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70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression
- mistrial9 3y agoit was interesting to see a documentary on World War II recently, and a key summit of Allied leadership was a meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in Tehran. They used the royal palace there for photo ops quite a lot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference
- pjmorris 3y agoI, showing my lack of education, first learned of the conference from reading 'War and Remembrance', Herman Wouk. It's amazing how much legitimate history he crammed into it and its prequel, 'The Winds of War.'
- boringuser2 3y agoThere's a certain strain of political outlook exemplified by an article like this, commonly categorized as "post-colonial", that ironically morphs itself into increasingly complex and implausible shapes to explain why all of the bad things are caused by the "first world" and nobody else has or will ever have any autonomy as an agent in the world. The other aspect of irony to this is that this worldview is cultivated uniquely in bourgeoisie Western spheres to be championed by chosen avatars of the parasitized people completely Westernized outside their disdain for Western culture. What we really need is a Canada-infused Iranian with a Western worldview telling us what the Iranian people truly want -- how absurd. The final and greatest absurd irony latent here is that in the minds of proponents of these conspiracy theories, the US and other Western powers go from bumbling buffoons that can't socially engineer their way out of a paper bag when you can see/prove it (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) to master machivellian puppeteers when you can't.
- joemazerino 3y agoYou didn't know? Everything bad is the West's fault. Meanwhile Iran's secular base disintegrates rapidly while the fundamentalist Islamists increase their stranglehold on their people.
- boringuser2 3y agoThe people clearly support the Iranian government. Whether or not you or I have anything to say about that is pretty irrelevant as I am not an Iranian citizen, and you are unlikely to be one. von Mises once said that every government is fundamentally democratic because even the most autarchic government requires the governing consent of its people. This is clearly true. This whole "people in the West get to decide whether or not a government is valid, but also they are evil bad guys" thing is really getting old.
- enkid 3y agoThis is absurd nihilism. If we change the meanings of words then any sentence can mean anything and stating "every government is democratic" is a clear example of that.
- boringuser2 3y agoIt's a metaphor meant to help you understand that the conceits with which you have been raised, namely that Democracy is a sacred system held only teneuously by a few Western states and that the narrative that there are oppressed peoples that are held hostage by their state and we must help them are geopolitical lies you've fallen for. Really smart people frequently use these metaphors that bust unquestioned cultural mores. Comparison is a very powerful tool.
- davidguetta 3y agoPeople are stupid and thats the point. The weste had the chance togo through a science-fueled phase which won the minds against religion and so as a CONSEQUENCE people were convinced. Now the biggest wave is religious fundamentalism (whatever that means by the way) so people follow that as the sheeps they are. Democracy is the best system at the exception of the others, but its not perfect and can be challenged or abused
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoAll war boils down to the ability to access, control or set pricing for a natural resource The perennial Iran/Iraq conflicts originated from disputes about access to the Shatt al-Arab River starting in the 16th century - once the industrial revolution hit, then of course oil was the key resource for growth The Overthrow of the Shah then, was based on the requirement to not be beholden to anyone but the west when pricing Oil, to ensure the west had unmitigated control of how the largest oil property set prices. Old school conquest of territory post WWII is considered gauche, so the 21st century approach to resource conflict is to find "other means" to have the same effect of guaranteeing access to someone else's property. I think this extremely rare peaceful period of "orthogonal conflict" that was notably devoid of multiple widespread bloodshed in war (~1975-Today) might actually come to an end in the next few decades as state capitalism crumbles under it's own weight and no coherent alternative exists.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoTL;DR: throughout history several countries got super wealthy by stealing other countries' shit at gunpoint, which went out of fashion after WW2, and then had to find other avenues for less obvious colonial-like theft, usually involving toppling leaders thorough coups and installing their own puppets in place who would gladly sign off on their country's resources for pennies to large western corporations
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoBingo Extra points if your colonialism exploits an internecine conflict such that it appears that internal problems of the country, rather than exogenous meddling with state or tribal sovereignty, led to it's failure to govern (reinforcing how "correct" your form of government is)
- tamimio 3y ago>usually involving toppling leaders thorough coups and installing their own puppets in place Pretty much yeah, and if that fails, sanctions and economic wars
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- NickC25 3y agoSad to see what Iran has become - no in small part thanks to the US/UK's meddling and installing a crazed theocratic government. The Iranian people deserve so much better - they are a nation of really smart people and would be a beacon in the Middle East if it wasn't for a bunch of religious reactionaries holding power. Some of the best engineers I've ever worked with were expat Iranians who left and have no intention of going back there.
- daneel_w 3y agoUS/UK didn't install the current ruling set of islamists.
- behnamoh 3y agoThat's not entirely true: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/10/ayatollah-khomeini-jimmy-carter-administration-iran-revolution https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/10/ayatollah-khom...
- ReptileMan 3y agoThe same way the US didn't install the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan. Twice.
- EA-3167 3y agoThe theocratic government was not installed by the US or UK though, they're the ones who overthrew the shah and took over.
- enkid 3y agoThe US and UK assisted a nationalist and westernized monarch retain and consolidate power. They did not install a theocratic government. The current theocratic government came into power as a reaction against the Shah the British and US had helped.
- orwin 3y ago'retain'. He was democratically booted of Iran, and his first coup failed. The democratically elected president had even more western values and his only flaw was that he was a bit too socialist for the local elites, who couldn't have thrown him off without US pushing for cooperation.
- markus_zhang 3y agoTBF the big shots have been putting their mouths into Iran much earlier than that. The British and USSR even had a plan to invade Iran because they were close to Germany back in the day. Of course German posing itself as the liberator because it wants the oil but Britain was blocking it from do so.
- enkid 3y agoThe British and Soviet Union did invade and occupy Iran during the war. It was focused on controlling the railroads, but it led to the then Shah to abdicate.
- markus_zhang 3y agoAh yeah my bad memory.
- behnamoh 3y agoAnd let's not forget the great famine of Iran thanks to the British and Soviet invasion of Iran during WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_famine_of_1942%E2%80%931943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_famine_of_1942%E2%80%9... * 4 million Iranians died as a result. Not a single mention of them on media, movies, etc.
- georgeburdell 3y agoInteresting aside about Germany from that time, but the word “Iran” is a reference to a people called Aryans that lived there, and the latter remains a not-uncommon name there. As a Westerner I found this a bit confusing since I don’t associate Iran with the kind of people over here that would use the term Aryan
- anigbrowl 3y agoThat's because you don't know any esoteric nazis (lucky you). Look into Savitri Devi. It's a common trope to think that neo-nazis only like caucasaians to the exclusion of everyone else; in reality a lot of them are into ethno-pluralism as long as its combined with separatism and oppression of 'inferior' ethnic groups. The same people that grumble about race mixing being degenerate (by other people) will also endorse scientific selective breeding for the production of superior genetic stock (by themselves). A lot of political extremism is rooted in reproductive frustration.
- orwin 3y agoI met an exiled Iranian in Paris 13 years ago, and spent multiple nights in his appartement, drinking and talking (and testing his weed shipment :/ ). He told me his clan/family was from northeast Iran, with presence in Afghanistan. They were allied to the Shah in 53 (not for his first coup though), and allied to both US and UK. He told me his 'import export' businesses was family business since the 50s: the US actually furnished them with both equipments and weapons and started their drug operation. He said his clan used and was used by the US twice, once against Iran democracy, the second time against the USSR in Afghanistan, and both times they ended up with nothing but troubles. They ended up exiling most of their clan to western capitals in the 90s. They still have land there I think.
- ggm 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Uncle_Napoleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Uncle_Napoleon
- aa_is_op 3y agoThat coup allowed a liberal society to flourish in Iran... now look where they are. I'd rather have US coups than any type of Iran-Russian autocratic regime.
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- fakedang 3y agoIran was "liberal" even before the coup, if liberal for you means ladies dressed in thigh-length skirts prancing about the big cities (mostly Teheran though). Iran outside the big cities was still extremely religious and conservative. And dirt poor. Which is why the socialist Mossadegh government was popular, and why the Shah wasn't, and why the Islamic Revolution ultimately succeeded.
- meitham 3y agoOne of the main reasons religion grows very strong in Iran eventually leading to the revolution was the Shah oppression of religious beliefs. Women were beaten in the streets if they had a scarf covering their heads. He was unpopular dictator, but of course the west like friendly dictators.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoNow, or soon they will be beaten in the streets for not wearing head concealing clothing. Can't do it right.
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- shrubble 3y agoInteresting connection is that Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. helped train both the Iranian national police and what later became SAVAK, and negotiated with the Shah to return to Iran... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Schwarzkopf_Sr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Schwarzkopf_Sr. His son was the American general that led the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm/Shield.
- echelon_musk 3y agoI can recommend the documentary Coup 53 [0] on this subject. The rest of the episodes of End of Empire have kindly been uploaded to YouTube and are worth a watch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_53
- mountainriver 3y agoThere’s a great book about this called All the Shahs Men, highly recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men
- aapl88889 3y agoWhy is the US blamed and not Iran's socialist policies which occurred 30 years later, after the revolution? "Following the nationalizations in 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, over 80% of the economy came under government control.[34]"
- brendoelfrendo 3y agoYou can draw a line directly from the coup in 1953 to the revolution in 1979, so it's pretty fair to blame the US for the revolution and what came after.
- AlbertCory 3y ago>The next day, on August 19, 1953, with the aid of “rented” crowds widely believed to have been arranged with CIA assistance, the coup succeeded I searched the article and its reference for any details on the mechanics of this "coup." Zilch. WSJ has an article today, in fact, about it. Mossadegh was not "democratically elected." There was massive opposition to him inside Iran. The UK was opposed to him, of course. As for the "rented" crowds: evidence please?
- behnamoh 3y ago> There was massive opposition to him inside Iran. The clergy were against him because their agenda didn't align with his progressive one.
- mzi 3y ago> Mossadegh was not "democratically elected." There was massive opposition to him inside Iran. See also: presidents of the United States of America There is no contradiction between democratically elected and domestic opposition. Quite the contrary.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- mu53 3y ago[dead]
- psychphysic 3y ago> There was massive opposition to him inside Iran. Massive opposition does not mean not democratically elected. Trump case in point. Btw, "Shah" means king. Iran had deposed a monsrch, that was part of why the Brits did not like it.
- k1m 3y agoA lot more info here: https://declassifieduk.org/iran-1953-mi6-plots-with-islamists-to-overthrow-democracy/ https://declassifieduk.org/iran-1953-mi6-plots-with-islamist... > IRAN 1953: MI6 PLOTS WITH ISLAMISTS TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY > Declassified British files highlight a little known aspect of the joint MI6/CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in August 1953 – UK covert action in support of leading radical Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini.
- LatteLazy 3y agoA cold hard look at US (and UK) policy to Iran leads to the conclusion that we have worked very hard to create an enemy where one need not actually exist...
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- kenneth 3y agoSo I'm basically reading this as putting blame for Iran's reprehensible regime and its crackdown on its citizen yearning for freedom on Britain and the US. No… let's stop with this rewriting of history. The only party to blame for the awfulness in Iran is their evil regime.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- InTheArena 3y agohrm... From wikipedia: "His government came under scrutiny for ending the 1952 election before rural votes could be fully counted.[6] According to historian Ervand Abrahamian: "Realizing that the opposition would take the vast majority of the provincial seats, Mosaddegh stopped the voting as soon as 79 deputies—just enough to form a parliamentary quorum—had been elected." Iran was many things, but not a utopia, nor even leagal here. Doesn't excuse any actions - and the cold war is one big example of be careful fighting monsters, lest you become one - but the storylines around Iran and Cuba don't hold up once the russiana propaganda bots disappear for a bit.
- golemiprague 3y ago[dead]
- WalterBright 3y agoI've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.
- throwaway4good 3y ago100.000 soldiers in each country?
- api 3y agoThe US also came into those countries with massive reconstruction funds. Injecting tons of money buys a certain amount of loyalty, especially from anyone in those countries who did not support the previous regime or had fallen out of love with it. We also promised them protection and trade and for some reason generally made good on that. We didn’t do that with Iran or any of those other countries we messed with during the Cold War. In fact we seemed to not even really care much what happened after the coup. The only objective was to contain communism, so as long as whatever thing took power was not communist it was fine. It didn’t matter if they were monsters or even if they were even more anti-American than the previous regime as long as there wasn’t a hint of Soviet ideology. We totally overreacted to communism to the point of actually building up more determined and ideologically consistent enemies.
- WalterBright 3y agoWe "injected" incredible amounts of money into Iraq and Afghanistan.
- illys 3y agoYes, but the Afghan "elite" did not commit to the reconstruction plan, they just behaved like to drain as much money as possible to their clans. Nothing serious was ever built and everything collapsed as soon as the withdrawal started.
- Mlller 3y agoYes, but somehow it worked in a not-so-tangible way. Germany for one apparently gave much more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_reparations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_reparations than it got out of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Expenditures in reverse. Imagine the allies had extracted much more wealth from Afghanistan or the Irak than they have put into it – itʼs inconceivable. Slightly alternative explanation for West Germany, combining what others have said: - First stage: The allies under US leadership were running the country anyway, they did it well and there was sufficient cooperation by Germans, for whom the Germany that was defeated represented an entity utterly discredited on account of the most horrible crimes against humanity. - Second stage: The feeling “the Americans are actually on our side – defeating us they have liberated us and then helped us to a new state in which we can live better than ever before, plus they are protecting us from the USSR” became more or less mainstream. (The experience in East Germany was completely different of course.) So I think the most important factor was that American victory and American predominance were associated with liberation and freedom.
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- aapl88889 3y agoIran was actually rich in the 1970s and women weren't in veils. You can thank the US for that. The revolution happened after.
- api 3y agoI don’t really see US foreign policy in that era as imperialistic. That’s giving it too much credit as it implies a degree of even Machiavellian intelligence. The British were imperialistic and they were actually kind of good at it. It was sheer idiocy, an exercise in spending massive amounts of money to build up our own enemies and negate our own supposed values, turning billions away from Western democracy and toward backward totalitarian ideologies that are in the end more hostile to us than the USSR was. Like I said in another reply it was mostly driven by paranoid overreaction to communism.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoWhen has this stopped. https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/ https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cyph...
- cheema33 3y agoThe "leaked" document that this entire article is based on has never been backed by anything. I can "leak" a document that includes wild claims. In absence of actual evidence, this is all conspiracy theories.
- goodbyesf 3y ago> I don’t really see US foreign policy in that era as imperialistic. US has been imperialistic from birth. Heck the revolutionary war was fought to secure our right to be imperialists and commit genocide against the natives. Our reason for existence is imperialism. Or maybe history is right and a bunch of racist slavers wanted to birth liberty and freedom into the world. > That’s giving it too much credit as it implies a degree of even Machiavellian intelligence. From a ragtag group of 13 colonies, we've taken over the world. Not only that, we've taken over the world while having the world believe we are the liberators. There are idiots all over the world who legitimate look to the US as saviors and liberators. Doesn't get any machiavellian than that. > turning billions away from Western democracy and toward backward totalitarian ideologies that are in the end more hostile to us than the USSR was. 'Western democracy' was the excuse invented to invade and murder tens of millions across the world in the 20th century. Whereas the brits advocated 'white man's burden' in the 19th century to murder and steal. We came up with democracy. Nothing more imperialistic than the cause of spreading democracy. > Like I said in another reply it was mostly driven by paranoid overreaction to communism. No. Communism was just an excuse to continue our imperialism. If communism never existed, we'd make up another excuse. What's our problem with Iran now? The USSR has been gone for 30 years and our relations with Iran is as bad as ever? Stop accepting what dumb historians on TV or news tell you. Try to think for yourself and see if an assertion makes any sense.
- flimsypremise 3y agoSo many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and interventions in Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, the US had a long history of this sort of behavior before Iran. Often undertaken under the guise of fighting communism or some other nebulous threat, these acts were in fact naked money grabs intended to secure the dominion of US corporate interests, established during colonialism, over land, labor and assets like oil, lumber and precious minerals in countries where local governments were attempting to seize back control of these assets, and in many cases grant them back to the often poor and rural communities that should have owned them in the first place. Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes is a good overview of the many "interventions" the US undertook to replace regimes that threatened the economic domination of the West. For the lazy, Wikipedia provides a decent list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... It's a bizarre sort of internal contradiction that allows people to believe in the overwhelming power of the United States while refusing to accept that the exercise of that power has shaped pretty much everything about the modern world. From Korea, where the US propped up a puppet regime staffed by Japanese collaborators post-WW II, leading to a civil war and partition, to Iran, to Russia, which was bankrupted and impoverished by US interests after the end of the Cold War. Those same interests then hand-picked a certain Vladimir Putin as a successor to their man Yeltsin. Unfortunately, most Americans are entirely ignorant of what actually occurred during these events because they were either never reported in the news, or reported in the distorted and propagandistic fashion that the US media tends to adopt.
- mugman9 3y agoNot just Iran, but also Egypt. ->https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FF 70+ years of darned military junta rule. With a small 1 year break between July 2012 and July 2013.
- digitalsin 3y agoRight, also while we're at it let's not blame Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, etc. for their deeds but instead blame whatever happened 2 generations before them. Maybe even sainthood for those fine gentlemen, right? This article is so biased and wreaks of Iranian state funded propaganda I'm going to need a shower to wash the stink off after reading it. Give me a break. This si not HN material.
- tijl 3y agoIt's interesting to see how the perspective on this is shifting in Iran to the point that nowadays, it became controversial to call this a coup. In the royalist version of events, it is Mosaddegh who attempted a coup. Mosaddegh had lost is parliamentary majority, but was still very popular. A held a referendum to dissolve parliament and give himself as prime minister the power to make law. The Shah responded by dismissing Mosaddegh. The Shah had the constitutional right to do this, because Parliament was not in session. That's of course only part of the story, and it completely ignores the role of Britain and the US. But what is interesting to me is not so much what exactly happened, but how peoples' view on history changes with shifting political moods. A generation ago in Iran, basically everyone agreed that this was a coup by Western imperialist powers. Today, with growing opposition to the political system, comes a questioning of the "official" history as thought in schools. Young people are today looking for different (but equally one-sided) versions of the story in which the roles of good and bad get reversed.