Republican senator says Tehran must be deprived of oil and gas revenue
Republican US Senator Tommy Tuberville expressed support for increased pressure on Iran, emphasizing sanctions targeting key sectors like oil and gas.
“If you're going to put sanctions on somebody —what President Trump does—for Iran and for the regime that's even killing its own people—is, you do blockade. You take away their source of being able to make a living, and that’s through their oil and gas,” Tuberville told Iran International.
Nearly fifty years later, Iran International can reveal the untold story of a critical US mission to Tehran ordered by President Jimmy Carter to determine whether Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah could fend off a revolution.
Their conclusion, after facing militants' bullets and a ghostly encounter with the shell-shocked monarch, was that the US could no longer support its longtime ally's rule.
The consequences of Islamic Revolution to follow reverberate to the present day.
Ambassador John Craig, 80, was a young American diplomat when he was tasked with joining an exclusive group to meet the Shah alongside Senate majority leader Senator Robert Byrd.
It was a mission that went undisclosed even to American Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan, Craig told Iran International in an interview in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at the local university.
In a storied career, Craig went on to serve as US ambassador to Egypt and Oman.
“President Carter asked Senator Byrd to make a special trip to Tehran to give him a personal assessment of the longevity of the Shah. There was great concern in Washington”, said Craig, “Could the Shah hold on? Could the Shah defeat the revolution?”
Their task was to help Carter transcend the disagreements within the US foreign policy over whether one of Washington's key allies in the turbulent region could be salvaged and provide an unvarnished take on the Shah's mettle.
“Some were saying, yes, the Shah could hold on, others no. One of the issues in that debate was how much force should be used to put down the revolution,” said Craig.
"There were those who felt that the Shah should really be aggressive and shoot people. And there were those who felt that reforms were the way to defeat the revolution.”
Ambassador John Craig has Ambassador-in-Residence in the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.American politician who served as a United States House of Representatives from West Virginia for over 57 years, from 1953 until his death in 2010.
Mission: Tehran
To camouflage the trip's true purpose, Craig and the rest of the group made a diplomatic tour across the Middle East and the North Africa before arriving in Tehran.
Craig touched down in December 1978, just a few months before the Shah was ultimately toppled and as rebellion roiled cities nationwide.
Violence was escalating and martial law was in place as armed anti-Shah demonstrators roamed the streets chanting ‘death to the Shah!’
Iranian demonstrator holds poster of Khomeini as uprisings swept Iran in 1978.
Because of the security risk, Craig and the team were not able to drive to the Shah’s Niavaran palace and instead flew by helicopter.
“We were flying. You could see out the windows that people were shooting at us,” Craig said.
When they arrived, Craig said he was astonished to see bare walls - no paintings, no antiques - in what was once among the world's most opulent palaces.
It became clear that the Shah was preparing to flee.
Interior of Niavaran palace which is now a museum open to the public in Northern Tehran.
“I'm saying to myself, this is really weird. I said to myself immediately, these guys have packed up. They are ready to go. No question about that,” Craig said.
Entering the palace’s Hall of Mirrors, Craig caught sight of the Shah and his wife, Empress Farah Diba, standing to greet them.
'Inert' emperor
“He was comatose. Standing, but inert,” said Craig.
“I noticed that the Shah was looking straight ahead. He was not interacting. His eyes weren't moving. He did not raise his hand. But when the person put their hand in his hand, he didn't grasp it and he didn't shake it,” Craig said.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, his wife Empress Farah Diba and their son, the crown prince.
They went on to have lunch in the palace. Craig said the Shah did not speak once over the course of the meal, leaving the Empress to do all the talking. She appeared to be in control and running the country in the last days of their rule, Craig concluded.
“He didn't eat. He didn't move. He didn't say a word,” said Craig about the Shah.
Pleasantries and small talk dominated the discussion and the violence in the streets went unmentioned. Senator Byrd and Ambassador Craig left convinced that the Shah was unfit to rule.
Little did anyone at the time realize it, but the lunch was to help determine US policy and Iran's future course for the coming decades.
Screaming match
What followed next was a visit by Senator Byrd and Ambassador Craig to Ambassador Sullivan’s house in Tehran to break the news on the special visit.
While Ambassador Craig did not partake in the conversation, he could hear what Sullivan and Byrd were saying.
“There was a lot of screaming and yelling. They were arguing about what our policy should be going forward,” said Craig on the encounter between the two men.
William H. Sullivan, the last American ambassador to Iran.
The conversation lasted about three hours, with Sullivan coming to the defense of the Shah and pushing to have the Americans keep him in power. Byrd argued the Shah was already done for and unable to rule over a people in revolt.
On the flight back to the United States, Senator Byrd prepared his report to Carter.
“We were such a small group, of course, that we could hear what the senator was dictating in the memo to the president. So we we all knew what the senator was saying in his memo,” said Craig.
Once they arrived back to D.C, the Senator had a car waiting to take him straight to the White House, where he informed the president of his dire conclusion: the scion of Iran's 2,500-year monarchy was doomed.
“He went back and told the president: This is not going to work," Craig said.
"The Shah cannot continue.”
You can watch the full interview with Ambassador John Craig on YouTube.
Iran has ordered its military personnel to leave Yemen, the Telegraph reported on Thursday citing an unnamed Iranian official, abandoning its Houthi allies as the US escalates airstrikes against the group.
The report cited the official as saying that the move aimed to avoid direct confrontation with the United States if an Iranian soldier was killed.
Iran was also scaling back its strategy of supporting a network of regional allies to focus on the direct threats from Washington instead, the report added.
Tehran’s primary concern was “Trump and how to deal with him,” the report quoted the source as saying.
“Every meeting is dominated by discussions about him, and none of the regional groups we previously supported are being discussed,” the source added.
Iran could potentially agree to direct talks with the United States on the nuclear issue if progress is made during initial indirect negotiations, independent journalist Laura Rozen reported on Thursday citing an Iranian source.
The source, whom Rozen said spoke on condition of anonymity, indicated that indirect talks could begin in the next two to three weeks, likely in Oman, if the US is willing to engage. The talks are expected to be private at first.
Rozen cited the source as saying that if the indirect talks are successful in establishing a framework for negotiations, they could pave the way for direct talks.
The report added that Iran's negotiating team is expected to include Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Majid Ravanchi, who was a key figure in talks which achieved a previous international nuclear deal, and Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of leading what he called an “assault on civilization” during joint remarks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest on Thursday.
Netanyahu's visit followed Hungary’s formal decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court earlier in the day. The Israeli leader is sought under an ICC arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
“This is important for all of civilization as we fight this battle against barbarism,” Netanyahu said. “We are fighting a similar fight for the future of our common civilization.”
He said that civilization itself is “under assault from radical Islam” spearheaded by Iran.
Iran-backed Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages to Gaza.
Israel's ongoing incursion into Gaza has killed more than 50,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, with nearly a third of the dead under 18.
Tehran and its allies were dealt significant setbacks last year, including Israeli attacks that severely weakened Iran's ally in Lebanon Hezbollah and helped dislodge the Assad dynasty in Syria, Tehran's oldest Arab ally.
On Oct. 26, Israel launched air strikes on Iran which it said knocked out Iran’s Russian-supplied air defense system.
Since Donald Trump took office in the United States for his second term as president, Tehran has issued repeated warnings against further attacks.
It has also conducted continuous military drills since early January. After reviving the "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions from his first term, Trump on Sunday mooted bombing Iran if it does not agree to a new nuclear deal.
A high-ranking Iranian judge and member of the so-called Death Committee which oversaw the execution of thousands of dissidents in the late 1980s, has died.
The head or Iran's judiciary issued a condolence message on Thursday saying Hossein Ali Nayeri had been bedridden due to a lengthy illness, attributing the sickness to his years of work.
"Certainly, this ailment was due to many years of service to the holy system of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the judiciary," Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the judiciary's Mizan news agency.
Nayeri's death comes after a court employee in January shot dead two veteran Supreme Court judges, Mohammad Moghiseh and AliRazini, before killing himself. Initial news reports at the time mentioned a third judge being injured but officials said an injured bodyguard was the only other victim.
Born in 1956, Hossein Ali Nayeri served as the religious judge of Tehran's Evin Prison from 1983 to 1989 and was appointed by the founder of the Islamic Republic Ruhollah Khomeini.
During this period authorities routinely executed political prisoners. Nayeri was a key member of a judicial panel - later known as the "Death Committee" - which condemned thousands of prisoners to death in the summer of 1988.
Following his tenure at Evin Prison, Nayeri served as the Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1989 to 2013 and as the head of the Judges Disciplinary Court from 2013 to 2022.
On Wednesday, a hacktivist group said the Iranian police intelligence agency has issued thousands of gun permits to senior state officials to fend off assassination.
