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armed forces. Testifying before the foreign assistance sub-committee of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee in hearings held in September 1976 to
approve or disallow the proposed sale of 160 F-16 aircraft to Persia, Philip C.
Habib, the under-secretary for political affairs at the State Department,
described the policies pursued by the shah over the preceding decade as having
been ‘generally compatible with our own’. Quoting from statements made by
Kissinger, the secretary of state, at various times, to the effect that the policies
of the United States and Persia ‘have been parallel and therefore mutually
reinforcing’ and that there was ‘a parallelism of views on many key problems’,
Habib proceeded to drive the point home to the sub-committee by emphasiz­
ing yet again that the United States and Persia ‘have generally seen our
respective interests as parallel, at times congruent, and we share many objec­
tives’. Hence the sales of advanced weapons to Persia. As Habib explained,

These sales add to the strength of a valued ally and to that nation’s ability to continue to
carry out a policy on which we and the Iranians agree. They also provide the essential
assurances that the United States has not changed its mind about Iran, that we remain
committed to a close relationship in all fields and that close co-ordination with the
United States on the part of the Iranians is still justified.

Despite the scepticism evinced by the members of the Senate sub-committee
about the wisdom of allowing the sale of the F-i6s to proceed, it was eventually
sanctioned by the Senate. Any misgivings that might have been felt by some
senators were not strong enough to prevail against the special pleading of
others from states in which the major aircraft and armaments industries were
located. The F-16 contract, after all, along with its associated missile order,
was worth around $3,800 million. By this time, however, considerable doubts
were arising about the shah’s ability to finance the arms purchases he was
making with such abandon. He had already fallen behind in his payments
for arms already acquired, to an extent it is impossible to determine but which
has been put as high as $2,000 million. One of the casualties of the financial
straits in which he now found himself was a highly complex and extremely

expensive electronic surveillance system, code-named ‘Ibex’, which was being
developed by the Rockwell Corporation for installation along the borders of
ersia to monitor signals traffic, especially beyond the Russian frontier. The
project was shelved in 1977, as much, it would seem, for reasons of political
prudence as through financial stringency.
Mere insolvency, however, was not sufficient to cure the shah of his ob-
sessjon with the piling up of arms. In October 1976 he sent General Toufanian
to oscow to conclude an agreement worth some $550 million with the Soviet
mon for the supply of tank-transporters, armoured personnel carriers and
su ace-to-air missiles. Payment was to be made, as with a previous arms
a^eement ten years earlier, in gas supplies. The following month the shah
ormed the British government that henceforth it would have to accept