"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

<span style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

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<span style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Whwhat Is the Rust

One Event Can Change The Course Of History

(Written and posted 24 June 2009)<o:p></o:p>

In 1951, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh (or Mossadeq) was elected the Prime Minister of Iran. Who cares, right? After all, that is ancient history. Or is it?

When you read the news about what is happening in Iran today, and want to some insight as to why, remember that in 1951 Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister of Iran. Who was Mossadegh, and why was he so important? Mossadegh was a fervent Iranian nationalist who lead a broad coalition called the National Front, whose objective was a strong and independent Iranian state. More importantly, Mossadegh was the last democratically elected leader of Iran.

When Mossadegh came to power, Iran was a de facto British colony. On paper, Iran was independent, but the Iranian government was a mere puppet of the British. For over forty years, the British controlled the economic lifeblood of Iran, oil, as the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the predecessor to British Petroleum) had a monopoly on Iranian oil production and distribution. As part of this monopoly, the British took 84 percent of Iranian oil revenues, and gave the Iranians a paltry 16 percent. In 1949, the Shah extended the British oil monopoly, and then rigged the Parliamentary elections to ensure he had a legislature that would rubber stamp the deal. Unfortunately for the Shah, his attempt to stack to deck backfired. Instead of ending up with a pro-British complaint Parliament, he ended up with a nationalistic, “hostile” one.

In 1951, this nationalist Iranian Parliament elected Mossadegh, the leader of the Nationalists, as Prime Minister. One of Mossadegh’s first order of business was to break the British yoke and nationalize the oil industry, as he rightly reasoned that Iranians should own Iranian oil. The British were not amused. They tried to bargain with Mossadegh; no deal. They British took their case to international bodies, and were peeved that the U.N. and World Court sided with Iran! So, the British decided that Mossadegh must go. In order to achieve this goal, the British asked the United States for help, but the Truman Administration emphatically said no, that the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of Iran, and would not use the CIA to topple another government, that that was not, and should never be, the CIA’s mission. Seeing that they were rebuffed, the British schemed and plotted with unscrupulous Iranians to topple the government. Unfortunately for the British, the Mossadegh government discovered the covert plot and proceeded to expel the British from the country.

Things did not look well for the British until the end of 1952, and then something happened that changed everything. That something was the election of Dwight Eisenhower as the President of the United States. Unlike Truman, Eisenhower was eager to help the British overthrown the Iranian government, as it was necessity to ensure the security of Western interests in a country that bordered the Soviet Union. Throughout the first part of 1953, the CIA worked out of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran to orchestrate the overthrow of the duly elected Iranian government. The CIA paid thugs to riot in the streets of Tehran in the name of Communism and Mossadegh, and then would pay counter-thugs to attack the thugs in the name of the Shah and those opposed the Mossadegh. Because of the CIA, Tehran quickly devolved into anarchy and chaos. Knowing that Mossadegh had become aware of the plots against him, and fearing for his safety, the cowardly Shah fled to Rome to observe the destruction of his homeland in luxury from afar.

On August 19, 1953, the CIA’s Operation TPAJAX reached it’s successful conclusion, as the Mossadegh government was toppled, and Mossadegh was arrested. The United States brought the exiled Shah back from Rome, and successfully propped up his brutal and autocratic regime for the next 25 years, a yoke the Iranian people would throw off in 1979. Because the Iranian people knew that the United States was the reason for the Shah, their hatred of the Shah translated to a hatred of the United States, too, and the Iranian Revolution was laced with fervent anti-Americanism. Enter another event that changed history.

When the Shah was deposed in 1979, he had cancer and needed treatment. As the world knows, the absolute best medical care on the planet is in the United States, so President Jimmy Carter, the kind and compassionate Christian that he is, took pity on the Shah and allowed him to get treatment in the United States. What we viewed as an act of compassion and kindness by Americans was viewed as antagonistic by the Iranians. After all, it was the United States who had sheltered and returned the Shah to the throne in 1953, and because that wound was still in the collective Iranian psyche, they believed that if we returned him once, we would do it again. So, to ensure that that wouldn’t happen, the Iranians took over the building where the last coup against a popular Iranian government was orchestrated – the U.S. Embassy.

Two things then happened that changed the world. First, the Shah’s oppressive regime was replaced by one run by Islamic clerics, who then fueled Islamic anti-Americanism throughout the world. Second, the American electorate elected Ronald Reagan as President, whose legacy is still with us today. Reagan abandoned pragmatism for hard core rhetoric, which further fueled the mullahs rhetoric, which precipitated a ghastly war with American-armed Iraq, not to mention terrorism and an environment of mutual hostility between the Islamic world and the United States that persists to this day.

Meanwhile, the people of Iran are protesting the lack of democracy in their country, and the conservatives in the United States are advocating regime change in Iran to give the people democracy. Of course, the irony is that is because the conservatives in the United States government changed a regime in Iran in 1953 that the Iranians don’t have democracy. It is because of a conservative President of the United States and his bipolar “you are either with us or against us” view of the world, that the mullahs were able to tap into nationalistic fervor to tighten their grip on power, a grip that our conservatives lament. Such a extreme worldview was disastrous in 1953, disastrous in 1980, and is still disastrous today.

When we cry tears for the innocents who are dying on the streets of Tehran, we need to look in the collective mirror to see who is ultimately to blame.

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