Articles relative to Iran in the Department of State Bulletin are first examined in chronological sequence, a sequence which corresponds to the shifting focus of these articles as U.S. concern towards Iran shifted from routine relations with the regime of the Shah, to concern over the accelerating pace of the Iranian revolution, to a focus on the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, and finally to the Iran Iraq war and the course of the Khomeini regime.
Following this survey of State Department documents, a similar survey is undertaken of New York Times editorials and commentaries regarding Iran. These, too, are organized in a generally chronological sequence, but because of the larger number of documents considered and the broader range of topics discussed, they are considered by subject emphasis, chronologically within each subject, with the subjects themselves arranged in a broadly chronological manner as each subject came to the fore. (For example, an early focus of concern for Times editorial writers was arms sales to Iran. With the fall of the Shah, arms sales ceased to be a principal topic, but some discussions continued to appear at later times.) This principle of organization is followed and illustrated by the references list for this study.
Once we have examined the Department of State Bulletin documents and the New York Times documents separately, we will be in a position to discuss how they relate to each other and what they illustrate of the dialog, during the years surveyed, between the U.S. Government, as represented by the State Department, and the mainstream press, as represented by the Times. Broader consideration of the implications of this dialog, and recommendations for further study, are deferred until the final chapter.
The series of State Department reports considered in this study begins with the July 1, 1968 issue of the Bulletin, which reported on a meeting between then President Ly...