William H. Sullivan

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The Iranian Shah meeting with Alfred Atherton, William Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1979.

William Healy Sullivan (born October 12, 1922) is a career United States Foreign Service officer, and served as United States Ambassador to Laos in 1964, the Philippines in 1973, and Iran from 1977 to 1979.

Sullivan was born in Rhode Island. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Iran from 1977 until 1979. During this time, he played an important role in communicating U.S. wishes to Mohammad Reza Shah, the second and last Pahlavi king.In the 70's, the U.S. had unusually high military and economic links with Iran. Economically, billions of private U.S. dollars were invested in the country. Militarily, the U.S. had spent ten years redeeming its petrochemical dollars spent during the 70's oil price boom by allowing the Shah's regime to purchase the most advanced non-nuclear weapons systems available to the U.S. military (to put this in perspective, outside a handful of NATO countries, only New Zealand and Iran were allowed to purchase this level of military hardware). The U.S. therefore had very strong interests in the survival of the shah's dictatorial, autocratic regime. Through a series of failures in U.S. foreign policy, Iran was lost to a revolution that at Sullivan's appointment appeared extremely stable.

The problem stemmed from indecision in the U.S. command structure and a lack of information provided to those decision makers. The DIA, CIA, NSA, White House, and embassy staff promoted various policies to contain and combat the growing unrest of 1978-1979. Sullivan was ahead of the other four bodies by about a month's information. The others didn't believe his reports until they were proven true, and their prescription for action was often what he had recommended some time one or two months previously. As a result, U.S. responses were inadequate to combat the revolution, and Khomeini achieved power officially on the 11th of February 1979. When the White House phoned Sullivan the next day (Feb.12, 1979), authorizing him to give the green light to the military to suppress the revolution with extreme force, Sullivan reputedly declined using colorful language.

Sullivan later published Mission to Iran(1981, ISBN 0-393-01516-5), a memoir of his time as Ambassador.