential in any large-scale conflict with the USSR.6 Until 1954 that oil was lifted jointly by the British and Iranians, with no American participation.
But there were reasons other than oil for the United States to sustain an interest in the future of Iran at the beginning of the Cold War. Of more immediate concern to U.S. government policymakers was the Soviet Union’s resolve to expand its influence throughout the Arab world and Southwest Asia. Iran’s location as a port of entry to the Middle East and to historically coveted warm-water ports assigned this ancient country a substantial role in Soviet expansionist goals. And the accident of geography that made it a buffer between the Soviet Union and the oil-rich Middle East made Iran equally important to those seeking to halt Soviet expansionism.7
Iran’s sixteen-hundred-mile-long border with the Soviet Union was a vital element in Western security considerations after World War II for several reasons. First, the quickest way for the Soviets to reach the Persian Gulf was to head directly south from the Azerbaijan Socialist Republic and through western Iran. Second, the Soviets had occupied Iranian territory south of that border more than once and after World War II attempted to do so again. Third, the contiguity of Soviet territory with northern Iran allowed the Communists to establish covert support bases in efforts to undermine local Iranian authority. Later, American policymakers and intelligence officers found this border vital to U.S. national security programs.8
Of almost equal import were the long borders Iran and the Soviet Union each shared with Afghanistan: an invading Soviet army transiting the Afghan frontier and thence into eastern Iran would be unhindered in its pathway to the Arabian Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian and Arabian oil reserves.9 In short, a Soviet invasion of Iran, whether from north to south (through Azerbaijan) or from east to west (via Afghanistan), would find it easy going. Such an invasion would give the Soviets control over the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which passed 40 to 60 percent of the world’s oil supplies. Further, U.S. policymakers postulated that if Iran were permitted to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence, American prestige in the region would be severely diminished, perhaps undermining the will of other Middle East countries to resist Soviet expansionism.10 Finally, in the days before long-range jet transport aircraft, Soviet control of Iran and the immediate region would have created a grave logistics challenge in moving troops and supplies from Europe to the Far East in the event of conflict in that arena.11
After the 1953 coup, when the United States became inextricably entwined in Iran’s future, additional factors increased Iran’s importance to America and the West in general.12 Iran under the shah commenced an extensive modernization program while adopting a staunchly pro-West, anticommunist political posture. Because of the unusually personal nature of the relationship between the shah and the U.S. government, the two countries not surprisingly came to share similar views of the region’s security requirements.13 As time passed, Iran took on increasing importance as the guarantor of security for the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.14 By the 1960s the oil that transited the strait was bolstering the economies of America, Europe, and Japan. If one believes that a strong economy is essential for national security and defense, then Iranian oil was doing much more than simply providing cheap gas and profits for petroleum companies.
One other aspect of Iran’s geographic location made it vital not only to the interests of America and the West in general, but to the security of the whole world. Beginning in the late 1950s, the U.S. intelligence community placed signals intelligence listening posts in Iran along the Soviet border. There were ultimately seven sites in the Elbourz Mountains of northern Iran, the most important being the two code-named Tacksman.15 Tacksman I, located at the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea near the village of Behshar, was established in the late 1950s. Tacksman II, constructed in 1964–65, was located well into the mountains 40 miles east of Meshad, outside the village of Kabkan. From Kabkan electronic eyes enjoyed unobstructed “line-of-sight” views across the vast open spaces of the Kara Kum Desert and the flatness of the Uzbek plain into the Kazakh SSR (see map 1). There, barely 650 miles north-northeast of Kabkan, near the city of Leninsk (Tyuratam) on the banks of the Sar-Darya, sprawled the Baikonur missile testing complex. (The town of Baikonur was actually a bit more than 300 miles from Tyuratam; the Soviets gave the name Baikonur to the missile complex to disguise its location and confuse Western intelligence.16 Thanks to U-2 and satellite imagery, this ploy didn’t work.)
In the 1950s and 1960s the Soviets tested their liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at Tyuratam, and Tacksman II could monitor every missile launched from that site toward the Kamchatka Peninsula to the northeast. Sophisticated Tacksman II equipment could acquire the telemetry signals almost at liftoff and then continuously record the telemetry through the missile’s midcourse trajectory, before the second stage of the rocket fired. This early signal acquisition allowed more precise evaluation of the data with respect to throw-weights, range, reliability, missile dimensions, and so on.17 It also allowed Tacksman II to inform other signals acquisition sites around the world to activate their equipment in preparation for the missile’s arrival within their windows.18
The intelligence listening posts could also eavesdrop on Soviet ground and air communications and were vital for monitoring the development of the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces beginning in the early 1960s.19 More important, they were invaluable in the 1970s for verifying the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT) with the Soviet Union and efforts to reduce the prospect of global nuclear war.20
The importance of the Tacksman sites to U.S. policy was clearly delineated in an October 1974 memorandum from the Department of State inspector general to the secretary in response to a National Security Council directive. The secretary was advised that U.S. policy toward
