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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Fri Nov 29, 2013, 11:46 AM Nov 2013

Without Reagan's Treason, Iran Would Not Be a Problem

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/52903/without-reagans-treason-iran-would-not-be-a-problem

Without Reagan's Treason, Iran Would Not Be a Problem
by Thom Hartmann | November 27, 2013 - 10:27am

As news of a US-Iranian nuclear deal spread like wildfire this weekend, the mainstream media began to ask its usual set of questions. Is the deal for real? Can we trust the Iranians? Are the mullahs just using a temporary break in sanctions to buy enough time to build a bomb?

Ever since the Second Bush administration labeled Iran part of the "Axis of Evil," the media has portrayed the Iranian government as a scheming theocracy, so the discussion of the "two-faced Persians" isn't all that surprising.

But aside from being wildly racist, this portrayal is also wildly inaccurate. That's because the biggest threat to an American-Iranian accord comes from President Obama's enemies at home - Congressional Republicans - not from the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Already Republican leaders in the Senate are calling for more sanctions against Iran. Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that doing so is the only way to ensure a long-term deal between the U.S. and Iran.
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Without Reagan's Treason, Iran Would Not Be a Problem (Original Post) unhappycamper Nov 2013 OP
I've always failed to see how Iran was at any time a problem. polly7 Nov 2013 #1
America's Iranian problems began in 1953 when we installed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi: unhappycamper Nov 2013 #2

polly7

(20,582 posts)
1. I've always failed to see how Iran was at any time a problem.
Fri Nov 29, 2013, 11:57 AM
Nov 2013

Nuclear weapons are a sin, says Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

February 23, 2012

VIENNA/TEHRAN // Iran's supreme leader yesterday insisted his country was not seeking nuclear weapons, claiming that "holding these arms is a sin as well as useless, harmful and dangerous".

However, after meetings with Iranian nuclear scientists and officials, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not mention a visit to Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said its experts had again failed to dent the country's refusal to cooperate in investigating allegations that Tehran covertly worked on an atomic arms programme.

Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran's policies would not change despite mounting international pressure against what the West says are Iran's plans to obtain nuclear bombs.

"With God's help, and without paying attention to propaganda, Iran's nuclear course should continue firmly and seriously," he said on state television.


Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/nuclear-weapons-are-a-sin-says-irans-ayatollah-ali-


Iran hasn’t invaded another country in at least a century and a half, it has signed the NPT and called for a ME nuclear weapon free zone.

The unacknowledged elephant in the room is that Iran was queued because of petroleum, and to a lesser extent because it is among the few remaining rejectionist states toward Israel. But as the US moves to wind and solar electricity and electric and hybrid plug-in cars, petroleum’s value will plummet over the next 20 years. The US is going to be energy independent in 20-30 years, but not via fracked gas and oil, which are relatively expensive. Oil certainly won’t be worth going to war over. The Congressional refusal to authorize a strike on Syria is the writing on the wall here.

Some hawks want to put China in the war queue as a booby prize, but China is a tough sell. It has a nuclear arsenal and so the US can’t just go to war with it. US-China trade is huge and the US needs China. What would Walmart sell if it couldn’t load up on the products of Communist China? Even just alienating Beijing by talking about it as an enemy is difficult in today’s world.

Without a demonized enemy number 1, how will hawks win election campaigns? How will they scare the public into letting them suspend the constitution and our civil liberties? How will they convince the public to let Congress spend billions on their industrial cronies? Maybe they won’t be able to.


http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/queue-twilight-hawks.html

unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
2. America's Iranian problems began in 1953 when we installed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi:
Fri Nov 29, 2013, 12:09 PM
Nov 2013
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name 'Operation Boot') and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).[3][4][5][6]

Mossadegh had sought to reduce the semi-absolute role of the Shah granted by the Constitution of 1906, thus making Iran a full democracy, as well as nationalizing the Iranian oil industry, consisting of vast oil reserves and the Abadan Refinery, both owned by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a British corporation (currently known as BP).[7][8][9] The coup saw the formation of a military government under General Fazlollah Zahedi, which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi the Shah of Iran (Persian for an Iranian king)[9] to effectively rule the country as an absolute monarch according to the constitution, relying heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979.[7][8][9][10] In August 2013 the CIA formally admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[11][12] The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government." [13]

In 1951, Iran's oil industry was nationalized with near-unanimous support of Iran's parliament in a bill introduced by Mossadegh who led the nationalist party the National Front. Iran's oil had been controlled by the British-owned AIOC prior to this occasion.[14] Popular discontent with the AIOC began in the late 1940s: a large segment of Iran's public and a number of politicians saw the company as exploitative and a central tool of continued British imperialism in Iran.[7][15] Despite Mosaddegh's popular support, Britain was unwilling to negotiate on its single most valuable foreign asset, and instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.[16] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott[17] while using Iranian agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government.[18] With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government though the predecessor Truman administration had opposed a coup.[19] Classified documents show British intelligence officials played a pivotal role in initiating and planning the coup, and that AIOC (now BP) contributed $25,000 towards the expense of bribing officials.[20]

Britain and the U.S. selected Fazlollah Zahedi to be the prime minister of a military government that was to replace Mosaddegh as premier. Subsequently, a royal decree dismissing Mosaddegh and appointing Zahedi was drawn up by the coup plotters and signed by the Shah. The Central Intelligence Agency had successfully pressured the weak monarch to participate in the coup, while bribing street thugs, clergy, politicians and Iranian army officers to take part in a propaganda campaign against Mosaddegh and his government.[21] At first, the coup appeared to be a failure when on the night of 15–16 August, Imperial Guard Colonel Nematollah Nassiri was arrested while attempting to arrest Mosaddegh. The Shah fled the country the next day. On 19 August, a pro-Shah mob paid by the CIA, marched on Mosaddegh's residence.[22] According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August. Other CIA-paid men were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city.[23] Between 300[1] and 800 people were killed because of the conflict.[2] Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.[24][25][26] Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty.[9]

After the coup, the Shah ruled as an absolute monarch for the next 26 years (under what he called a "guided democracy&quot [8][9] while significantly modernizing the country using oil revenue, until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.[8][9][27] The tangible benefits the United States reaped from overthrowing Iran's elected government included a share of Iran's oil wealth[28][clarification needed] as well as resolute prevention of the possibility that the Iranian government might align itself with the Soviet Union, although the latter motivation produces controversy among historians. Washington continually supplied arms to the increasingly unpopular Shah and the CIA-trained SAVAK, his repressive secret police force;[9] however by the 1979 revolution, his increasingly independent policies resulted in his effective abandonment by his American allies, hastening his downfall.[29] The coup is widely believed to have significantly contributed to anti-American sentiment in Iran and the Middle East. The 1979 revolution deposed the Shah and replaced the pro-Western absolute monarchy with the largely anti-Western authoritarian theocracy.
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