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According to the Washington, DC-based White House Historical Association, the 1978/79 US policy on Iran, that embraced Ayatollah Khomeini, betrayed the pro-US Shah of Iran, and failed the pro-US Sunni Arab regimes, was based on a superficial view of Middle East political, religious, cultural and historical reality:
“…. In January 1979, the Shah fled into exile, and the theocratic regime of Khomeini took power. There was little informed understanding in the U.S. government about the political implications of this fundamentalist regime. Gary Sick, who was on the National Security staff, recalled a meeting in which Vice President Walter Mondale asked the CIA director Stansfield Turner, ‘What the hell is an Ayatollah anyway.’ Turner said he wasn’t sure he knew….”
However, the New York-based Foreign Affairs Magazine claims that – following President Carter’s initial assessment that Ayatollah Khomeini would be preoccupied with tractors rather than with tanks – the US President amended his position on Iran, concluding that regime-change was the most realistic policy toward Iran, because the Ayatollahs were relentlessly anti-American, ill-faith negotiators, neither partners for peaceful coexistence, nor amenable to democracy or to abandoning their anti-US fanatic vision:
“….Recently declassified documents reveal that in December 1979, Carter issued a presidential finding—a notification to Congress required under laws passed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal—ordering the CIA to ‘conduct propaganda and political and economic action operations to encourage the establishment of a responsible and democratic regime in Iran; make contacts with Iranian opposition leaders and interested governments in order to encourage interactions that could lead to a broad, pro-Western front capable of forming an alternative government….’ The CIA attempted to organize external Iranian opposition groups into a cohesive force, tried to aid dissidents in Iran, and enlisted regional powers such as Saudi Arabia to help undermine the nascent theocracy….”
Has the 1979-2022 track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs justified President Carter’s transformation of policy from diplomacy to regime-change?