While I personally am gratified at the recent Democratic electoral victories (William Jefferson not withstanding) and have long ago understood and recognize the value of this site to help the netroots/grassroots towards achieving that goal (i.e. getting Democrats elected to office). That said, I have mixed emotions about the current state of affairs because of policy, specifically our foreign policy. While Iraq is "the issue of our times" and was certainly a core issue which helped propel Democratic victories last month, I would like to move beyond the issues surrounding the extrication of our troops from Iraq and the political/electoral ruminations various options might portend, to the looming backdrop of our historical and current posture within the middle and near east, and one of the larger metaphorical elephants in the room...Iran.
Iran has long been a simmering issue at the crux of our entire posture within the middle and far east, and has greatly influenced and shaped my view on our comportment in the region, but I have recently been prompted by a couple of things to write about it now. The first being what seems to be a quiet surge in recent weeks of pushing a "crisis" in getting the UN to place sanctions on Iran, the other being conversations I have had with some politically astute people about the problem of relaying an honest historical perspective about why and how the United States has been cast into the role of the "Great Satan" to the average American voter.
The sordid tale of our nation's dishonesty and actions within the region is something that is virtually ignored within the Washington establishment, certainly within the media, which in turn has led to gross perversions of foreign policy spanning decades, and well over a half dozen administrations (more like the past ten actually). I see it as tantamount to treason how what passes for viable political debate, or rather a glaring lack thereof, precludes frank and honest ownership of what we have sown in the region, and consequently what we have reaped from it. Be it the cost of lives and treasure spent in the current disaster of unparalleled proportion which is our invasion of Iraq, to our actions past and present giving legitimacy to the anti-western hatreds which in no small part helped precipitate the fall of two iconic edifices in New York City from being symbols of American economic opportunity into that of grave markers within the cultural zeitgeist.
It is often deemed a third-rail in American politics to be honest with the public about what we have had done in our name, and how that ignorance is reflected in the virtual joke of what is allowed as legitimate discussion on the issue of Iran. It seems to be a first-class ticket to political or policy marginalization to have the temerity to even question the basic premise behind the hand-wringing over the "problem" of Iran. It is almost by rote which such discussion are branded "America hating" or "blame America first". Once labeled as such such annoyances as facts and history, and those who bring up such pesky things, can be shoved aside for those wishing to be "serious" in politics by willfully ignoring reality, our nations history of action and simply pandering to the bigotry, ignorance and lack of engagement of the general public in our country. Apparently such rejection of the truth and reality is what it takes in order to be "electable" or to be viewed as anything short of being someone who hates America, but I will come to that issue later.
This past summer I posted a diary which got on the rec. list which was simple yet for many provocative in its premise, and that was to ask simply, "So what if Iran gets a nuke?"(See article following).
While that is another large question, and more a thought exercise, what I hope to discuss here in this diary is what we have done, are doing and may do in the near future with regards to Iran. It is an issue, which to my mind, is little discussed and how American ignorance will hopelessly doom any legitimate discourse about Iran in the political sphere unless we can find a way to make being honest with ourselves, as a nation not only acceptable, but a political prerequisite for even being taken serious.
The Renewed March Towards "Crisis"
The latest round in the Iranian nuclear "crisis" was precipitated when Iran resumed enriching uranium earlier this year. However Iran has a legal right to enrich uranium, even under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of which Iran is a signatory, even though other nations, such as Israel, are not. The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board even reported in its November 2004 resolution, and again later in a June of this year in the IAEA Board Chairman’s conclusions that suspension of enrichment by Iran in the first place under the Additional Protocol was "voluntary, non-legally binding, confidence-building measure." A voluntary measure that Iran undertook while it and the EU-3 were negotiating a longer-term settlement of outstanding concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
However early this year, the EU-3 instantly rejected a February Iranian six-point offer which included a further two-year moratorium on its uranium enrichment while negotiation continued on a settlement, thus setting in motion a major international "crisis" which is as fraudulent as WMDs and mushroom clouds claims about Iraq which were sold to an ignorant but shell-shocked American public in the aftermath of 9/11.
Given all the mountainous revelations about the cover-ups and disinformation on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction you would think the US media would have examined the nature and content of the six-point Iranian proposal, instead of giving an unexamined pass on the pronouncements over the immediate rejection by the EU-3 diplomats, when the issue is even mentioned at all. Diplomats who seem to be more keen on satisfying a US march toward the Security Council to get sanctions placed on Iran than in substantive negotiation.
Iran's "six-point" proposal was submitted by the Iran to the EU-3 (Germany, France and the UK) in Brussels on January 30, 2006. Instead of giving it careful consideration, the EU-3 diplomats rejected it as devoid of anything new, despite the fact that Iran offered for the first time to extend the voluntary freeze on enrichment activities (which is allowed under the NPT treaty) for another two years in order to give negotiations more time to fully satisfy IAEA "concerns" about offers of material sales from 1987 (yes you read that right, dating back the Reagan Administration).
All this despite the IAEA's own reporting to the UN just a few months before that rejection of Iran's offer which has led us to the UN Security Council on the road to sanctions, that all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for.
The immediate rejection of Iran's offer led to Iran then withdrawing from the voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, which even the EU-3 acknowledges Iran has a right to pursue. So in turn the IAEA voted to refer Iran to the UN Security Council in which the United States is now pushing for international sanctions (the United States has had worthless and petulant unilateral sanctions for years) to punish Iran for doing something which is not a violation of the NPT. Again you read that right, the US and the EU-3 want to sanction Iran for not violating the NPT.
The pressure being mounted by the United States, but not just from the United States but also from members of EU-3, is not the first time that Iran’s endeavors to stand on its own feet and make advances have faced the stiff resistance and concerted pressure of the United States and other permanent members on the UN Security Council.
If Only History Was TiVo'ed
The contrived "crisis' about Iran resuming its legal right to enrich uranium under the NPT is not the first time the United States or members of the EU-3 have been dishonest about, and contrived, a "crisis" over Iran. In fact contemporary Iran has been subject to numerous injustices and prejudicial approaches by the United States, and before and with the UK and our allies. The Iranian people's struggle to nationalize their oil industry in the 1950s was but the most glaring one and one which the vast majority of the American public remains stupefyingly ignorant of, much less factoring it into how and why we are not welcomed into the middle and near east with showers of sweets and petals of flowers.
The actions taken by the United States and the British in the events before and after World War II are inextricable to current events, yet they are almost virtually unkown or ignored by most Americans. It was a pivotal and tragic event which has pretty much permanently ceded any credibility of the United States as having a legitimate role in the region.
But to understand these events, put them in proper context, one must dig further back into history. Going back to just before the turn of the previous century, in the late 1800s. I know that it is somehow odd for Americans in the 21st century to pay heed to what transpired on the persian plateau almost a century and a half ago, but I posit it is at the heart of the problem about how and why the American public, and more pointedly our nation's "leadership" in how it deals with the peoples in the region, and specifically Iran. As the almost clichéd saying goes "if one does not learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it". I would instead cast it more critically as "those who do not even bother to learn history, are guaranteed to to make a disaster of your future". It is also vital, as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara finally came to realize after leaving office (and chronicled in The Fog of War), to empathize with your opponent. What he was saying was that we must develop a sense of empathy towards enemies—and by that he didn't mean "sympathy" but rather "understanding"— in order to counter or preclude their hostility towards us and the west. Or to paraphrase, Sun Tze, to win militarily in battle is not the highest point of achievement or development, to best an enemy without fighting is the highest achievement. In essence, to preempt the need for confrontation and war, it is far better to understand why you have an enemy, and remove the reason for them to become your enemy.
The reasons for animus towards "the west", and the United States in particular, on the part of Iran begins roughly in 1872 and it has little or nothing to do with "our freedoms" or other absurd bromides offered by those who think like Bush. In 1872 Nasir al-Din Shah had been the monarch of Iran for some twenty years. He was a ruler of the Qajar dynasty, who were a long succession of monarchs from a Turkic tribe based near the Caspian Sea. They were in essence, to put it bluntly, a series of corrupt, small-minded kings who bear a heavy responsibility for the poverty and backwardness under which Iran had basically stagnated. At a time when both the United States and the British Empire had long ago moved the rule of the government in their own countries from the hands of monarchy (the United States through armed revolution, the British through making Parliament and representative democracy their form of government) the peoples of Iran were ruled by corrupt ne'er-do-wells. Even if somehow they had moved towards a more enlightened hand at governance, the pressures would still have been intense for subversion by foreign powers. This had to do with geography as Iran lay at the center of two great superpowers of its day, Great Britain and Russia. For the British, Iran was a land route to India its most valuable colony, and Tzarist Russia saw it as a chance to control a large swath of territory along its southern border.
So with a corruptible ruler, who like his predecessors was famous for their excesses, Nasir paid little heed to the needs of the people, and was instead quite willing to sell his nation into subservience in order to keep himself in royal pulchritude and comfort. In his harem where he spent most of his time, he had some sixteen hundred wives, concubines, and eunuchs. He fathered hundreds of princes all of whom had unfettered access to the national treasury. Nasir went by various titles as fanciful as they were pompous, such as Shah of Shahs (i.e. King of Kings), Subduer of Climate, Conqueror of Lands, Arbiter of His People, Shadow of God on Earth. Nasir would often travel abroad to Europe pleasure trips with huge entourage in tow. Nice work if you can get it, but hardly a legitimate voice for the people of Iran.
To support this outrageous lifestyle, Nasir sold government jobs, imposed oppressive taxes and confiscated the fortunes of successful merchants. Once he and his princes burned through all the domestic moneys they could lay their hand on, they turned to the idea of raising cash by selling concession rights to foreign companies and governments. First to the British who wanted rights to run a telegraph line and offices through Iran, to India. Then the French, German and Austrians for various other concessions. One of the most stunning ones of all went to a wealthy British interest, a Jewish German-born British journalist and media owner named Paul Julius Baron von Reuter (founder of the Reuters News Agency) in 1872. For a paltry sum and a small royalty payment, he acquired the exclusive rights to run the countries industries, irrigate its farmland, exploit its mineral resources, build and run its railroads and streetcar lines, create and run its national bank and print the nations currency.
Think about that. We Americans fought a brutal war, the longest war in North American recorded history, to kick out an overseas king who raised the taxes on tea.
Not only were Iranian patriots outraged by this, the merchant classes and the clerics were as well. Russia was startled by the huge reach the British would have, and even the British Government (which had not been consulted by Reuter) thought it might be too bold a move. Nasir himself realized he may have indeed gone too far, and less than year later canceled the concession, but his need for cash once again compelled him to sell these concessions, only to a more diverse competing set of foreign groups. He sold three to British consortiums. The mineral rights went to one, banking went to another, and the third granted exclusive rights to control commerce along the Karun River, Iran's only navigable waterway. Russia was placated for the most part by giving exclusive rights to the Caspian caviar fisheries. In essence, these and other concessions ceded the nation's most valuable assets to foreign hands. The money was used to continue the lavish court lifestyle of Nasir. When the money eventually ran out, he simply borrowed more from British and Russian banks. Things came to a head for Nasir in 1891 when he sold the Iranian tobacco industry and rights to the British for a pitiful 15,000 pounds. The terms of the concession meant that every farmer had to sell their crop to the British Imperial Tobacco Company and every smoker had to buy it from a shop that was part of the companies retail network.
Iran was (and is) a largely agricultural country and like America was at the time, a country of smokers. It was a huge domestic industry. From numerous small farmers who grew tobacco, to a large middlemen merchant class who cut, dried, packaged and distributed it to a multitude of Iranians who smoked it. Now this native product was being taken from the people on terms bordering on extortion, processed and sold back to them in order to line the pockets of foreigners. It was a huge insult. Remember about Americans and their outrage over taxes on tea towards the end of the previous century to the ones the Iranians found their tobacco in the hands of the British?
The entire country erupted in protest. One of the leading religious leaders declared it an affront and declared that as long as foreigners controlled the tobacco industry, it would be a sacrilege to smoke tobacco. Almost the entire nation heeded the fatwa against foreign controlled tobacco. Nasir was stunned and became fearful over the unanimity of the protest. Even his own harem stopped smoking foreign tobacco in protest. He had no choice but to cancel the concession, and to his own humiliation had to borrow a half a million pounds from a British bank to pay out compensation to the British Imperial for the cancelation of the concession. Nasir then went on to drift further from the public and even from reality, and was eventually assassinated a few years after the tobacco revolt in 1896 by a follower of Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani, who is considered to be the founding father of political Islam. But even with the violent removal of Nasir, his successor, one of his numerous sons, was not to lead to reforms and a fair deal for the Iranian people.
A Leader Not Too Far-Sighted
Mozzafar al-Din was unsuited for the responsibilities of office, yet became Shah with the assassination of his father, and followed a similar course, selling off concessions to foreigners in order to bankroll his courts lavish lifestyle. After ascending to the throne he quickly went on a tour of Europe paid for by borrowing money from a Russian bank, then when he came back took out another huge loan, this one from a British bank, in exchange for a portion of Iranian customs revenue. Rioting broke out as a result. Instead of recognizing the legitimacy of their outrage, he went even further by selling off another concession to a foreign interest which would irrevocably alter the course of history.
In May of 1901, Mozzafar sold to William Knox D'Arcy, a London-based financier, the "special, exclusive privilege to obtain, exploit, develop, render suitable for trade, carry away and sell natural gas and petroleum... for a term of sixty years." for the sum of 10,000 pounds and a fractional cut of the profits. A few years later oil was found and in April 1909 the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was founded with D'Arcy being made its director. The company would later become British Petroleum, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.
Public anger fed on Mozzafar's continued practice of granting concessions to Europeans in exchange for payments to him and his officials. Payments which underwrote his extravagant lifestyle. Iranian political consciousness had grown considerable since the Tobacco Revolt. Religious and cultural traditions of the Shiite majority contributed to this. Long before Islam, Persian people with the blending of Zoroastrian theology with Persian concepts of justice and sacred kingship rooted in farr. Farr is the cultural concept that a ruler's legitimacy is directly tied to the expectation that spirituality and virtue are to guide a ruler in bringing a fair and just society to the people. If the king turns from the forces of light to the forces of darkness, he loses farr and with it, his legitimacy. Iranian leaders retain farr only insofar as they serve the communal goal of spiritual liberation and establishment of a just and righteous society. Implicit in this concept of charismatic kingship is the right of the people to rise up in rebellion against a king that has lost farr.
While it is more a spiritual concept than a legalistic or structural tie between the ruler and the ruled, it is deeply entrenched in the Persian zeitgeist. While it is easy for us in "the west" to dismiss this, one need only look at the expectations of morals and principals we expected and attribute to we had and continue to hold with regards to our nations founding fathers, to see that dynamic at work. Granted the efforts in crafting our nations form of Government, were great effort, and were undertaken to try and formalize and codify such concepts into legal statement of principles, and to form of structures of government to bring it about.
So for the Iranians, Mozzafar like numerous rulers before him lost farr in the eyes of the people with the selling out of the nation to foreign powers and being bought off with the money to feed a gluttonous personal lifestyle. People began to push for a curb on royal authority and the establishment of the rule of law with representation for the interests of the people. Tensions began to mount and a spark threatened to ignite the powder keg in which decades of corruption and abuse had built. The spark finally arrived in December of 1905.
Tzar Wars, A New Hope
In December 1905, there was a dispute among a handful of merchants in Teheran over sugar prices which resulted in arrests. The punishment met out by the the local governor, who was a crony of the ill-healthed Shah, was bastinado, a favorite Qajar punishment. Bastinado is when the victim is tied up and hung by their wrists, then the soles of their feet are beaten. The bazaar was enraged and erupted in rioting. Fearing retributions the protesters, lead by merchant and clerical leaders, sought sanctuary in mosques in Tehran and outside the capital at the Shah Abd al-Azim Shrine in the city of Qum. In January they began public calls for reform. At first they demanded only the local Governor who had ordered the beatings, but then realizing their rising power demanded reduced taxes, which they saw line the pockets of the corrupt Shah and foreigners. Finally their protest came to a head when they concluded that the only way to curb the abuses they had long suffered under was the creation of a national assembly. As their central demand stated "In order to carry out reforms in all affairs, it is necessary to establish... a national consultive assembly to insure that the law is executed equally in all parts of Iran, so that there can be no difference between high and low, and all may obtain redress of their grievances."
In order to quell the pubic unrest, Mozzafar first promised to establish a consultative assembly or representative body for the people in government, then proceeded to break that promise by stalling and doing all he could to derail the effort. This in turn brought thousands of people that summer, again led by the merchants and church leaders, to once more take sanctuary or bast, which is an ancient Persian tradition giving asylum and shelter to those seeking refuge from persecution (similar to what western churches gave since Constantine I). This time ironically within the compound of the British legation in Tehran in order to safely launch their protests. There they went about setting up what amounted to a shotgun school for democracy. They held discourse in translating and circulating reformist newspapers, the works of European philosophers and the study of western democratic movements. Finally as the protests escalated, Mozzafar reluctantly agreed in August to issue a decree promising a constitution. In October, elections were held and the elected assembly representing the various trade guilds convened to draw up a constitution, which was based on that of the Belgian Constitution of 1831.
The drafted Constitution provided for strict limitations on royal power, an elected parliament, or Majles, with broad powers to represent the people, and a government with a cabinet subject to confirmation by the parliament. Under the constitution the parliament would negotiate all foreign treaties. It guaranteed the autonomy of the provincial councils and supported freedom of the press. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were recognized as citizens and given equality under the law with Muslims. Getting the drafting and signing of the constitution done quickly was seen as crucial, since the long ailing Mozzafar was ill and his son was well known to despise the democratic movement. So the hastily drafted constitution was signed on December 30, 1906, but refusing to forfeit all of the powers of the Shah to the proposed parliament, Mozzafar attached a caveat that made his signature on all laws a requirement, before he would sign the constitution. He died five days later.
Mozaffar's son Mohammad Ali Shah, who had no desire to uphold the constitution, was made Shah and with the aid of Russia, attempted to rescind the constitution and abolish the parliamentary government. In Russia, the Tzar, who along with the British had dug its claws into Iran, was mortified by the impression it would give for a cuckold monarchy to be deposed or neutered by a popular people's movement, with Russia having just undergone the Revolution of 1905 itself. A revolution in which the Tzar had only managed to retain his position by giving reluctant acquiescence to the formation of a consultative "parliament" or Duma.
Most serious threat of all to the Constitutional Revolution, and what was hoped would inaugurate a new era of independence from the great powers, was sown under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 when Britain and Russia agreed to divide Iran into spheres of influence. The Russians were to enjoy exclusive right to pursue their interests in the northern sphere, the British in the south and east; both powers would be free to compete for economic and political advantage in a neutral sphere in the center. Iran nor its parliament were consulted but simply informed of this arrangement after the treaty was signed in St. Petersburg Russia. Think about that for a moment. Imagine if you will if two foreign powers had signed a treaty amongst themselves dividing your country between them, two powers which by the way have been looting your nation for decades and backing corrupt degenerate puppet kings looking to score foreign capital to keep themselves in isolated luxury, backed by foreign troops on your soil. Ponder that for a moment.
With the treaty signed, what had long been a de-facto, though technically informal, control of Iran was made explicit and backed by British and Russian troops. Both foreign powers feared a nationalist movement and viewed it as a threat to their concessions which allowed them to basically loot the country blind. Such veto power and control by the people had to be stopped. As several disputes between the Shah and the members of the newly formed yet weak parliament escalated, in June of 1908 the Shah used the supplied Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade to bomb the parliament building. His forces arrested many of the deputies, and closed down the assembly.
Iranians flocked to the banner of democracy because they believed that by establishing the rule of law and limiting the selling off of their nation's economy, they could pull themselves out of poverty and into the modern era. Yet this aspiration was fought by the bought off king with foreign support and with foreign troops. Resistance to the shah continued however, with the opposition coalescing in Tabriz, Isfahan, Rasht, and other areas outside the capital and in July 1909, constitutional forces marched from Rasht and Isfahan to Tehran. The shah went into exile in Russia and his 11 year old son ascended to the peacock throne on July 16, 1909.
Although the constitutional forces had triumphed, they faced serious difficulties. The upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution and civil war had undermined stability and trade and their weak control could do little to undue the rampant corruption or seriously change the dynamic of living under divided foreign control. In addition, the ex-shah, with Czarist Russian support, attempted to regain his throne, landing troops in July of 1910 in the north, yet still the reformers pushed forward to try and wrest control from foreign powers. Matters came to a head when, ironically they turned to the United States.
Morgan Shuster, a United States administrator was hired as treasurer general by the constitutional government to reform its finances and sought to set its tax collection in order. Shuster arrived with a zealotry toward's dismantling the corrupt back-room deals through which the British and Russian syndicates were looting Iran. It boiled over when he pressed to carry out the reforms which opposed powerful officials who were Russian protégés and proxies by sending members of the treasury gendarmerie, a tax department police force, into the Russian zone to enforce the reforms.
Russia and Britain pushed back demanding Shuster be removed. When in December 1911 the parliament unanimously refused the Russian ultimatum calling for Shuster's dismissal, Russian troops, already in the country, moved to occupy the capital. The government, weakened by bread riots, was forced to capitulate to a series of ultimatums. The cabinet was revised to suit Russian dictation. Teheran was near famine. Violence erupted again; terrorists began a campaign of assassination. In December Russian troops crossed the frontier en masse. The Shia church leaders imposed a boycott on all Russian enterprises and goods: tramways, tea-drinking, etc. Street fighting flared up in Tabriz, where a thousand nationalists took refuge in the citadel. The Russian troops moved in and massacred them. On December 24th, the parliament was shut down. With it, Iran's tumultuous five-year Constitutional Revolution, the first concerted attempt to synthesize Iranian tradition with modern democracy, was over.
The War to End All Wars... Except Oil
Events outside of Iran would not stay outside for long as the events of World War I unfolded. Iran hoped to avoid entanglement in the war by declaring its neutrality, but ended up as a battleground for Russian, Turkish, and British troops.
Throughout their rise in Iran, the Russians embraced more and more desperate techniques of imperialism. Because of the decay and threat populist movements poised to the tsarist régime at home, the Russian oppression was more pronounced and overt than it was from the British. British control in the southern zone however was not free from the rattling of sabers or even moving to put down in the south what it perceived as threats to its control, in particular its slowly growing need for oil.
With the outbreak of war against Turkey in 1914, rule shifted to overt British military administration in the south. Iran became the backstage of the Mesopotamian theatre during the war, and a vital supply line to the Russian front. Britain became the dominant ally in the balance of Anglo-Russian control. The agreement between Russia and Britain dividing the zones of Iran was revised, granting the neutral zone and the cities of Isfahan and Yezd to Britain. The regional Bakhtiari chiefs were subsequently bought off like the shah. In an attempt to stop Iranian obstruction of British military deployments, overtures were made to populist leaders and a third Majlis or Parliament was permitted to assemble as a token gesture.
A group of Iranian nationalists were highly averse to throwing their lot behind the Anglo-Russian side in the war and in early in 1915 a delegation obtained an audience with Ahmed Shah and persuaded him to set up a new government and endorse a secret Iranian-German treaty which had been drawn up. A defiant pro-German government was declared first in Qom but was soon forced to retreat behind the Ottoman lines to Kermanshah (now called Bakhtaran when it was renamed after the 1979 Iranian Revolution), where they established a provisional government. The provisional government lasted for the duration of the war but failed to capture much support and its fate was tied to that of the Turks and their position within the larger World War. When German agents tried to arouse the southern tribes against the British, Britain created an armed force, the South Persia Rifles, to protect its interests.
As the World War carried on, the structure of Iran society finally collapsed. The government existed solely to bargain for bribes and, satisfied, sign warrants and decrees drafted by Britain and Russia. Order was maintained by foreign troops. Unrest was general though there, no cohesion or unifying nationalist movement and opposition was scattered throughout the country. The corruption was rampant and the various foreign leaning factions and regions were often at odds with each other. The south tended to be pro-German. In Tehran and the east military contracts and pro-royalist (and hence pro Russian/British) back-room deals were the order of the day. In the oil-fields, trade-union movements sought to improve worker conditions and everywhere in the country opium was easy to get a hold of, which helped to drown the indignities and the uncertainties of the fractured nation.
At the end of the war, because of Russia's preoccupation with its own revolution after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Britain became the dominant influence in Tehran. However the ominous strategic interests within the region began to assert themselves which, for the first time were not predicated by the ground you could walk on, but what lay under it. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company which had grown out of the D'Arcy concession had begun extracting huge quantities of oil from beneath the Iranian soil. With the shift in warship design in the British Royal Navy from burning coal to burning the relatively smokeless oil burning power plants, it became not just a strategic economic asset to control, but a militarily vital one as well. As Churchill, yes that Churchill, put it in 1917... Iranian oil was "a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams."
Realizing the immense value both militarily and economically of this new resource, the British sought to secure it under terms in their favor. The British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, pushed an agreement onto the impotent Ahmad regime under which Britain would provide Iran with a loan and with advisers to the army, but more dramatically virtual control of every government department. Under its provisions the British assumed control over Iran's army, treasury, transportation system, and communications network.
To help seal the agreement, the Iranian prime minister, Vosuq od-Dowleh, and two members of his cabinet where bought-off to support it. The Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, like the earlier corrupt Shah's concessions, was in essence selling off the nation and was widely viewed as establishing a British protectorate over Iran. This naturally aroused considerable opposition, and the parliament, seeking to finally throw-off the yoke of foreign subversion, refused to approve it. Martial law was declared but the agreement was already dead when, a Persian Cossacks Brigade would burn a new phase into Iranian history.
Khaaaaaaaaan!!!
The Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919 removed the last vestiges of Iranian sovereignty, but it also ignited a nationalist movement which was inspired by the emergence of anti-colonial forces in other countries, including some that were under British rule. A group of nationalist radicals in the north, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in the neighboring Russia, eliminated the hands of the Tsar in Iran's national pocket, and established a Communist party. After Soviet troops landed on the Caspian coast of Iran, declared the surrounding area the "Iranian Soviet Socialist Republic."
In much of the country people were faced with the worst conditions they had ever known which gave rise to numerous separatist movements. With northern separatists aligning themselves with the radically new movement of Soviet Socialism to the north, wide-discontent in other provinces and a deteriorating situation, all with the newly vital resource oil on the table, securing Iran was vital to Britain. Not just for access to oil, but as you may recall Iran was viewed by the British as a vital link in the chain within a sort of governmental archipelago, tying its Indian colony (remember India was a British colony at that time) back through Iran onward towards its other de-facto colonial outpost of Egypt.
As a result of the Turks being on the losing side of World War I, the territories the Ottomon Turks controlled where now divvied up by the French and the English. The nations of Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon in essence where artificially contrived by the French and British drawing lines on a map, with little regard to the cultural, ethnic, or religious demographics of the people that lived within the newly conquered lands. Britain was at its height of power, and saw Iran as the lynchpin tying its vast empire together from the far-east all the way through to North Africa. Installing the Hashemites to the throne in Iraq, to the Saudis in Arabia as it sorted out the aftermath of the war in which it had involved itself in the Arab Revolt (as was romanticized in the west by its portrayal in Lawrence of Arabia). It only followed to the imperial line of thinking of Britain to secure for itself control to the keystone of its empire, Iran. The need to back a charismatic leader who would enjoy popular support among its people to stabilize the situation and secure British interests was vital, but who?
Reza Khan, a young Iranian officer of the Cossack Brigade, had impressed the British by the discipline among his men as the purge of Russian officers commenced following the Anglo-Persian agreement of 1919. A nominal nationalist, but disgusted with the Russian-backed elements of the Qajar rulers, the British had urged his promotion. Reza Khan used his new authority astutely, profiting from the general disorganization of the rest of the army. He was highly disciplined and efficient, among a sea of incompetents. With the assistance of a Teheran journalist, Zia ud-Din Tabatabai, who contrived allegiances in the capital, he carried out a successful coup d’état and installed himself as war minister.
He immediately embarked on a series of campaigns to restore order to the country. His first objectives were the suppression of the nomad tribes and the Soviet supported separatist republic in Caspian region. The British were much in favor of his campaigns since they saw such goals as a reason for backing him in the first place. To deal with the separatist movements, Reza Khan launched his own loyal regiments against the infant revolution in the north. During Reza Khan's campaign the British occupying army from the war retired from Iran, in accordance with the armistice agreements which ended World War I. Britain was confident of its ability to act decisively through its chosen horse, Reza Khan and British officers still held command positions within the Iranian army. As the campaign progressed, internal divisions within the factions that made up the separatist forces splintered the republic.
As he continued to secure his position, Reza Khan moved against others who were nominally aligned with him. He drove Tabatabai into exile, threw others in jail, and forcing others to resign their positions, among them Mohammed Mossadegh who was finance minister. He was forced to resign both for his anti-corruption campaign which threatened Khan and his cronies and because of his Qajar family heritage. Mossadegh went on to be named Governor of the Azerbaijan province, but resigned after Reza Kahn refused to give him authority over troops stationed there when the Soviets were trying to stir up a separatist rebellion. Mossadegh then served briefly as foreign minister but resigned that post as well after a few months when he finally concluded Reza Kahn shared neither his democratic instincts or his anti-imperialist views. Mossadegh was then easily elected to parliament, and will become a pivotal figure in our history in Iran, which we will come to later.
In 1923 Reza Khan added the premiership to the war ministry. For a time he toyed with the idea of declaring Persia a republic, after the model of Kemalist Turkey, but his autocratic tendencies, coupled the prospect of religious and traditionalist outrage if he were to abolish the vestiges of the monarchy prompted him not to go the other direction. Instead he undertook a pilgrimage, bare-headed, to the shrines of Kerbela and Najaf to secure the support of the religious factions in the country behind him. Finally, in 1925, Ahmed Shah Qajar was formally deposed and on April 25, 1926 Reza Khan, under the title of Reza Shah Pahlevi, ascended the throne. Five members of the parliament had dared to vote against his accession. Among them was the former finance minister Mossadegh.
The British were at first enthusiastically behind Reza Shah. He was the strongman they had sought to consolidate Iran with and was thought to be the reliable figure with whom they could cut deals and buy off, or failing that depose. However Reza Khan sought personal power and slowly sought to limit the influence of foreign powers, though he could not pull his country out of the orbit of foreign powers. He moved to ban the sale of property to non-Iranians, revoked the concession that gave the British-owned Imperial Bank the exclusive right to issue Iranian currency. Things were beginning to slide for the British and their interests in Iran.
Reza Shah's autocratic style soon came to the fore. He was fascinated by the fascist/nationalist movements that began to emerge in the early 1930s. In 1934 he traveled to Turkey to meet its leader Atatürk whom he had long admired and considered a friend. As they toured the country the Shah became despondent as he realized how quickly Turkey was progressing toward modernity and a secularism. Reza began imposing his will by terror and authoritarian methods. He unilaterally declared and enforced a ban of the veil for women and ordered that men wear billed caps that would prevent them from touching the floor with their foreheads during prayer. Religious leaders protested and gathered several hundred hundred followers in the sacred Khorasan mosque to protest. As soon as Reza shah learned of this he ordered soldiers to storm the church and massacre them. More than a hundred were killed.
This was also not an isolated occurrence, nor was it confined to religious observance. During a visit to Hamedan in western Iran, he was told by people that they were going hungry because they believed the local bakers were hoarding bread to drive up rices. He ordered the first baker he saw thrown into an oven and burned alive. His terror methods did have an effect, next morning every baker in town was practically giving away bread.
Many Iranians were appalled at his methods, yet others recalled the chaos and civil unrest and like the fascist movements he began to flirt with, many remained silent or applauded the order he imposed. That isn't to say that everything he did was inherently wrong or bad for the country. He did have legitimate achievements which improved civil society. He embarked on huge construction projects that gave the country new roads, highways, factories, government buildings railroad lines and schools. He introduced the metric system, the use of the modern calendar, use of surnames and civil marriage and divorce. Yet for all the reformist endeavors he pursued, true social transformation was not within his style of rule to engender. His censoring the newspaper media, forbidding organized labor, murdering opposition figures or jailing them or forcing them into exile undercut his being a true leader for his people. He considered the traditions of the nomadic tribes relics of the past and incompatible with his views of modernity and forced them into barren settlements where thousands suffered and died. His corrupt practices of bribes form foreign businesses led one member of the British Parliament to observe that "Reza Shah eliminated all the thieves and bandits in Iran and made his countrymen realize that henceforth there would be only one thief in Iran."
Like the emerging fascist movements he began to align himself with, he launched an oppressive campaign to obliterate the identity of minority groups, especially the Kurds and Azeris and established a "Society for Public Guidance" to glorify his ideas and person. Numerous German dignitaries visited Iran and spoke glowingly of the emerging German-Iranian alliance. Even one of the Shah's newspapers declared that "The cardinal goal of the German nation is to attain its past glories by promoting national pride, creating hatred of foreigners, and preventing Jews and foreigners from embezzlement and treason, our goals are certainly the same."
Reza Shah shared the increasing enmity towards the British and the Soviet Union. When World War II broke out, Iran declared official neutrality. However his policies were decidedly biased towards Germany. He allowed German agents to operate within Iran working to build networks of support with the traditional regional warlords. Western leaders, the Soviet Union in particular feared that Germany would use Iran as a conduit through which it would carry out the unfolding Operation Barbarossa to invade the Soviet Union. The loss of the oil fields would be not just a blow to the allies, but also a lifeline to the German Wehrmacht which was desperate for oil in the new age of mechanized warfare and could tip the balance in favor of the Germans. As a result, the British and the Soviets entered Iran with troops on August 25, 1941. They dropped leaflets from airplanes stating "We have decided the Germans must go and if Iran will not deport them, then the English and the Russians will." It is with supreme irony that these two countries would be promoting themselves as Iran's friends and protectors, yet there was little the Iranian army could do. It yielded in just days, and after seizing key points around the country the British demanded Reza Shah sever all ties to Germany and give free use of their territory to the allies. He abdicated on September 16, 1941 and his eldest son, twenty-one-year-old Mohammad Reza was allowed to succeed him, this time very much in the role of figurehead. Reza Shah left Iran quietly and died in Johannesburg South Africa three years later.
For nearly twenty years, part of it in active politics and the rest in virtual house arrest, Mohammed Mossadegh saw Reza Shah's regime as a enemy of the Iranian people. Now in the sudden turn of events of World War II, Reza Shah was gone and the elections of 1943 was the first free ones in many years. Mossadegh emerged from the sidelines and what was internal political exile and was elected to the newly reformed parliament, the Majles, with more votes than any other candidate. Although his old adversary had been deposed a new an even more powerful one now stood in the way of the Iranian people to reclaim their nation. The British, and in particular the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company dominated the country as no other and was to be the defining event for modern Iran and its relations with the west, though most Americans have little grasp of it.
Our story will continue in part II tomorrow evening, with...
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So what if Iran gets a nuke?
Aug 25, 2006
That is the question that is being begged in all this fear-mongering and hand-wringing about Iran and its nuclear program. But step back, and actually think about it.
So what if Iran does (even given the worst) develop some nuclear devices? What do people honestly think would happen then? Do people honestly think there is even the remote possibility that they would ever be used?
Iran has never attacked us and sought to kill Americans. Yet we are suppose to envision some nuclear holocaust because Iran gets a nuke, yet Pakistan, which backed and whose ISI created the Taliban has had nukes for a decade yet somehow we still don't have any mushroom clouds to show for it. It seems this administration, the media punditry, the GOP and yes... a vast number on "the left" and even here on Daily Kos seems to think that a nuclear armed Iran is "unacceptable"... which begs the question which never gets substantively answered... why is it unacceptable?
The canard that Iran backs Hezbollah and are led by mullahs, hence a threat to Israel and the U.S. and the world is utter bullshit. Yes many leaders in Iran are bigoted religious thugs, so is Pat Robertson and the Bush administration, but honestly look at reality and draw me any substantive scenario where Iran uses a nuke other than in response to getting nuked or invaded.
Anyone?
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