Shah Quotes

“1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere.

2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times....

3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions.

4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred.

5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth.

It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Today, Americans, if they remember the Shah at all, are likely to associate him with massive human rights violations and state-sanctioned repression. … The Shah became a hate figure for many people. When President Jimmy Carter grudgingly allowed the deposed monarch to enter the United States in 1979 for cancer surgery, his own ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, complained that it was like ‘protecting Adolf Eichmann.’ By comparison, Young described Khomeini as ‘a saint'.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran

“The controversy and confusion that surrounded the Shah’s human rights record overshadowed his many real accomplishments in the fields of women’s rights, literacy, health care, education, and modernization. Help in sifting through the accusations and allegations came from a most unexpected quarter, however, when the Islamic Republic announced plans to identify and memorialize each victim of Pahlavi ‘oppression.’ But lead researcher, Emad al-Din Baghi, a former seminary student, was shocked to discover that he could not match the victims’ names to the official numbers: instead of 100,000 deaths, Baghi could only confirm 3,164. Even that number was inflated because it included all 2,781 fatalities from the 1978-1979 revolution. The actual death toll was lowered to 383, of whom 197 were guerilla fighters and terrorists killed in skirmishes with the security forces. That meant 183 political prisoners and dissidents were executed, committed suicide in detention, or died under torture. … The lower numbers do not excuse or diminish the suffering of political prisoners jailed or tortured in Iran in the 1970s. They do, however, show the extent to which the historical record was manipulated by Khomeini and his partisans to criminalize the Shah and justify their own excesses and abuses.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran

“Tourists enter Tehran from the south on a carriageway built by order of the Shah. On the city’s outskirts they pass through the green belt he envisioned would protect Tehran from the twin scourges of desert wind and dust. In the central city visitors pass by the government ministries, hospitals, universities, schools, concert halls, monuments, bridges, sports complexes, hotels, museums, galleries, and gleaming underground metro that were among his many pet projects. … He championed the social welfare state that today provides Iranians with access to state-run health care and education. He raised the scholarship money that allowed hundreds of thousands of Iranian university students, including many luminaries of the Islamic Republic, to study abroad at leading American and European universities. The Shah ordered the fighter jets that made Iran’s air force the most powerful in southwestern Asia. He established the first national parks and state forests and ordered strict water, animal, and conservation measures. Perhaps it is no surprise that Iran today has the look and feel of a haunted house. The man who built modern Iran is nowhere to be seen but his presence is felt everywhere. The revolutionaries who replaced the Shah may not like to hear it, but Iran today is as much his country as it is theirs.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran

“By the time the Shah staged his belated coronation … Iran’s rate of economic growth outstripped those of the United States, Great Britain, and France. Critics who had once dismissed Iran’s King as a callow playboy now applauded his achievements and acumen. ‘We are delighted to salute the Shah of Iran on the day of his Coronation,’ declared Britain’s ‘Daily Mail. ‘During his 26-year reign he never once involved his country in war. He has shown the way to beat hunger, want, squalor, and disease by methods from which other countries could learn.”
― Andrew Scott Cooper, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran