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02 March 2011

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Why Iran Hates America

 

In 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave

the go-ahead to Operation Ajax; a covert

plan to remove Iran’s elected leader

 

Western nations, primarily Britain, controlled Iran’s oil development from its beginnings in the 1920s. Under a weak government, Iran had signed away most of its rights to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now called British Petroleum).

 

Mohammed Mossadeq Becomes Iran’s Leader

Iran was ruled autocratically by Shah Reza Pahlavi. There was an elected parliament but it was largely ineffective.

 

In 1951, Mohammed Mossadeq (left) became prime minister. As described by Sandra Mackay and Scott Harrop in their 1998 book The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation, Mossadeq believed the country’s vast oil reserves ought to be benefiting the people of Iran, most of who were living in poverty at the time.

 

He tried to renegotiate the oil agreements and, when that didn’t work, he nationalized the resource, saying the oil now belonged to the government of Iran. The British organized an economic blockade of the country in retaliation. This plunged Iran into a financial crisis.

 

Plot to Remove Mossadeq

However, Britain wanted to go further and, writes Dan De Luce in The Guardian (August 2003), proposed organizing a coup with American help, “an idea originally rebuffed by President Truman. But when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, cold war ideologues - determined to prevent the possibility of a Soviet takeover - ordered the CIA to embark on its first covert operation against a foreign government.”

 

The Central Intelligence Agency became the lead organization in the affair with the assistance of Britain’s secret service. The plan was to disrupt Mossadeq’s government through planting phoney stories in newspapers, organizing street demonstrations, and bribing people in a position to be a nuisance. The whole scheme was orchestrated by a CIA agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt.

 

Coup Unseats Mossadeq

On August 19, 1953 a demonstration against the Mossadeq government was organized by CIA-supported pro-Shah groups. The protesters headed for central Tehran and were joined by police and military equipped with tanks. Fights with government supporters broke out and as many as 300 people died.

 

Mr. Mossadeq fled and by early evening an army general announced he was prime minister and the Shah (right with his wife) was Iran’s supreme leader. Thus began two decades of brutal dictatorship under the Shah, who was propped up with American arms and money.

 

But, the violent excesses of the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, in crushing dissent only made the opposition stronger. In 1979, a popular revolution toppled the Shah and installed a group of conservative Islamic clerics as the governing power.

 

Long-term After Effects of Internal Meddling

In his 2003 book, All the Shah’s Men, New York Times foreign correspondent, Stephen Kinzer argues that the 1953 coup still poisons relations between the United States and Iran. He even goes so far as to suggest it created the climate of hostility in the Middle East that gave rise to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.

 

On November 2009 The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl reported on a speech given by a member of Iran’s current opposition. Ayatollah Mohajerani, spoke to a meeting of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, whose audience Diehl writes was expecting to hear robust criticism of Iran’s aggressive and confrontational president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

“What they heard, instead, was a speech that started with a rehashing of U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup in Tehran and went on to echo much of Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about the United States and the nuclear program.”

 

More than 50 years after the event, the ousting of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq still rankles.

 

Sources

“The Spectre of Operation Ajax.” Dan De Luce, The Guardian, August 20, 2003.

“Iran’s Unlovable Opposition.” Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, November 2, 2009.

“Iran Opposition: over 200 ‘Arrested’ in Tuesday’s Protest. BBC News, March 2, 2011.

 

© Canada and the World, March 2011

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IRAN UPDATE

 

After a revolution in 1979, the Iranians set up what’s called a theocracy, which is a government run by religious leaders. In the case of Iran, the government religion is Islam.

 

The highest authority in the country is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; he has held that position since 1989.

 

Khamenei is very conservative and, according to a BBC News profile of him, “has repeatedly denounced the West, and in particular the United States.” This should come as no surprise as Khamenei spent three years in prison for his opposition to the Western-backed regime of the Shah of Iran.

 

Elections are held from time to time but they are meaningless in the sense that they have no possibility of changing the self-appointed leadership.

While all power is concentrated in Khamenei’s hands, the public face of Iran outside the country is represented by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

 

In June 2009, President Ahmadinejad was declared to have won a resounding victory in his bid for re-election. However, his rival candidates claim the vote was rigged, an accusation supported by outside observers.

 

Opposition supporters took to the streets and armed forces met them. About 1,000 people were arrested and at least 30 killed before the authorities gained the upper hand.

 

More recently, perhaps reflecting demands for greater freedom in Arab states, demonstrations have taken place in Iran. They have been put down with the usual ferocity of the regime.

 

In March 2011, BBC News reported more than 200 opposition figures have been detained while protesting the jailing of their leaders.