William H.Sullivan, United States ambassador to Iran from 1977 to 1979, said to a Harvard audience this week that the Soviet Union is attempting to encourage the break-up of Iran by "agitating" ethnic independence groups within the country.

Sullivan told about 70 at a Center for International Affairs seminar Wednesday that Soviet KGB operations have been proceeding in three areas of Iran in an effort to "reduce Iran's effectiveness as a barrier to "Soviet mischief" and to Soviet intentions on the Persian Gulf.

While U.S. officials have hinted at Soviet attempts to stir ethnic unrest in Iran, Sullivan's statement is believed to be one of the highest-level confirmations of such charges.

Sullivan on Thursday gave The Crimson permission to publish an account of his remarks, which he made on an off-the record basis.

While discounting the role of Iran's communist party-"The Tudeh is not a very useful instrument to the Soviets"- Sullivan said KGB agents are providing weapons and training to Kurdish fighters; had "considerable assets that are still alive" in Azerbaijan, near the Soviet Union; and would seek to infiltrate Ballucci tribesman along the Afghanistan border.

In his talk, Sullivan reiterated, sometimes sarcastically, his criticism of Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter, and blamed internal Carter administration "scrapping" for what he termed a paralysis in U.S.policy towards the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi in the final stages of his rule.

"There has to be a reduction in the role of the national security adviser, so he becomes the sort of staff officer that he was intended to be," Sullivan said, adding that "the most vicious sort of contest was going on inside Washington" over the length to which the U.S.should go to keep the shah in power.

Repeating earlier assertions, Sullivan also said he warned American officials not to permit the deposed shah to enter this country unless they evacuated beforehand all personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

He said he cabled Washington several times in 1979 that "if we wanted to maintain an embassy in Tehran, we wanted to maintain an embassy in Tehran, we should not allow the shah into the U.S."

"If we wanted to maintain a personalized relationship with the shah, we should have closed our embassy and brought our people home. If we wanted to keep an embassy in Tehran, then we should have told the shah that a Canadian doctor could take out his gallstones better than an American," the 73-year-old former diplomat said.

Sullivan and Brzezinski gave conflicting advice in late 1978, when opponents of the shah were uniting in massive demonstrations. While Sullivan says he recommended the U.S. prepare for the transition to a new Iranian government, Brzezinski reportedly urged that every measure--including massive displays of force--be employed to keep the shah in power.

When the White House continued to issue statements professing support for him, "even the shah was embarrassed by it and asked me to stop them," Sullivan said.

"'It makes me look like a puppet,"' Sullivan quoted the shah--"an indecisive and sort of diffident man"--as saying.

According to Sullivan, the shah did not use unlimited force in an attempt to stop the revolution because of "dynastic" reasons. Believing he had about six years to live, the shah "repeatedly" told Sullivan that "he could suppress his opponents for as long as he was alive, but he was afraid the revolution would then below up in the face of his son," who would succeed him.

The shah left Iran in January 1979, and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power following a provisional governments headed by Shahpour Bakhtiar and Mehdi Bazargan. Sullivan wrote in the current issue of Foreign Policy that Brezezinski asked him over an open international telephone line "whether I thought I could arrange a military coup against the revolution."