PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONAL
A 1979 editorial from Palestine Perspectives argues that the Iranian Revolution was a direct response to decades of U.S. imperialism, specifically the CIA-MI6 coup in 1953 that overthrew a democracy to install the brutal, Western-backed dictatorship of the Shah.
Editorial note: More than four decades ago, the journal Palestine Perspectives documented US complicity in the Shah’s atrocities in Iran. Today, the Trump administration reproduces this imperial logic, deployed once again to erase the right to self-determination in the ‘Third World.’ On the eve of ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ the Progressive International republishes the 1979 article from Palestine Perspectives as a reflection on the enduring logic of US intervention across the world.
On August 19, 1953, the CIA and MI6 staged a coup d’état in Iran that led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mossadegh, a popular, modernizing figure, had nationalized Iran’s oil industry, angering US and British oil interests in the region. After the coup, the CIA installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — the pro-western “Shah of Iran” — who promptly invited the foreign oil companies back into the country. The Pahlavi dynasty was excessively oppressive and used the SAVAK intelligence agency, which was created with help from the CIA and Mossad, to control the population and suppress dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty also existed as a neo-colony of the West, especially the US and Britain. In fact, while propping up the Shah’s dictatorship, Britain exported most of its arms to Iran. Iran’s national resources were used primarily to enrich the Shah’s court and for foreign interests to exploit.
In 1979, the Shah was deposed following a popular uprising that came to be known as the Iranian Revolution. The Revolution abolished the monarchy and ended the Pahlavi dynasty. The pro-Western Imperial State of Iran was replaced by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assuming its leadership. The Iranian Revolution reconfigured the politics of West Asia, posing an alternative to the Gulf monarchs installed by the West, and continuing the long struggle in the region for decolonization. Iran’s revolution also meant full support for Palestine and other oppressed peoples in the region and beyond. The founding and continued existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, then, has meant a continuous challenge to US (and Western) imperialism, especially as it is represented by its proxy, the Zionist entity.
These are the reasons the US and its rabid proxy in the region have been trying to destroy Iran since 1979.
Soon after the success of the Iranian Revolution, Palestine Perspectives, the journal of the PLO’s Palestine Information Office in Washington, DC, published a succinct and incisive editorial on the Revolution’s origins, causes, and meanings. Titled “Iran, Third World People and U.S. Foreign Policy,” the editorial comments on the North American surprise, bewilderment, and anger at the events in Iran, arguing that racism and Islamophobia have blinded most people in the US to the root cause of the Revolution – and the deep source of the profound anger many Iranians felt towards the United States. That cause, and that source, was US imperialism and its role in repeatedly and brutally crushing the national aspirations and the desires for autonomy of the Iranian people, as well as all people across the Third World.
As the latest unprovoked and violent joint US imperialist-Zionist attack on Iran suggests, little has changed since 1979. US and Western imperialism continues its monstrous attacks on people fighting for self-determination. But resistance, including Iran’s resistance, also continues.
As the editors of Palestine Perspective pointed out in 1979, “The lesson of Iran… is that the destiny of Third World peoples can not be manipulated. Not indefinitely.”
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