The 1979 American Overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the Roots of Islamic Terrorism
The best military policy is to attack strategies. ---Sun-Tzu
Thoughtful Americans since 9-11 have ask themselves “Why do they hate us?” the answer to this question can only be understood in the context of the history of the last Fifty years of U.S. foreign policy. The United States and the Western powers try to rule the World by not allowing other nations to develop industrially, thereby preventing the emergence of Military competitors. Therefore, the United States at every turn has pursued a foreign policy that has destabilized the political economies of those nations that challenge American power in the world or aspire to challenge American power.
The reason why they hate us is simple the U.S. has done everything in their power to keep the people of the Third World poor and in the dark through their policies of preventative industrial development in the Third World. As long as America and Europe pursue this policy, we will always be the object of world hatred. By exploring the history of O.P.E.C. and Iran in the context of Americas Cold War with the Soviet Union, one can come to understand the rise of Islamic terrorism and America’s current war in Central Asia and the Middle East.
The world paid little attention, on 9 September 1960. When five of the world’s oil producing nations came together in Baghdad for the first meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or O.P.E.C. consisting of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait and representing 80% of the Worlds Oil production, came to form O.P.E.C. in response to cuts in the price of crude oil. The price cuts had an adverse effect on the developing economies of newly formed international body. The formation of O.P.E.C. occurred in the atmosphere of, the European de-colonization which followed the end of World War 2, the soon to be named “Third World”, by the Western European Powers, mainly France and Great Britain. O.P.E.C. would control the price of crude oil overturning the previous economic order, which had been to the advantage of the seven major Oil companies of the West.
Initially O.P.E.C. was unsuccessful in its aim of acting unilaterally to control the price of crude. Then in response to the 1967 War, the Arab members of O.P.E.C. embarked upon their first oil embargo, cutting exports to the countries that supported Israel. The Arabs had realized since the time of Nasser that Oil was a weapon that the oil exporting nations could use to bring the West to its knees. The first Arab led embargo was short due to lack of participation by Iran and Venezuela. During this period the Shah of Iran, who was increasingly more ambitious in his plans to turn Iran into a technologically modern state on par with nations in the west, increased Iranian oil production reaping large profits due to the inflated price of oil caused by the embargo. The Shah’s refusal to participate in the Embargo came with increased demands on the U.S. for a higher rate of production to increase his revenue that was financing the “White Revolution” of 1963 or face Iranian participation in future Arab oil embargos.
The 1970s were a tumultuous time for the Middle East and Central Asia these two areas of the world are crucial to the international oil industry, which needs to keep the Suez Canal in Egypt open so the oil tankers can bring their cargo west. The Middle East witnessed the Yom Kipper War, which threatened the Suez Canal. Central Asia saw the rise of its first nuclear power India, which tested its first nuclear weapon in what it called a “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion” in order to stay within the International Non Proliferation Treaty.
During the Oct 1973- Mar 1974 oil embargo the Shah like he had in 1967 refused to take part. The Shah went on a shopping spree, with the dollars he earned by bucking the embargo, for arms. The Shah’s arms expenditures would come to the attention of U.S. foreign policy makers, which viewed them as a threat to U.S. national security. The Shah’s expenditures on conventional arms eventually gave Iran the fourth most powerful military in the world.
The Shahs military ambitions did not stop at procuring the finest conventional weapon systems that money could buy. He had nuclear ambitions as well. On the coast of Iran, the Shah was constructing with the help of Siemen’s Corporation of Germany the first of 23-planed nuclear reactors. The Shah ostensibly promoted nuclear power for the peaceful purpose of developing Iran’s industrial base. Meanwhile the Shah was covertly procuring the necessary equipment to enrich uranium. In a report entitled NonproliferationIssues HearingsBefore The Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Organizationsand Security Agreements Of The Committee on Foreign Relations UnitedStates Senate Ninety Fourth Congress it was estimated that Iran would be producing enough plutonium to produce 800 atom bombs a year by 1985. The shah’s nuclear program was progressing at a time when American foreign policy makers were increasingly concerned about nuclear proliferation. India had tested nuclear weapons. The region of Central Asia or the area of the Indian subcontinent had gone nuclear and Iran was not too far behind. U.S. foreign policy circles viewed the proliferation of nuclear weapons as cancer that was spreading west from India into the Persian Gulf. If the countries of the Persian Gulf had gone nuclear, the ability for the United States Military to intervene in the region would have been nullified.
The 1973-1974 Oil embargo had lead the American Government to threaten to use “tactical nuclear weapons” and food embargos, the carrot and stick approach, to force the Arab nations to keep the oil flowing west. The successful use of oil as a weapon by the Arab nations was as an “energy crisis” in the minds of the western powers. By 1975 a year after both Iran and Iraq embarked upon their nuclear programs, the U.S. Government drafted plans, which were published in U.S.,Congress, Committee on International Relations, Special Subcommitteeon Investigations, OilFields as Military Objectives: A Feasibility Study,Report Prepared by the Congressional Research Service, 94th Cong.,1st sess., August 21, 1975, (Washington, DC: US Government PrintingOffice, 1975), Parts I and II, pp. 1-39. to invade the oil fields Persian Gulf. An examination of America’s legislation and diplomatic maneuvers from that period reveals that the oil barons that run United States were gravely concerned that their foreign oil concessions would be nationalized by governments inimical to the USA‘s imperial designs on their lands. Both Iran and Iraq were simultaneously developing nuclear reactor complexes, which were set to go online by the early 1980’s giving U.S. foreign policy planners a window of five to ten years to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons into the Persian Gulf and preserve their ability to intervene militarily without going to nuclear war.
Tensions between the Shah and the West also grew during this period. The arms sales that the had been approved by the Nixon administration came under the scrutiny of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Shah had bought the most sophisticated front line fighter aircraft of the U.S. Navy the F-14. The Shah of Iran single handedly saved the whole F-14 program by giving Grumman the capital needed to put the F-14 into production. The Shah’s government was a bribed by Rockwell, a company with deep CIA ties into installing a massive electronic monitoring system called IBEX, which means mountain goat in Farsi. Three Rockwell representatives were gunned down at the Tehran airport.
The U.S. mass media has long promoted a big lie in regards to the Shah namely that the United States controlled the Shah like a puppet. The Shah did not seem to share this sentiment in his book he wrote that the Western Powers had decided to overthrow him. The Shah in his book Answer to History contradicts this often-repeated lie that the West, which was once the case for the Shah of 1953 but no longer applied to the Shah of the 1970’s, supported him. The Shah believed that he was overthrown.
After being repeatedly asked to step-down by “foreign visitors” in December of 1978 visited him including Lord George Brown a former British Foreign Secretary who asked him to step down personally at this time as well. Former U.S. attorney General Ramsey Clark had a meeting with the Shah. There was considerable international pressure on the Shah to step down. Since the Shah would not step down the U.S. plotted to overthrow the Shah in a coup coordinated by General Robert Huyser, Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe. Huyser corrupted General Ghara-Baghi who according to the Shah “used his authority to prevent military action against Khomeini.” With the sole exception of Ghara-Baghi, all of the Shahs Generals faced the executioner’s hands.
The coup put the Islamic Fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini in power, a man who publicly expressed enmity to the United States. Behind the scenes the Ayatollah was a puppet who did the bidding of his Western masters. He ended Iran’s nuclear program under the ruse that it was un-Islamic, executed 200 members Iran’s Tudeh party after having been provided a list of all known Tudeh Party members from the CIA (Washington Post, 1/13/1987, A1, 8) and cooperated with then Vice Presidential Candidate George H.W. Bush to hold off on releasing the U.S. Embassy hostages in order to influence the presidential election of 1980(The October Surprise,Barbara Honegger). The Baathist Party of Iraq was also put into power with the help of the CIA. They rounded up and eliminated communists from a list provided to them by the CIA as well. (Cockburn, A. and Cockburn, L. (1991). Dangerous Liaison, p.130).
The most transparent connection between the U.S. government and Islamic Fundamentalist Terror was the U.S. backing of the Afghan Mujahedeen, which helped to defeat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The awful truth about the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is that it owes its existence to the United States and which continues to support it. All of this support was done in the name of the Cold War. The US Oil run Government supported the rise of Islamic Fundamentalist Parties and Factions in the 1970’s in order to derail scientific secular regimes in the long term and to provide a rationale for intervention in the region. The Shah had booby trapped his oil fields in the 1973-74 embargo. The US foreign policy circles knew that Americans would not support intervention to stop an oil embargo.
30 December 2017
It is clear that the American Ruling Class supports Islamic Fundamentalism because of the crucial role it has played in destabilizing the Soviet Union. These fundamentalists were used in a proxy war in Afghanistan that spread to Caucus Region of the USSR. This war lasted nearly 20 years in Russian state of Chechnya.
Islamic Fundamentalism hinders scientific progress in the countries they control. This makes the region much easier to control for the American Ruling Class.
