Iran - A Brief History

This is a short history of Iran, since WWII. And how the West fucked their country up and made it what it is today. Most of the material here is taken from assorted, annotated Wikipedia articles. Feel free to check my facts.

In 1941, Iran was ruled by Reza Khan, the Shah. American allies in WWII, the UK and the USSR, invaded Iran to gain control of the railroad infrastructure that Reza Shah, a modernizing leader like Peter the Great in Russia or Ataturk in Turkey, had been developing since he took power in 1925. The Allies needed this Iranian railroad to move supplies into the Soviet Union while they fought the Nazis on the Eastern Front.

The British and Soviets forced Reza Khan to abdicate, and had his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (hereafter referred to as The Shah) installed as monarch of the country. The Shah was younger, and the invading powers believed he would be more easily controlled (by the West).

In 1951, Mohammed Mossadeq led the Iranian Parliament to unanimously nationalise the oil industry in Iran. Mossadeq was a nationalist, and his primary goal was to remove foreign influence from Iranian politics. Most notably, Mossadeq wanted half of the profits from the oil that Britain was taking from Iran, to stay in Iran so they could continue to modernize their country.

The British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, that later became British Petroleum (BP), controlled all the oil that came out of Iran, and all the profits went to the UK. Have you ever wondered how England was the supreme world power for so long, when they just had that tiny island without many natural resources? It was by colonizing un-developed countries, exploiting the native populations, and moving the natural resources from one colony to the others (and home) at a significant mark-up.

So as I said, Mossadeq wanted 50% of the oil profits to stay in Iran for the benefit of the people of Iran. Obviously, the British didn't want this. They refused, so Mossadeq led the Parliament to nationalize the oil industry, shutting out the British entirely.

The British responded by enlisting the aid of their Special Friends, the USA. Operation Ajax was a covert operation by the CIA to remove Mossadeq from power and replace him with a General that had been selected by the British and American governments. Operation Ajax initially failed, and The Shah went into exile.

Shortly after, covert CIA operatives and their paid assets in Iran organized riots and ultimately a military coup, that resulted in Mossadeq's arrest. And The Shah came back from exile to resume ruling Iran.

If all this sounds, to hard to believe, like some crazy conspiracy theory, like the shooter on the grassy knoll, try Googling Operation Ajax. This is all declassified, and the information is there for you to read. There's far too much detail to go into. Suffice it to say, Iran had a strong, SECULAR leader who was intent on modernizing his country, who some historians say could have been Iran's Ataturk, and because he tried to force the British to pay Iran for the oil they were taking, we removed him from power through trickery. And it was all personally authorized by President Eisenhower.

So now The Shah rules Iran again. He's been put into power TWICE by the West, and he knows that we own him. He brings the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company back. They resume shipping out Iran's oil, and not really paying for it. America gives Iran money to build their military, because now they're our ally against the Soviet Union. We train his SAVAK secret police (think Gestapo) who were widely known for their use of torture (techniques that the CIA shared with them, and with Sadat's secret police in Egypt, and elsewhere). Basically, America propped up The Shah's dictatorship.

One of the victims of The Shah's SAVAK was the now infamous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeini was a political critic of The Shah who was arrested by the secret police, tortured and imprisioned. When he got out, he didn't have nice things to say about America. Go figure.

In 1978, the people of Iran had had enough of the dictatorship. They organized strikes and protests. In January 1979, Khomeini returned from exile to Tehran, and ten days later The Shah abdicated and went into exile. The people of Iran took Khomeini as their new national leader, and in a national referendum they overwhelmingly adopted a theocratic constitution and Iran became an Islamic Republic.

In November 1979, a group of Iranian students raided the American Embassy and took it's people hostage, accusing them of being CIA spies (which we know that at least some of then were). They released most of the women and African-Americans before long, but the rest they held for over a year while they demanded the return of The Shah to Iran so that he could be tried for his crimes against his people. Of course, America was not going to accomdate them. Khomeini's government was not aware of the plans to attack the embassy, but publicly supported it once it had happened. This is the moment in history where the US finally had a reason to call Iran an enemy.

Enter Saddam Hussein. Enemy of America, right? No, it's the 80's Hussein is our ally, as is Osama Bin Laden. Saddam decides to attack Iran, and they spend years fighting each other. Oh, let's not forget Iran-Contra, where the Reagan administration sold weapons to the Iranians, as well as the Iraqis. Yes, we sold weapons to both sides.

I think that pretty much brings you up to speed. This is why there is so much animosity towards the West in Iran. I think they have some reason to be angry. I only hope that with a moderate American President, and a moderate Iranian leader, we can begin to heal the divide that we created to help the British continue their exploitation of the un-developed world.

What we should NOT do, is interfere. All of our allies in developing countries end up being monsters. Sadat, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden. They all ended up butchering their own people or attacking us. When they are ready, the people of Iran will take their freedom. This may have already started in the last few days. But they have to win their freedom, and we need to stay out of it, ready to welcome them when they emerge from the darkness.

Freedom?

A few weeks ago, I took a road trip with three friends to Southern Ohio. While on the trip, I saw a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker with this slogan:









Obviously, this person didn't vote for Obama. But it got me thinking about how Conservatives see Freedom.

It seems to me like I frequently hear from self-identified conservatives about how social welfare programs and nationalized health care are "Socialist" and are somehow taking away their freedom. I've always thought that "Socialist" was just a dirty word that the Right threw at the Left, an insult left over from McCarthyism. To some extent, I still think that's the case. But as always, it's more complex.

Somehow, money has become equated with freedom. A conservative friend of mine said that taxes infringe on his freedom, because he doesn't get to decide how that money is spent. I sugested that he does have a voice in how it's spent, since he's electing the lawmakers who spend the money ultimately anyway. Another conservative friend suggests that there should be no income taxes, only usage fees for things that we actually use. So instead of paying taxes that are used to build and maintain roads and bridges, everything would have tolls that would be paid. Personally, I don't see how any of this makes anyone more "free."

I feel it's become necessary to define Socialism, just in case someone is not familiar with the writings of Karl Marx. Socialism is an economy where the means of production are controlled by the workers. In our American democracy, it could be argued that the workers are the "people" and the people are the government. So if the government controls the means of production, that would be Socialism.

Socialism is not, however, making health care and education accessible to every American. It's not even giving money to failing banks and auto manufacturers to help keep our post-industrial economy afloat. If President Obama gave GM a boat-load of money and then fired the Board of Directors and appointed a whole new board, then I'd be concerned. But to my understanding, that's not what he's doing.

As I sink deeper and deeper into student loan debt with every passing quarter of community college, I ask what is so wrong with the idea of free education. Or what would be so terrible about everyone being able to go to the doctor when they're ill, without worrying about how they're going to pay for it. How does it make you less "Free" for a poor child to have the same access to health care and education as a child whose parents have more access to these resources? What about the freedom of someone who is born into less advantageous circumstances?

In America, the middle class has seems to have the illusion that everyone has equal freedom. I don't think this is the case. The poor are not as free as the middle class, who are not as free as the wealthy. Sure, a poor kid can bust their ass and get a scholarship to an Ivy League school, but do you think that it's as easy for that poor kid as it is for the child born into privledge? Of course it's not. So that poor kid has less freedom.

It sounds like I'm changing my own mind. Maybe money does equal freedom. But that guy in Portsmouth, Ohio with the bumper sticker doesn't have as much freedom as he thinks.