198. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson1
SUBJECT
- Your Meeting with the Shah
You have already agreed to one office meeting with the Shah after his 5 p.m. arrival on 12 June, and you are having dinner with him that evening. However, the Shah is anxious to budget a second meeting with you the next day.
[Page 368]Normally, I would stand firm against a second meeting on any but a State visit. However, in this case there is a great deal to talk about. Moreover, the Shah is a person you can talk seriously with. We have invited him over here primarily to convince him that you are deeply aware of the great changes taking place in the Middle East as they concern him, and I think it would be worth going along with him.
We could arrange to keep the second meeting off the schedule so it would not create a formal precedent for later visitors, though it would become known. I am sure the Iranians would go along with this.
The alternative is to wait and see how things go at the first talk and schedule a second meeting then if you want. To carry this off, we should probably be in a position to suggest to the Iranians now that we wait and let you and the Shah decide. This tack seems attractive, but if you’re likely to agree to a second meeting, we’d probably gain by scheduling it informally now.