Mr. Zahedi was named ambassador to the United States for the first of his two tenures in Washington in 1960, but his term was troubled from the start. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy despised the shah, according to “Eminent Persians” (2008), a book by Abbas Milani, scholar at Stanford University and a close friend of Mr. Zahedi’s. Kennedy, Dr. Milani wrote, even sheltered members of the Iranian student opposition. Mr. Zahedi urged the White House to send the students back since they weren’t attending school, but President John F. Kennedy refused. These tensions led the shah to recall Mr. Zahedi after just two years.
