Robert Scheer: The Moment the U.S. Ended Iran’s Brief Experiment in Democracy

[marmar]

from truthdig:


The Moment the U.S. Ended Iran’s Brief Experiment in Democracy

Posted on Aug 20, 2013
By Robert Scheer


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 Iran’s 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 Iran’s history was Mossadegh’s 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 bargain—except on his own uncompromising terms—with 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. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_moment_the_us_ended_irans_brief_experiment_in_democracy_20130819/

[yurbud]

1. crucial story

[pinto]

2. Another good read on the topic - "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer

(from the cover flap)

Half a century ago, The United States overthrew a Middle Eastern government for the first time. The victim was Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran. Although the coup seemed a success at first, today it serves as a chilling lesson about the dangers of foreign intervention.

In this book, veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer gives the first full account of this fateful operation (Operation Ajax). His account is centered around an hour-by-hour reconstruction of the events of August 1953, and concludes with an assessment of the coup's "haunting and terrible legacy".

It was published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

[eridani]

3. And now our overlords have the gall to gripe about the Iran they created n/t