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The New York Times
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April 16, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column
3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 4522 words
HEADLINE: SECRETS OF HISTORY: The C.I.A. in Iran -- A
special report.;
How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in
'79)
BYLINE: By JAMES RISEN
BODY:
For nearly five decades,
America's role in the military coup that ousted Iran's elected prime minister
and returned the shah to power has been lost to history, the subject of fierce
debate in Iran and stony silence in the United States. One by one, participants
have retired or died without revealing key details, and the Central Intelligence
Agency said a number of records of the operation -- its first successful
overthrow of a foreign government -- had been destroyed.
But a copy of
the agency's secret history of the 1953 coup has surfaced, revealing the inner
workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in 1979, and
for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle East's most
powerful countries.
The document, which remains classified, discloses
the pivotal role British intelligence officials played in initiating and
planning the coup, and it shows that Washington and London shared an interest in
maintaining the West's control over Iranian oil.
The secret history,
written by the C.I.A.'s chief coup planner and obtained by The New York
Times, says the operation's success was mostly a matter of chance. The
document shows that the agency had almost complete contempt for the man it was
empowering, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, whom it derided as a vacillating coward.
And it recounts, for the first time, the agency's tortured efforts to seduce and
cajole the shah into taking part in his own coup.
The operation,
code-named TP-Ajax, was the blueprint for a succession of C.I.A. plots to foment
coups and destabilize governments during the cold war -- including the agency's
successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous Cuban intervention known
as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In more than one instance, such operations led to
the same kind of long-term animosity toward the United States that occurred in
Iran.
The history says agency officers orchestrating the Iran coup
worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime
minister's replacement, sent a stream of envoys to bolster the shah's courage,
directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist
Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.
But on
the night set for Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's overthrow, almost nothing
went according to the meticulously drawn plans, the secret history says. In
fact, C.I.A. officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian
officers recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a
pro-shah demonstration in Tehran and seized the government.
Two days
after the coup, the history discloses, agency officials funneled $5 million to
Iran to help the government they had installed consolidate power.
The
outlines of the American role in the coup were disclosed in Iran at the outset
and later in the memoirs of C.I.A. officers and other published accounts. But
many specifics have remained classified, and the secret history obtained by The
New York Times is the first detailed government account of the
coup to be made public.
The C.I.A. has been slow to make available the
Iran files. Two directors of central intelligence, Robert Gates and R. James
Woolsey, vowed to declassify records of the agency's early covert actions,
including the coup. But the agency said three years ago that a number of
relevant documents had been destroyed in the early 1960's.
A C.I.A.
spokesman said Friday that the agency had retained about 1,000 pages of
documents related to the coup, besides the history and an internal account
written later. He said the papers destroyed in the early 1960's were duplicates
and working files.
The chief State Department historian said that his
office received a copy of the history seven years ago but that no decision on
declassifying it had yet been made.
The secret history, along with
operational assessments written by coup planners, was provided to The Times by a
former official who kept a copy.
It was written in March 1954 by Dr.
Donald N. Wilber, an expert in Persian architecture, who as one of the leading
planners believed that covert operatives had much to learn from history.
In less expansive memoirs published in 1986, Dr. Wilber asserted that
the Iran coup was different from later C.I.A. efforts. Its American planners, he
said, had stirred up considerable unrest in Iran, giving Iranians a clear choice
between instability and supporting the shah. The move to oust the prime
minister, he wrote, thus gained substantial popular support.
Dr.
Wilber's memoirs were heavily censored by the agency, but he was allowed to
refer to the existence of his secret history. "If this history had been read by
the planners of the Bay of Pigs," he wrote, "there would have been no such
operation."
"From time to time," he continued, "I gave talks on the
operation to various groups within the agency, and, in hindsight, one might
wonder why no one from the Cuban desk ever came or read the history."
The coup was a turning point in modern Iranian history and remains a
persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It consolidated the power of
the shah, who ruled with an iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with to
the United States. He was toppled by militants in 1979. Later that year,
marchers went to the American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and declared that
they had unmasked a "nest of spies" who had been manipulating Iran for decades.
The Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini supported
terrorist attacks against American interests largely because of the long
American history of supporting the shah. Even under more moderate rulers, many
Iranians still resent the United States' role in the coup and its support of the
shah.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, in an address in March,
acknowledged the coup's pivotal role in the troubled relationship and came
closer to apologizing than any American official ever has before.
"The
Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic
reasons," she said. "But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political
development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this
intervention by America in their internal affairs."
The history spells
out the calculations to which Dr. Albright referred in her speech.
Britain, it says, initiated the plot in 1952. The Truman administration
rejected it, but President Eisenhower approved it shortly after taking office in
1953, because of fears about oil and Communism.
The document pulls few
punches, acknowledging at one point that the agency baldly lied to its British
allies. Dr. Wilber reserves his most withering asides for the agency's local
allies, referring to "the recognized incapacity of Iranians to plan or act in a
thoroughly logical manner."
The Roots
Britain Fights Oil
Nationalism
The coup had its roots in a British showdown with Iran,
restive under decades of near-colonial British domination.
The prize was
Iran's oil fields. Britain occupied Iran in World War II to protect a supply
route to its ally, the Soviet Union, and to prevent the oil from falling into
the hands of the Nazis -- ousting the shah's father, whom it regarded as
unmanageable. It retained control over Iran's oil after the war through the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
In 1951, Iran's Parliament voted to
nationalize the oil industry, and legislators backing the law elected its
leading advocate, Dr. Mossadegh, as prime minister.
Britain responded
with threats and sanctions. Dr. Mossadegh, a European-educated lawyer then in
his early 70's, prone to tears and outbursts, refused to back down. In meetings
in November and December 1952, the secret history says, British intelligence
officials startled their American counterparts with a plan for a joint operation
to oust the nettlesome prime minister.
The Americans, who "had not
intended to discuss this question at all," agreed to study it, the secret
history says. It had attractions. Anti-Communism had risen to a fever pitch in
Washington, and officials were worried that Iran might fall under the sway of
the Soviet Union, a historical presence there.
In March 1953, an
unexpected development pushed the plot forward: the C.I.A.'s Tehran station
reported that an Iranian general had approached the American Embassy about
supporting an army-led coup.
The newly inaugurated Eisenhower
administration was intrigued. The coalition that elected Dr. Mossadegh was
splintering, and the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, had become active.
Allen W. Dulles, the director of central intelligence, approved $1
million on April 4 to be used "in any way that would bring about the fall of
Mossadegh," the history says.
"The aim was to bring to power a
government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to
become economically sound and financially solvent, and which would vigorously
prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party."
Within days agency
officials identified a high-ranking officer, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, as the man
to spearhead a coup. Their plan called for the shah to play a leading role.
"A shah-General Zahedi combination, supported by C.I.A. local assets and
financial backing, would have a good chance of overthrowing Mossadegh,"
officials wrote, "particularly if this combination should be able to get the
largest mobs in the streets and if a sizable portion of the Tehran garrison
refused to carry out Mossadegh's orders."
But according to the history,
planners had doubts about whether the shah could carry out such a bold
operation.
His family had seized Iran's throne just 32 years earlier,
when his powerful father led a coup of his own. But the young shah, agency
officials wrote, was "by nature a creature of indecision, beset by formless
doubts and fears," often at odds with his family, including Princess Ashraf, his
"forceful and scheming twin sister."
Also, the shah had what the C.I.A.
termed a "pathological fear" of British intrigues, a potential obstacle to a
joint operation.
In May 1953 the agency sent Dr. Wilber to Cyprus to
meet Norman Darbyshire, chief of the Iran branch of British intelligence, to
make initial coup plans. Assuaging the fears of the shah was high on their
agenda; a document from the meeting said he was to be persuaded that the United
States and Britain "consider the oil question secondary."
The
conversation at the meeting turned to a touchy subject, the identity of key
agents inside Iran. The British said they had recruited two brothers named
Rashidian. The Americans, the secret history discloses, did not trust the
British and lied about the identity of their best "assets" inside Iran.
C.I.A. officials were divided over whether the plan drawn up in Cyprus
could work. The Tehran station warned headquarters that the "the shah would not
act decisively against Mossadegh." And it said General Zahedi, the man picked to
lead the coup, "appeared lacking in drive, energy and concrete plans."
Despite the doubts, the agency's Tehran station began disseminating
"gray propaganda," passing out anti-Mossadegh cartoons in the streets and
planting unflattering articles in the local press.
The Plotting
Trying to Persuade A Reluctant Shah
The plot was under way, even
though the shah was a reluctant warrior and Mr. Eisenhower had yet to give his
final approval.
In early June, American and British intelligence
officials met again, this time in Beirut, and put the finishing touches on the
strategy. Soon afterward, the chief of the C.I.A.'s Near East and Africa
division, Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran
to direct it.
The shah was a problem from the start. The plan called for
him to stand fast as the C.I.A. stirred up popular unrest and then, as the
country lurched toward chaos, to issue royal decrees dismissing Dr. Mossadegh
and appointing General Zahedi prime minister.
The agency sought to
"produce such pressure on the shah that it would be easier for him to sign the
papers required of him than it would be to refuse," the secret history states.
Officials turned to his sister for help.
On July 11, President
Eisenhower finally signed off on the plan. At about the same time, C.I.A. and
British intelligence officers visited Princess Ashraf on the French Riviera and
persuaded her to return to Iran and tell her brother to follow the script.
The return of the unpopular princess unleashed a storm of protest from
pro-Mossadegh forces. The shah was furious that she had come back without his
approval and refused at first to see her. But a palace staff member -- another
British agent, according to the secret history -- gained Ashraf access on July
29.
The history does not reveal what the siblings said to each other.
But the princess gave her brother the news that C.I.A. officials had enlisted
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf in the coup campaign. General Schwarzkopf, the father
of the Persian Gulf war commander, had befriended the shah a decade earlier
while leading the United States military mission to Iran, and he told the agency
"he was sure he could get the required cooperation."
The British, too,
sought to sway the shah and assure him their agents spoke for London. A British
agent, Asadollah Rashidian, approached him in late July and invited him to
select a phrase that would then be broadcast at prearranged times on the BBC's
Persian-language program -- as proof that Mr. Rashidian spoke for the British.
The exercise did not seem to have much effect. The shah told Mr.
Rashidian on July 30 and 31 that he had heard the broadcast, but "requested time
to assess the situation."
In early August, the C.I.A. stepped up the
pressure. Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists threatened Muslim
leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed Mossadegh," seeking to stir
anti-Communist sentiment in the religious community.
In addition, the
secret history says, the house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by
C.I.A. agents posing as Communists. It does not say whether anyone was hurt in
this attack.
The agency was also intensifying its propaganda campaign. A
leading newspaper owner was granted a personal loan of about $45,000, "in the
belief that this would make his organ amenable to our purposes."
But the
shah remained intransigent. In an Aug. 1 meeting with General Schwarzkopf, he
refused to sign the C.I.A.-written decrees firing Mr. Mossadegh and appointing
General Zahedi. He said he doubted that the army would support him in a
showdown.
During the meeting, the document says, the shah was so
convinced that the palace was bugged that he "led the general into the grand
ballroom, pulled a small table to its exact center" and got onto it to talk,
insisting that the general do the same.
"This meeting was to be followed
by a series of additional ones, some between Roosevelt and the shah and some
between Rashidian and the shah, in which relentless pressure was exerted in
frustrating attempts to overcome an entrenched attitude of vacillation and
indecision," the history states.
Dr. Mossadegh had by now figured out
that there was a plot against him. He moved to consolidate power by calling for
a national referendum to dissolve Parliament.
The results of the Aug. 4
referendum were clearly rigged in his favor; The New York Times
reported the same day that the prime minister had won 99.9 percent of the vote.
This only helped the plotters, providing "an issue on which Mossadegh could be
relentlessly attacked" by the agency-backed opposition press.
But the
shah still wouldn't move against Dr. Mossadegh.
"On Aug. 3rd," the
secret history says, "Roosevelt had a long and inconclusive session with the
shah," who "stated that he was not an adventurer, and hence, could not take the
chances of one.
"Roosevelt pointed out that there was no other way by
which the government could be changed and the test was now between Mossadegh and
his force and the shah and the army, which was still with him, but which would
soon slip away."
Mr. Roosevelt told the shah "that failure to act could
lead only to a Communist Iran or to a second Korea."
Still haunted by
doubts, the shah asked Mr. Roosevelt if President Eisenhower could tell him what
to do.
"By complete coincidence and great good fortune," the secret
history says, "the president, while addressing the governors' convention in
Seattle on 4 August, deviated from his script to state by implication that the
United States would not sit by idly and see Iran fall behind the Iron Curtain."
By Aug. 10, the shah had finally agreed to see General Zahedi and a few
army officers involved in the plot, but still refused to sign the decrees. The
C.I.A. then sent Mr. Rashidian to say Mr. Roosevelt "would leave in complete
disgust unless the shah took action within a few days."
The shah finally
signed the decrees on Aug. 13. Word that he would support an army-led coup
spread rapidly among the army officers backing General Zahedi.
The Coup
First Few Days Look Disastrous
The coup began on
the night of Aug. 15 and was immediately compromised by a talkative Iranian Army
officer whose remarks were relayed to Mr. Mossadegh.
The operation, the
secret history says, "still might have succeeded in spite of this advance
warning had not most of the participants proved to be inept or lacking in
decision at the critical juncture."
Dr. Mossadegh's chief of staff, Gen.
Taghi Riahi, learned of the plot hours before it was to begin and sent his
deputy to the barracks of the Imperial Guard.
The deputy was arrested
there, according to the history, just as pro-shah soldiers were fanning out
across the city arresting other senior officials. Telephone lines between army
and government offices were cut, and the telephone exchange was occupied.
But phones inexplicably continued to function, which gave Dr.
Mossadegh's forces a key advantage. General Riahi also eluded the pro-shah
units, rallying commanders to the prime minister's side.
Pro-shah
soldiers sent to arrest Dr. Mossadegh at his home were instead captured. The top
military officer working with General Zahedi fled when he saw tanks and loyal
government soldiers at army headquarters.
The next morning, the history
states, the Tehran radio announced that a coup against the government had
failed, and Dr. Mossadegh scrambled to strengthen his hold on the army and key
installations. C.I.A. officers inside the embassy were flying blind; the history
says they had "no way of knowing what was happening."
Mr. Roosevelt left
the embassy and tracked down General Zahedi, who was in hiding north of Tehran.
Surprisingly, the general was not ready to abandon the operation. The coup, the
two men agreed, could still work, provided they could persuade the public that
General Zahedi was the lawful prime minister.
To accomplish this, the
history discloses, the coup plotters had to get out the news that the shah had
signed the two decrees.
The C.I.A. station in Tehran sent a message to
The Associated Press in New York, asserting that "unofficial reports are current
to the effect that leaders of the plot are armed with two decrees of the shah,
one dismissing Mossadegh and the other appointing General Zahedi to replace
him."
The C.I.A. and its agents also arranged for the decrees to be
mentioned in some Tehran papers, the history says.
The propaganda
initiative quickly bogged down. Many of the C.I.A.'s Iranian agents were under
arrest or on the run. That afternoon, agency operatives prepared a statement
from General Zahedi that they hoped to distribute publicly. But they could not
find a printing press that was not being watched by forces loyal to the prime
minister.
On Aug. 16, prospects of reviving the operation were dealt a
seemingly a fatal blow when it was learned that the shah had bolted to Baghdad.
C.I.A. headquarters cabled Tehran urging Mr. Roosevelt, the station chief, to
leave immediately.
He did not agree, insisting that there was still "a
slight remaining chance of success," if the shah would broadcast an address on
the Baghdad radio and General Zahedi took an aggressive stand.
The first
sign that the tide might turn came with reports that Iranian soldiers had broken
up Tudeh, or Communist, groups, beating them and making them chant their support
for the shah. "The station continued to feel that the project was not quite
dead," the secret history recounts.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mossadegh had
overreached, playing into the C.I.A.'s hands by dissolving Parliament after the
coup.
On the morning of Aug. 17 the shah finally announced from Baghdad
that he had signed the decrees -- though he had by now delayed so long that
plotters feared it was too late.
At this critical point Dr. Mossadegh
let down his guard. Lulled by the shah's departure and the arrests of some
officers involved in the coup, the government recalled most troops it had
stationed around the city, believing that the danger had passed.
That
night the C.I.A. arranged for General Zahedi and other key Iranian agents and
army officers to be smuggled into the embassy compound "in the bottom of cars
and in closed jeeps" for a "council of war."
They agreed to start a
counterattack on Aug. 19, sending a leading cleric from Tehran to the holy city
of Qum to try to orchestrate a call for a holy war against Communism. (The
religious forces they were trying to manipulate would years later call the
United States "the Great Satan.")
Using travel papers forged by the
C.I.A., key army officers went to outlying army garrisons to persuade commanders
to join the coup.
Once again, the shah disappointed the C.I.A. He left
Baghdad for Rome the next day, apparently an exile. Newspapers supporting Dr.
Mossadegh reported that the Pahlevi dynasty had come to an end, and a statement
from the Communist Party's central committee attributed the coup attempt to
"Anglo-American intrigue." Demonstrators ripped down imperial statues -- as they
would again 26 years later during the Islamic revolution.
The C.I.A.
station cabled headquarters for advice on whether to "continue with TP-Ajax or
withdraw."
"Headquarters spent a day featured by depression and
despair," the history states, adding, "The message sent to Tehran on the night
of Aug. 18 said that 'the operation has been tried and failed,' and that 'in the
absence of strong recommendations to the contrary operations against Mossadegh
should be discontinued.' "
The Success
C.I.A. and Moscow Are
Both Surprised
But just as the Americans were ready to quit, the
mood on the streets of Tehran shifted.
On the morning of Aug. 19,
several Tehran papers published the shah's long-awaited decrees, and soon
pro-shah crowds were building in the streets.
"They needed only
leadership," the secret history says. And Iranian agents of the C.I.A. provided
it. Without specific orders, a journalist who was one of the agency's most
important Iranian agents led a crowd toward Parliament, inciting people to set
fire to the offices of a newspaper owned by Dr. Mossadegh's foreign minister.
Another Iranian C.I.A. agent led a crowd to sack the offices of pro-Tudeh
papers.
"The news that something quite startling was happening spread at
great speed throughout the city," the history states.
The C.I.A. tried
to exploit the situation, sending urgent messages that the Rashidian brothers
and two key American agents should "swing the security forces to the side of the
demonstrators."
But things were now moving far too quickly for the
agency to manage. An Iranian Army colonel who had been involved in the plot
several days earlier suddenly appeared outside Parliament with a tank, while
members of the now-disbanded Imperial Guard seized trucks and drove through the
streets. "By 10:15 there were pro-shah truckloads of military personnel at all
the main squares," the secret history says.
By noon the crowds began to
receive direct leadership from a few officers involved in the plot and some who
had switched sides. Within an hour the central telegraph office fell, and
telegrams were sent to the provinces urging a pro-shah uprising. After a brief
shootout, police headquarters and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs fell as well.
The Tehran radio remained the biggest prize. With the government's fate
uncertain, it was broadcasting a program on cotton prices. But by early
afternoon a mass of civilians, army officers and policemen overwhelmed it.
Pro-shah speakers went on the air, broadcasting the coup's success and reading
the royal decrees.
At the embassy, C.I.A. officers were elated, and Mr.
Roosevelt got General Zahedi out of hiding. An army officer found a tank and
drove him to the radio station, where he spoke to the nation.
Dr.
Mossadegh and other government officials were rounded up, while officers
supporting General Zahedi placed "known supporters of TP-Ajax" in command of all
units of the Tehran garrison.
The Soviet Union was caught completely
off-guard. Even as the Mossadegh government was falling, the Moscow radio was
broadcasting a story on "the failure of the American adventure in Iran."
But C.I.A. headquarters was as surprised as Moscow. When news of the
coup's success arrived, it "seemed to be a bad joke, in view of the depression
that still hung on from the day before," the history says.
Throughout
the day, Washington got most of its information from news agencies, receiving
only two cablegrams from the station. Mr. Roosevelt later explained that if he
had told headquarters what was going on, "London and Washington would have
thought they were crazy and told them to stop immediately," the history states.
Still, the C.I.A. took full credit inside the government. The following
year it overthrew the government of Guatemala, and a myth developed that the
agency could topple governments anywhere in the world.
Iran proved that
third world king-making could be heady.
"It was a day that should never
have ended," the C.I.A.'s secret history said, describing Aug. 19, 1953. "For it
carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and of jubilation
that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it."
'Gentleman Spy' at Helm
Donald Wilber, who planned the coup in
Iran and wrote its secret history, was old-school C.I.A., a Princetonian and a
Middle East architecture expert who fit neatly into the mold of the "gentleman
spy."
Years of wandering through Middle Eastern architectural sites gave
him the perfect cover for a clandestine life. By 1953, he was an obvious choice
as the operation's strategist.
The coup was the high point of his life
as a spy. Although he would excel in academia, at the agency being part-time was
a handicap.
"I never requested promotion, and was given only one, after
the conclusion of Ajax," Dr. Wilber wrote of the Iran operation.
On his
last day, "I was ushered down to the lobby by a young secretary, turned over my
badge to her and left." He added, "This treatment rankled for some time. I did
deserve the paperweight."
He died in 1997 at 89.
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photos: As the
C.I.A.-backed royalist coup seemed to be failing in Iran, the shah and Empress
Soraya arrived in Rome on Aug. 18, 1953. (Corbis Bettmann)(pg. 1); Royalists,
carrying a picture of the shah, rode a commandeered bus in Tehran on Aug. 19,
1953, when the coup became a success. (A. Rashki/Associated Press)(pg. 14);
(Photograph from "Adventures in the Middle East" by Donald N. Wilber,
Darwin)(pg. 15)
Chart/Photos: "Decades of Turmoil in Iran"
1941 -- Britain and the Soviet Union invade western Iran to counter the
threat of expanding Nazi influence.
1951 -- Mohammed Mossadegh,
an ultranationalist, is elected prime minister, under the shah. He angers the
British by trying to nationalize the oil industry.
1953 --
American and British intelligence services overthrow Mossadegh. The coup
consolidates power under the shah, ensuring cooperation on oil and discouraging
Communist expansion.
1963-64 -- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a
religious leader, is exiled to Turkey after his arrest for speaking out against
the shah's relationship with the United States.
1978 -- Turmoil
sweeps Iran. Khomeini establishes an opposition movement in Paris.
1979 -- The Iranian revolution forces the shah to leave. A month later, he
is allowed into the United States for cancer treatment in New York City.
1979 -- Khomeini returns to proclaim an Islamic republic.
With his support, Iranian students occupy the American Embassy in
Tehran. Fifty-two Americans are held hostage for 444 days. The United States
freezes Iranian assets.
Broken Ties With the United States
1980 -- The United States breaks ties with Iran, bans American
exports to the country and expels Iranian diplomats.
A secret
American military mission to rescue the hostages is aborted because of bad
weather. Eight servicemen die in a helicopter crash.
The shah
dies in Egypt at age 60.
1981 -- The hostages are released
minutes after President Carter's term ends. A United States-Iran claims tribunal
is set up in The Hague.
1986 -- Revelations emerge of an American
deal to exchange arms for Iranian help in freeing hostages held in Lebanon.
1988 -- The American cruiser Vincennes mistakenly shoots down an
Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 aboard.
1989 -- Ayatollah Khomeini dies and is replaced as the nation's spiritual
leader by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The speaker of Iran's Parliament, Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, is elected president.
1993 -- The Clinton
admin 2/3istration starts a campaign to isolate Iran, accusing it of supporting
terrorism, seeking nuclear arms and trying to derail Middle East peace.
1995 -- The United States cuts off all trade and investment with
Iran.
1996 -- President Clinton signs a law that imposes
sanctions on foreign companies investing heavily in "terrorist" Iran or Libya.
1997 -- Mohammad Khatami, a moderate cleric, wins Iran's
presidential election. Clinton calls the election hopeful, but insists that ties
are not possible until Iran renounces terrorism, opposition to the Middle East
peace effort and weapons of mass destruction.
Shifting Toward
Reconciliation
1998 -- Khatami proposes cultural exchanges as a
way to end mistrust, but rules out a government-to-government dialogue.
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright invites Iranians to join
with the United States in drawing up "a road map leading to normal relations.
Iran responds that such a step must be followed up by acts.
1999
-- The Clinton administration announces it will let American companies sell food
and medical items to three countries off-limits as terrorist -- Iran, Libya and
Sudan.
1999 -- Clinton asks Khatami for help in solving the 1996
bombing of a Saudi building in which 19 American servicemen died and hundreds
were wounded.
The Clinton administration renews an offer for
talks "on the basis of equality and mutual respect." Iran rejects the offer two
days later.
The United States agrees to let Boeing provide Iran's
national airline with parts to ensure the safety of its 747's.
2000 -- Albright announces the lifting of a ban on American imports of
Iranian luxury goods. She acknowledges America's role in the 1953 coup, coming
closer to apologizing for it than any Ameri 2/3can official ever has.
(pgs.
14-15)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: April 16, 2000