ACUTV proudly presents
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary.
On campus today,
we're pleased to welcome Dr. Henry
Specked, member of the new
history department at Abilene Christian
University, who has spent about six
years in Iran and a couple of years in
Iraq. And we'll be talking about the
Iran Iraq relationship, the tensions
that exist and something about the
history. Thank you for being with us.
Thank you. OK, I think it'd be helpful if
we went to the map perhaps first and
said a few things about the geographical
location and something about where you
were spending your time while you were
there.
Perhaps first we should identify Tehran
because that's perhaps the most well
known point has been the capital of
Iran throughout this century.
And then moving just south there
down to this other yellow square
we find where you spent your time, Shiraz
in the south.
It's actually about an hour's plane
flight, about five hundred miles by road.
And so then to just remind us all
of something about the proximity
of Iran to some of the other places
bordered on the north by the Soviet
Union. Yes, on the east by
Afghanistan
and on the west
by Iran. Iraq, I mean by Iraq.
And then then we've got the
celebrated Persian Gulf
to the south. Yes.
So an extremely
tension laden piece
of geography there, it seems, doesn't it?
Well, indeed, it has been for a very long
period of time. One reads
very early in human history that
the peoples of the Highlands and Iran is
very high in the geography that you were
talking about. One goes up from virtually
sea level or perhaps three
hundred feet above sea level,
up over the mountains, which rise to
fourteen thousand feet, something like
that. And when you drop over the
mountains, you drop onto the Iranian
plateau, the average elevation, which is
about a mile up the same as Denver,
actually, that would be Tehran or Shiraz
either most of these cities and
throughout history people have come down
out of these mountains
in order to.
Rob, or to pillage fertile
fields or to rule over this more
settled area or what at one time was a
more settled area, and conversely, people
have gone up through the mountains on
various occasions.
The whole silk route goes through there
from Baghdad, up through the mountains to
Tehran and then on to
Afghanistan and India and
China, depending on on the division,
Kandahar and Afghanistan.
So conquerors have gone
on to the Iranian plateau through
history. And the net result is that
because the Iranians are a
very different kind of people than those
people whom we call the Arabs who speak
Semitic language, the Iranians are more
like us and speaking Indo-European
languages.
There's been that for
that reason, part for other
historical reasons, a great deal of
conflict between peoples of the Highland
and peoples of the lowlands
for a very long period of time.
And through the mountains, one sees
the records in the rocks of conquerors
have come one way or another way.
So it's really not a kind of tension
which is is limited to
the 20th century, totally modern.
Now, you first went to Iran in seventy
two, is that correct?
Mm hmm. I went from Germany to Iran
in nineteen seventy two and was there
a brief times I was out
of the country until seventy eight, June
of seventy eight, which is about six
to eight months before the Shah left
Iran. Some of my friends stayed.
I thought it was time to go.
And then I went to Iraq, to northern
Iraq, to Mosul, which is on the side
of ancient Nineveh.
And I was there for two years until
the war began to break out between Iran
and Iraq. And that seemed a very good
time to leave Iraq.
So it was a total of eight years, almost
without a break between 1972 and
1980 when I was either
in Iran or in
Iraq.
It was the entire time that you were
there in one way or another, connected
with the university?
Yes, I taught at the Shah's university,
the name of which has been changed to
Shiraz University, but then it was known
by the family dynastic
name Pahlavi.
And then when I went to Iraq,
I taught for the Iraqi Ministry of
Education.
I suppose my boss was Saddam Hussein,
really. And I was I
think at least the first year I was
there, the only American employed
directly by the Iraqi government,
um, in Iraq, there are other
Americans in Iraq, but they were through
paid through companies.
We had another man.
We had some Canadians, had a lot of East
Europeans, but of Americans in Iraq
who there weren't very many between
nineteen seventy eight and eighty, I
guess in some ways the the
Iran that you were living in in seventy
two and the following years, uh,
is, is a great
deal different from the Iran that we're
hearing about today.
I suspect in a lot of ways that I
understand that
in some ways at least the Iran of today
hasn't changed a great
deal. Some of the people have changed.
But those are specific ways that in
general, yes, it's a very different
country in the Islamic Republic.
And from about nineteen seventy two,
when I went there until about nineteen
seventy six, I suppose it was
the Iranians were doing frightfully well
economically then
around about seventy six.
Seventy seven.
Iran was not doing as well
economically and people were beginning to
feel this and at the same time,
apparently the Shah became ill.
He certainly was not in the country a
great deal of the time.
His picture disappeared from the front
page of the newspaper most days
when his picture did finally reappear in
the newspaper. He looked a very different
man than one had seen a
year before.
And I think because of natural
what we refer to as grassroots
movement of Islamic fundamentalism,
because of a decline in the economic boom
boom, because of the Shah's own,
perhaps, perhaps because of his own
illness, that these factors came together
and Iran began to change very quickly
in seventy seven long
before Khomeini came back.
Perhaps if we could do this, I'd like to
see if we can go back and kind of get a
historical foundation,
then move to the Shah
and his period of leadership and then
move to the present day to
the Ayatollah and all that
was going on. And that led to the
present situation that we're dealing
with. Could you give us a little bit of
an insight into the historical
relationship that existed between that
has existed between Iran and Iraq and the
tensions that, uh,
that have just passed from generations?
It was then very complicated story, a
very long story.
But I think put very simply,
an answer would go something like
this, that up until
the end of World War One, what
we today call Iraq was part of the
Ottoman Empire and Iran
had been able to have its
own history outside of that Ottoman
Empire.
And then after World War One,
when Iraq finally,
some years after, to simplify the matter,
became a country, then the two countries
began to have relations.
And then in
in the 1920s, the Shah's
father became the shah of Iran.
And diplomatic relations between
the two countries were sometimes better
and sometimes worse.
But there was always
a lot of friction over water rights
on the shuttle, around the confluence of
the of the Tigris and Euphrates.
There's this lowland area of Iran where
the fighting was going on.
It's always been the problem of the
Kurdish question in the north
after World War two, this erupted.
These problems erupted again throughout
the 50s and the 60s.
And the Iraqi government had changed
once or twice.
But I suspect to put it in its immediate
kind of context,
that it was in the middle 70s
that Iran and Iraq decided
once again that they could have better
relationships and a new treaty was
signed, which hopefully would
settle the Kurdish problem.
The problem was essentially that the
Iraqis were accusing the Iranians of
helping the Iraqi Kurds and the Iranians
are accusing the Iraqis of helping the
Iranian Kurds and said they agreed no one
would help anybody and that they could.
They could indeed, where the shot was
concerned come to some sort of
of of of agreement.
And furthermore, that the other element,
which was important was that Khomeini
himself, who had caused
a great deal of trouble for the Shah in
the 60s, had been
exiled or asked to leave Iran.
He'd gone to Iraq.
So part of this agreement was that
the Iraqis would send Khomeini out of
Iraq because he had spent all of his time
in southern Iraq.
Sending propaganda into Iran have been a
focal point of of of
trouble for the Shah.
He went off to Paris until he came
back to to Iran just after
the shah left.
So in point of fact, there
had been these problems, but
they were not.
Terrible problems, they seem to have been
resolved by the late 70s,
but seventy six, let's say,
but you see the
problem with many was
that on one hand,
he not only felt very strongly
that all of this region should become
an Islamic republic, but he
had a kind of personal score to settle
both with the shah of Iran
and also with the Iraqi government, which
had sent him out.
And in some ways, what we're seeing
since
Khomeini came to power in Iran,
he he not only made
Iran an Islamic republic, not
only got rid of the Shah, but now,
of course, he would like to extend
it to the Islamic Republic or
have other Muslim countries have Islamic
Republic. It very much like to get rid of
Saddam Saddam Hussein.
So there is this kind of personal
enmity, and this is one of the
problems in trying to bring the war to
some sort of settlement.
But that's a very much in some
ways.
And continuing with that, during the time
you were there then in
the early 70s to the mid seventies,
um, were you
to what extent were were there two
elements? Uh, obviously.
In other words, was the Shah
perceived to be, well, in control
or was there always an undermining
element at work trying
to, uh, you throw in Iranian
society had various elements.
One element was a very strict
fundamentalist element that had always
opposed the Shah and opposed his father,
continued to oppose him, were supporters
of people like Khomeini in the 60s and
70s.
Whether they were in Iran are not.
Khomeini became a rallying
point. There were a lot of
one wouldn't like to call him yuppies,
but they were upwardly mobile Iranians
who were making money and they were very
pleased with the Shah.
Then there were Iranian communists
not to be confused with,
uh, other kinds of communist.
They were nationalistic in their
aspirations.
And they thought that the Shah was simply
a puppet of
the West. And there were other groups
which opposed the Shah on these grounds.
But as long as the economy held fairly
solid, the Shah had a considerable
amount of support, plus the fact that
he had an absolutely iron fisted
secret police.
And so he was able
to keep these
elements totally under
control then.
I don't know to what extent President
Carter's policies, um.
Affected the shah of human rights,
but certainly it was approximately at the
same time that the Shah
seemed to loosen a little bit, it was
about the same time he got ill, became
ill, apparently, as far as one can make
out, and the economy had gone
wrong.
And suddenly there was a building that
one could see, certainly in seventy seven
and.
The revolution had really started,
there were riots, there were sit ins,
there were demonstrations, riot police
were in already by the spring of seventy
eight, which was, I suppose,
almost a full year before the shah
left the country.
And you came the country.
So you were really there at a very
critical time because all of this was
probably seething
underground during that time.
And to what extent were
the people aware of this
upheaval going on?
I give you two kinds of examples of
people on the streets changed.
And when one went to get a taxi,
when one went to the bazaar, when one
went to the markets, this one did almost
daily to buy food stuffs which were
plentiful. Still, though, higher
in price.
People said things and
there was jostling, there was much
more rudeness developing
and an anti foreign,
um, kind of demonstration
which people might have done, I kind of
doubt it earlier on, but discontent,
disaffection. And they were attributing
it to the Shah and the Shah was
the puppet. And of course, the mullahs
were saying this sort of thing
and other groups were saying this sort of
thing. So that was changing certainly
in the beginning of seventy eight.
The other thing that was changing were
the students and they
were generally very polite and
some of them would come to the office and
say quite openly of
the revolution has started
when they would never have dared because
of the secret police to have said
anything approaching
make any any kind of comment approaching
that even six months
before. But they themselves felt
free to make this kind
of remark to a foreign student, actually
come to my office one day and say, how do
you like the revolution?
And I was being very careful.
And I said, What revolution?
And they grin and they said, you know
what? Revolution. The one and the student
came to my office one day and said, You
better not go to university next Tuesday,
next Wednesday or something.
And I said, Why is that?
Because Khomeini is coming in from Paris.
I said, the Shah is not gone yet.
He said he's coming in.
Well, indeed, on that particular day,
Khamenei flew over Tehran but couldn't
get lending permission and flew back
to Paris. That happened two or three
times. The Shah was still
there. So, yes, one could see things
changing almost day by day.
And sometimes we had to leave the
university early.
We had a lot of broken windows.
We had a lot of broken doors.
Um, we had a lot of fun and games.
We need to take a break for just to come
back and pick up at this point.
We're visiting today with Dr. Henry Spek.
What is the difference for Julie Manase,
sophomore from Abilene, it's the chance
to get involved.
There are many different ways students
can get involved in activities that I
see. I was I was in freshman
class. SING-SONG and the musical
and I went on spring break, came to
Chicago.
These things just really helped me
get involved and get to know people and
enjoy school so much more.
The ACU difference can make a difference
for you.
For more information, call six seven
four. Two thousand.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Dr. Henry Spek as we talk
about the tensions and understanding the
situation in Iran.
You were just mentioning before the break
about the college students coming into
your office and saying, how do you like
the revolution? And so.
Are you saying that that
this was one of the first places the
revolution began to be seen
in the country on the college campus?
Yes, I think so.
The whole of the revolution was very well
orchestrated and
students principally in Germany
were said or doing much of the
orchestration.
So that on all
campuses in Iran and there were
perhaps I don't know how many exactly
there are now, but there were perhaps
eight or nine major universities
in Iran.
At particular, our
particular morning going to class
two or three minutes after
the bell rang, then at that
very moment and all of the universities
in Iran, all of the students got up,
marched up, but very much
off campus, they marched to a particular
spot like the stairwell or
somewhere in the hall by the gate.
And then they all kneel down and pray.
And the reason for this was that the riot
police couldn't touch them and the Shah
didn't dare touch a student.
It was praying and they would stay
there for hours on another
day, they might get up and pick up the
chairs and break out the windows.
But the interesting thing about this are
they might storm a particular building.
But the interesting thing about it is it
happened, you know, exactly the
same moment at every
university and you run very
carefully orchestrated.
And there were all sorts of other things
that happened.
But I suppose I don't want
to drop facetious parallel
here. But one room I remember in the 60s,
during a couple of years, I was here in
the United States when I was
there in the United States that a lot
of the anti-war demonstrations in America
against the Viet Nam war
began again on college campuses.
And of course, there were a lot of
students on the on the campuses
who.
Either were radical in their political
philosophy or fundamental
and their religious philosophy.
And so the
campuses were a very good place to have
cells of organization.
We had a lot of students
collected, occasionally disappear
and come back with their head shaved.
And they've been given a warning
by the secret police that they better not
be in any more trouble.
But they became bolder and bolder
and one could almost watch this on the
campuses. Other things happened to other
sorts of things very often happen in
bazaars, the bar bazaars and go on
strike. There be mob groups in the
bazaars outside of the mosque on
certain occasions.
But I think it's fair to say that
on campus, uh,
on the campuses, that this was,
uh, you know, one of the first
places, one site really going
the way you first and started describing
that it sounded as if it was a very
nonviolent kind of protest
and revolution as they would just get up
and walk out and grab their drivers.
But it began to become a little more
violent as you had the same sort of thing
happen.
I guess that happens in many revolutions.
The riot police came and stood by.
They held their fire initially.
One side provoked the other
side a bit. The other side provoked.
And there was a feeling of
animosity on the part of the students I
know toward the Shah's troops and riot
police. And I know there was a feeling on
the part of these people for students
against the students because they felt
the students were a privileged bunch in
universities and they had no business
doing this sort of thing.
They should appreciate what they had.
And so they were ready to give the
students what for to and the things
simply escalated into one of those normal
kinds of steps.
Same thing happened in
the bazaars so that by
August of seventy eight, which
was really a critical point in the
revolution, and I had gone, I
come back to this country I was waiting
to see I had two contracts in my pocket,
one to go back to Iran, one to go to
Iraq. And I was waiting to see what would
happen when I read in the paper that
enough was done in the lowlands.
The someone perhaps students,
I don't know really.
And therefore I probably shouldn't say
that. But it was alleged by some people
that were student groups, um,
put a bomb inside a movie theater.
And that was really.
The violent turning point, and after
that, things became very quickly
more violent, escalated during
the time you were in Iran, was there ever
a time, you recall, where you were
actually in fear of your life because
of this revolution
that you could begin to see?
Not because not because of the
revolution? Perhaps.
Perhaps it got a bit tricky a couple of
other times, but not because of the
revolution. In point of fact, I
remember one day that the that the riot
police came into the building where I
worked and I was told by one
of the students who was about to be
beaten to stand
because there was no way for the students
get out. And it was upstairs to stand
back. And I stood back about,
oh, I suppose five yards.
From where the riot riot police attacked
the students and no one
ever laid a hand on me or even looked
like they were going to land, that was
very controlled violence, absolutely
controlled mayhem.
Uh, and the students took a very
good beating in the riot.
Police were laying it on them.
And when it was over, I was allowed
to go. So by and large, not so.
I believe. However, it's true
to say that after August, if I had
stayed, some of my friends perhaps
were not in fear of their lives, but
things were getting.
Much dicier after August in
those last four months, let's say,
before the shah left and
Khomeini returned.
But see, I left several months.
Before that allows two
months, actually, before the bomb went
off and off us, because of some of
the things that have happened to American
professors in
Lebanon and in some of the other areas.
Did you ever feel there was any kind of
opportunities that people ever considered
about either seizing you, holding you
hostage, doing anything that might,
uh, involved in the situation
not in Iran, in northern Iraq,
nor any place I've felt I have ever
been in the Middle East?
I've been in most of the Middle East, but
things have changed dramatically
in the last well, it's now
decade been changed dramatically in
the last decade a bit longer.
And as an American, one
has to realize that one's government
can't protect one and that if one's
going to be in these places, I feel
terribly sorry for for these people
because one, you know, if one had stayed,
might be one of them.
And I knew three of the people who were
hostages in Tehran,
not terribly well. But but but but I knew
them, uh, that this can
happen and, um,
how much one can do.
But it seems extremely difficult to
separate religion
from politics in Iran to,
uh, as you begin to understand the
overthrow or the change of the political
system. It seemed to be so,
uh, entwined, intertwined
with the religion system, with because
of the role that Islam plays
in the country.
Would you be worried about Iran's
been singular in this respect?
Because when Islam moved
out of the deserts of Arabia in the 7th
century and moved up onto the
Iranian plateau, the
Iranians thought themselves
to possess
a perfectly good religion and a perfectly
good way of life, which
many still believe is superior to
what Islam and the Arabs
brought them. They've never liked Arabs
very much.
Iranians haven't.
And so they
it's very difficult to explain in Western
terms. But they became Shiites, members
of the party of Ali
and.
Religion in Iran.
Fuzed in a way that
was different than other parts of
the Islamic world, which is impossible to
explain and just, you know, a couple
of short sentences, but
there has been a tendency toward
fundamentalism, what a lot of people call
fanaticism, even other Muslims
in Iran ever since.
And that's that's the whole history of
Iran since the seventh century.
And then in the 16th century, Shia
Islam was made. The state religion
absolutely made the state religion.
And then at the beginning of this
century, there was the secularizing
tendency and this went against almost
everything that was
in Iranian history,
Iranian religious history.
And of course, that's something I think
we failed to understand in the West, that
there is within Islam, strictly speaking,
no division of church and state.
There's no recognition of its state apart
from religion, so
that when people like Saddam Hussein or
the Shah for Saddam Hussein and and
others want to modernize
their state, want
to create
what is a secular government and
a strict Muslim like Khomeini, like Shia
Muslims, would immediately say that
is apostasy.
And for them, they don't use the word
sin, but this is this is
an apostasy from the teachings of
Islam, which simply do not allow
for a secular state.
So Iran has been different
and even within the Muslim
world and the efforts of the Pahlavi's,
that is to say, uh, I
raised the father and Mohammad Reza,
uh, the son who
was Lusha, went counter.
To a great deal of fundamental feeling
in Iran, which was very deep, and when
we talk about grass roots
fundamentalism throughout the Arab world,
it's different.
There's some of that same sort of a
feeling in other countries, but not
like Iran. Iran is very, very different
in this way as an idiosyncratic history
in this way.
So then in looking at a current
perspective of the situation,
would do you see,
uh, what direction you see
Iran headed in the future?
Depends on Khomeini's death.
Um, he's reputed to be,
uh, eighty seven, having
been born in nineteen eighty eight this
year, having been born in nineteen
hundred, I understand he's actually a
little bit older and of course people
born around the turn of the century in
the Middle East very often don't know the
exact.
Date of birth, so he could be a couple
years older, women admitted recently that
his health really has deteriorated
as long as he's alive because
of this personal thing with Saddam
Hussein. I don't think he'll ever agree
to a compromise.
But Iranians are not stupid people, very
clever people.
Uh, they know how to play Baza,
as we say, how to bargain, how to
maneuver.
Very sophisticated people, these mullahs,
this Rafsanjani, this Montazeri, these
people who are the successors potentially
of Khomeini, a very clever man.
And we shouldn't think that the crazy
people, they're not.
So I would hope at
least and think there is some reason to
suspect, perhaps not a lot, but I
suspect they went home and he does.
There may be a bloodbath in Iran
among the mullahs trying to get power,
but there may ultimately be
the feeling that we have got to come to
terms somehow with the Iraqis.
The Iraqis have been trying to come to
terms for several years now.
Saddam Hussein has suggested let's
talk how many?
No talk. Because, you know,
it's this thing with Saddam Hussein in
part. In part, it's only part of this
part. But I would think that perhaps
chances are relatively good
with Khomeini's death
that there could be negotiations
because they're much more moderate
elements in among the mullahs
themselves. None of them, however, is
what has been said
on American television and papers.
None of them is moderate.
We wouldn't they're moderate
on a different standard, moderate
as opposed to some of the other
elements in Iran.
Not moderate, as we understand from our
perspective.
You know, we we had
in the Iran-Contra affair a great
deal of talk about trying to contact
those moderate elements in Iran.
That in English is a very different
comment than
their moderate only with in relationship.
Some of the others, I'm sure,
already out of time because there's so
many other things that we could talk
about as far as implications out of
this situation. But thank you for
sharing your insights from your
experiences in those countries.
Thank you. And thank you for being with
us on campus with Dr Henry Spek.