In an interview about the Crisis in Egypt Aired August 15, 2013 - 21:00 ET, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark admitted to US's role in underminind the Shah's Miliatary during the Revolution.
(The Footage of the interview is no more available but you can read the full transcript below)
MORGAN: Newt Gingrich, stay with me. I want to bring in now General Wesley Clark. He's a former NATO Supreme Allied commander, also CNN's senior international correspondent Ivan Watson, and Middle East analyst Robin Wright.
Welcome to all of you. General Clark, it seems that the Americans and the administration in America have got themselves into sort of a devil and a deep sea here situation because they're dammed if they do, dammed if they don't. What is the proper course of action now, do you think, for President Obama to take?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: I think the proper course of action is to be very, very steady. Do not break relations with the Egyptian military. We don't like what happened. If we can work with both sides and pull them away from this confrontation that's looming or will intensify, that's what we need to be doing.
Look, the Egyptian military is doing what they think they have to do to keep Egypt as a modern country. They are responding to the will of the Egyptian people. They went overboard, somehow, the police, I don't know how all these people got killed. That's a big failure in somebody's procedures.
But, Piers, I was a major in the U.S.-European command in the fall of 1978 and the spring of 1979, working for General Alexander Haig. We went through this exact scenario with the shah of Iran. We didn't like him. He wasn't democratic enough. His secret police were really tough and they tortured people, and so we encouraged the emergence of a democratic movement.
The generals tried to warn the Americans, they said be careful, you're playing with fire and you're going to let Ayatollah Khomeini come back in. We sent in an American general over to tell the Iranian generals back off. So for about 60 days we kept the military from intervening in Iran.
During that period, the revolution coalesced, the military forces fell apart, extreme Islamists took over and at that point, the Carter administration said, oh my goodness, get the general to take control, don't let this happen. And the general said, we waited too long, we have no forces, and a few months later all the generals had been shot, and we have Iran today.
So I think there's an important lesson. Of course we want democracy. We don't want slaughter in the streets. But this is Egypt's problem. They know it better than we do. The military has been influenced by the United States. They are westernized. We should encourage the military to work with the police, minimize the violence, try to move this towards an inclusive democratic government.
Read Full Transcipt Here
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General Huyser to the Shah of Iran - 'When are you leaving, Sir?'
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When demonstrations in Iran were at their height, the Shah of Iran learnt that US General Huyser had been in Tehran on some suspicious activities. He immediately had him summoned but as soon as they met the General asked the Shahinshah Aryamehr 'When are you leaving, Sir?'
The Shah later wrote that he was astonished when he learned that U.S. Air Force General Robert Huyser, then Deputy Commander in Chief of American forces in Europe, had been in Tehran for several days. "General Huyser's movements were normally laid down in advance. But this time nothing ... I questioned my generals. They, too, knew nothing. What, then, was this American general doing in Iran?"
The Shah believes that Huyser's mission was to "neutralize the Iranian army" when demonstrations turned violent. Encouraged by Huyser and U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan, the Shah went into exile. "General Huyser remained in Iran for several days after my departure. Having arranged for the generals to abandon Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, head of the coalition government formed to see the country through its hour of crisis, all that remained for the fulfillment of his mission was the decapitation of Iran's army.
"He was quickly to be satisfied. One by one they were executed ... Before the parody of a trial which preceded his execution, General Amir Hussein Rabii, commander in chief of the Iranian air force, was questioned about the role played by General Huyser. He replied to his judges: 'General Huyser threw the emperor out of the country like a dead mouse.' "
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