The vigilante then asked why the Islamic Government would bother to be so accommodating to the Great Satan and was told that the whole operation was planned in advance by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan’s revolutionary Government with Pres. Carter in return for Carter having helped depose the Shah and that this was being done to ensure Carter got re-elected. “He helped us, now we help him” was the matter-of-fact comment from the cleric. I find this to be unbelievable. The students in the street in Iran didn't differentiate between Carter and Reagan, they thought all of America was The Great Satan and wanted revenge for the CIA's assistance in overthrowing Mossadeh back in the 1950s.
There was speculation in some Iranian quarters — as well as in some US minds — at the time and later that Carter’s actions were the result of either close ties to, or empathy for, the Soviet Union, which was anxious to break out of the longstanding US-led strategic containment of the USSR, which had prevented the Soviets from reaching the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
Carter’s mistaken assessment of Khomeini was encouraged by advisors with a desire to form an Islamic “green belt” to contain atheist Soviet expansion with the religious fervor of Islam. Eventually all 30 of the scenarios on Iran presented to Carter by his intelligence agencies proved wrong, and totally misjudged Khomeini as a person and as a political entity.
So which is it ?
Carter in sympathy with the USSR, of Carter wanting an "Islamic Belt" to encircle the atheistic Communists ?
This is the message that the "leakers" of this strange attempt at putting a spin on those events of 1979 are really about:
In 1978 while the West was deciding to remove His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi from the throne, Shariatmadari was telling anyone who would listen not to allow “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini and his velayat faghih (Islamic jurist) version of Islam to be allowed to govern Iran. Ayatollah Shariatmadari noted: “We mullahs will behave like bickering whores in a brothel if we come to power ... and we have no experience on how to run a modern nation so we will destroy Iran and lose all that has been achieved at such great cost and effort.”
Today, Iranian-born, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the dominant Shia leader in Iraq faces Shariatmadari’s dilemma and shares the same “quietist” Islamic philosophy of sharia (religious law) guidance rather than direct governing by the clerics themselves. Sistani’s “Khomeini” equivalent, militant Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was gunned down in 1999 by then-Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein’s forces. Sadr’s son, 30-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr, lacks enough followers or religious seniority/clout to immediately oppose Sistani but has a hard core of violent followers biding their time.
This is coming from Sistani's camp. It's their attempt at lobbying.
I agree with Andy, I thought Carter was a terrible president, but one thing that I am sure of, is that he was not motivated by money, nor were his backers. They were silly people, but they weren't mendacious.
"I find this to be unbelievable. The students in the street in Iran didn't differentiate between Carter and Reagan, they thought all of America was The Great Satan and wanted revenge for the CIA's assistance in overthrowing Mossadeh back in the 1950s."
You must be kidding. The whole world feared Reagan. Iran let the hostages go the day that he was inaugerated, rather than risk open atomic warfare with us.
In contrast, Khomeni was backed by Communists. This odd alignment of fundmentalists and athiests was possible only because both sides were weak and needed to ally together to oppose the power of the U.S.
Likewise, athiestic Communists openly support to this day the Palestinian terrorist organization PFLP (formerly Black September) in a region that only permits fundmentalism amongst its people.
Ditto again for the Communistic Basques in Spain and France as well as for the fundamentalists in Chechnya.
At every turn you will find that radical Islamic fundamentalists are financially backed by athiestic Communists and aided by Communists...to the extent that the athiestic Cubans permitted the radical fundamentalist Arabs to use the Cuban embassy in Lebanon to base their attack on Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
These people know full well who they are opposing; American nationalists. They also know that they can count on indifference, tolerance, and the occassional outright aid for their causes from the Socialist wing of American politics (Carter falls well into this camp).
Carter's own direct contribution to this anti-American nationalism movement was to give away the Panama Canal and permit the establishment of the illegal (price manipulations of commodities are forbidden by U.S. law, for instance) OPEC oil cartel .