A Second Ford Administration and Iran.

Let’s say Gerald Ford manages to squeeze a victory in 1976 and wins a second term in the White House, what happens to Iran? At this point it’s extremely unlikely the Iranian Revolution wouldn't happen. The powder keg had been lit and was ready to blow up.

My question overall is what does a second Ford Administration do about about Iran and will the situation be better or worse than OTL?
 
I think the revolution happens, the Shah is probably still granted entrance to the US for medical care, but the response to the Embassy hostages is sooner and harsher. Maybe a rescue attempt prior or in conjunction w/ a military strike--and there would be a larger rescue attempt (i.e. more helos than the bare minimum rqd). I still doubt the rescue is successful due to inherent issues in Joint Service operations at the time (I doubt the basic plan would be different the Eagle Claw in OTL) and after the failure of the rescue military action would occur if hostages not released.
 
I found this old post by @Yes

One thing to bring up -- even if you whack Khomeini, and quite possibly God help you if you do -- Jeff Greenfield's sunny "oh, we'll shore up the dying Shah and his underage son, do a Pinochet on the opposition, and Iran will come right" just desperately underestimates the tectonic forces at work, especially outside Tehran, by the time they started to slip in '78. Certainly Ford's administration is going to look at Chile as a template. But Chile had a relatively stable "system" of politics and economics in which you were decapitating a socialist "head" and purging its fellow-travelers among the general population but leaving the rest in place. Despite some corruption and decay since the Thirties the military was strong and competent by comparison to Iran's (full of marvelous toys and some good individual units but rife with corruption and with a fatalist outlook on their ability to influence big events), and the target in Chile (Allende's administration) had gone out of its way to make itself unpopular in the last eighteen months or so leading up to the coup, even alienating some prior allies in-country. You had a country and a system that could absorb the horrors of September '73 and after (at terrible, terrible cost, but still absorb them without social collapse), a strong, organized, and horribly competent authoritarian regime to put in place, and a fragmented, under-powered opposition. In Iran the state was the Shah, via his prime minister Hoveyda and the general staff, the infrastructure still sucked despite the White Revolution, the military could've clocked Iraq or the Kurds but was a paper tiger against an enraged populace, and the balkanized revolutionaries were quietly arming themselves up and all too full of fierce conviction. Make Khomeini a martyr and things might get worse, not better. And out beyond Tehran there were real problems as local regime figures (civil and military) cut deals with youth protesters, clerics, and bazaaris in an effort to accommodate and keep things from blowing up entirely.


Add to that the US would be in even deeper over its eyeballs with Ford 2.0 than Carter, when there were forty thousand odd Americans living in-country, many tied to defense contractors or the servicing of ARMISH-MAAG (the military assistance mission.) It's a dead horse I like to beat but for a couple of weeks in OTL's February 1979 the several thousand Americans holed up in Tehran hotels trying to get out were effectively hostages, with komitehs in the lobbies waving Kalashnikovs and militia machine-gun nests on the roofs. Multiply this by nationally-fragmented disorder and a Ford administration desire not to cut and run again after Saigon so long as the Shah holds on. And if he does run, leaving aside the situation of US citizens fleeing through Tehran, what about the oil belt from Khuzestan down the long coast to Kharg? Do you send in the marines to "supervise" public order? (Literally -- the strong choice for the mission would be 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, backed by elements of the Pacific fleet, because no CENTCOM in those days.) How would the Russians react? Based on the Shah's illness and broader economic and political forces moving towards a clash by the end of the Seventies, Iran's still likely to get ugly, perhaps even more so in this TL.

Thoughts?
 
I would like to quote from an earlier thread,
President Ford being re-elected does not alter the fact of the Iranian revolution, or the failure of the US government to respond to it. Revolutions are massive complex events, and there is a level of American centrism to assume that a different President would automatically lead to the complex historical and economic factors being historically altered. Shah's regime had become disconnected from reality by the early 1970s, as evident in the ridiculous and excessive 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire. The Iranian economy had spun out of control by 1973-1974 when Iran decided to spend the windfall caused by the OPEC embargo, rather than save and invest it overseas. Rather than investing those petrodollars around the world or saving them, the Iranian government spent them on weapons, and poured them into the Iranian Economy, which was not equipped to handle that level of investment or consumption. That combined with the mass migration to cities creates a very unequal society whose economy was spinning out of control. One of Ford's last acts as president, putting pressure on OPEC to lower Oil Prices, was actually disastrous as it badly weakened the Iranian economy which was dependent on international borrowing.By the time Carter came to power, Court Minister Asadollah Alam was lamenting that “At home we claim to have brought Iran to the verge of a Great Civilization . . . yet the country is constantly hit by power cuts and we can’t even guarantee water and power supplies in the capital” Add this to the overcrowding and unemployment, in particular of young men, caused by the urbanization and expansion of University education in Tehran and you have a recepie for serious unrest and dissatisfaction with a regime seen as corrupt, out of touch, un Iranian and in the pocket of the United States.


A Ford Presidency from 1977-1981 would change many things, one thing it is unlikely to change is the institutional difficulties the US had in addressing the situation in Iran. It is likely that even with Ford as President the CIA will still say in August of 1978 "Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation. "There would need to be a shakeup of the CIA in Iran for a different better assessment to come out. This being said several things could change.

1: During most of 1978 Iran was not a priority of the Carter Administration, they where more concerned with "the Camp David peace talks, the normalization of relations with China, and the SALT negotiations."(Moens 1991)A Ford administration could potentially be less interested in the peace talks, but normalization of relations with China, and the SALT negotiations would be a concern for any administration. However maybe a Ford administration decided to be more wary of their oil supplying US arms procuring ally in the Middle East. However considering the two paths that such an administration would have taken 1: a continuation of Kissinger's realpolitik or 2: Neoconservatives as advocated by Team B, then conditions within Iran would not have been as much a priority. This question comes down to a larger topic on what kind of Administration we are dealing with, however it is likely that Kissinger would be out by 1977 and the Neo-Cons with their allies such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, would be in power. But this is a conversation for a different post

2: The US was not aware of just how sick the Shah of Iran was until it was too late. The health of the Shah was a closely guarded secret; but the Shah was a depressed man, often incapable of action at critical periods in 1978. Perhaps details of the Shah's health makes it way to the CIA, who decide to intervene as the Shah is incapable of making the right decisions, or indeed any decisions at all.

3: The US did not understand Islamic politics within Iran, they still thought of the opposition in the Cold War terms of Liberals/Communists as opposed to the religious inspired opposition, which was emerging, again I don’t know how a different administration changes that.


There is much debate on why the Shah didn't launch a larger violent crackdown (not that soldiers didn't open fire upon protestors), and instead furthered liberalization, going so far as to release political prisoners. The first theory is that the Shah, for all his vanity, could not bring himself to launch such violence on his own people, he did not want to be known as someone who butchered his own people, such was the view he had of himself. The second theory is that he was waiting for the all clear from Washington, and instead got the message to liberalize and appease. There where senior advisors to the Carter administration who believed that by appeasing the liberals the Shah could regain control of the situation, this was a miscalculation. According to Alexander Moens, Zbiginew Brezinski was the principle advocate for the application of force against the protests in the Carter Administration. The Shah had shown a willingness for capricious use of military power. With US pressure he, or generals in his government, could send in the troops. Yet we know from OTL that this did not work, indeed it proved counterproductive. Soldiers frequently mingled with the protestors and joined them, while political Shiite Islam, a misunderstood force outside the Shiite world, used the violence to its advantage, casting the dead Iranians as martyrs. A violent crackdown could result in mutiny, more strikes in the Iranian oil industry, attacks on the American Embassy or arms contractors in Iran. There is a wide array of outcomes and unfortunately many of them are quite bloody. It is not as simple as saying "if only they sent out the tanks and were prepared to kill a few thousand Iranians it would have worked out"
 
All in all, probably the same as OTL. If Ford decides to give the greenlight to the Shah (or rather, the general staff of the Iranian army) that he will have the U.S.'s backing to suppress the demonstrators, then it's likely the situation will become even more volatile as rank-and-file soldiers will crack at the thought of having to execute possibly thousands of their fellow countrymen and women on the streets of Tehran (the Shah can no longer rely as his father did in the 20s and 30s of bringing in a bunch of armed Turkmen from the borderlands who spoke zero Persian to do this type of dirty work, as the Iranian military is a truly national one and no longer a semi-feudal levying force of tribesmen). It depends on how far the hostage crisis (or whatever variation of it is ITTL) and how severe or substantive Ford's response to it is, but I still expect a Scoop Jackson presidency in '81.
 
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