302. Memorandum From Harold H. Saunders of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)1
Washington, July 1, 1968.
SUBJECT
- Your appointment with Ansary—Tuesday,2 at 11 a.m.
Attached is State’s briefing paper.3 Following are the main points you might make to Ansary:
- 1.
- We are just about finished with the studies the President promised the Shah. It will take us a couple of more weeks and the President will be in touch. Some of these involve difficult problems for us but we have made every effort to be as forthcoming as possible.
- 2.
- You could say how much the President enjoyed the Shah’s visit and how much the President has enjoyed his association with the Shah.
- 3.
- You might say the President appreciates the Shah’s agreement to consider shifting dollar holdings to longer term basis.
- 4.
- You might ask Ansary to tell Prime Minister Hoveyda how much we are looking forward to his visit in December. (The purpose of that visit will be to broaden our current praise of Iranian leaders. We don’t want the Shah to think that he is the whole show. Having Hoveyda here, with the possibility of meeting the President-elect, will serve this purpose.)
- 5.
- You might chat about the Persian Gulf in the light of its experiment in sub-regional relationships. The main point we want to make is the importance of the Shah working out these arrangements with other leaders in the Gulf, especially Faisal.
- 6.
- You might chat about the Arab-Israeli problem (keeping your comments general since everybody reads Ansary’s reports and he isn’t always too accurate).
State recommends that you not foreshadow our response on any of the specific requests the Shah made so we can save the full impact for the President. For your information, however, here are the conclusions on the points the President asked to have studied as they stand in draft:
- 1.
- Assuring the Shah of our support for his five-year program. The best we have been able to come up with so far is a promise by the President to speak to his successor about the importance of our continuing [Page 536] cooperation with Iran. We would also reiterate the assurance we have already given—that the Executive Branch will continue to try to persuade Congress of the importance of our ability to participate in Iran’s military development program.
- 2.
- USAF technicians to support F–4 aircraft. The USAF has surprisingly come up with a proposal to send 40–50 supervisory personnel for maintenance management. However, this still is not final because we haven’t resolved the major question of who would pay.
- 3.
- Dominating the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The proposal so far is that we offer the Shah a study of this problem. I don’t think this is quite enough by itself, and I will urge that this be beefed up.
- 4.
- Radar and military communications systems. Our next step will be to outline the alternatives to the Shah to make clear what he still needs to decide. Once there is a definite plan, we will see how we can help, but the issue is just not precisely enough defined yet.
- 5.
- Northrop 530 Aircraft. We would give the Shah the facts, telling him that we think it is premature for Iran to invest because the plane has not even been design-tested yet.
- 6.
- US to buy more oil from Iran. This is the toughest. The proposal is to invite Iran to work through companies that have US oil import permits, since the USG can’t engage directly in barter without upsetting the whole quota system. Iran could also bid on the sale of refined products to Defense (though it’s not clear yet what this would add up to).
As I say, these are still tentative, and we will be sharpening them in the next few days.
Hal