[Alberta's Child]

For an article of this length, I'm particularly disappointed that the author neglects the history of relations between the U.S. and Iran before 1979. This sentence is particularly ironic . . .

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants.

. . . since the fundamentalist revolution in Iran was the culmination of a long series of events that dates back to 1953, when the Eisenhower administration authorized a covert U.S.-British intelligence operation to topple the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq in Iran.

If Mr. Hanson really believes that relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world suddenly turned sour in 1979 when the Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah and seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, he's absolutely ignorant.

[kenavi]

In his memoirs, "Present at the Creation", Dean Acheson (Sec'y of State under Truman) expressed a lot of respect for Mossadeq.

I think that Guatemala was a similar situation, where the Eisenhower administration overthrew a democratically elected leftist who probably was benign.

In contrast, Eisenhower forced the British, French, and Israelis to withdraw from their take-over of the Suez canal from Nasser, a real bad guy.

Jewish scholarship has a bitter saying about King Saul: "Because he was kind when he should have been cruel (to King Agog), he ended up being cruel when he should have been kind (to David)."

Maybe U.S. was cruel when it should have been kind (Mossadez, Arbeniz), and ended up being kind when it should have been cruel (Nasser, Arafat, Khomeini).

[RaceBannon]

The coup of Mossadegh was a necessity, though.

While we took away the democratic election he won, he was becoming a lunatic.

There is a new book out called THE PERSIAN PUZZLE, a great read, I put it down last week, have to work on it more, but it has more detail on Iranian history than I ever read in our papers. Iran has been the whipping boy of the mid east for some time, the Russians, the Brits especially.

But when Mossadegh won, he then turned to the soviets to try to enter their sphere of influence, and there was no way that much oil and a warm water port could be allowed to be in the hands of the soviets.

Plus, some accounts had Mossadegh answering the door in his jammies...important people...in his jammies...

The guy had to go.