the balance and moderation of his opinions. At one point he told me that where we stood was not Israeli land, but rather held in trust against the day when there was a secure settlement. He was a considerate man, and seeing that I was shivering in the cold wind which swept across the mountains he lent me his flak jacket. I was photographed in this and there followed furious Syrian objections. And so my first major Middle Eastern foray ended amid the endemic misunderstandings of the region.
In retrospect, my visit to the Middle East occurred at an important time of transition between the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the 1978–79 American-brokered Egyptian-Israeli peace settlement. Although the Camp David Agreements ultimately failed to solve the deeper problems, they were a remarkable tribute to the principal participants — Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. At the time I became Prime Minister they still seemed to form the best basis for progress. In fact, however, the rise of armed, aggressive Islamic fundamentalism, principally financed by and focused on Iran, was to upset all such calculations.
I was one of the last senior Western politicians to visit Iran while the Shah was still in power. The troubles had already begun. There were riots in Tabriz in February 1978 against the Shah’s programme of Westernizing reforms, which the Mullahs described as impious attacks on Islam and which, alas, ordinary people often experienced as the forced disruption of their traditional ways of life. As the disturbances increased, the Carter Administration vacillated in its attitude to the Shah. At times, it would offer him support as a bastion of Western influence in a strategically important part of the world; at others it would denounce his human rights record and demand the introduction of liberal reforms. What this recommendation failed to bear in mind was well summed up by the Shah himself: ‘I will behave like the King of Sweden when my subjects behave like Swedes.’ In any event, the Carter Administration’s blowing hot and cold only served to undermine the Shah and encourage his opponents — a fact not lost among America’s potential allies in the Middle East.
For my part, I had no doubt about the strategic importance of Iran for the West. Moreover, although by most definitions only peripheral to the Middle East, Iran, as subsequent events were to demonstrate, had a large potential influence in the region. In any case, I admired the Shah personally and believed that his policy of modernization along Western lines was ultimately the right one. In retrospect, I can see that its success depended upon its being carried out more gradually and taking into account the customs and mores of his people. But it was certainly preferable to the retreat into fundamentalism and medieval economics which have reduced the standard of living of the Iranian people and forced the regime to distract them with political and religious adventurism abroad.
All this was in the future, however, when I arrived in Tehran on the evening of Friday 28 April to be met by Tony Parsons, our Ambassador there. I found Iran to be, on the surface, a bustling, prosperous, Western-style country. There were plenty of new cars in the crowded streets. Shops sold luxury goods to sophisticated, well- dressed women. Moreover, the consumer society was underpinned not just by oil but by new industrial investment, as at the ultra-modern Iran National Automobile works which I visited.
Tony briefed me on the situation. Not only was he on good personal terms with the Shah himself: he had a vast detailed knowledge of what was happening throughout the country. At this time the accepted wisdom was that the main threat to the Shah’s strongly pro-Western regime came from the communist-backed opposition, the Tudeh. Judging from his public pronouncements, even the Shah himself seemed to believe this. But Tony Parsons had perceived that the Mullahs and their supporters were also a threat. That turned out to be all too true. Tony is, however, candid enough to admit in his own account that he thought the army would be capable of holding the situation. That turned out to be all too false. But none of us foresaw how quickly the Shah’s position would crumble.
On Saturday morning I was received at the palace by the Minister of the Court, Amir Abbas Hoveyda. Hoveyda was an urbane and distinguished man, who was later executed by the Ayatollah’s regime after a show trial which I saw on television.
When I met the Shah he began by expressing concern about the recent communist-backed
The Shah was a handsome man, with somewhat gaunt features which I later understood were the early signs of the cancer that would kill him. There was nothing in his manner to suggest he believed that time was running out. It was ominous perhaps that when he went to inspect his troops he travelled by helicopter: I was told that nowadays he always travelled that way rather than through the streets because of the threat of attack. I also noticed that on my visit to Isfahan, to see the ancient mosques, my personal security was particularly tight.
On reflection, my impressions of Iran seem to have something of the quality of those paintings in which the French nobility on the eve of the Revolution disport themselves amid contrived pastoral scenes. Within a year, the Shah would have fled the country, the Ayatollah Khomeini would have returned, an Islamic Republic would have been proclaimed, and bloodshed and terror would prevail. Yet here I was, invited to admire the glorious trappings of the Peacock Throne, to wonder at the spectacular crown jewels, to be enthralled by the illuminated grandeur of the ruins of Persepolis.
Could the Shah have been saved? If the Americans had been more robust, if the French had insisted that the Ayatollah refrain from political activity in Iran as a condition of asylum in Paris, if the Shah had appeased moderate Islamic opinion, perhaps things could have turned out differently. As it is, the forces unleashed by the Iranian revolution are still unchecked and represent one of the greatest threats to international peace and stability.
ASIA AND THE FAR EAST
Between the autumn of 1976 and the spring of 1977 I visited no fewer than eight states in Asia and the Far East. This provided me with a range of contacts and a fund of experience which would prove useful when I was Prime Minister. Inevitably, though, since so many countries were fitted into such a short time — among them Pakistan, India, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and China — I received only a series of political snapshots which would have to be supplemented by wider reading and discussion.
As I reflected later on what I had learned, however, it seemed to me that two general themes stood out. First, in varying degrees and from different standpoints, countries throughout the region were becoming more alert to the extension of Soviet power and influence: this would be sharply reinforced in 1979 by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Secondly, it was still an open question as to how China, Japan and possibly India would arrange a new Asian balance of power. In each case, the rise to dominance was distracted at least as much by self-created obstacles as by external circumstances. The years 1976–77, therefore, were ones full of interest for an apprentice Western statesman. And, in spite of criticisms in the British press for spending too much time away from home, I never regretted making these visits.
On Sunday 5 September 1976, very early in the morning, I arrived in Pakistan at Rawalpindi. The following evening I was entertained by Prime Minister Bhutto. He was the best kind of host, never allowing his left-wing views to get in the way of a first-class dinner and serious but amusing conversation. Gordon Reece accompanied me and Mr Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir, and some of her friends were present too. Prime Minister Bhutto and I had both been to Oxford and had trained as barristers at Lincoln’s Inn.
Mr Bhutto had been an indifferent Prime Minister in difficult circumstances. He helped Pakistan achieve some self-respect after the previous military regime had lost Bangladesh in its disastrous war with India; Pakistan’s relations with its powerful neighbour were now on a better footing. But he failed to tackle seriously the country’s deeply rooted economic difficulties. Like many other Third World socialist leaders of the period, he tried to escape from domestic economic problems by calling for a ‘just’ new international economic order, which was shorthand for larger transfers of foreign aid from the West. Indeed, he had backed a Third World initiative for this purpose.
