It would be premature to declare the Cold War over in the summer of 1969. The Cold War rhetoric continues to abound in the United States in the debates over Vietnam and the ABM; dangers of Soviet-American confrontation are serious in the Arab-Israeli conflict; and Soviet behavior in Czechoslovakia is of the Cold War mold. But, as symbolized by Richard Nixon's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, there is widespread agreement among American leaders that an era of negotiation and rapprochment with the Soviet Union has been entered. The indications are already strong that for Iran this portends an era in which the Soviet-American conflict will not influence very significantly Iran's internal affairs.

As this new era begins, there are already signs that the Cold War world view, including the Soviet-American confrontation in Iran, is about to be drastically revised by a new generation of students of the Cold War.

It would indeed be surprising if the recent controversy over revisionist scholarship and the Cold War did not extend to Iran. For the last two decades, most American historians have asserted that United States involvement in Iran was fundamentally a response to Soviet penetration, made manifest during World War II when Russia tried to establish a puppet regime in Azerbaijan. According to the “orthodox” school of Cold War scholarship, America first took an overt interest in Persia in 1946. President Truman sent his “blunt message” to Stalin, the State Department protested sharply, and the United Nations Security Council asked for Russian withdrawal. The Soviets, after boycotting the United Nations discussions, left the territory. America, a disinterested power, had suddenly awaken to her world responsibilities and come to the rescue.

Seven years ago, a political report published by Echo of Iran raised the issue of the difficulty with which the Iranian political elite distinguishes between criticism and subversion. There is still only a hazy boundary separating treason from the lesser evil. Just one example of this level of debate was the suggestion by the “opposition” Mardom Party Newspaper that to attribute administrative misdemeanors to either ministers or to the Imperial Inspectorate was to commit treason.

One of the distressing effects of the failure to make this distinction in contemporary Iran is that a generation may appear which is loyal to the monarchy but which holds attitudes counter-productive to the espoused long-run political goals of the Shah. The attitudes to which I refer include the rejection of policy-oriented political activity and a flexible bargaining stance in the resolution of social problems. This writer met a number of young people in Iran who saw general disorder as the only alternative to the tight rein with which the Shah attempts to guide political activity.