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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Moment the US Ended Iran’s Brief Experiment in Democracy by Robert Scheer
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/20-0Mohammad Mossadegh in front of the Straight of Hormuz, as seen from the international space station. (NASA/WikiMedia Commons)
Sixty years ago this week, on Aug. 19, 1953, the United States, in collaboration with Britain, successfully staged a coup in Iran to overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that a newly declassified CIA document reveals was designed to preserve the control of Western companies over Irans rich oil fields.
The U.S. government at the time of the coup easily had manipulated Western media into denigrating Mossadegh as intemperate, unstable and an otherwise unreliable ally in the Cold War, but the real motivation for hijacking Irans history was Mossadeghs move to nationalize Western-controlled oil assets in Iran. According to the document, part of an internal CIA report:
The target of this policy of desperation, Mohammad Mosadeq, [sic] was neither a madman nor an emotional bundle of senility as he was so often pictured in the foreign press; however, he had become so committed to the ideals of nationalism that he did things that could not have conceivably helped his people even in the best and most altruistic of worlds. In refusing to bargainexcept on his own uncompromising termswith the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, he was in fact defying the professional politicians of the British government. These leaders believed, with good reason, that cheap oil for Britain and high profits for the company were vital to their national interests.
There you have it, the smoking gun declaration of the true intent to preserve high profits and cheap oil that cuts through all of the official propaganda justifying not only this sorry attempt to prevent Iranian nationalists from gaining control over their prized resources but subsequent blood-for-oil adventures in Iraq and Kuwait. The assumption is that the best and most altruistic of worlds is one that accommodates the demands of rapacious capitalism as represented by Western oil companies.
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The Moment the US Ended Iran’s Brief Experiment in Democracy by Robert Scheer (Original Post)
xchrom
Aug 2013
OP
polly7
(20,582 posts)1. K&R. Good article. nt.
panader0
(25,816 posts)2. Salvadore Allende-same thing in Chile
k and r