Posted on 09/21/2018 8:24:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I went to college with a whole crew of Iranian midshipmen. This was during the revolution. On more than one occasion I saw a classmate being rushed off campus because the secret police had killed his/her father.
A few months later, classmates were being moved off campus because the revolutionaries had killed their fathers.
They are, as a culture, good folks. Yes, they were very into “American Culture” with their Trans ams and tight disco clothes. But they were decent folk.
I would love to see the people decide what they want. Dictators are not the best choice. But then again, I am not a fan of Royalty. As long as they are not talking about killing me—I cannot care too much.
I would say the same about Franco or Pinochet. By our standards they are "bad guys", but for those countries, they did what they had to do.
I spent too much time with people who’s families were rounded up by the secret police and came out without fingernails (or worse.)
Just because he was OUR guy, doesn’t mean he was a good guy.
I have also read some very good things about the Shah’s son. But my method of argument is to assume the worst and go from there. Logic, even assuming the worst about him, dictates that he’d be WAY better than the mullahs. And if he wasn’t stupid, he’d reign in the worst aspects of his father’s rule (and some of them were probably justified - that’s NOT a nice neighborhood, and there were constant threats to his power).
I do, however, actually believe that he’d be a very pro-Western, pro-American leader, and much more in the mold (morality-wise) of a Western leader than all but a few Middle Eastern regimes (and I am not counting Israel here, as it IS a Western country, just located over there).
Bring on the Shah’s son, the world will be FAR better off for it, and so will all but the mullahs in Iran itself.
Yeah, what’s not to like about getting your nuts shocked off by a guy installed by the CIA and Brits, because Mossadegh the popular guy freely elected didn’t think Britain should control Iran’s oil.
The CIA and operation AJAX created a monarchy strongman and trained a secret police. This was the fertile ground Islamicism and the Ayatollahs exploited.
Here we are 63 years later, reaping the benefits of the CIA overthrowing people and unleashing hell on anyone who opposes their new “boy”.
“The Shah was our friend & ally. Mosaddegh was a Socialist demagogue, who wanted to confiscate American investments”
The CIA loved people like you. Hook, Line, Sinker.
Mossaddegh was an educated and decent man. He won an election on the very reasonable idea that Britain should not have the final say over Iranian oil and be able to keep them as serfs.
And it was not American investments. It was British Petroleum. And yes, it’s beyond question that we installed him. Operation AJAX is out in the open now. Even the CIA does not dispute that it was a CIA coup, launched at the request of the weakened Brits for control of Iranian oil.
Part of AJAX was propaganda that he was a socialist or communist.
That cat is outta the bag.
I still maintain if we had left Mosaddegh alone, there never would have been an Islamic Revolution in Iran.
By the way, plenty of Americans had stock in British Petroleum. The issue involved was also a key issue in Chile, when General Pinochet moved against the Marxists, and our interests also aligned with the Chilean conservatives.
Also, remember that Jimmy Carter sabotaged the Shah, making possible the rise of the Khomeni faction.
Every monarch deserves to be shot on the spot the very moment they assert the right to rule over you. If your name isn’t Jesus, a monarch is pure force, so that is what they deserve back.
Totally agree
“Yeah, what’s not to like about getting your nuts shocked off by a guy installed by the CIA and Brits, because Mossadegh the popular guy freely elected didn’t think Britain should control Iran’s oil.”
You are conveniently omitting that Mossadegh nationalized the BP oil fields in May of 1951. In response, the US threatened to disrupt the export of the purloined oil, and was concerned that Mossadegh would then turn to the Soviet Union for economic and military assistance. Our support of the coup was a chess move against the Cold War ambitions of the Soviet Union.
I am no fan of royalty either. But I think the Shah was a thousand times better than that child molesting piece of crap Ayatollah Khomeini.
I have worked over the years with some Iranian expatriates. Good folks.
Only two controls have historically proved effective against Arabs. One of them is brutality. And Shah Pahlavi wasn’t tight with the Muslim clerics, so the other control wasn’t available to him.
Besides, the student-led Iranian Revolution was fomented by the Soviets as a smokescreen for their invasion of Afghanistan. Because they knew Carter was such a bungling idiot he’d be transfixed by the Iran problem and wouldn’t be able to act against them.
True That! And I know.
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