As of this writing, being the summer of 2019, U.S. naval ships are in the Persian Gulf, aiming missiles at Iran, while Iran is attacking British tankers and holding the crews hostage. The U.S. and Iran are destroying each other’s drones, and more U.S. troops are being sent to the Persian Gulf, preparing for war.
All this because President Donald Trump decides to renege on a nuclear deal President Obama made with Iran back in 2015, agreed upon with other countries, including Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany where Iran agrees to the limits the amount of Uranium it can enrich and use for nuclear reactors and other purposes, except in the production of nuclear weapons. The limit would be able to go up by 2026, in which another deal can be made. The details of the agreement are more complex, such as limiting the number of centrifuges to be used to enrich Uranium, but these are the general terms. Most of the highly enriched (weapons grade) Uranium already produced, about 98%, went to Russia.
This was the best we could do for the moment, and I think it was a good deal, provided that Iran did not cheat, but there were watchdog organizations for that.
When Trump came into office, he was dissatisfied at what Obama agreed upon, wanted a better deal, and reneged on the present deal, declaring it null and void. He then reimposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran declare its part of the nuclear deal null and void, and here we are about to go to war. Whether or not we do remains to be see, but the U.S. will be to blame, whether we will admit it or not.
The present problem with Iran stems back to 1978, when, up until then, the U.S. had diplomatic relations with Shah Mohammed Reza, then ruler of Iran. The Shah ruled Iran for 25 years, until the Iranian people rebelled against the Shah, driving him out, and installing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, creating an Islamic Republic, in reality being a tyrannical theocracy.
Just when it couldn’t get any worse, the Iranians demanded the Shah back for trial and execution, and any country that harbored him would be targeted. Eventually, the Shah ended up in the U.S. for medical treatment. Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and held its (American) workers hostage for 444 days. The Shah, incidentally died during this ordeal.
Then there was the Iran-Iraq War, with the U.S. Navy protecting Kuwaiti ships in the Persian Gulf, and the time when the U.S. accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane in 1988.
Iranian agents sponsor terrorist worldwide, and they came close to developing a nuclear bomb, and I think they will do it. Iran has become a dominant power in the Middle East, rivaling Saudi Arabia and Israel.
This is a brief summary, but the point is that Iran is now both a dangerous and powerful enemy of the United States.
Why?
Iranian hatred of Americans isn’t new. I personally knew someone who was in Iran in 1966, and they hated the Americans back then.
The reason was because of the Shah. America supported the Shah so we could get cheap oil. To the Shah’s credit, he modernized Iran and even encouraged Western culture and dress, and many Iranians loved this, but he was also tyrannical. There was a secret police force under the Shah, SAVAK, equivalent to America’s C.I.A., where any Iranian who spoke out against the Shah would be literally sought out anywhere on Earth and killed. This was one of the chief causes of the Islamic revolution in 1978.
It goes deeper than that, and way back further, back to the first world war in 1914, all of it because of the western world’s thirst for oil, especially in Great Britain and the United States. This would extend all the way to 1953.
Here’s the reason why.
During the first world war, and even before then, the world had an energy revolution, switching from coal to oil for energy. In 1914, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, had all ships of the British Royal Navy converted from coal to oil, and from that point on, oil became vital to Britain’s national security. This was when the British Empire was at its peak.
Britain itself had no oil of its own, so they relied on their colonies and allies in the Middle East for their what was thought to be an unlimited source.
In 1914, the British government purchased 51% of shares of oil in Persia, in what became the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The percentage bought made Britain a major shareholder, thereby giving them the last word on how the oil is to be used, as well as where the profits will go. As a result, Persia only received 16% of the net profits.
On March 21, 1935, the Shah changed the name of Persia to Iran. The oil company became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
In 1949, there was an assassination attempt on the Shah, Mohammed Reza’s father. This act only increased the Shah’s power, to the resentment of the Iranian people.
In 1951, Iran’s parliament nationalized Iran’s oil, to the detriment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Naturally, Britain and the U.S. objected. This very act, I believe, marked the beginning of the road leading up to the situation in present day Iran.
As of 1952, Iran was ruled by Shah Mohammed Reza, Britain still owned the majority of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and the United States and the Soviet emerged as the two dominant and competing world powers.
Again, Winston Churchill became prime minister after being out of office since the end of the second world war.
The stage was set for the journey to the point of no return.
Iran was always ruled by the Shah, but it also had competing parties, including an Islamic party, but they were then a slight minority.
In the partial democratic branch of parliament, there rose Mohammed Mosaddegh, a political figure who was very popular with the Iranian people, and proposed many reforms to improve their quality of life. Granted, he was no saint, and was a dangerous man to cross, but nonetheless wanted reform for the benefit of the Iranian people, and he was succeeding in his endeavor.
First, he tried to limit the Shah’s power, and for a while, was successful.
Mosaddegh proposed and put into action a land reform law in 1953, abolishing the present feudal farming system and granting more land and money to the peasants and less power to the Shah. He also had many social programs to improve the lives of the Iranian people as a whole.
Iran, under Mosaddegh, wanted to claim all of its oil for its own, and it was rightfully theirs, regardless of the decades old agreement which in reality left Iran with a pittance, 16% of all profits. No country, including the United States, would tolerate an agreement like that if they were on the wrong side of the deal.
With 100% of its profits, the Iranian people would have been able to build Iran into a prosperous country, which is what Mosaddegh intended to do.
Mosaddegh did have a problem with some of the Iranian populace. There were demonstrations in Tehran, but he was determined to resolve the matter in his favor.
Mosaddegh was then the duly elected prime minister of Iran, and held more power than the Shah, who was fast becoming a figurehead.
It must be noted that Mosaddegh did take desperate measures, since he had to deal with the Shah and the British. In order to prevent election manipulation and to limit the power of the monarchy, and to push through his reforms in land, education, the judicial system and election, parliament granted him emergency powers for a year.
In October, 1952, Mosaddegh declared Britain an enemy of Iran and broke off all diplomatic relations.
The British government was extremely bitter over their loss of control of the Iranian oil industry.
Churchill, Britain’s prime minister, suggested to the incoming U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, to work with him in deposing Mosaddegh to regain control of Iran’s oil, hinting that if they didn’t, Iran would give oil to the Soviets and their allies.
This is one untruth, a lie, by Churchill. Mosaddegh was not a socialist. In fact, he was very anti-socialist and was also anti-Soviet. He had no plans of supplying the Communist world with cheap oil, but that wasn’t how Britain and the U.S. saw it.
Mosaddegh did threaten to limit cheap oil to the West, however.
With the inauguration of Eisenhower as President of the U.S., the plot, known as Operation Ajax, was commenced to usurp Iran’s prime minister. In March, 1953, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the C.I.A. (then headed by his younger brother, Allen Dulles) to draft plans to oust Mosaddegh from his position as prime minister and reinstate the Shah.
Mohammed Mosaddegh was extremely popular with the Iranian people because of his reforms, so the C.I.A. tried to convince the Shah to dismiss Mosaddegh, but the Shah feared this action. The C.I.A. then instituted a propaganda campaign against Mosaddegh, including issuing threats in Mosaddegh’s name to rival parties, threatening them with “savage punishment,” should they cross him.
In order to fight this, a referendum was submitted to voters to dissolve parliament, giving Mosaddegh the power to make the laws, which passed with over 99% of the voters approving.
Riots broke out, with the C.I.A. hiring thugs both supporting and opposing the Shah, in order to stir chaos. This resulted in rioting, looting, and the burning of Mosques and newspapers, thereby destabilizing Iranian society.
As a result, the Shah dismissed the prime minister and was reinstated as the absolute ruler of Iran. Once again, the U.S. and Britain received the lion’s share of Iran’s oil. For the next 25 years, the United Stated massively supported and funded the Shah, regardless of how he ruled. This was a major setback Iran’s political development, and its mood darkened throughout the years.
In 1978, our actions in helping to overthrow Mosaddegh caught up with us as the Iranian people rebelled against both the Shah and the United States. The Shah was overthrown and an Islamic state was established with the Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy was seized and its employees were held hostage for 444 days, all leading up to where we are today.
In retrospect, what would have happened if we had accepted Mosaddegh as Iran’s new prime minister back in 1952 and never plotted to oust him, would we be better today? Perhaps we could have made a new deal with Iran, forging an agreement in buying oil that would be fair and reasonable to the West that Iran would find acceptable.
We then may have had good diplomatic relations to this day, where there never would have been an Islamic revival, Americans never would have been held hostage, and Iran would not be a threat to the Western world today, with peace in the Persian Gulf.
This is all speculation, but the chances for the above would have been great.
Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has had, and still has, a bad foreign policy.
In order to protect our interests, we help to overthrow leaders of a country, even when duly elected by its people, and install someone more willing to cater to our interests, even if he is a tyrant.
We may sustain our interests in years to come, but our actions will eventually catch up with us, and we will end up paying a very high price. We’ve done this many times: Guatemala in 1956; South Vietnam in 1963; Argentina in 1973; Iraq in 2003.
We are paying for these very acts today. We stifle progress and freedom for the people of these countries, and they end up hating us, going as far as to side with our enemies whoever they may be; i.e. Russia, China, Iran.
Is it possible to adapt a policy where we should accept whatever leader a country chooses, even if we don’t like him or her, and try and establish relations anyway?! We may be able to pursue our interests by making agreements satisfactory to all sides, rather than to make them in our favor regardless of what the other side wants simply to satisfy our own greeds.
This is the only way we can improve our present foreign policy.
We still haven’t learned how the world works.
Alastair Browne
