My apologies for the tardy response; I wanted to give this due effort. I don't know why anyone would have taken the authors of the "Atlantic Charter" at their

My apologies for the tardy response; I wanted to give this due effort. I don't know why anyone would have taken the authors of the "Atlantic Charter" at their word. If any Iranians did, they were the only "non-aligned" people who made that mistake. That's not to say there was no evolution in colonial technique, however. USA policy in Philippines, Latin America, etc. had been very focused on natural resources and agriculture. 1953 wasn't much later, and there had been several distracting events in the meantime, so we naturally deferred to British oil greed. That isn't the case anymore. Have you seen the price of oil? Even if it rises a lot (it won't anytime soon) we can just frack all we need here at home. The bombs we drop now aren't for oil or bananas or anything else we can't get from China: we drop bombs so we can buy more bombs. A burning world is just more opportunity to enrich the military-industrial-political-media complex. That's why we're taught to fear Muslims. I concede, you're right that back then we didn't want to burn down all of little brother's fancy oil rigs. However, American decision-makers in 1953 were psychopathically confident. They didn't fear destabilization; just look at what they were doing at the time in Korea. Look also at what they were doing at Enewetak Atoll! Eventually Iran became a case study for the value of destabilization, but Southeast Asia had made the case much earlier. That work would soon start: Allen Lawrence Pope was shot down in 1958, after we had been fanning the flames in Sumatra and Sulawesi for a year. If Brzezinski really was talking about this stuff in the mid-70s, he was a couple of decades behind the times. Anyway, he hardly benefited. The disastrous "Operation Eagle Claw" was mentioned in the first paragraph of his obituary. Your concern for the "legitimacy of the Pahlavi dynasty" seems to hint that you're less concerned for the preferences of Iranians. The elder Pahlavi wasn't a bad sort, and if we're to believe the stories he didn't actually even want to become Shah. His son, though? Who would cry for him? This two-ruler rump dynasty was a fitting end to the whole shabby Shah tradition. Historically, the Shahs who weren't bloodthirsty and insane despots like Nader Shah were patsies for foreign tyranny. Both the Pahlavis were, and at least the previous four Qajars. Iran is a great nation. It has had great leaders such as the Arsacids. Eventually it will have a worthy government again. I don't know that Americans can have the same hope...