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70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

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Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#121

Post by api »

aapl88889 wrote: post #118

Iran was actually rich in the 1970s and women weren't in veils. You can thank the US for that. The revolution happened after.

I don’t really see US foreign policy in that era as imperialistic. That’s giving it too much credit as it implies a degree of even Machiavellian intelligence. The British were imperialistic and they were actually kind of good at it.

It was sheer idiocy, an exercise in spending massive amounts of money to build up our own enemies and negate our own supposed values, turning billions away from Western democracy and toward backward totalitarian ideologies that are in the end more hostile to us than the USSR was.

Like I said in another reply it was mostly driven by paranoid overreaction to communism.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#122

Post by jltsiren »

WalterBright wrote: post #103

I've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.

Japan was the interesting case.

With Germany, you are basically asking how they managed to install a stable Western government in a Western country with a history with similar forms of government and the institutions to support them. It was probably easier than convincing the Confederate States of the legitimacy of the US after the Civil War.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#123

Post by aapl88889 »

NoraCodes wrote: post #95
loeg wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you blame modern Germans for WW2? Why?

The Nazi government was overthrown and its ideology outlawed. Not so with the United States.

Do you want democracy and capitalism to be outlawed? What ideology?

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#124

Post by brendoelfrendo »

aapl88889 wrote: post #111
mountainriver wrote: post #65

There’s a great book about this called All the Shahs Men, highly recommend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men

Why is the US blamed and not Iran's socialist policies which occurred 30 years later, after the revolution? "Following the nationalizations in 1979 and the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War, over 80% of the economy came under government control.[34]"

You can draw a line directly from the coup in 1953 to the revolution in 1979, so it's pretty fair to blame the US for the revolution and what came after.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#125

Post by reissbaker »

rendang wrote: post #110
WalterBright wrote: post #103

I've never seen any analysis of why the US was able to install stable, successful democratic governments in Japan and Germany, and generally failed to elsewhere.

Failed at installing democracies elsewhere? Aside from Afghanistan where has the US done that? More often the US has installed or propped up autocrats w/ varying degrees of success

Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine. Technically Iraq as well, although I don't think the Iraqis were particularly happy about that.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#126

Post by zackees »

flimsypremise wrote: post #119

So many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and inter…

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Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#127

Post by alephnerd »

aapl88889 wrote: post #118

Iran was actually rich in the 1970s and women weren't in veils. You can thank the US for that. The revolution happened after.

> women weren't in veils

Sure among the elite in Tehran, but the rest of the country was still significantly conservative. You can see this in blockbuster movies from Iran in that era such as Qeysar [0] and Tangsir [1], as well as with Iranian thinkers with a mixed traditional and western educational background such as Ahmad Fardid, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, and Ali Shariati preaching about Gharbzadegi as a reaction to the rapid modernization the Shah used.

> Iran was actually rich in the 1970s

But extremely unequal. The earliest Gini coefficient I could find for Iran (1984) was at 0.47, so roughly similar to Venezuela during that era. It also appeared that Tehran's household expenditures (and thus salaries) were 4x those of the rest of the country [2].

There's a reason why Islamic Socialism is the primary political philosophy within Iran, with the key intellectuals of the Iranian Revolution being influenced by a mix of Islamic Reformism, Third Worldism a la Frantz Fannon and the Algerian Revolution, and Marxist thought.

Basically, an Islamic version of Liberation Theology that was popular in South America and the Solidarity Movement in Poland, and directly influenced Pope Francis

[0] - https://archive.org/details/gheysar-1348

[1] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg2S3dHTKD0

[2] - https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-des-etudes-du-de...

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#128

Post by digitalsin »

Right, also while we're at it let's not blame Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, etc. for their deeds but instead blame whatever happened 2 generations before them. Maybe even sainthood for those fine gentlemen, right?

This article is so biased and wreaks of Iranian state funded propaganda I'm going to need a shower to wash the stink off after reading it. Give me a break. This si not HN material.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#129

Post by ImHereToVote »

api wrote: post #121
aapl88889 wrote: post #118

Iran was actually rich in the 1970s and women weren't in veils. You can thank the US for that. The revolution happened after.

I don’t really see US foreign policy in that era as imperialistic. That’s giving it too much credit as it implies a degree of even Machiavellian intelligence. The British were imperialistic and they were actually kind of good at it. It was sheer idiocy, an exercise in spending massive amounts of money to build up our own enemies and negate our own supposed values, turning billions away from Western democracy and towa…

When has this stopped.

https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cyph...

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#130

Post by jasmer »

flimsypremise wrote: post #119

So many Americans naively believe this fairy story about their country, when the reality is a lot darker and more brutal. The intervention in Iran was neither an isolated event, nor was even close to the first coup that the US perpetrated at the behest of business interests. Starting with Samoa and Hawaii in the 1800s, an extremely violent occupation of the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, and inter…

[dead]
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