Posted on 05/12/2017 6:50:09 PM PDT by freedom44
Mossadegh nationalized the British-owned oil industry. That did not make him a Soviet ally. We didn’t need to meddle in Iran’s internal affairs to have a regime that would look to the West for protection against the red menace on their northern doorstep. Geopolitical reality would have kept the US and Iran close with or without the Shah had we not stuck our nose where it didn’t belong.
I didn’t say he was a communist. I said he was a Soviet ally. Part of his coalition was the communist Tudeh Party which received support from the Soviets. The Soviets clearly supported him. Unfortunately at that time our fight against Soviet communism was entangled in the old European colonialism. The Soviets were gaining ground in the third world by supporting and coopting nationalist movements. I’m just saying it’s not all black and white. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and visa versa.
Ditto
I agree that the Tudeh was worrisome, but in hindsight a far better result would have been obtained if the US had not supported the British policies that drove Mossadegh toward Tudeh in the first place.
Carter let the Shah fall because the Shah wouldn’t pay a $2 billion bribe to allow Halliburton build his new port complex.
In many ways, I suspect Carter’s inept handling of the hostage crisis, incuding the failed rescue attempt put Reagan over the top. Had Carter backed the Shah and resisted the islamic revolution in Iran, there would not have been an embassy takeover and possibly no Reagan in 80.
A fatal flaw in the scenario: with many young Iranian students studying abroad at American universities, where they are exposed to Western ideals of freedom and democracy.
That the Shah was ill is true. That he was dying not so true. The grief of what happened hastened his health issues. But if carterites hadn’t undermined his government, and made a clandestine grand bargain with khomeinists which most egregiously and stupidly they believed “a kind of Persian ‘saint’!!”, Middle East, and indeed the world, today would be a very different place and we wouldn’t be in this state of perpetual war w islam (remember this was the height of Cold War, and I believe the stupid carterites panicked, thinking Iran was falling to the Commies who had penetrated the universities and leftist groups, and better “their” islamist “Persian saint” than the soviet Commies!!) If and when the Shah died, his son was of age, western educated, and more egalitarian than even his father. He would have made a great king.
Every way one looks at it, carterites made one of biggest mistakes of modern American history by PURPOSELY AND WITH DESIGN undermining and overthrowing the monarchy of Iran.
People say hindsight is 20/20, but that’s only half true. We can see the results of the path taken, but the path not taken isn’t necessarily any clearer. For example, we know the problems caused by removing Saddam, but we’ll never know what would have happened if we didn’t, which might have been worse. Same with Mossadegh.
BTW, Mossadegh’s coalition also included the Iranian Islamists of the day. Now they are allied with Russia again. Strange bedfellows as they say.
Just as there were people smart enough to vote for Barry Goldwater of Lyndon Johnson, so I was smart enough to vote for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.
“No kidding - Jimmuh stabbed the Shah in the back, big time.”
Worse yet, Jimmah stabbed the entire world in the back (also big time).
Jimmah is on my short list for a hopefully near-term visit from the grim reaper. I’m still not sure but that he’s still our worst president, it’s just that Obola had twice as many years.
That was Mosedeg the Marxist. One of the few success stories of he CIA.
In 1960 I was caught up in a riot in Tehran. I was but 13 years old and in a taxi going home. The taxi driver made me hide on the floor and we passed through the riot of the Marxists Mosedeg supporters. He probably saved my life.
Problem was Mossadegh was a commie.
Persians imho, are smarter than Arabs in general. The Shah kept peace in the Middle East. Not a nice guy but under our influence moderating.
Khomeini was a psychotic mass murderer.
>>it is not even clear why President Carter chose to engage in such opposition
Because you can always count on Carter to do the wrong thing, Internationally. More recently, this is the guy who certified Venezuela’s election of Chavez. Look how wonderfully that turned out.
Sort of like we should have supported Ho over the French in 1945, instead of handing them their colony back.
Ho had been a Comintern agent for the Soviets for years. He was not some guy who only went Communist after being refused by the US.
We didn’t just oppose Ho, we convinced France that they should fight to keep Indochina (when they knew they hadn’t the will or the money to do so). We armed them (including loaning them an aircraft carrier), dressed them like GIs (including US helmets), then abandoned them while they awaited US air support at Dien Bien Phu (which had been visited by US advisors while the French set the stage for the battle).
We lost the Indochina War for the French; it was a proxy war of ours to “contain communism”.
The fall of the Shah was a consequence of an election 25 years earlier, when the Iranians elected a leader and the US helped overthrow him in favor of the Shah.
Somehow the words “Iran” and “success story” don’t go together.
When I think of all the blood and all the money.. lives wasted in the ME I always hate Carter. His policies are still being paid for every single day. He is one of very few people I actually hate.
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