The Fall of the Shah: U.S. Bureaucracies' Blind Eye for Revolution

Abstract

The fall of the Shah of Iran in January 1979 represented a complete collapse for U.S. policy in a key area of the Middle East. Top U.S. foreign policy leaders, with their attention focused on other issues, were caught off guard by the revolutionary fervor that swept Iran in the last months of 1978. They had relied on the foreign policy bureaucracies to identify issues needing top-level attention, but for the most part these bureaucracies failed to recognize the depth of Iran's mounting internal crisis. This paper examines the theory that during 1978 the principal foreign affairs bureaucracies' tendency to conduct "business as usual" diverted them from recognizing the nature of the revolutionary forces the shah was facing.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1995
Accession Number
ADA440773

Entities

People

  • Ginny Hughes

Organizations

  • National War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Department Of State
  • Foreign Policy
  • Governments
  • Human Rights
  • Law
  • Middle East
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Political Systems
  • Revolutions
  • Security
  • United States
  • Universities
  • War Colleges

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security
  • Strategic Security Studies