As Iran celebrates the 30th anniversary of its historic Islamic revolution, it is worth examining the origins of the three decades of bitter hostility between Tehran and the West.
Iran's jagged relations with the West began in the Second World War. In 1941, the British Empire and Soviet Union jointly invaded and occupied independent Persia, as it was then known. This oil-motivated aggression was every bit as criminal as the German-Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939, but has been blanked out of western history texts.
The Allies deposed Iran's shah and put his weak son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, on the throne as a British puppet ruler. But in 1951, an Iranian democratic leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, became prime minister and promptly nationalized Iran's British-owned oil industry, ordering its profits be used to lift Iran from poverty rather than enriching Britain. The Shah fled.
Two years later, U.S. and British intelligence mounted a coup that overthrew Mossadegh, ending Iran's first democratic government. The shah was restored to the Peacock Throne. Iran's oil wealth returned to British and, now, U.S. control.
Washington and London planned to turn Shah Pahlavi into the "gendarme of the Gulf" to protect their oil interests. The Shah quickly blossomed into a megalomaniac, styling himself the "Shah of Shahs," and "Imperial Light of the Aryans" (Iranians are an ancient Indo-European people).
The shah's relatives and Iran's tiny ruling elite looted the nation, living like pre-Revolution Russian royalty. Wives of the elite flew to Paris to have their hair done for gala parties. The nation's oil revenues went to buy U.S. and British arms and build gaudy palaces. The rest of Iran remained mired in abject poverty as the royal court flaunted its wealth.
Iran's elite put on European airs and dismissed Islam as a backwards faith of superstitious peasants. Iranians who objected to the court's lurid ostentation, Iran's status as a Western puppet, or the looting of its oil wealth were branded Communists or Islamic fanatics.
Savak, the vastly powerful security agency, imposed a reign of terror on Iran. Real and imagined opponents of the Shah and the Shia clergy all fell victim to Savak, whose tortures and brutalities were legend, even by brutal Mideast standards. American and Israeli experts advised Savak.
Iran and Israel became close allies, to the fury of deeply religious Iranians. The shah negotiated to buy Israeli missiles with nuclear warheads. Washington offered to sell Iran 26 nuclear reactors.
By the late 1970s, the shah's imperial pretensions, the arrant corruption of his family, and the elite's scorning of Islam brought Iran to a boil. In 1979, an exiled Shia religious leader, Ruhollah Khomeni, led a popular revolution that quickly overthrew the hated Shah.
Popular fury turned against the Shah's primary supporter, the U.S. Mobs stormed the U.S. Embassy, taking hostages and bringing the two nations close to war.
Washington and London immediately began planning the overthrow of Iran's new Islamic government. CIA sought to mount a military coup. Forty per cent of government leaders were assassinated by the Marxist "People's Mujahidin." When these efforts failed to end the Islamic regime, the U.S., Britain and their Arab oil clients got another U.S. bully boy --Iraq's Saddam Hussein -- to invade Iran. The resulting eight year Iran-Iraq war cost Iran one million casualties. The U.S., Britain, and the oil Arabs financed and helped arm Iraq. Israel sold Iran billions in U.S. arms and spare parts.
After the U.S. Navy entered the war on Iraq's side, Iran was forced to sue for peace. Iran lay in financial and emotional ruins, with an entire generation killed in battle or horribly maimed by Iraq's western-supplied chemical weapons.
Rightly or wrongly, most Iranians blame the West for their historical suffering. They see the Western powers continuing efforts to overthrow their government, isolate Iran, and seize its oil. A former commander in the bloody Iran-Iraq War, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is today president of Iran.
The West keeps Iran on the run...
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Originally Posted by Caduet
