Thursday, June 14, 2012

Iran


While I was reading about the history of nuclear power I came across an article published in The World Today vol 6 (12) in 1950.

The article is titled "The Present Situation in Persia"

The lead sentences are of special interest:

"With the continuation of the cold war, it is not surprisign that the eyes of the world should occasionally be turned towards Persia. Geography and oil have made it inevitable that she should play a part in the relations of the Great Powers quite of proportion to her position in terms of military and economic power." (p. 529).

Majia here: Iran has been the subject of western machinations for over 100 years. The ongoing drum beat encouraging the US to wage war against Iran is hardly new and the Iranians (a.k.a. Persians) are very aware of that fact.


Walter Pincus has an excellent essay in the Washington Post dated June 11, which describes the history of US intervention in that country. 

Pincus: Fine Print Iranians’ past with U.S. colors how they see standoff over nuclear program. The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2012/06/11/gJQA9wR8VV_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines_Tue

"...few Americans realize that the younger Bush was a latecomer to American attempts to control Iran’s government.

Recall the August 1953 military coup that overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, an event that led to the 25-year autocratic rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

That coup was largely the result of a joint covert operation run by the CIA and its British equivalent, MI6. Within the United States, the overthrow was hailed the end of a potential pro-communist regime; for Iranians it ended the country’s drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources, primarily oil. It also smothered the country’s nascent nationalist movement and restored to power a monarch reliant on the West.

The 1953 coup “changed the course of democracy [in Iran] and led to dictatorships,” Mousavian said Monday in a telephone interview. But even more present in the minds of today’s Iranians, according to Mousavian, was Washington’s bias in the 1980s toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after it invaded Iran.

... In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a directive allowing the shah’s government in Tehran to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from used nuclear reactor fuel as part of a multibillion-dollar deal to purchase American nuclear power plants. After 1979, according to Mousavian, the Khomeini revolutionary government decided against many power plants and the enrichment facility. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, which was begun in 1975 with German help, was halted in 1979, but restarted with the Russians in 1995 despite U.S. objections...."

[end excerpt]

Majia Here: Walter Pincus reminds us of the US legacy of interference in Iran. That interference produced the "blow back" that occurred with the American hostage situation under Carter.

What historical chronology would have unveiled if the Iranians had been allowed democratic self-determination under Mosaddeq?

US and British machinations were directly responsible for producing the conditions of possibility for radicalism and anti-western sentiments in Iran.

The greed of the nuclear-industrial complex, aided and abetted by the US, UK, and Soviet governments, is responsible for the proliferation of plutonium production around the world, including in Iran.

The decades of imperial machinations and lies have produced a world on the verge of global war, poisoned by a literally out-of-control nuclear-industrial complex that profits from proliferation of the means of total destruction.

Lies and deception are decades deep. No truth can emerge from our so-called leaders' lips because truths would contradict the mythos of western innocence and good will. 

We are a race of beings led by sociopaths.


2 comments:

  1. We are. Secret U.S. enabled enrichment with plutonium is part of the threat of emissions from Fukushima.
    http://environmentalarmageddon.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/the-pacific-ocean-is-dying/
    http://environmentalarmageddon.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/photoelectron-induction-in-uranium-particles-by-chris-busby-phd/
    http://www.nuclearreader.info/chapter1.html
    http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1442&Itemid=13
    http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1186.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. So many times the US government overtly or covertly tried to meddle in Russia's sphere of influence. Arming the Afghan rebels with Stinger missiles to wipe out Russia's helicopter forces. Trying to cozy up to the nuclear power Pakistan with limited success.

    The US oil industry kept requesting US interference in Islamic Middle East nations and Libya. Other US military/corporate nterests targeted rare metals and oil from war-torn African nations.

    In the past sixty years the US has spent tens of trillions of dollars trying to prop up governments or dethrone ruling parties. The Arab Spring in 2011 and the double whammy of Japan going down the tubes and the economical meltdown of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Japan) means things are looking bad for the big world powers.


    As the hapless inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere enter year two of The Fallout Age
    the spector of a 21st century Great Depression looms in the near future. Once that happens the issue of trying to contain the meltdowns at Fukushima will be a very difficult task for any of the top ten nations of the world.

    ReplyDelete

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