[Pictured: Protesters hold a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the 1979 revolution.]
By Joyce Chediac
Republished from Liberation News.
Washington just staged an unsuccessful attempt at regime change in Iran. The U.S. continues to call out the Islamic Republic as “dangerous” and “repressive.” What would the U.S. want for Iran? For 26 years the U.S. actually ruled that country. An examination of the period reveals what the U.S. might really wish today for the Iranian people.
Iran is a formidable country. With 92 million people, it has the largest population in West Asia. Iran has 10% of the world’s oil reserves and 15% of its gas reserves, the third and second largest world reserves respectively. It has many key minerals and great tracts of arable land. It borders eight countries, and has coastlines on two key waterways. Its territorial waters extend 12 miles into the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic waterways in the world, where a fifth of the world’s ships carrying oil and natural gas pass through.
Iran was long regarded by the Western colonial powers not as a country with people who have rights and needs, but as a prize to be snatched. For decades it was dominated by Britain, and its oil syphoned off by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP), leaving the people of Iran in poverty and underdevelopment.
The CIA’s very first coup was in Iran
After fighting themselves to exhaustion in World War II, the European colonial powers were much weakened, providing a space for many in the Global South to assert independence. Iran was one of these countries.
In 1951 Iran’s Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry controlled by Britain and elected the leading proponent of nationalization, Mohammed Mossadegh, as Prime Minister. The nationalization was very popular. It reflected the population’s widespread dissatisfaction with foreign exploitation and desire for greater sovereignty.
Other forces were at work, however. With the European colonialist regimes weakened, the U.S. emerged as the strongest imperialist power after World War II, hungry to assert itself as the new world colonizer.
To aid in this effort the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was formed in 1947 to function outside the law and exempt from congressional oversight. In 1953 the covert agency cut its teeth by overthrowing the Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh and seizing the nationalized Iranian oil.
The CIA actually bragged that the coup was “an American project from beginning to end.” It was first of many CIA coups, launching what Washinton rulers and their Wall Street backers named “The American Century.”
The New York Times wrote its colonialist view of the coup on Aug. 6, 1954:
“Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders.”
The “more reasonable and more far-seeing leader” that Washington chose to replace Mossadegh was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a Swiss-educated aristocrat. Pahlavi was installed as an absolute monarch, the Shah of Iran.
To keep their new client in power the U.S. then financed, formed and trained SAVAK, the notorious and deadly secret police, to destroy the significant opposition to the coup.
Five CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence, “trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel,” according to the Iran Encyclopedia. The trainers included Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, whose son, Norman Schwartzkopf Jr., was to lead the murderous the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.
SAVAK was given the power to make arbitrary arrests, detain indefinitely without charges and to extract confessions through torture. It decimated an entire generation of militants, revolutionaries and progressives.
Mosaddegh’s group, the National Front, was outlawed and most of its leaders arrested. The Tudah (Masses) Party, Iran’s communist party, was virtually destroyed. Over 4000 members were arrested, at least 14 killed by torture and over 200 sentenced to life imprisonment.
But the U.S. was doing fine. With Iran’s oil controlled by a consortium of Western companies, American firms gained considerable control over Iranian oil production. U.S. companies took around 40% of the profits. Politically, Iran acted as an important counterweight to the Soviet Union, which it bordered.
The Nixon Doctrine, announced in 1969, called for Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia to be the guardians of Washington’s interests in the Middle East at a time when the U.S. military was bogged down in a losing war in Vietnam.
U.S. aid to Israel soared to billions of dollars annually. The Pentagon built Iran’s military into one of the largest in the world, growing Iran’s defense budget some 800% over four to five years. By 1977 it was ranked fifth globally. Its job was to be Washington’s policemen in the Persian Gulf.
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Economic development lines pockets of rich, hurts the workers
The Shah’s 1963 “White Revolution,” a plan for economic development much acclaimed in the U.S. at the time, would be called pure neoliberalism today.
The economy grew significantly during these years primarily due to oil proceeds that were finally coming into the country’s economy. Prior to the nationalization of oil, the British gave Iran virtually nothing for the oil they were plundering. The CIA coup of 1953 violently defeated the movement for the nationalization of oil. But the new arrangement under the US-installed system did give Iran approximately half of the oil proceeds, a concession in hopes of preventing future anti-imperialist mass movements.
Economic development was uneven as projects prioritized what brought profits to foreign companies, not to mention the huge military spending that syphoned much of the oil profits right back to the US and its defense contractors.
Some 85% of the of wealth that remained in the country went to a small elite. The majority of the population remained untouched. In the poorest areas in the southeast, where by UN data 55% of the population lived below the poverty line, Iranians were dying of hunger.
Rapid militarization and foreign economic penetration brought inflation which decreased the purchasing power of the poor. Many small farmers unable to make a living migrated into the cities and joined the ranks of the unemployed there where rapid urbanization had created housing shortages and poor living conditions.
The Shah’s secret alliance with Israel
Israeli Foreign Ministry documents declassified in recent years reveal that Israel had extensive and exceptional relations with the Shah’s regime. The documents reveal that on Feb. 23, 1966, Mordechai Gazit, Director of the the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Department wrote, “Iran-Israel relations are a kind of unwritten secret alliance that gives Israel a range of advantages in the fields of the economy, security, the Middle East and anti-Nasserism.”
Over the years Israel purchased a significant part of, and sometimes all, of its oil from the Shah’s regime, while Iran used Israel as a middleman to sell its oil to third countries.
There was much military cooperation. Israel had close ties to SAVAK. While Iran never officially recognized Israel, the Shah had secret representation in Tel Aviv since 1961, while Israel had permanent representation in Tehran which, at one point, was an embassy with military attachés. In 1967 the Iranian prime minister asked the Israeli military attache to train the head of his bodyguards. Iranian police received training in operating communications equipment at Motorola in Israel. Between 1968 and 1972 Iran bought some $63 million in military equipment from Israel.
The Shah throws ‘the most expensive party in modern history’ while Iranians starve
Instead of using Iran’s petrodollars to address poverty and inequality, the Shah threw for himself what was then called “the most expensive party in modern history.”
In 1971 he flew in 18 tons of food prepared by the French restaurant Maxims to celebrate what he called the 2,500 anniversary of his dynasty, and to celebrate himself. For days he entertained 60 kings, queens and heads of state at luxury tents in the desert at the ancient ruins of Persepolis. This waste of resources while people were hungry became a symbol of his total detachment from his people and a rallying cry for a need for major change.
Meanwhile, the Shah’s regime grew even more repressive. After 1972 those committing alleged political crimes were tried before secret military tribunals, without witnesses or defense lawyers, and with guilt determined solely based on SAVAK’s evidence.
There was no such thing as freedom of speech or association. The press was strictly censored, with the Shah decreeing that every newspaper with a circulation of less than 3,000 and periodicals with a circulation of less than 5,000 be shut down. From 1975 to 1978, political activity was restricted to participation in the Rastakhiz Party, the Shan’s party, membership in which was mandatory for everyone.
Trade unions were outlawed and workers who protested for better conditions could be imprisoned or killed. Academic freedom was restricted and students and university teachers were subjected to surveillance by SAVAK.
‘A history of torture which is beyond belief’
Human rights groups charged Iran with having the worst record of political repression in the world. Amnesty International reported in 1975 that Iran had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.”
A 1976 New York Times article said, “There are 100,000 political prisoners and there have been 300 official executions in the last three years in Iran, according to figures of Amnesty International, Le Monde, and other European newspapers, and the international Federation of Human Rights.”
By the late 1970s the anger of the people of Iran at their U.S. imperialist exploiters and their repressive puppet Shah was at a boiling point. People look to those who were the most militant and intransigent against U.S. imperialism for leadership. They turned to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia cleric exiled by the Shah in 1964. For years he had been recording on cassette tapes fiery messages excoriating U.S. imperialism and calling for the arrest and trial of the Shah. These tapes were circulated throughout Iran. At one point, 90,000 mosques were duplicating and distributing them.
Anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977. Protests even reached the U.S., as Iranian students at U.S. universities lost no opportunity to confront visiting Iranian officials and members of the Shah’s family with picket lines and chants of “The Shah is a U.S. puppet, down with the Shah!
The movement brought together a wide array of groups, including radical clerics, left activists, people from various social groups, including clergy, intellectuals, and merchants, ethnic minorities and millions of workers. Economic demands were made, though the protests also raised the political demands of an end to martial law and the release of political prisoners.
In 1978 the revolution grew into a broad-based uprising that paralyzed the country. Labor strikes began with oil workers in five cities taking to the streets. They spread everywhere until they immobilized the economy. Giant demonstrations took place in every city.
Troops on rooftops opened fire on the crowds, committing many massacres. But the killings only further infuriated the population. Some actually came to protests wearing white Islamic burial shrouds in defiance of the troops and signaling that they were willing to die to liberate their country.
By the end of the year the hated Shah was a prisoner in his own palace, backed only by his generals and the hated SAVAK. On Jan. 16, 1979, the U.S quickly whisked him out of the country.
After 14 years of exile, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979 to jubilant supporters. A referendum on creating an Islamic Republic was held on March 30 and 31, 1979 and overwhelmingly approved. Khomeini became the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
‘We used to run this country … Now we don’t even run our own embassy’
Days after Khomeini returned, and after a demonstration briefly attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran, an American diplomat preparing to leave bitterly commented, “We used to run this country…Now we don’t even run our own embassy.” His astonishment was typical of flabbergasted U.S. officials.
Never concerned about the plight of the Iranian people, the Shah’s U.S. backers were oblivious to the significant internal struggle taking place. Only a year before the Shah had to run from the country he was praised by then-President Jimmy Carter in a New Year’s Eve toast that called Iran “an island of stability in a turbulent corner of the world.”
A New York Times article of March 11, 1979 expressed the astonishment of the political establishment here and their total underestimation of the Iranian people:
“How could Iran, with its oil and its strategic situation between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf, between Europe and the Middle East, fall under the sway of a holy man out of the mists of the 13th century? How could the shah, a monarch who commanded more tanks than the British Army, more helicopters than the United States First Cavalry in Vietnam, be pressured so neatly out of power?”
Iranian Revolution changed West Asia
The Iranian Revolution was a game-changer. Its demonstration of the power of mass uprisings to overthrow colonial regimes inspired oppressed people in the Muslim world and throughout the Global South.
It not only kicked the U.S. out, it also changed the geopolitical landscape and power balance in West Asia. For 46 years now, despite severe economic sanctions imposed by Washington and the whole imperialist camp, the Iranian people still assert their right to self-determination and are aiding others in the region to do so as well.
To this day, where the people of the world see the Iranian Revolution as a taking back of natural resources and a restoration of rights and dignity, the U.S. government just sees the loss of a very strategic and lucrative asset. This is why regime change has been the State Department’s goal in Iran ever since 1979.
This post has been syndicated from Read - Hampton Institute, where it was published under this address.