To the Editor:

Richard Nixon visited the Shah of Iran Tuesday and Wednesday after his Moscow trip to discuss problems of mutual concern. The first and the most important topic on the agenda was the security of the Persian Gulf, whose coastal states and islands produce much of the oil on which the United States, Western Europe and Japan depend.

To secure the oil flow out of the Persian Gulf, Iran’s military is quietly being built up by the United States and Britain to fill the vaccum [sic] created by the British military withdrawal from the gulf area. The present $1,400 million military budget has greatly prevented Iran’s normal development of industry and agriculture.

The wasteful appropriation of Iran’s wealth by the Shah’s regime is not anything new. It actually started back in 1953 when the CIA-engineered coup overthrew the national and democratic government of Dr. Mossadegh and brought the Shah back to the throne. Since then the military budget and the regime’s repression have steadily and simultaneously increased.

The American support of the Shah’s regime and Nixon’s trip to Iran is to further implement the “Nixon Doctrine” in Iran with the purpose of turning [the] Shah to a stronger gendarme who will be able to protect American and British interests in the Persian Gulf area. Obviously, the present U.S.-backed military build-up in Iran does not help the people’s well-being; on the contrary, it severely deteriorates their living conditions. It is up to the American people to make impartial evaluation on the policies of their government toward Iran and act accordingly.

IRANIAN STUDENTS ASSOCIATION
AT THE UNIVERSITY