Iran, U.S. Military Involvement in

Iran, U.S. Military Involvement in. The American military first assumed a role in Iran in 1942. The shift of the lend‐lease supply route to the Soviet Union from Murmansk to the Persian corridor brought American military personnel to Iran. They came for two reasons: to move supplies across Iran and to shore up the Iranian government headed by Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi. The Americans organized a series of advisory missions to stabilize Iran, including one to reform its army and another to reorganize the gendarmerie (state police). The first adviser, Gen. John Greely, set out to improve the army's fighting quality, but lacked authorization or resources. His successor, Gen. Clarence Ridley, followed War Department guidelines to evaluate a military assistance program and reorganize the Iranian military supply system. Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (father of the leader of Desert Storm) headed the gendarmerie mission. By 1943, some 30,000 troops of the Persian Gulf Service Command (PGC) under Gen. Donald Connolly had begun rebuilding roads and the railroad to move Lend‐Lease supplies from the gulf to the Soviet Union.

Immediately after the war ended, the United States dismantled the PGC. President Harry S. Truman, at State Department urging, exempted the advisory missions from his order to remove all American troops.

The American military played no significant role during the Soviet‐American crisis over Iran between November 1945 and April 1946. The Joint Chiefs of Staff did warn that in any armed conflict, logistical difficulties prevented an effective military response. They later supported a National Security Council finding that Iran had become “a major strategic interest to the United States.” The region's oil was vital to postwar energy policy. Iran also shared with the Soviet Union a 1,300‐mile border and blocked the traditional Russian aspiration for a warm‐water gulf port. Both factors created long‐term American concern with Iran's stability and independence.

Over the next two decades the Department of Defense (DoD) resisted the Shah's requests for help in building Iran's military forces. Military advisers remained until the 1979 revolution, organized after 1950 as ARMISH‐MAAG and GENMISH. They supported the American policy to contain Soviet ambitions in Iran, but played no significant role in the Central Intelligence Agency operation that overthrew Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations both stressed economic development and social reform rather than military strength as the key to Iran's future security. In case of conflict, the Pentagon planned to use American forces to stop the Russians. The primary threat in the late 1950s came from Soviet arms shipments to Iraq. In 1964, the United States extracted a Status of Forces Agreement that exempted American military advisers from Iranian law. As a reward, the Shah received $200 million in loans and credits to buy arms. That agreement angered conservative Islamic opponents of the Shah, especially Ayatollah Rouhallah Khomeini.

By 1970, some 778 Defense personnel were in Iran. In May 1972, over Defense objections, President Richard M. Nixon and NSC adviser Henry Kissinger granted the Shah unlimited access to the most advanced American weapons, including F‐14 and F‐15 aircraft. In 1972–77, American arms sales totaled $16.2 billion as Iran's defense budget rose 680 percent. Nixon and Kissinger justified this policy under the Nixon Doctrine, which shifted the burden of regional defense to key allies. The buildup brought 30,000 Americans to Iran and increased the nationalist resentment of the Shah, ultimately triggering the revolution of 1978. On 24 April 1980, the military launched Operation Eagle Claw, a disastrous mission to rescue fifty‐two Americans held hostage by Iranian militants. Eight helicopters from the carrier Nimitz flew 600 miles to a site called Desert One to rendezvous with C‐130 transport planes. A combination of bad weather and mechanical failure aborted the mission, leaving eight American Marines dead.

In response to Iran's revolution, President Jimmy Carter on 23 January 1980 enunciated the Carter Doctrine: the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its “vital interests” in the Persian Gulf region. A major buildup of American naval forces and the development of the Rapid Deployment force and CENTCOM, its command structure, continued under Ronald Reagan. After the outbreak of the Iran‐Iraq War in September 1980, both sides attacked tankers and oil facilities critical to the West.

In 1986, Iran focused its attack on Kuwait and Kuwaiti‐bound ships in the gulf. American policy by then had tilted toward an Iraqi victory. The Iran‐Contra Affair of 1986 confused the issue as the Reagan administration, which publicly condemned Iran, privately shipped arms to Teheran. To protect the flow of oil from Iranian attacks, the U.S. Navy began to escort American and “reflagged” Kuwaiti tankers. In May 1987, an Iraqi Mirage F‐1 fighter in error fired two Exocet missiles that killed thirty‐seven sailors aboard the American destroyer USS Stark.

By late 1987, the United States had some thirteen naval ships in the gulf, supported by another twelve to fifteen in the Gulf of Oman and a substantial allied force. American forces several times attacked small Irani ships. Iranian‐laid naval mines posed the gravest threat to gulf shipping. On 18 April 1988, in retaliation for a mine attack on the frigate Samuel B. Roberts, the navy fought its largest surface action since World War II. Operation Praying Mantis destroyed two armed oil platforms, a frigate, a fast attack craft, and two armed speed boats. As a war‐weary Iran moved toward peace, the cruiser Vincennes on 3 July 1988 mistakenly shot down a civilian Iranian airliner with the loss of 290 lives.

After the Iran‐Iraq War ended in July 1988, overt hostility between the United States and Iran ceased. Iran remained neutral during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and figured prominently only when over 100 Iraqi fighter planes fled there to avoid destruction from Operation Desert Storm. Friction with the United States persisted through 1995, primarily from Iran's support for international terrorism and its program to build nuclear weapons. Friction with the United States persisted into 1999, but the rise of more moderate leaders and Iran's continuing role as a counter‐weight to Saddam Hussein in Iraq gave hints that tensions might ease.
[See also Middle East, U.S. Military Involvement in the.]

Bibliography

Ervand Abrahamian , Iran: Between Two Revolutions, 1982.
Mark H. Lytle , The Origins of the Iranian‐American Alliance, 1941–1953, 1987.
James Bill , The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American‐Iranian Relations, 1988.
Dilip Hiro , Desert Storm to Desert Shield: The Second Gulf War, 1992.
Michael A. Palmer , Guardians of the Gulf: A History of America's Expanding Role in the Persian Gulf, 1833–1992, 1992.

Mark H. Lytle