by B. R. GOWANI
(from left to right) British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton (seen here delivering a statement during a ceremony) Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the United Nations in Geneva November 24, 2013 PHOTO/Reuters/Denis Balibouse/Russia Today
Breakup of Iran/US relations
One day in 1953, Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President of the United States), along with his co-conspirator Ardeshir Zahedi (the son of the to-be-installed Iranian prime minister Fazlollah Zahedi) officially gave the good news to Loy Henderson, the US Ambassador to Iran, of the successfully carried out CIA engineered coup, under the name of Operation Ajax, which removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup. With champagne, they all raised their glasses to the Shah, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the US President Dwight Eisenhower, the new government of Iran, and themselves.
The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned back to warm the Peacock Throne or Takht-e Tavus. Once Shah was back, Roosevelt, a CIA agent, was invited to the Saad Abad Palace where Shah wanted to thank him, the United States, and Britain. The Shah spoke:
And in June, the US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles proudly declared:
Why was Mossadegh a madman? Because he had nationalized the British owned Anglo-lranian Oil Company (AIOC). The “madman”‘s removal paved the way for the comeback of the AIOC but with a different name: British Petroleum and with a reduced share, that is, 40%. Another 40% was awarded to the US companies, a payback for the coup. The rest of the share was given to Compagnie Francaise de Petroles and Royal Dutch Shell.
Shah ruled with an iron hand with the help of his secret police SAVAK, Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and the US CIA. Then in January 1979, the Shah had to abdicate and make room for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to come back from the Shah-forced exile. With him was also ousted the “Great Satan” or Shaytân-e Bozorg, the name Khomeini gave to the US, from Iran. Of course, not totally.
In November of that year, the US Embassy in Tehran was taken over by the students and the embassy employees were taken as hostages. Some of them were released, but 52 of them were held for 444 days. But before the embassy was totally under control of students, the CIA agents, who were part of the embassy staff, shredded all the documents. The documents were painstakingly reassembled by Iran and the US role, which was not much of a secret, became more clear.
(The CIA has not changed much and is still involved in creating chaos and in activities harmful to the countries they are stationed at. Just this week, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party (which rules the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province) has disclosed the identity of a CIA station chief in Pakistan in a move to force the US to stop its drone attacks. It has demanded the agent’s trial for “waging war against Pakistan“.)
In the wake of the Embassy takeover, the Jimmy Carter administration imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran. And by 1995, President Bill Clinton turned it into a “total trade and investment embargo“. The United States not only stops trading with the country which it perceives as its “enemy” despite its own criminal role in creating that enemy, but it also prohibits other countries from trading with that “enemy” with threats of financial and economic retaliation.
Obama’s right move
Its’ now more than three decades that the US and Iran have no diplomatic relations. Even the oil companies who don’t love anything except the black gold have been helpless in reviving business with Iran in face of the lobbyist group America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who have opposed relations with Iran.
President Barack Obama has not done much which could be counted as beneficial to the human race. One good thing he has done recently is to continue avoiding confrontational policy with Iran and is trying to improve relations with that country.
This in spite of Binyamin Netanyahu‘s hawkish barking.
Guardian’s Jerusalem reporter Harriet Sherwood has described perfectly well how Netanyahu’s vehement opposition to the Iran deal reached its crescendo:
First it was bad. Then it became very bad; soon, exceedingly bad. Finally, it was condemned as a “historic mistake” which made the world a “much more dangerous place”.
This coming from a leader of a tiny country with a population of 8 million, whose hands are on a couple of hundred nuclear weapons and whose boots are on the necks of Palestinians, and who is hell bent on pushing the US to wage a war against Iran.
Obama also has to ignore the opposition from the Republican Party, the Israel Lobby, and some of the members of his own Democratic Party. And not surprisingly, the Republican opposition had begun even before the details of the deal were announced.
The five permanent members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) of the United Nations Security Council and Germany agreed to give Iran some relief, about $6 to $7 billion, in sanctions against the latter’s promise to curb its nuclear program. The relief and relations are temporary, that is, for six months only and is subject to Iran fulfilling its promise. Israel, AIPAC, Saudi Arabia, and warmongers in the US are hoping and will try their best that Iran fails to keep its promise and the excuse to punish Iran with a war is realized. Let’s hope that “Obama’s Middle East grand strategy“, to use Deepak Tripathi’s phrase, succeeds.
It will be a good thing for the world, especially the Muslim people, if the Iran/US relations improve because that will reduce the Saudi influence which has not done anything good for the Muslims.
Obama should invite Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani to the US and he himself should visit Iran and create some good history. The last time the US president visited that country was Jimmy Carter. President Carter, on a state visit to Iran in 1977, praised the ruthless dictator:
Within less than two years, the island’s superficial stability disappeared and the real trouble appeared.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com