64th
Anniversary Of The West-sponsored Coup In Iran
By Andre
Vltchek
August 20,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- After WWII, the West had one huge ‘problem’ on
its hands: all three most populous Muslim
countries on Earth – Egypt, Iran and Indonesia –
were clearly moving in one similar direction,
joining group of patriotic, peaceful and
tolerant nations. They were deeply concerned
about the welfare of their citizens, and by no
means were they willing to allow foreign
colonialist powers to plunder their resources,
or enslave their people.
In the
1950’s, the world was rapidly changing, and
there was suddenly hope that the countries which
were oppressed and pillaged for decades and
centuries by first the European and then North
American geopolitical and business interests,
would finally break their shackles and stand
proudly on their own feet.
Several
Communist countries in Eastern Europe, but also
newly liberated China, were actively helping
with rapid de-colonizing process in Africa,
Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the
world.
Those
developments were exactly what the West in
general and both the U.K. and the U.S. in
particular, were not ready or willing to accept.
‘Ancient’ belief in some sort of ‘inherited
right’ to colonize, to loot and to control
entire non-white world, was deeply engraved in
the psyche of the rulers in both Europe and
North America.
Peaceful,
tolerant and socially oriented Islam was seen as
a tremendous threat, at least in London,
Washington, and Paris. It had to be stopped,
even destroyed - resolutely and by all available
means. Only the pre-approved Wahhabism, which
was collaborative with the West and from the
onset at least partially ‘co-produced’ by the
British Empire, was singled-out and allowed to
‘bloom and succeed’.
*
Iran fell
first, in 1953.
Actually,
it did not fall; it was brutally destroyed.
According
to the logic of the Empire, Iran had to be
derailed and ruined, in order to prevent
so-called ‘domino effect’.
As written
by Irfan Ahmad, an Associate Professor of
Political Anthropology at Australian Catholic
University, Melbourne and author of “Islamism
and Democracy in India”:
“...Major
theatre of de-democratization was Iran, whose
elected government was overthrown, in 1953, by a
US-UK alliance. Mohammad Mosaddeq was Iran's
elected prime minister. He enjoyed the approval
of Iran's parliament for his nationalization
program. The US and UK organized a CIA-led coup
to oust Mosaddeq - because Iran refused make oil
concessions to the West. During World War II,
the UK had taken control of Iran to prevent oil
from being passed to its ally, the Soviet Union.
Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the UK
continued to control Iran's oil after the war.
The French-educated Mosaddeq was highly critical
of Iran's draining of resources to the West.
Soon after getting elected as prime minister in
March 1951, Mosaddeq and his National Front
alliance had moved to nationalize Iranian oil
and throw out foreign control of oil fields. One
such was the Abadan refinery, then the largest
in the world. The UK retaliated by imposing
economic sanctions, backed by its heavy naval
presence in the region. Mosaddeq, however, was
undeterred; his popularity only increased among
the Iranian people. Faced with Mosaddeq's
resistance, the UK-US alliance staged a coup to
over throw Mosaddeq's government.”
*
France,
the U.K. and Israel attacked it, in 1956, during
so-called “Suez Canal Crises”. Although the
invasion eventually ended and Canal stayed in
the hands of Egypt, the country never fully
recovered. There were further Israeli attacks
and invasions, and after President Gamal Abdel
Nasser passed away in 1970, gross meddling in
Egypt’s internal affairs by the Western
countries. Gradually, Egypt was turned into an
impoverished client state.
In
Indonesia, a progressive and religiously
tolerant President Ahmed Sukarno was overthrown
more than a decade after Mohammad Mosaddeq in
Iran. The coup took place in 1965, with direct
involvement of the United States. Between 1 and
3 million people were brutally slaughtered.
Sukarno’s
main ‘sins’, at least in the eyes of the Western
Empire, consisted of strong left wing, patriotic
stands, which included nationalization of almost
all natural resources. Sukarno was also one of
the founding fathers of non-aligned movement.
By the end
of the 1960’s, socialism in the Muslim countries
had been almost thoroughly demolished. Dark era
of collaboration, particularly in the [Persian]
Gulf region, arrived.
The 1953
coup in Iran was later replicated in various
parts of the world, even as far as Latin
America.
For years
it is has been no secret that the U.S and the
U.K. planned and executed this deadly event.
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In its
article, CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup,
published on 19 August 2013, The Guardian
reported:
“The
CIA has publicly admitted for the first time
that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup
against Iran's democratically elected Prime
Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that
also show how the British government tried to
block the release of information about its own
involvement in his overthrow.
On the
60th anniversary of an event often invoked by
Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US
national security archive at George Washington
University published a series of declassified
CIA documents.
"The
military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his
National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA
direction as an act of US foreign policy,
conceived and approved at the highest levels of
government," reads a previously excised section
of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for
Iran.”
Declassified, U.S Department of State “Top
Secret” documents from 1952, also clearly
demonstrated great appetite of the U.K. to
perform the coup in Iran:
“Subject:
Proposal to Organize a Coup d’etat in Iran
Problem:
“The
British foreign Office has informed us that it
would be disposed to attempt to bring about a
coup d’état in Iran, replacing the Mosadeq
Government by one which would be more
“reliable”, if the American government agreed to
cooperate...”
Although
the U.S. government was originally hesitant
about supporting the U.K. in planning to
overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq, it
soon changed its mind and allowed the CIA to
plot and execute the coup.
What
followed was 26 years of perversely brutal rule
of Shah Reza Pahlavi, as well as of the
British-US control over almost all great natural
resources of Iran.
In brief:
the West performed an experiment on Iran and on
its people: how would the country react to a
bloodbath, to overthrowing of its popular
leader, to a theft of its resources?
*
As it did
for centuries, the U.K. ‘scored’: it correctly
predicted that it would be able to ‘get away
with murder’. It managed to convince its
offspring, the United States, that huge
international crimes pay, as long as they are
committed barefaced.
And the US
industrialized these crimes, as it earlier did
production of automobiles or radio sets. Crimes
got mass-produced. One ‘inappropriate’
government after another got overthrown,
destroyed; all over the world: Congo, Dominican
Republic, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia,
Vietnam... Crimes were piling up, and still are.
1953 in
Iran marked the beginning of a ‘new chapter’ in
the world history - a terrible and brutal
chapter.
Iranian
people and Iranian leadership are well aware of
it. The country that suffered so much, the
country which lost hundreds of thousands of its
sons and daughters to Western imperialism,
geopolitical games as well as naked greed, is
now standing tall and strong, unwilling to
surrender or to even budge.
It wants
to go forward, it is going forward, but in its
own direction, at its own pace, for the benefit
of its people.
Iran is
not alone. There is now an entire powerful
alliance in place, consisting of countries from
all over the world: an alliance of those who are
not afraid to confront deadly expansionism and
consequent terror. From Bolivia to China, from
South Africa to Russia, Syria, Venezuela and the
Philippines, people are remembering Iran of
1953, determined to defend their countries and
the world against the greatest evil, which is
imperialism!
Andre
Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker
and investigative journalist. He has covered
wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three
of his latest books are revolutionary novel
“Aurora”
and two bestselling works of political
non-fiction: “Exposing
Lies Of The Empire”
and “Fighting
Against Western Imperialism”.
View his other books
here.
Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen.
Watch
Rwanda
Gambit,
his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and
DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America,
Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in
East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to
work around the world. He can be reached through
his website
and his
Twitter.
See also -
A small
history lesson about Iran (17 Pics)