One clearcut policy difference between President Ford and Governor Carter that surfaced in their foreign policy debate, but has unfortunately received little comment since then, is the matter of arms shipments to Iran. Although Iran is a faraway country with which not many Americans identify, our policy toward Iran could have as much impact as our policy toward another faraway country called Vietnam, albeit for a different reason.
In the big presidential debate on foreign policy, Carter criticized the Ford policy of selling arms to Iran — both the dollar volume of the sales and the sophistication of the weapons and aircraft. He gave as reasons a confusing conglomeration of “idealism,” “consistency,” and a desire to give more priority to the military needs of our other friends. President Ford did a good job of defending our policy of military sales to Iran.
The Ford policy is soundly grounded in the economic facts of life. Iran’s oil reserves are the second largest in the world. It has 65 to 70 billion barrels. When the Arabs, who have the largest oil reserves in the world, slapped their oil embargo on the Western world in 1973, Iran did not join that boycott.
Remember the shortage of gasoline while that embargo was in force, the long lines as we waited at service stations for a fill-up, the inconvenience, the economic dislocations, the frightful costs to the United States, and even more so to our NATO and Japanese allies? If Iran had cooperated in that oil embargo, it would have been much worse.
If the Arabs saddle the West with another oil embargo, will Iran succumb to pressure from its Arab and Russian neighbors and join the embargo? Or will Iran continue to ship to the West? That is a question of potentially tremendous significance because we are even more dependent on imported oil today than we were three years ago. We now import 42 percent of our oil.
Iran has a common border with the Soviet Union and with Iraq, which is communist-dominated. Iran has had two wars with the Russians since the Bolsheviks came to power, which cost Iran 37 northern cities.
In the 1940s, the Soviets installed a puppet Communist government in Iran. Thanks to the vision and the anti-Communist foreign policy of President Harry Truman, our country gave Iran the support it needed to extricate itself from Soviet control without military action. Saving Iran from the Soviets is one of the few foreign policy victories our country has had since the end of World War II.
In the context of Iran’s obvious need to build up its own military defense, plus the American need for oil, it is the height of irresponsibility for Governor Carter to imply that he would refuse to sell to Iran because he doesn’t approve of the percentage of the Iranian budget that is spent on defense, or because Iran doesn’t practice the freedoms we enjoy under the American Bill of Rights, or because Iran doesn’t conform to Carter’s “idealism,” whatever that may be.
There is a good argument for setting a moral quid pro quo for our shipments to those countries that are the beneficiaries of American foreign aid, but Iran is paying for everything it receives.
The American people should stop, look, and listen before they accept Carter’s foreign policy. It might mean that next year we will not have enough gasoline to drive our cars.
