Your Weekend Listen: An Astounding Account of a Revolution Still Plaguing Us
Scott Anderson’s “King of Kings” is a hair raising story of how feckless US officials helped usher in the virulent Iranian revolution
WHO KNEW? Not the CIA, evidently, or most of the American diplomats, military officers and U.S. weapons salesmen luxuriating in late-royal Tehran, as an Islamic revolution bubbled in the souks. Even as the end appeared near in 1979, the Americans were in a perpetual state of disbelief that “the slight, pompous, pathetically dithering Shah of Shahs, or King of Kings,” as one observer calls Reza Pahlavi, installed by the CIA in 1953 and wrapped in a cocoon ever since, could ever be dislodged by the raggedy zealots in the mosques and slums. But then came the revolutionary haboob, blowing across the outer cities into Tehran with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at its front, and in a virtual instant, the king and all his trappings were gone.
The Iranians have never forgotten—not have they let us. The Islamic fervor (or bitterness, if you will), fueled by ancient grievances and a lust for revenge, changed the Middle East forever. For nearly a half century now, we’ve been in an undeclared war, marked by episodic violence. The FBI uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate candidate Donald Trump last summer. It won’t be the last.
Right up to the end in 1979, according to this “exceptional and important book,” as fellow veteran war chronicler Mark Bowden called it in The New York Times, the CIA maintained a stiff-upper-lip about the shah’s resilience. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when a mid-level U.S.consular officer (and a hero of Anderson’s story), Michael Metrinko, a former Peace Corps volunteer who learned Farsi and actually talked to ordinary Iranians, is approached by a CIA officer who wants him to expedite U.S. visas for some of his endangered Iranian spies.
“Excuse me, Mr. Intelligence Officer,” Metrinko recalls thinking, “but what does it tell you when your most important sources are trying to get the hell out of the country?”
Lucky for you, we had Scott Anderson to talk about all this on the SpyTalk podcast this week. And as you might expect, he’s a great story teller. So do listen in, on Simpleacast, or Apple, or Spotify whatever your favorite platform. It’s a fast hour. Perfect for a morning or afternoon walk. You won’t be sorry.
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation (Doubleday)
In the months after the Shah was deposed, I was having a conversation with the Washington representative of the Seed Trade Association (as I recall it was called) about another area of interest and somehow the subject of Iran came up. He described how he'd been to Tehran while the Shah was still in power, but came back essentially recommending not doing business with Iran. He reached in file and showed me a report he had filed that detailed, in his view, how he thought the Shah was in trouble. When asked how he came to that conclusion, he said every taxi driver, shop keeper, etc. etc. he talked to were certain the Shah would be deposed. He went on to describe how our diplomats (and presumably the Agency) were talking to the wrong people, i.e. Iran's diplomatic core, other countries diplomats, etc., not the "real" folks on the ground. I think he was right. Somewhere buried in government files, a copy of that report lies, as he gave me a copy.
Sounds fascinating! I noticed a couple of copy errors eg “monring”—would like a chance to copy edit for you—please see my website, www.seedyhack.com, or www.robertdavey.com; and please check out my comment to Michael Isikoff re Jim Himes and Section 702. Have written twice in Village Voice and once in Penthouse on this—all three are at the site.