Time to Send a Public Message

Few Americans know Iran better than former CIA Director Richard Helms, a friend of the Shah's for 20 years and U.S. Ambassador to Tehran between 1973 and 1976. In an interview with TIME Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey, Helms makes the traditional case for toughness. Sidey's report:

The world of Richard Helms has been a long struggle against the marauding Russian bear. That is why Helms speaks so strongly about the grim outlook in Iran. Says he: "We ought to go to our NATO allies and make certain that we are all together, and then we ought to sit down with the Russians and make it plain to them that having the Persian Gulf under the control of Communists is simply not acceptable to us."

If there is a ring to that which takes one back to the old days when life on this globe was a series of crises strung together with pauses while the Soviets looked for another opening, that is just the way Helms meant it to sound.

Helms feels that the problem in Iran dwarfs almost every other foreign policy consideration of the moment for the Western world, including the final agreement on the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Iran is "dangerous." His view: this is oil, the free world's lifeblood. This could sweep the entire Middle East into chaos. This could lead to serious confrontation between the superpowers.

In Helms' opinion there is no viable alternative to the Shah, and thus the U.S. should do everything in its power to sustain him. Although Helms points no public fingers at past failures that produced the current upheaval, it is obvious that he finds Washington's response lethargic and uncomprehending. Not only would he get tough with the Russians, he would also be firm with the British, French and Germans, who have an immense stake in Middle East oil. The Israelis, too, have a huge interest in Iran and her oil; surely they could find a way to help.

"The Shah needs every ounce of our moral and political support right now," continues Helms. It is safe to say that Helms was depressed last week when at this delicate time, President Carter chose first to give the world another lecture on human rights and then later, at a breakfast with reporters, suggested that the Shah might fall. "We ought to keep quiet and go to work where it matters," Helms insists. If the U.S. is not now heavily involved in a detailed re-evaluation of all the forces at play in Iran, it should be, he says. "This talk about there being no evidence of the Soviet involvement is nonsense," he adds. "The KGB is there. We ought to beef up the CIA."

Helms believes that for too long America has heard only of the Shah's repressions and his violations of human rights. The difficulty of governing Iran was never understood in the U.S. nor, for that matter, was the Shah's loyalty to the U.S. Helms remembers that during the oil embargo of 1973, the Shah sent his emissaries to Egypt and Saudi Arabia to plead for a quick end. He kept Israel supplied with oil at that time. Once he secretly sent a tanker out to refuel an American carrier task force running low on oil in the Indian Ocean. In the closing days of the Viet Nam War, at U.S. request, he instantly dispatched a squadron of F-5s to Saigon. His planes and ships have patrolled the Strait of Hormuz for years, watching over the tankers headed west.

There were many failures over time that caused the Shah his problems today, admits Helms. Our own curtailment of the CIA has not helped. Even before the CIA's operations were cut back, the agency did not have enough Farsi-speaking agents. And maybe, muses Helms, the Shah, for many reasons, including U.S. pressure to liberalize, did it too fast when at last he moved.

When he was in the spy business, Helms learned early not to look back. That is his idea now. He believes the U.S. should pull all the backstage levers it can, should let the world know that Iran is critical to our interests, should send the Shah a public message that the U.S. still cares, and that it still knows a few tricks in the big power game. It has always been Helms' view--one his detractors call simplistic--that we are only as helpless as we think we are.

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