220. Record of Debriefing of the NSC Standing Group Meeting0
Mr. McGhee asked about the status of the recommended $330 million Aid Program. (Recommended in the State-Defense-AID [Page 542] package).1 He was told that the President is deferring any decision on this, pending his talks with Amb. Holmes.
Mr. McGhee suggested the possibility of joint planning exercises for the defense of Iran. It was pointed out, however, that joint planners would probably create a demand for still greater military expenditures. Therefore, the suggestion was rejected. Mr. McGeorge Bundy said that he was becoming quite sympathetic with the Shah. Everyone agreed that the Shah had no real defense against Soviet attack.
It was decided that the Shah should be given a briefing on STRAC potentialities (by Lt. Gen. Quinn). Mr. William Bundy is to look into this. William Bundy said, however, that Iran was the one place to which the STRAC forces were not really applicable. He therefore felt badly about such a briefing, given the fact that we are “not about to send our two STRAC divisions into Iran.”
William Bundy said that the real dangers of the Shah’s visit would be the questions he would probably ask: such as, How do your troops get in? and What about the prepositioning of equipment? He pointed out that it would be difficult to come up with any credible plan. He asked what “degree of phoniness” we could get away with. It was also pointed out that Iran’s 1921 Treaty with the USSR would cause difficulties with the prepositioning of any equipment.
No real conclusions were reached concerning the presentation of a plan to the Shah, but William Bundy was nevertheless to try to come up with a paper by next Wednesday or Thursday which would convince the Shah of the credibility of the US deterrent and of our ability to come to the aid of Iran.
It was pointed out by McGeorge Bundy that merely convincing the Shah of our strategic superiority would not be sufficient. What kind of assurances can we give the Shah? It was concluded that Gen. Lemnitzer’s statements at the CENTO conference in March 19612 represented just about the limit of what we could say and that the President will probably be unable to do more than simply repeat Gen. Lemnitzer’s commitment made at that time.
Messrs. McGhee and Talbot are to see the President on Friday and take a draft talking paper with them.
It was also decided that the Pentagon would give the Shah a briefing on our assessment of the Iraq-Afghanistan potential (which is considerably lower than the Shah’s assessment thereof). It was decided that the overall US Program for Iran should be presented to the Shah while [Page 543] he is here (or at least enough of it to reveal to him the “bad news” aspect thereof).
AID is still unwilling to make a specific dollar commitment to the Third Plan. They insist on prior pressure.
McGeorge Bundy pointed out that a Soviet attack on Iran would not be “so damned unlikely” if the Soviets find out about this kind of thinking. It was reluctantly concluded that the hard military facts made a bunch of dreams of McGhee’s and Bundy’s desires, to reassure the Shah. It was also pointed out that this sort of military thinking put us on a collision course with Gen. Norstad with regard to supporting assistance to Greece.
It was decided that the Shah would be given a general outline of the Aid Program.
- Source: Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 70 D 265, NSC Standing Group Meeting, 3/23/62. Top Secret. Presumably drafted by Bowling who conducted the debriefing. The NSC Standing Group meeting was held at 2:30 p.m. on March 23; see Document 219.↩
- Document 208.↩
- See Supplement, the regional compilation, for documentation relating to the April 1961 CENTO Ministerial Council meeting.↩