The US and Iran: Dialogues Before Distrust

Matthew Shannon is a historian of United States foreign relations and a specialist in the cultural history of diplomacy, with a focus on interactions between Iran and the United States. He previously taught history at Emory & Henry College in Virginia and now teaches at the American University in Cairo. His scholarship examines how international education, public diplomacy, and personal experience have shaped mutual perceptions between Iranians and Americans.

We spoke with him about American–Iranian Dialogues, a new volume he has edited that explores the longer—and often neglected—history of encounters between the two countries. The book revisits key moments in Iranian-American relations, from the Constitutional Revolution to the White Revolution, periods that have received comparatively little attention in official historiography.

AO: What inspired you to undertake this project on American-Iranian dialogues, particularly focusing on the period from the 1890s to the 1960s? Was there a personal or scholarly moment that sparked your interest in this history?

MS: I was trained as a historian of US foreign relations, but I was always interested in transnational history and other methodologies that go beyond the level of the state. This approach was neither the exception nor the norm when I was in graduate school in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and I was fortunate to be a historian-in-training at a moment of methodological eclecticism. However, practitioners of different historical methods (such as diplomatic, social, and cultural history) and interdisciplinary fields (such as Middle East / Iranian Studies and American Studies) are not always in conversation with each other. Thus, my aim in American-Iranian Dialogues was to explore what the transnational and cultural “turns” looked like to scholars in different fields. This idea came about one year after my first book, Losing Hearts and Minds, was published, through conversations with colleagues at the 2018 meeting of the Association for Iranian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. The timing was fortuitous, as I had recently received an invitation from Tom Zeiler, a former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), to put forward a book proposal for the Bloomsbury series that he edits called “New Approaches to International History.”

In your introduction you talk about a “connected history” approach to US-Iran relations. Could you elaborate on what this concept means to you and how it reshapes our understanding of the interactions between Americans and Iranians during this period?

I borrow this concept from other scholars and apply it to the history of US-Iran relations. At the macro level, “connected history” seeks to identify and understand various forms of connection that go beyond simplistic and often artificial categories of human understanding and historical analysis. For example, this approach can help explain the historical dynamics in borderlands and other liminal spaces, both territorial and cultural. More specifically, the concept has both topical and methodological significance. 

As it relates to the subject of US-Iran relations, the book aims to understand the sources of connection between the two countries instead of the sources of division. Unfortunately, so much of the scholarship on US-Iran relations centers on security narratives of difference and conflict. But we had a different goal that is more in line with the aims of humanistic inquiry. The connected history approach fundamentally reshapes our understanding of US-Iran relations by emphasizing the agency of individuals and, to some extent, institutions as the drivers of historical change over time. In doing so, the book presents the history of US-Iran relations as an ongoing and contested dialogue and complicates our understanding of “diplomacy” in global affairs. 

One interesting example comes in the first chapter, by John Ghazvinian, which looks at some of the early diplomats who represented Iran in the United States. While diplomats are, of course, state actors, the lives of these individuals were more fluid than would be the case for diplomats in today’s world. Some were businessmen involved in a range of commercial ventures, and others were influential cultural brokers who helped to present “Iran” to Americans at events such as the 1893 world’s exposition in Chicago. The question of who represents one country in another – and in what manner – remains a vital question. And it is a question that the connected history approach can help us understand in nuanced ways. In addition to reinterpreting the life of “Haji Washington,” this chapter sheds light on some lesser-known figures from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many of whom were neither “Persian” nor Muslim, thus revealing the importance of religious minorities as agents of dialogue between the United States and Iran. This is a very different sort of “diplomatic history” than one typically finds in the literature. 

In this and other ways, the connected history approach also relates to historical methods. Indeed, the contributors to the book utilize a range of primary source material in both English and Persian. This is what allowed us to write a connected history of US-Iran relations, in the first place. A few chapters are informed by archives in Iran. Additional chapters are based on the personal papers of individual American aid workers and archaeologists, while others draw on the institutional archives of Presbyterian missionaries and Western oil companies, to name just some examples. In addition to archival research, some of the chapters are based on interviews. In these and other ways, the book connects different research methods and incorporates voices from both sides of the US-Iran relationship.

The book highlights the role of non-state actors—missionaries, archaeologists, Peace Corps volunteers, and students—in shaping US-Iran relations. Why do you think these unofficial actors were so significant, and how did their contributions differ from those of official diplomats?

While official actors on a government payroll are important to any bilateral relationship, most individuals experience “the global” on different terms and as private citizens. Consider the case of international education as an example. Despite the importance of US government initiatives such as the Fulbright program, the large majority of Iranians who studied in the United States prior to 1979 did so on their own accord. In other words, they were self-funded and not recipients of scholarships from the US or Iranian governments. Thus, if a historian wants to provide an accurate representation of the history of educational relations between the United States and Pahlavi Iran, it is imperative to look to non-state actors and non-governmental organizations. It is also important to understand that official actors have a particular charge from their government, namely, to advance the so-called national interest. By contrast, for non-state actors the situation is different and much more fluid. Thus, the focus on non-state actors is at once more representative of the past and, I think, simply more interesting and befitting of humanistic inquiry.

In addition to students in the United States, two other examples would be American economic advisers and archaeologists in Iran. Morgan Shuster was an American economic adviser who lent an early form of technical assistance to Iran long before the US government’s foreign aid program existed. Shuster was in Iran during the years of the Constitutional Revolution, and he became well-known for his defense of the Iranian Constitution and his opposition to the British and Russian imperial interventions that ultimately ended the revolution. Shuster later wrote a book titled The Strangling of Persia. Then there were the various American archaeologists who worked in Iran during the interwar period. While the archaeologists of this period can be controversial actors, their work figured prominently, for better or for worse, into the evolution of Iranian nationalism during the early Pahlavi period. I present these two examples because they indicate how, whether in the late Qajar or early Pahlavi period, nonstate actors from the United States were part of a transnational dialectic on Iranian nationalism. For that reason and others, they played a meaningful role in shaping this connected history that is the focus of the book.

You frame the book between Iran’s Constitutional Revolution and the White Revolution, rather than the more commonly referenced Islamic Revolution of 1979. What was the rationale behind this temporal focus, and how does it challenge conventional narratives of US-Iran relations?

This is an important question about how “periodization” influences the narratives and conclusions that historians put forward. The book breaks with traditional periodizations to reinterpret the framework of Iran “between two revolutions,” to borrow from the historian Ervand Abrahamian. We kept the years surrounding Iran’s Constitutional Revolution as the opening bookend, but reinterpreted the closing bookend as Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s “White Revolution.”

By doing this, the book pushes back against the obsession in the scholarly literature to explain the origins of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, on the one hand, and the seeds of animosity between the United States and the Islamic Republic, on the other. If the “telos” of a historical narrative is 1979, then all roads lead to the fall of the shah and the rupture that occurred in the US-Iran relationship during the hostage crisis. In those narratives, most of which are political in orientation, the shah’s reform program is not taken seriously. And in those narratives the historical points of consensus between Americans and Iranians are viewed as anomalous because they do not help to explain the conflict that became evident during the revolutionary years. Thus, the centrality of the Iranian Revolution to the scholarship has led scholars to overlook and misinterpret many aspects of US-Iran relations prior to 1979.

I would point to the Community School of Tehran as an example of genuine affinity between the two countries that has been neglected in the dominant narratives. I write about Community School in my chapter – and in greater detail in my most recent book, Mission Manifest. Community School was a K-12 coeducational institution that American Presbyterian missionaries established in the 1930s for their children and other English-speakers living in Iran. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the school shed its Presbyterian affiliation, established a board of trustees, became accredited by the Iranian government, and evolved into a truly international institution before its nationalization in 1980. Over time, it enrolled Americans, Iranians, and young people from all over the world whose families were in the country. Whatever their parents were doing in Iran, the students at Community School were thrust into an educational and social space that provided them with an opportunity to have a genuine and meaningful international experience. This was a school for a particular moment in Iranian history. In addition to my writings, I also lead an oral history project that has resulted in the creation of the Tehran Community School Collection on the Presbyterian Historical Society’s Pearl Digital Archive. The collection includes interviews that I conducted with former students and staff, interviews conducted by other researchers, and a range of digitized documents relating to the history of the school.

Community School is but one example of how American-Iranian Dialogues examines a period of history when Americans had space to be constructive partners in Iranian life, and when Iranians were, as citizens of an allied state, able to be valuable contributors to American life.

The book explores how Iranians and Americans influenced each other’s perceptions and identities. Could you share a specific example from the book that illustrates this mutual cultural impact and its lasting significance?

Consider the examples of American Peace Corps volunteers in Iran and Iranian students in the United States. These three chapters – one on Peace Corps Iran and two on Iranian students in the United States – utilize oral histories to foreground the human element that is so important to understanding the forgotten histories of US-Iran relations.

The chapter on the Peace Corps shows how it was at once “a Cold War innovation and deviation.” This phrase, which is used by Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, explains so much, I think. It means that, while the Peace Corps was a US government program and an instrument of American “soft power,” its very nature provided space for individuals to exercise their own agency as they lived and worked in Iran. The chapter demonstrates that, even though Peace Corps volunteers were charged with transmitting knowledge and other sorts of information to Iranians, the biggest impact may have come in the ways in which “Iran” transformed the young Americans who experienced the country and its cultures during the 1960s and 1970s. There is a group in the United States called the Peace Corps Iran Association that is having its last meeting in Washington, D.C. this fall. One cannot have a conversation with a former Peace Corps volunteer without hearing about how their experience in Iran transformed them.

Examples abound, but one obvious area where the Peace Corps experience had a transformative impact on American life is in academia and higher education. Some of the most important scholars of US-Iran relations from the past half-century began their careers as Peace Corps volunteers in Iran. Ambassador John Limbert is one example. After serving in the Peace Corps, he went to graduate school and returned to Iran to work in the US embassy in Tehran. Despite being held hostage between 1979 and 1981, he thereafter continued his career in the US Foreign Service and is, to this day, an important voice of reason within the context of US-Iran relations. Professor James Goode is another example. He also went to graduate school after his time in the Peace Corps and went on to have a distinguished career as a prolific scholar of US-Iran relations, along with other aspects of modern Middle Eastern history. He recently wrote a memoir titled Living, Loving Iran, which is an important testament to the long-term contribution of the Peace Corps experience to the promotion of dialogue between the United States and Iran.

In addition to the chapter on the Peace Corps, there are two chapters on Iranian students in the United States, both of which center the history on a particular place in the United States. In the chapter on California, it is fascinating to see how the political activities of Iranian students intersected with, and shaped the experiences of, the broader “new left” during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, the social change movements of that era would not have been what they were without individuals from countries other than the United States. The chapter on Michigan demonstrates that some Iranians who came to the United States to study prior to 1979 remained in the country after the revolution, shaped American perceptions of Iran, and navigated their identities in a new cultural context. Both California and Michigan are, today, major population centers and important hubs for the Iranian-American community.

With regard to the chapter on Michigan, we see how connected histories can put local and global phenomena in conversation with each other. An example is the history of the Persia House of Michigan, which is an important intervention that at once informed American perceptions of Iran and helped Iranian-Americans navigate new cultural identities in the United States. This is but one of the many rich examples featured in Camron Amin’s contribution to the book. Anyone interested in learning more about this subject should consult his chapter, which includes excerpts from the interviews that he conducted as part of the Michigan Iranian-American Oral History Project. This formatting allows readers to hear directly from the Iranian-American community in Michigan, rather than through the interpretive lens of an analyst.

Cyrus Schayegh’s conclusion discusses the ambiguities of US imperial power in Iran. How do you see the interplay between American influence and Iranian agency during this period, particularly in light of the power imbalances highlighted in the book?

We were very fortunate to have Professor Schayegh reflect on the volume’s content in the conclusion. As he notes, the connected history that we explore was made possible because the United States and Iran were allies, rather than adversaries, within the context of the Cold War. And, within that context, the United States was the global hegemon – a “superpower” – and Iran was a developing state that, despite its own agency, did not necessarily control its own destiny.

During this period, there were treaties in place that afforded Americans and Iranians certain privileges and protections in each other’s countries that would not have been available to citizens of adversarial states. It is no coincidence that the most important one – the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights – was signed in the aftermath of the 1953 Anglo-American coup that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. The more well-known treaty – the 1964 Status-of-Forces Agreement – set the stage for the dramatic expansion of the American colony in Iran, which was nearly 50,000 strong in the late 1970s. Because of US imperial power, Americans had access to Iran in ways that citizens of other countries did not; and that, after 1979, Americans have not. And because of the US alliance with Pahlavi Iran, Iranians had access to the United States in ways that citizens of other countries did not; and that, after 1979, Iranians have not.

So readers should understand that the subjects covered in the book existed under the umbrella of, rather than independent from, US global power. Because the history of US power projection into Pahlavi Iran is well understood, we did not feel compelled to further document it. Instead, we sought to understand the broader cultural and transnational experiences of the moment.

 

Your recent book, Mission Manifest, shifts focus to American Presbyterian missionaries and their role in Tehran during the 1940s to 1960s, arguing they were central to American-Iranian relations before the 1979 revolution. How does Mission Manifest build upon or diverge from the framework of American-Iranian Dialogues, particularly in understanding the interplay of evangelical ideals and US foreign policy in Iran?

The argument of Mission Manifest is that the spiritual power of “the church” – in this case, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (or PCUSA) – converged with the material power of “the state” – both American and Iranian – to make the mid-twentieth century a unique period in the history of US-Iran relations. In contrast to earlier periods, the work of American evangelicals was amplified by broader US initiatives and those of the Pahlavi state during the Second World War and early Cold War.

Each chapter of Mission Manifest examines a different manifestation of that shared mission in Tehran. There are chapters on place, religion, development, education, and associationism. The two final chapters turn to the missionary “boomerang” in the United States and then to the endgame in Tehran. While the focus of is the period spanning the 1940s to the 1960s, many of the chapters detail the backstory of the missionary experience in Iran, which dates to the nineteenth century. With further regard to periodization, the book eschews the revolutionary years of the 1970s, which frees up intellectual space to ask different research questions and gain a fuller appreciation of the “American moment” in Iran.

As an example, consider the chapter on development initiatives in Iran. The first half of the chapter discusses the evolution of Persian-language literacy programs in postwar Iran, and the second half employs the history of a health clinic in South Tehran to understand the evolution of social work, in particular, and the welfare state, more broadly, in Pahlavi Iran. In both cases, one sees how Presbyterian missionaries, US government aid programming, and influential Iranians – such as Sattareh Farmanfarmaian – were working on the same track to promote a shared vision of mission and modernity in Pahlavi Iran before and during the era of the White Revolution.

I was working on Mission Manifest at the same time I was editing American-Iranian Dialogues, so there are similarities between them. Readers will see that the subjects from my chapter in American-Iranian Dialogues, which examines three Presbyterian educational institutions in mid-century Tehran – the Community School of Tehran, the Iran Bethel School, and the Alborz Foundation – are dealt with in much greater detail in chapters four and five of Mission Manifest. One of the most exciting aspects of editing a book is to see how, in many cases, researchers are able to transform the material from their individual chapters into standalone research monographs.

What would you say is the key takeaway you hope your Iranian readers draw from American-Iranian Dialogues about the shared history of Iran and the United States?

Despite the current state of US-Iran relations, there was a time when the two countries were not at odds. Moreover, individual Americans and Iranians were able to interact with each other and develop shared understandings of what it meant to live together in the modern world. “American” and “Iranian” are not monolithic categories, and different groups had different ideas about the nature of the binational encounter prior to 1979. Some thought it was great, others thought it was horrible, and still others had more value-neutral understandings of the US-Iran relationship. Nevertheless, “dialogue” and “friendship” existed between individual Americans and Iranians outside of the narrow parameters of the state-to-state relationship. Believe it or not, there is more to the US-Iran relationship than military and security considerations. This is important, not just to understand the full complexity of the history, but also to chart a more peaceful and humane path forward amid a time of unprecedented conflict.