Released August 1, the fifty-nine-page report found that the shah is the largest single purchaser of U.S. military equipment. In the four-year period ending in June 1976, the shah paid the Pentagon and various U.S. manufacturers a total of $10.4 billion.

But Iran, with its nonindustrial economy, lacks a work force with the skills necessary to maintain and operate the sophisticated weapons purchased by the shah. Therefore, the report says, the Iranian army will be unable to use these arms "unless increasing numbers of American personnel go to Iran in a support capacity."

The way the Senate committee sees it, "the U.S. assumes the obligation of long-term support for the equipment it has sold; the purchaser becomes dependent on the U.S. in much the same manner as local automobile dealer is dependent on Detroit."

However, what is involved is not automobiles. As the report points out, the Iranian regime could not "go to war in the next five to ten years...without U.S. support on a day-to-day basis."

As of January 1976, there were already an estimated 24,000 Americans stationed in Iran. This number "could easily reach 50,000–60,000 or higher by 1980," the Senate report concluded.

 
 
October 29, 1951
The American people are pounded day in and day out with the propaganda that arms production will not only make this country strong, rendering it safe from "aggressor attack," but that it is the best guarantee of peace. This is a barefaced hoax.

The historical fact is that every arms race in the past has ended in a major shooting war, and the arms race now in progress is no exception. But what makes the war danger even more acute is the additional factor that capitalist economy has now developed to the point where civilian demand at home and abroad is able to absorb only a fraction of the entire productive capacity.

For a market that can absorb the output of American industry, capitalism requires nothing less than the unlimited market of production for war.

The entire postwar experience has proved this to the hilt. Even before Korea, U.S. military appropriations set an all-time "peace" record. But these large arms budgets, on top of domestic and worldwide demand for consumer goods, arising from the destruction, shortages and scarcities of the last global conflict, proved not enough. On the eve of Korea, 16 months ago, this country tottered on the brink of depression, with production dropping off and unemployment climbing to five to six million.

The "Korea boom" staved off the depression.  
 
 
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