6, January 2018 Iran
Oh, how our political pundits love to waggle
their fingers and lecture autocratic rulers on democracy that we have done so
much to undermine. Like the US (Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, .) the Iranians have
squandered their precious resources fighting proxy wars and impoverishing their
people.
Let’s begin to
examine own dark history in Iranian affairs. In 1953-54 the CIA (and British intelligence)
orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's (parliamentary elected) Prime Minister
Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had sought to build a true democracy. His major
offense against the West was the nationalization of Iran’s oil fields, thereby
denying the British (Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.) their control of Iran's chief
natural resource. The CIA ushered in the demonic Shah of Iran who, as an absolute
monarch, bought billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the US, established
a vicious secret police (SAVAK) that carried out torture and murder on a wide
scale. In 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini led the Shia Iranian Revolution hostage
taking which further fanned hatred against the US. Teflon President Reagan then
generated revenue to support the Contras by selling weapons to Iran. We then
enriched our defense contractors by selling weapons to Iraq in its eight war
with Iran. Not much has changed. It’s a pity Mr. Trump in his latest tweet
failed to express similar outrage for the people living under oppressive
regimes that we support - in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt to name just a few.
No comments:
Post a Comment