Before President Carter attempted to restrain the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he did have some notable diplomatic successes. Five years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, with relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors in a deadlock, Carter invited the leaders of Israel and Egypt to the United States. Following two weeks of discussions in September 1978 at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat reached an agreement on a “framework for peace.” For the first time in its history, Egypt would extend diplomatic recognition to Israel in exchange for Israel’s agreement to return the Sinai peninsula to Egypt, which Israel had captured and occupied since 1967. Carter facilitated Sadat’s acceptance of the Camp David accords by promising to extend foreign aid to Egypt. The treaty, however, left unresolved controversial issues between Israelis and Arabs concerning the establishment of a Palestinian state and control of Jerusalem.
Whatever success Carter had in promoting peace in the Middle East suffered a serious setback in the Persian Gulf nation of Iran. In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow Iran’s democratically elected president, replacing him with a monarch and staunch ally, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. For more than two decades, the shah ruled Iran with U.S. support, seeking to construct a modern, secular state allied with the United States. In doing so, he used repressive measures against Islamic fundamentalists, deploying his secret police to imprison, torture, and exile dissenters. The shah’s lavish lifestyle stood in contrast to the poverty of most Iranians, and in 1979 revolutionary forces headed by Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, an Islamic fundamentalist exiled by the shah, overthrew his government. Khomeini intended to end the growing secularism in Iran and reshape the nation according to strict Islamic law.
When the deposed shah needed treatment for terminal cancer, President Carter invited him to the United States for medical assistance as a humanitarian gesture, despite warnings from the Khomeini government that it would consider this invitation a hostile action. On November 4, 1979, the ayatollah ordered fundamentalist Muslim students to seize the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and hold its fifty-two occupants hostage until the United States returned the shah to Iran to stand trial. Rather than submit to this violation of international law, President Carter retaliated by freezing all Iranian assets in American banks, breaking off diplomatic relations, and imposing a trade embargo. Carter’s response did nothing to free the hostages, and the cutoff of Iranian oil shipments contributed to a 130 percent increase in the price of gasoline in the United States. For most Americans, the oil embargo meant shortages and high gas prices. In response, Khomeini incited Iranian nationalism by denouncing the United States as “the Great Satan.” As the impasse dragged on and with the presidential election of 1980 fast approaching, Carter became desperate. After a failed U.S. rescue attempt, Khomeini’s guards separated the hostages, making any more rescue efforts impossible. Further humiliating the president, Khomeini released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the inauguration day of Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan.
See Document 28.1 to read about one hostage’s experience.
Despite good intentions and some notable achievements, Jimmy Carter left office with many of his foreign policy objectives unfulfilled. His administration was inconsistent in its approach to the Soviet Union, with attempts at improving relations, as evidenced in the SALT II talks, undermined by moral outrage at the Soviets for invading Afghanistan. The Camp David accords marked a high point of Carter’s diplomatic efforts; however, his policies satisfied neither liberals nor conservatives in the United States, and the Iran fiasco helped ensure Carter’s defeat in 1980.
|
How did Carter’s foreign policy differ from that of Ford and Nixon? |
How did events in Afghanistan and Iran undermine the Carter administration? |