Stuff here worth knowing. You won't get this from Fox News nor the White House.
...America’s troubled relationship with the Iranian people dates not from
the 1979 U.S. embassy hostage crisis but from 1953, when the United
States and Britain clandestinely overthrew the country’s fledgling
democracy and instituted the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, the country’s latest (and, as it would turn out, last) foreign
puppet-ruler....
That was a British-inspired move; the Brits wanted the petroleum and promised to share it with the US. By the way, the Little-Boy-Pahlavi running around claiming that he can move right in and take over ruling Iran? Not likely at all.
The democracy that the US overthrew (thanks, Allen Dulles!) was actually favored by the Shi'a Muslim clerisy.
... Shia Islam had been adopted by Iran in the 16th century as a form of
resistance against the perceived tyranny of the Ottoman empire, whose
caliphs claimed the right to rule the whole Muslim world as the
successors of Muhammad and sought to encroach on Iranian sovereignty....
... the 18th-century American British colonists were fascinated by Iran’s
Shia resistance to the Ottoman empire and saw it as a fulfillment of
Persia’s long tradition of civilized refinement and benign rule
stretching back to Cyrus the Great. In fact, colonial Americans
developed a sort of love affair and even obsession with Iran in the
early 18th century....
It's American, ya'know, to become a formal ally of dictators--so long as they dictate in a US direction. So Turkey is a member of NATO, and the Shi'a are now The Enemy.
Hard to keep up, ain'a--unless you own shares of British Petroleum (BP--the "green" gas stations.)
Unfortunately for the first Pahlavi dictator, he got palsy with one A. Hitler. So the Brits and Russkies got rid of him and installed his son as the Shiny New Shah--and the Brits took the petroleum in exchange.
... However, the new shah faced strongly democratic forces in Iran that were
backed by much of the Shia clergy, who were seeking the country’s
independence from foreign economic and political control. By 1951, the
parliament had forced the shah to accept the strongly reformist Mohammad
Mosaddegh as the country’s prime minister. Mosaddegh immediately began
to curtail the power of the shah and to nationalize the country’s oil
industry....
Can't have THAT!! So MI6 and CIA saw to the elimination of Masaddegh, leaving Pahlavi solely in charge.
Then comes a twist that will shock most Americans (it did that to me, too.)
...The United States and the State of Israel began to work with the shah to
ensure that nothing would threaten his rule in the future. With the
help of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, Mohammad Reza established SAVAK, a
secret police force that would arrest political dissidents and
systematically torture them in hidden prisons. Thousands of Iranians
suffered this fate, including intellectuals who had been able to freely
publish and speak only a few years earlier....
In return.......
... The shah abolished all political parties in the parliament, restricting
who could run and permitting only a single, pro-shah party that acted as
a rubber stamp and a defender of his absolute rule. He dutifully
invited the United States to send its major oil companies, including
Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco, to manage the country’s oil resources and take
50 percent of the profits along with British Petroleum....
Fifty percent? That's the classic "Beyond the Dreams of Avarice."
... By the late 1960s, the shah was so isolated from his people and drunk on
power that he scheduled a coronation ceremony to have himself crowned
as “Emperor” (literally, “King of Kings”) of Iran, a vanity title from
Iran’s ancient past that only had meaning in the narcissistic dream
world in which he was living...
The Greeks had a word for that.
The Iranian hoi polloi became restive and the clergy helped move that along, as "progressive" US values pushed by such as Planned Parenthood showed up on scene.
... In 1978, protesters began to hit the streets, encouraged by the
Ayatollah Khomeini still in exile, and they were consequently joined by
the nation’s Shia clergy and clerical students. The shah’s U.S.-backed
military began to massacre street protesters, but each wave of killings
brought even more protesters into the streets month after month.
Graffiti written on the walls read, “Death to America’s Shah.”...
Jimmuh Cartuh now proved beyond a doubt that he was dumber than GWBush:
...The turning point came in late 1978, when Jimmy Carter made a
personal phone call to the shah—after a particularly bloody massacre
that used helicopter gunships against protesters—in which Carter
“reaffirmed the close and friendly relationship between Iran and the
United States,” as the White House summarized the call.
The United States had clearly thrown the Iranian dissidents under the
bus. The population became more enraged and protests continued to grow.
Finally, the shah fled the country, and in February of 1979 the
Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in a plane filled with Western
journalists, now received by colossal mobs of literally millions of
joyful supporters, and by almost the whole range of political opinion,
as the de facto leader of the Iranian Revolution....
Cahtuh's stupidity ensured that the Iranians would keep the hostages until he left power in the US. Maybe you believe the fable that the Ayatollah feared Reagan? Actually, the Ayatollah was working as hard as he could to FREE the hostages. He had morals, unlike certain current US and Israeli leaders.
... Iran soon began to ally itself with other countries and causes linked to
anti-colonialism in the Middle East and worldwide, especially with
fellow Shias. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and committed a massacre
against thousands of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila under
the protection of U.S. Marine “peacekeepers,” Iran began to aid Shia
Muslim organizations in the area that eventually came together to form
Hezbollah (the “Party of God”), a political party and militia created to
resist the Israeli occupation....
But Netanyahu tells you that Hezbollah does that massacre thing. Yah, well, they were taught the technique by Israel.
...When American corporations tried to break the ice and begin doing
business with Iran again in the mid-’90s, neoconservative pundits, AIPAC
lobbyists, and the State of Israel went to work to shut them down....
... a multi-billion-dollar oil drilling deal with Conoco was nixed by Bill
Clinton via a seeping executive order in 1995, which prohibited
virtually all commerce, either direct or indirect, with Iran....
So Iran began to develop nuclear power plants. That technology was given to them by none other than the good old USA.
Why are the Houthis so nasty?
...When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran gave arms to Shia
militias there to help them run the United States out of the country.
Meanwhile, the United States and Israel funded the Sunni-aligned
terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS, enabling them to wreak
chaos in Syria and to finally install an Israel-friendly, Sunni regime.
The United States also continued to support Israel in its own terrorist
policies against the Palestinians and other Arab countries in the
region. In turn, the Iranians built up Hezbollah to a massive fighting
force and made an alliance with the Houthis in Yemen, while also
supporting the Palestinian Sunni Muslim party Hamas, in Gaza....
Now Trump has both feet planted in the quicksand in a monumental case of FAFO for the US.
Israel it holding our coat. How very sportsmanlike of them!
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