In 1953 the United Kingdom with help from the United States ousted the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosadegh. Mosadegh was a revolutionary who sought to nationalize iranian oil, eliminating the monopoly that the United Kingdom had on iranian oil. Through Operation TPAJAX, which led to a series of U.S. backed coup état’s in various countries, Iran was robbed of their democracy and a tyrannical U.S. backed Dictator was installed in its place. This interference of Iranian affairs has led to decades of American hatred and later the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Before the 1953 coupe état, revolutionary, Mosadegh nationalized Iranian oil with an almost unanimous vote,later being threatened by American and British intelligence he was removed from power, and then decades of american resentment and hindrance of political progress followed.
“The coup had its roots in a British showdown with Iran, restive under decades of near-colonial British domination”(Iran Chamber). Britain had almost complete control of most of Iran’s oil reserves which were in the Persian Gulf, and there was a growing concern from the Iranian people and the Iranian government from how little of a percentage of the profits Iran was getting compared to the fifty percent that Saudi Arabia was getting. Then in 1949 the Majlis or the Iranian Parliament approved the First Development Plan which called for extensive agricultural and industrial development of the country(Iran Chamber). The First Development Plan was largely funded from the extra revenues of the oil industry. Initially General Ali Razmara the current Prime minister was not successful negotiating a better deal with the British,and could not “persuade the oil company of the strength of...
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...and the will of the people, I fought this savage and dreadful system of international espionage and colonialism. ...I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.” (In his military trial on December 19, 1953).
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Hap, Abrams. "Operation TP-AJAX." Operation TP-AJAX. Opsec News, n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
Iran Chamber Society, ed. History of Iran a Short Account of 1953 Coup. Iran Chamber Society, 2001. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
This completely changed the perception of the United States within Iran. Many Iranians believed that “American influence and power made a mockery of their national autonomy and desecrated their religious beliefs” (Farber, 37). The real struggle came once the Shah sought asylum in the U.S. Iran believed this to be a betrayal and demanded the Shah be released to the revolutionaries. Due to the fact that the United States did not refuse the Shah, the revolutionaries took the embassy in Tehran and all of the people that worked there hostage. One of the hostages wrote back to his parents during the crisis “‘We will not be set free until shah is released and the longer we stay here like this the better is a chance for something terrible to happen’” (Farber, 156). The siege was led by Iranian students who supported the revolution and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader that the revolution had selected to take the place of the
Kinzer tells us that the Iranians celebrated their nationalism in taking control of their oil, but their success was a shock to the British multinational companies in Iran. They did not like the idea of Iran nationalization, so they plan a coup to overthrow the Prime Minister Mossadegh. But this plan failed and the British were disarmed and sent back to their country closing down their embassy in Iran. The British tried to present their case to the United State in a way that the United State would intervene. So they presented a case that Mossaghe is not only nationalizing the Iranians oil, he is also leading Iran into communism. This case stirred the American action and they feared if they assassinate Mossaghe, his seat will be open and communist ...
In All The Shah’s Men there seems to be a very strong hatred for all foreign powers, including the United States, taken by the citizens of Iran. I believe that this ultimately occurred because of the impatience of certain government officials in Washington D.C., and also in Great Britain. If only there could have been better communication between countries, I feel that there would have been a solution reached. The stubbornness of the British for the most part, led to many lives being lost, and a feeling of perpetual disgust being shown towards the United States for their involvement. Although the British were our allies and we did have an extreme fear of communism taking over the free world, this coup was disorganized, forced along too quickly, and put forth without any guidance or strong evidence, which in the end proved to completely defy what the United States was trying to impose on the world, and what Mossadegh was trying to give his people; freedom and democracy.
For decades, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East had depended on a friendly government in Iran. The newly appointed leader, the shah of Iran, began Westernizing the country and taking away power from the Ayatollah, powerful religious leaders. The United States poured millions of dollars into Iran’s economy and the shah’s armed forces, overlooking the rampant corruption in government and well-organized opposition. By early 1979, the Ayatollah had murdered the Shah and taken back power of the government. A group of students who took the American embassy hostage on November 4th, 1979, turned the embassy over to the religious leaders. Carter knew he must take action in order to regain the American embassy and the hostages, but with all of the military cutbacks, the rescue attempt was a complete failure and embarrassment. It took the United States 444 days to rescue the hostages. This was the final straw for many Americans, and enough to push them to the “right” side of the political spectrum, Republican.
America and Iran had tricked the Soviets which left them very angry, and this inevitably led to the Cold War. But less than a decade later, America had done something which caused Iran to change their opinion of them. In 1951, Iran had recently elected a prime minister by the name, Mohammed Mosaddeq, which he nationalized the countryś petroleum industry, long the domain of the British-dominated AIOC. This move, however, pitted the two governments against each other in a bitter political fight. The Truman administration had tried to work between both sides, but Dwight Eisenhower had quickly concluded that Mosaddeq represented the problem rather than the solution to the crisis. They decided that they wanted him out and later he was kicked out and Mohammad Reza Shah took his place for the next twenty-five years. Shah not only gained access to sophisticated American weaponry, but also obtained tacit White House permission to forgo any serious effort at reform. Over the years, the internal resentment against the Shahś political and economic policies was building to a peak, but the depth of the problem escaped the notice of American
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Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.
The introduction to Persepolis gives a great deal of background information to the unrest in Iran leading up to the Islamic revolution. Iran had been in a state of unrest for “2500 years” (page11). Iran was ruled by foreign nations and exploited by the western world for its rich expanses of oil. In 1951 the prime minister of Iran tried to take back his country’s wealth by nationalizing
Nedzi (D-Mich.), Luclen N. “Oversight or Overlook: Congress and the US Intelligence Agency.” A Congressman talk to the CIA senior seminar, November 14, 1979, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol18no2/pdf/v18i2a02p.pdf (accessed January 7, 2014).
In the 1970’s Iran, under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a very centralized military state that maintained a close relationship with the USA. The Shah was notoriously out of touch with working class Iranians as he implemented many controversial economic policies against small business owners that he suspected involved profiteering. Also unrestricted economic expansions in Iran lead to huge government expenditure that became a serious problem when oil prices dropped in the mid 1970’s. This caused many huge government construction projects to halt and the economy to stall after many years of massive profit. Following this was high rates of inflation that affected Iranians buying power and living standards. (Afary, 2012) Under the Shah, political participation was not widely available for all Iranians and it was common for political opposition to be met with harassment, illegal detention, and even torture. These measures were implemented by the Iranian secret police knows as ‘SAVAK’. This totalitarian regime combined with the increasing modernisation of the country paved the way for revolution.
Watts, Tim. "Iran hostage crisis." World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 28 July 2011.
The "Iran-Contra Affair. " The Encyclopedia of the Cold War: Political, Social, and Military History. Ed. Spencer C. Tucker, b. 1875.
Arjomand, Said Amir. “Iran's Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective.” World Politics, Volume 38, Issue 3 (1986. 4), 383-414.
He then focuses on the continuing struggle of his people to be treated with dignity and equality and shows how his perceptions and opinions have been molded by his own experiences, from childhood to the harshness of prison life. In his writings he states, “I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to.” This quote perfectly shows the advice of what he can bring to attention if he was ever released. He has learned this source of compassion and respect while being wrongly locked up for all these years and it is something that could be usefully preached through out this
Although the Iranian Revolution was both a political and religious movement in that it resulted in major shifts in government structure from an autocracy to a republic and that Islamic beliefs were fought to be preserved, it was more a religious movement in that the primary goal of the people was to preserve traditional ideology and in that the government became a theocracy intertwined with religious laws and desires of the people. Although the Iranian Revolution was caused by combination of political and religious motivations and ideas, the desires of the people supporting the movement were more dominantly religious ideas that were wished to be imposed in society and in a new government. The Shah, or king, of Iran at the time was Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who had developed relations with nations in the “western” world, specifically with the United States. The United States supported the White Revolution, which was a series of social reformations the Shah made to remove Islamic values, law and tradition from the government to boost the country’s economy (White Revolution, 2010).... ...