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Khomeini had returned to Iran, from Paris, on February r, just a day before Lambrakis'smemo was written. Nine days later, the interim governmentof Iran collapsedand the mullahs createdthe dictatorship that has lasted more than a quarter of a century. PresidentCarter welcomed the new Iranian governmentand optimisticallyreachedout to its leaders,but ominouslS on February r4, a Khomeini-inspiredmob seizedcontrol of the U.S.embassyin Iran, only to withdraw after tense negotiations. Nine months later, a similar mob invaded the embassy and held scores of American personnel hostage for more than a year,precipitating one of the greatestdiplomatic crisesin American history. By the end of it, Khomeini reigned unchallengedas Iran's dictator. How could Lambrakis have beenso wrong? \fhy did a seniorU.S. government official-and he was not alone-believe that Khomeini and his clerical mafia would cede power to "political leadersrather than mullahs"? \fhy would he describethe Khomeini movement as "enlightened"? \7hy would he expect that something "closely approachingWesternizeddemocraticprocesses"would emerge? There is plenty of blame to go around. Neither the StateDepartment, nor the CIA, nor the vauntedcommunity of foreign policy think tanks, nor academiagot lran right. Most of the blame must go to the U.S.government,for mixing blind ignoranceof Iran with sheerincompetence.But the blindnessextendedto many leading U.S. academic specialistson Iran. Several-the University of Texas'sJamesBill, the Universityof Texas'sMarvin Zonis, and the Universityof Pittsburgh's Richard Cottam, the former CIA officer-acted as semi-official consultants to the \fhite House and the State Department in r978-7r1. Bill, whose book, Tbe Eagleand the Lion, is often cited as a definitive work on U.S.-Iranrelations,authoreda major piecein loreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on ForeignRelations,in late r978 that, like Lambrakis's missive, also completely missed the mark. Even as Khomeini thunderedagainstthe shahfrom Iraq and then from France, and mobs carried photos of the ayatollah down the streetsof every major Iranian city, in "Iran and the Crisisof t978" Bill concludedthat . . . the most probablealternativeif the Pahlavidynastyshouldbe destroyedby force and violenceis that a ieft-wing, progresslve