Posted on 02/02/2005 8:38:23 PM PST by Dr. Marten
How can you say that? Mossadegh had, per the linked Wikipedia article, two principal supports: the Tudeh (Communists) and the Ayatollah Kashani and his Moslem militants. Sound familiar?
Mossadegh was a classic "two-revolution" stalking horse, just like Nasser in Egypt (the Soviets were grooming Ali Sabry, Nasser's intelligence chief, to succeed him -- and Ali Sabry was completely Soviet-controlled) and Allende Gossens in Chile (the Communist MNR were stashing large numbers of weapons under Allende in preparation for a coup). Bung Sukarno in Indonesia was simultaneously being courted by the Soviets (who sold him aircraft and warships on favorable terms, up to and including the cruiser Ordzhonikidze) even as they prepared the PKI for an eventual Communist coup. The CIA forestalled that coup with Suharto's coup instead -- and Suharto and his colleagues killed 800,000 Communist cadre.
Patrice Lumumba was another stalking horse: while he was posturing his anti-Western postures in the limelight, the KGB was arming Cyril Adoula in the jungle. The CIA stopped Adoula by intercepting his weapons shipments on the dock in Kenya. Kenyan police had been paid to look the other way, so the CIA arranged for the crane operator to drop a crate while unloading it from the ship. The crate burst open, spilling brand-new Kalashnikov rifles all over the dock. The police couldn't look the other way any more, the weapons were impounded, the CIA intercepted Adoula's payroll, and eventually Adoula's recruits killed him themselves for failing to deliver on his promises.
You can't just stand there with folded arms and let a foreign intelligence service roll country after country with influence agents. I notice the article doesn't tell us what Mossadegh was doing between 1923, when he resigned in protest -- in protest? -- from the Majlis, and 1944, when he reappears. The missing piece would, I think, tell us something significant about Mossadegh that would be inconvenient to your POV.
You are absolutely right.
NOWHERE in this juvenile screed do the authors make even a meager attempt to show how this 50 year old episode is relevant to today's situation. Their only real gripe is that a left-winger was overthrown.
Whatever the merits of what the United States did or didn't do fifty years ago, the past is past. We have today to worry about, and all the leftist whining and cavailing in the world won't change that.
My advice to the left is: Stop nursing grudges that nobody cares about and grow up.
Pinging.....going "yankee search"!
What did we do, drop him in acid?
You know, I've got a new game to play, how about "register on FR and then bash the US". Yeah, that's the ticket. Damn idiots. Let's go back a half a century and make up our own comments to bash the GOP. Whoop de do.
The article is wrong. Tudeh may have supported Mossadegh, but when the coup was occurring, and Mossadegh was given the oppurtunity to arm Tudeh to fight the coup, Mossadegh refused, and Kashani secretly worked with the United States.
Mossadegh's actions were moderate, and his only crime was nationalizing Iran's oil.
I never said we need to apologize for what happened 50 years ago, and frankly, we can't change it.
But it's revisionist to say Mossadegh was a communist or that it was right to overthrow him. I'm just setting the record straight.
I may be new here, but let me make it perfectly clear: I may not approve of every action the United States has taken (see: the Clinton Administration) but I love America.
He went to Europe and got an education, he was the first Iranian to graduate from a European school and get a Ph.D, if I recall correctly.
It should be required reading. Thanks for posting it.
Excellent intelligent post. thx
I'm really sure that the US overthrown of the Iranian regieme in 1953 somehow caused the Wahabi movement of the 18th century, the expansionist tendencies of Islam and the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the 1920s. I think I can recall those 9/11 suicide pilots screaming about the Iranian coup. Usama bin Laden mentions the coup all the time. Or maybe this writer is just one of those American-hating hacks who think that everything bad started in the United States.
If I read the article correctly, it was Britain's deal. And America stepped in because we are allies. Am I wrong?
Of course, Americans are always the bad guys...grrrrr
The left is running out of current evil deeds by the US and has to go back 50 years and post stories that no one knows about or cares about. It is PAST, OVER AND DONE and not relevent at this time.
I think it was Bush's grandfather's fault.
I checked to "source" (DV) - what a leftist, anti American site.
FDR propped up Stalin and the USSR ... 40 years later, Reagan brought them down ...
"What's the point here?"
The point apparently is, for some obscure reason, to pretend there was never a Great Power Cold War for most of fifty years, of which Musaddegh was a minor and relatively unmourned player who chose badly. Elephants were circling each other warily, with atom bombs in their trunks, and ants were at risk of getting squashed.
Same goes for the murderous, racist Patrice Lamumba, revered by the Soviets for launching rape and murder campaigns against whites in the Congo and destabilizing that wretched country's shot at decent home rule for the next forty years or so.
I guess some people want to pretend the Cold War didn't exist because...well... we won it.
The Shah had inherited the throne in 1944, as a child. In his early years after having been restored, the Shah was powerful, but he alienated the people with forced collectivizations and other draconian steps toward socialism.
The dispossessed were among the core of the Islamic mob that installed Khomeini. But mostly, by 1978 the Shah was sick and tired, felt betrayed by Carter, and had lost the will to continue the ancient Persian game of playing factions and mullahs off against each other.
He almost abdicated, as much as was overthrown, and died abroad soon after. The overthrow of Mussadegh in 1954 had nothing to do with the rise of the mullahs in 1978.
Let's see your source of their involvement.
I think it's meant to be an object lesson on the incredible ease with which you can get paid money to write...stuff.
Darn right. And we had slaves, too, because we're all racists.
By we, of course, I mean white American males who lived before the Civil War...but that includes every white American male who ever lived, of course.
/white-hot scorching sarcasm
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