IRANIAN CRISES WAS A 'CONSCIOUS RETREAT' FOR JIMMY CARTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100160027-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 14, 2007
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: February 23, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100160027-8
23 February 1979
BY JEFFREY ST. JOHN
Panax News Service
- WASHINGTON - "Forecasting
political upheavals and military
coups," insisted CIA Director,
Admiral Stansfield Turner, "is
probably the most difficult part of
intelligence, much more difficult
than military or economic in-
telligence." - -
Turner made that observation
Feb. 4, 1979, adding that no other
intelligence agency in the world
predicted the upheaval in Iran or
that no journalist or scholar
predicted the Shah would be forc-
ed to leave the country. However,
on Feb. -9, 1979 the Wall Street
Journal reported that Isreal's
Intelligence Service back in 1977
warned its political leaders that
Iran was in -danger of being dis-
established and that the globe
could be engulfed in a crisis over
oil unless Israel looked elsewhere
for oil supplies.
ISREALI political leaders took
the estimate of its, intelligence
service seriously and prepared for,
the crisis that has since engulfed
.Iran while the Carter administra-
tion chose to ignore it..Turner is
also wrong that no scholar
foresaw the crisis and sought to
warn the Carter administration.
Dr. James Brill of the Universi-
ty of Texas and an expert on Iran,
in- an interview with the
Associated Press prior to the
Turner statement, insisted that in
March of 1978 he wrote a paper
for the administration warning of
the collapse of the Iranian
monarchy, but that such warnings
were never taken seriously.
The recent drop in President
Carter's popularity in the polls
clearly is tied to his inaction over
Iran; first vacillating on support
for the Shah, then strong
statements of support followed by
utterances the Shah leave the
country and- followed still by sup-
port for the Shah's foe, Prime
Minister Bakhtiar, and in the end
turning to support the Moslem
revolutionary Khomeini.
HOWEVER, Admiral Turner
must know the Soviet economist
who defected to the West in 1976,
Dr. Igor S. Glagolev a senior
member of the Soviet Academy of
Scientists, Institute of World
Economic and - International
Relations and a -disarmament ex-
pert'.
He told this columnist in
December that prior to his defec-
tion form the Soviet Union he
knew first hand how Moscow was
planning. to subvert nations vital
to the West, like Iran, and that l
agents had been trained and sent!
into Iran.
The failure of the Carter ad-
ministration in Iran is not some
isolated incident, but part of a
persistent pattern of retreat. The
list of nations over the last two,
years is lengthy; surrender of!
Taiwan, the Panama Canal, and'
willingness to withdraw U.S.
forces from South Korea.
IN AFRICA the Cubans. and i
Russians have had a free hand in
Ethiopia and Angola seeking to
overthrow Zaire, and were,
blunted more by European than
American action when France
and Belgium sent paratroopers to .
Zaire. At the same time the
Carter administration has sought
to establish better relations with
Russia, Vietnam, China and Cuba
while turning on its former
friends in the name of human
rights violations. Nicaragua,
Chile and Argentina are but three.
examples.
All this confusion and chaos.
does not appear an accident and
the disaster in Iran illustrates this
clearly. The Carter administra-
tion does not seem that upset by
the cut off of Iranian crude,
perhaps, because it now.provides
.the pretext for them to impose
gas rationing and greater controls
at home. .
. Its attitude toward Mexico as
an alternative source has. been }
negative, even to the point of
seeking to make the Mexicans-the
heavy in a recent aborted gas
deal.
Thus, the Iranian crisis was not,
as Admiral Turner would have us
believe, the failure of in-
-telligence, but a conscious retreatI
-of the Carter administration to ,
reduce the United States as a
global power. The Carter ad-
ministration over .the last two-!
years has dismantled U.S
economic, military and political
power against its enemies while
they assembled an arsenal of
weapons for a world at peace im-
posed by force. -00
Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100160027-8