Posted on 03/10/2012 1:29:33 PM PST by pickrell
The origins of the conflict between Iran and the U.S. go back decades. To understand them is to get a better idea of how we got here.
At the start of Eisenhower's presidency, in 1952, Iran was a country barely removed from the middle ages. The famed General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's father, (who, after retiring from the New Jersey State Police, was best for a radio "gang-busters" show he did,) had been hired by the Shah to build an Iranian national police force- the first successful attempt to even nudge Iran towards the 20th century. Illiteracy was rampant; poverty was pervasive. Some of the ones suffering least were the religious mullahs, who began sniffing the idea of eventually seizing power.
The British, who had an agreement and partnership with the Iranians to develop and market their oil, (the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co- later renamed BP Oil), had been systematically stealing oil from Iran for years, by massively under-declaring the amount of oil being loaded onto their tankers. Far worse was the incredibly lush lifestyles they led in full view of the desperate peasants. It didn't take much more than a pair of binoculars down by the docks, looking at the draft mark lines on ships showing how heavily they were laden, and comparing that to the "records" the Brits used to compute their share, for a growing number of Iranians to become enraged. When they saw the disdain of the Brits for the commoners, the pot reached full boil.
To make a long story short, the mullahs helped engineer the appointment in 1951 of Dr. Muhammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh soon froze all British shipments of oil and nationalized the industry. He was initially hailed in newspapers worldwide as a folk hero.
Winston Churchill retaliated against this action with a series of unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Mossadegh. Far more successful, on Churchill's part, was the boycott the British organized among the rest of the world's oil refiners and distributors, against Iranian oil.
Once Eisenhower was elected, he had to listen to Churchill blackmailing him in private, that if the U.S. wanted England's help in Korea, it damned well had better support England against Iran. Ike was heard to later remark privately that if he could figure a way to secretly get fifty million dollars quietly to Mossadegh, he would- except that the Dems would inevitably find out and crush him over it.
The problem was that Mossadegh, whether or not anyone could believe the Brit's whispering campaign about his personal faults, was simply not the man to take on the powerful oil interests. Mossadegh had not thought through what would happen when the small amount of royalties from the Brits was shut off completely. In one year the Brits took 40 million pounds sterling in profits, while the Iranians' "25 percent" share... was only 7 million pounds! But at least the Iranians had some money to buy food. The embargo effectively cut that off completely. And no reserves had been put back in preparation for the standoff with Great Britain.
The reality was, after the nationalization, that people in Iran began starving and going without medicines. What little the populace had, soon evaporated, and suffering intensified.
Finally the U.S. State Department concluded that Mossadegh not only wouldn't be able to sustain the nationalization of joint-owned property, against the British-led boycott, but that the quiet period of enforced mourning following the death of Stalin was about to end. Up to this point the Iranian "Tudeh" communist party was stagnant, in an absence of orders from Moscow. Soon, however, directions were received to prepare to remove Mossadegh by a "popular people's revolt", and install a puppet to extend the communist grip on the Middle East.
By 1953, word went out that CIA-Iran should "see what it would take" to remove and replace Mossadegh, before the communists had their chance to act. At that time Kermit Roosevelt,(grandson of Teddy Roosevelt,) according to what he understood was his orders, under operation AJAX, spread some money around to the newspapers, and other community leaders. A raft of published criticisms of Mossadegh led to growing demonstrations and eventually the removal of Mossadegh. Roosevelt was stunned that so little effort, (and frankly- so little money), could unseat a country's leader. So stunned, in fact, that he later avoided publicity and any further intelligence work.
The western world was also awed by the ease with which one man, who may have misunderstood and exceeded his orders, could simply remove Mossadegh! The best British agents had tried for two years to accomplish what Roosevelt- an untrained functionary- managed in a few weeks, with just a little walking around money. If Roosevelt could do it, what of the ruthless and highly organized Soviets? It was determined that Iran, unlike eastern Europe, would not be allowed to suffer decades of communist domination. The communists would be stopped cold. Iran's Schwarzkopf-trained police, would become SAVAK, the Shah's noted and dreaded secret police, who would deal with the communist party harshly.
The State Department had a hard sit-down-and-listen-talk with Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the returning Shah, and told him that his previous visibly opulent lifestyle was not helping, and could not be repeated. He was then flown back to restore the monarchy.
Far more importantly, Eisenhower decided to break the British embargo, and staged a mandatory meeting between British, Iranian and other oil interests. Some details of the meeting are even now secret, but the results were apparent. The British were forced to "sell" a large share of their oil concession to competing countries' oil industries, and "renegotiate" the terms and guarantees of their deal with the Iranians. The Americans had for years been dealing 50-50 with the Saudis, and "suggestions" were made.
Revenues to Iran rose massively- thanks exclusively to the insistence and clout of the U.S. Government, and specifically to Dwight Eisenhower. This money enabled the Shah to begin an immediate, sustained modernization program for the whole country.
Unfortunately Churchill and other Brits in the know had openly called Iran THE crown-jewel of their colonial interests for good reason. In most other colonial ventures the Brits had actually lost money, and the Iranian oil rake-off was desperately needed to maintain an expensive, though shrinking, British Empire.
After that, and the later debacle in Suez,(when the Americans thwarted Britain and France in their military venture to seize the Suez Canal,) Europeans no longer regarded the U.S. as a reliable, (read- controllable,) ally. Much had changed.
Oddly, the fury over Mossadegh being removed from power raged on in Iran, in spite of the improved lives of the Iranians. Iranian peasants were seeing vastly more food, a chance at education, and a better lifestyle. But with modernization, the iron grip that the mullahs enjoyed was crumbling, and that- coupled with the realization that it was an American engineered "soft-coup" which led vast crowds of Iranians to demand the resignation of Mossadegh- was the last straw for the mullahs.
America had removed their man from control, and America would have to pay for it. It would only await a nearly brain-dead Jimmy Carter to bow to their Ayatollah in exile in France, two decades later, and pave the way for his return to oust the now long-time ally of the U.S., Reza Shah.
When the students first seized the U.S. Embassy towards the end of Carter's term, and took hostages, the mullahs were in fear of what the Americans would do. But when it became obvious that Carter's answer was simply to fret and sputter, it was all over but the shouting. The new age of radical clerics wielding mobs to seize power and attack enemies was given birth at the hands of a President nearly as incompetent as Mossadegh.
Were Carter and Mossadegh bad men? Probably not. They were, unfortunately, men who found themselves in positions of power that they were utterly incapable of wielding with competence and clear vision. They had surrounded themselves with advisers who thought as they did and so lost the competent conflicting advice they both desperately needed.
And long term, they both set in motion titanic destructive forces enabling one of the truly great evils of our age to become established and to then begin the carnage.
For Iran it began with mullahs weeding out non-religious military leaders, ending up with the incompetence of leadership in their army which sent hundreds of thousands of teenage boys to charge Iraqi machine guns. How many died, wearing their little paper keys to heaven, will never be exactly known.
For the rest of the world it meant the old, vile evil of religious warfare had again been let out of the bottle.
And charismatic men, good orators who had such admiring, heartfelt followers wanting change ... had done it.
Churchill’s fault. Who knew?
18 trillion
The law of unintended consequences. History is replete with other examples. The British seizure of the two Turkish battleships in 1914 helped cause the Ottomans to join the Central Powers and the decision to break up the Empire after the war quite possibly led to the Middle-east becoming the great mess it is today. The decision to open Japan by intimidation in 1853 led to that nation modernizing into a great industrial power and becoming our mortal enemy in WW2.
Good post.
outstanding essay...
I can think back to my days in Syracuse, in '55-'57 when the discussion of this was hot at the frat, though the war by then was ice-cold and the elitists of the brothers seemed to be preparimg their resumees to apply for CIA openings. Before Sputnik.
I'm nobody, really. I just write occasional essays for anyone who might be interested. I thank you for the compliment. If anyone finds it interesting, then the time was worth it to write it. It's why many of us post stuff every once in a while. :-)
You are a very clear-visioned man, sir.
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