Greetings for The Shah

A whiff of dissent clouds a state visit

"There is one thing I can say about the Shah: he knows how to draw a crowd."--Jimmy Carter, toasting Iran's Mohammed Reza Pahlavi at the White House last week.

The battle lines were clearly drawn. On the north side of the White House in Lafayette Square, some 1,000 opponents of the Shah of Iran had massed to protest his first state visit to the U.S. in 2 1/2 years. Most of the demonstrators were Iranians studying in the U.S., including some who paid their own way to Washington and some who were assisted by student organizations. Wearing cardboard or muslin masks--to prevent Iranian secret police from photographing them, they said--the protesters bore slogans reading, SHAH: FASCIST MURDERER; SHAH IS A U.S. PUPPET; and CIA OUT OF IRAN.

On the Ellipse, south of the White House, several hundred of the Shah's supporters were seated in bleachers under a huge white banner proclaiming: WELCOME SHAH. Somewhat older and better dressed than the dissidents, most were also overseas Iranian nationals who had flown in from around the country. Many were reluctant to say who had paid their expenses; a few openly said that they had received air fare, hotel accommodation and a bonus $100 bill from representatives of the Iranian government.

Shortly after an armored limousine had brought the Shah and Empress Farah onto the South Lawn, trouble broke out. The anti-Shah faction charged through the lines of mounted police and headed for the pro-Shah bleachers, armed with the handles of their placards and wooden two-by-fours that had been piled up for use in the annual Christmas pageant on the Ellipse. As the President began his welcoming remarks, police struggled to keep the two factions apart. The large white welcome banner was ripped to shreds. At that point, the wind carried the first acrid whiffs of tear gas used by police to quell the outbreak toward the ceremonies in progress on the White House lawn

Reeling slightly, the Shah sought refuge behind a white pocket handkerchief. The Empress, standing behind him, fumbled in her purse for dark glasses. Vice President Walter Mondale and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, eyes streaming, covered their faces. Only Carter, still speaking, refused to flinch. Tears rolled out of the President's eyes, but he made no move to wipe them. Recovering his composure when it was his turn to speak, the Shah thanked Carter for "your very warm welcome," and the official party quickly retreated to the White House. Out on Pennsylvania Avenue, it took police another hour to get the melee under control. The day's toll: 92 demonstrators and 27 policemen injured.

As many of the signs made clear, the imbroglio had more to do with domestic Iranian politics than with U.S. feelings toward the regime of the man who has ruled Iran for 36 years. But even though relatively few Americans joined in such displays, the Shah's visit served to highlight one of the country's more ambivalent foreign involvements. A top State Department official calls it one of Washington's "most complex relationships." On one side of the ledger, the Shah symbolizes much that the Carter White House opposes: royal posturing, human rights violations, prodigious arms spending and an oil price hawkishness. But he also rules a nation that is strategically important to the U.S., both because of its military geography and because of its oil. Moreover, he has done a great deal to advance Iran's standard of living and international prestige. Like the two skilled politicians that they are, Carter and the Shah reached a compromise on some of these differences last week--and agreed to tread lightly on others.

Understandably high on the agenda was oil. The Shah, who helped spearhead the 1973-74 quadrupling of OPEC prices, recently promised Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal that he would be "neutral" at next month's OPEC price policy meeting in Caracas. Carter argued forcefully that an increase in oil prices would kick off a new round of inflation that would damage both oil consumers and producers. The President's well-rehearsed presentation impressed the Shah, who agreed to go to Caracas committed to an oil-price freeze, a view also supported by Saudi Arabia. Said the Shah, in polished if patronizing Americanese: "We decided to give you a break."

For his part, the Shah laid out Iran's wishes for military hardware. Iran has spent more than $18 billion in the past eight years on U.S. arms, and its new shopping list includes 140 F-16 fighter-bombers (in addition to 160 already on order) and 250 F-18 combat fighter planes. But Congress has expressed concern about the volume of U.S. arms sold to Iran. Future sales are bound to be closely scrutinized, and Carter thus refrained from any firm commitment.

The human rights issue was conspicuously missing from the official agenda. Partly as a result of documented charges by both Amnesty International and the International Red Cross that Iran's secret police organization, SAVAK, had systematically persecuted dissidents, the Shah has moved to liberalize his regime. He has operated largely through Jamshid Amouzegar, 54, his tough OPEC oil negotiator, whom he named Premier last August. Amouzegar, nicknamed the "$12 Million Man" after he was kidnaped at the OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975, and subsequently ransomed for $12.5 million, has ordered an end to press censorship and initiated a number of other civil rights measures. Several hundred political prisoners have been released.

"Iran remains a one-party state and in fact a one-man dictatorship," TIME Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn reported last week after a visit to Tehran. "But in a few months the police-state atmosphere has altered drastically to a mood of vastly greater individual freedom and relaxation. Among knowledgeable Iranians it is taken for granted that the liberalization was at least partly in response to the Carter campaign. The Shah apparently feels he has a better chance to buy American military hardware if he burnishes his image a bit."

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