Henry Kissinger wrote in the first of his three memoirs (on page 1,261) that the shah “was for us that rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally.” He readily agreed to Western demands for fifty-fifty profit sharing in Iranian oil operations and cracked down hard on internal opposition, arresting more than three thousand members of the communist Tudeh Party in the year or so following the coup and imprisoning a handful of officials for decades (he also granted American military advisers immunity from Iranian law). The shah worked with the CIA to set up a secret police force, SAVAK, that carried out the day-to-day work of political repression. He also became an avid purchaser, even a connoisseur, of American arms. By 1977, 35 percent of Iran’s annual budget was going to the military; a joke circulated among arms dealers that the shah read defense equipment manuals the way other men read Playboy. He placed orders for F-16 fighter jets, naval destroyers, nuclear-powered submarines, and more than a thousand tanks. The US even agreed to throw in nuclear reactors, with the shah reassuring American officials that he had no interest in pursuing nuclear weapons. Congress appreciatively estimated that Iran’s arms purchases from the US were “the largest in the world.”