After Iran’s monarchy fell in February 1979, most of the radical Islamists and radical leftists who had led the revolution believed the United States was trying to overthrow the nascent Islamic regime. Much of their concern focused on the CIA, which had acquired a villainous reputation in Iran after overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 and then propping up the monarchy by creating and nurturing its brutal intelligence agency, SAVAK. In 1979, many Iranians believed the CIA had a vast network of covert intelligence officers and Iranian collaborators inside Iran and was trying to destabilize the new regime and restore the monarchy – as it had in 1953. These concerns helped fuel the radicalization that occurred in this period and were one of the principal reasons radical Islamist students seized the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979. This paper seeks to evaluate whether these concerns were justified by examining the various covert operations the CIA was carrying out in Iran between February and November 1979. It is based mainly on a large trove of CIA cables and other documents published by the students who seized the US embassy and interviews with some of the key people involved. The paper begins with a discussion of the general goals of US policy toward Iran during this period and the limitations under which CIA officers and other US government personnel operated in Iran. It then examines the contacts CIA officers and other US personnel established with Iranian government officials, moderates, radical leftists, radical Islamists, ethnically based guerrilla groups, and the exile opposition groups that were beginning to emerge in this period. The main conclusion is that the CIA’s covert operations in Iran in this period were aimed at gathering intelligence, encouraging moderation in Iran, and forging better bilateral relations, rather than undermining or overthrowing the Islamic regime. Indeed, CIA officers and other US personnel frequently encouraged their Iranian contacts to work with Iran’s new leaders and rejected requests for assistance from opponents of the new regime.

This paper forms part of the pre-organised panel: 'The Bazargan Era in Iran: A Critical Reappraisal'. Its primary purpose is to re-appraise the United States relationship with the Bazargan government. To do so it draws on a wealth of recently declassified documents and the author's interviews with participants. In one important sense, the analysis presented in this paper stands as an important corrective to the narrative of American motives in Iran presented by the current Iranian leadership. Indeed, the confrontation between the United States and Iran may appear so ideologically entrenched and domestically vitriolic that it is easy to lose sight of the importance the United States placed on reaching an accommodation with the nascent Islamic Republic in 1979. US diplomats tried persistently, and in good faith, to build bridges with the new regime. This was not an obvious decision. The revolutionary movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini had just swept aside a loyal US ally and many of its early activities appeared to run contrary to US interests. This paper explores the assessments, pathologies and interactions that guided US attempts to engage Iran. This includes assessments of the PGOI's foreign policy orientation, contacts prior to the revolution, assessments of Khomeini's relationship with the PGOI, assessments of the internal and external communist threat in Iran, prevailing attitudes towards political Islam, and the wider domestic and cold war context. The paper shows how US strategy retained core-elements of the relationship that had existed during the Shah’s regime. US officials emphasised a mutual interest in containing direct Soviet aggression, deterring Soviet proxies such as Iraq, and undermining Iranian leftist groups. My paper will then look at the actual execution of engagement – particularly contacts between embassy staff and Iranian groups. Although well-meaning, the paper argues that many of the assumptions that guided Washington’s ‘new’ policy were inappropriate for dealing with the new reality. Washington’s continued presentation of Iran as a critical theatre for super-power rivalry reinforced a paradigm for US-Iranian relations that the more radical elements of Iran’s post-revolutionary polity were dedicated to dismantling. It undermined Washington’s claim that it had accepted the revolution and projected American concerns and orthodox understanding of geopolitics onto a transitional regime operating in a febrile political environment. More broadly, the US defined its ‘mutual interest’ with Iran in terms that smacked of protecting the status quo; rarely a welcome notion to revisionist revolutionary movements.

This paper examines the relationship between the main revolutionary leftist political groups in Iran and the provisional government of the Islamic Republic of Iran under Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. As the first post-revolutionary government of Iran from February to November 1979, the provisional government was given the task of reconstituting the state apparatus after the revolutionary collapse of the imperial regime. This monumental task was to be done at a time when various revolutionary and moderate groups, on national and regional level, many of them armed, challenged the new order lead my Ayatollah Khomeini. Bazargan was considered a thoughtful but moderate and cautious revolutionary. His first cabinet included elements from the moderate-secular National Front. Bazargan’s prime interest was to return the country to a state of normalcy by reestablishing the state apparatus and putting the economic house in order. Yet Bazargan and his colleagues in the Liberation Movement of Iran, who was soon referred as the “Islamic liberals,” were faced with challenges which soon overwhelmed them. Part of this challenge emanated from his own fellow revolutionaries organized in the Islamic Republic Party (IRP), who viewed him as indecisive and not radical enough. A different challenge was posed by the Marxist left and militant Muslim organizations. This paper examines the relationship between radical leftist groups and the short lived provisional government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The paper is based on the author’s extensive published research on the history of the left in Iran as well as work done by others. The interaction of five major organizations with the Bazargan government will be particularly focused on as sample. These are the Fad’iyan, the Mojahedin the Tudeh, the Paykar, and the short lived National Democratic Front. Each of these five formulated a different analysis of the Bazargan government and attempted to develop policy on that base. In this context, the hostility of Bazargan and company toward the Marxist left and his fear of being out maneuvered by the IRP caused the provisional government to make significant mistakes in its relations with the opposition. The paper will argue that this period was one of poor choices and lost chances by all parties involved.