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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

#111

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]"

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

#112
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot more info here: https://declassifieduk.org/iran-1953-mi6-plots-with-islamist... > IRAN 1953: MI6 PLOTS WITH ISLAMISTS TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY > Declassified British files highlight a little known aspect of the joint MI6/CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in August 1953 – UK covert action in support of leading radical Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini.

After WW II, the UK didn't have the power to overthrow anyone . They were ruined by two world wars. You seem to have confused "intent" with "ability." That's why in 1956, the UK and France had to humiliatingly climb down from the Suez operation. Eisenhower just said, nope, nope and that was it.

The UK could overthrow lots of places still, so long as the US didn't disagree with it.

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

#115
post #5

Sad to see what Iran has become - no in small part thanks to the US/UK's meddling and installing a crazed theocratic government. The Iranian people deserve so much better - they are a nation of really smart people and would be a beacon in the Middle East if it wasn't for a bunch of religious reactionaries holding power. Some of the best engineers I've ever worked with were expat Iranians who left and have no intentio…

> Sad to see what Iran has become - no in small part thanks to the US/UK's meddling and installing a crazed theocratic government. This is some tinfoil-hatted nonsense. I'll be charitable and assume you're unfamiliar with the history, as opposed to a conspiracy theorist who thinks the CIA is behind everything you think is wrong with the world. Rightly or wrongly, the US and UK went after Mossadegh precisely because t…

> As a final stick in the eye, the Ayatollahs waited until Reagan had been sworn in to release the Embassy hostages.

You say that as though there were no quid pro quo involved.

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

#116
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot more info here: https://declassifieduk.org/iran-1953-mi6-plots-with-islamist... > IRAN 1953: MI6 PLOTS WITH ISLAMISTS TO OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY > Declassified British files highlight a little known aspect of the joint MI6/CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in August 1953 – UK covert action in support of leading radical Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini.

After WW II, the UK didn't have the power to overthrow anyone . They were ruined by two world wars. You seem to have confused "intent" with "ability." That's why in 1956, the UK and France had to humiliatingly climb down from the Suez operation. Eisenhower just said, nope, nope and that was it.

Ah right, because 3 years later the UK couldn't mount an actual military operation in Egypt, without the assistance of the USA, there's no way that they and the US could have helped a coup take place in 1953.

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

#117

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.

well i’m not going to change that with my guessing but i’d wager that it has more to do with the values of the populace, the willingness of the people to engage in and be ruled by democracy, and the regional stability at the time than anything the US did or didn’t do

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

#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 interventions in Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, the US had a long history of this sort of behavior before Iran. Often undertaken under the guise of fighting communism or some other nebulous threat, these acts were in fact naked money grabs intended to secure the dominion of US corporate interests, established during colonialism, over land, labor and assets like oil, lumber and precious minerals in countries where local governments were attempting to seize back control of these assets, and in many cases grant them back to the often poor and rural communities that should have owned them in the first place.

Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes is a good overview of the many "interventions" the US undertook to replace regimes that threatened the economic domination of the West. For the lazy, Wikipedia provides a decent list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

It's a bizarre sort of internal contradiction that allows people to believe in the overwhelming power of the United States while refusing to accept that the exercise of that power has shaped pretty much everything about the modern world. From Korea, where the US propped up a puppet regime staffed by Japanese collaborators post-WW II, leading to a civil war and partition, to Iran, to Russia, which was bankrupted and impoverished by US interests after the end of the Cold War. Those same interests then hand-picked a certain Vladimir Putin as a successor to their man Yeltsin. Unfortunately, most Americans are entirely ignorant of what actually occurred during these events because they were either never reported in the news, or reported in the distorted and propagandistic fashion that the US media tends to adopt.

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