One fact in the current hype to bomb Iran is overlooked: The people
of Iran are innocent. How many innocent people will we kill when we bomb Iran? We killed over half a million innocent people in our war against Iraq. Remember that war? The one we started by lying about weapons of mass-destruction?1 The war that made America an Aggressor Nation for the first time since the Spanish American War.
The government of Iran is most definitely not innocent in its support of terror to create a militant Islamic world and is certainly a political problem for us, but we created it. We foolishly tinkered with a foreign government and infected a nation to create our own Frankenstein. Now certain political and religious groups want to kill it. And the millions of innocent civilians who live there. They are mainly guilty of not being Christians.
The government of Iran is most definitely not innocent in its support of terror to create a militant Islamic world and is certainly a political problem for us, but we created it. We foolishly tinkered with a foreign government and infected a nation to create our own Frankenstein. Now certain political and religious groups want to kill it. And the millions of innocent civilians who live there. They are mainly guilty of not being Christians.
Our laboratory wasn't in a dark, eerie castle, rather a Democratic state that duly elected its own leaders. The curtain was pulled back on the US covert operation that ran counter to our goals and ideals in support of the oil factions who wanted Iranian oil at cheap prices. On August 19, 2013, the CIA formally acknowledged the United States,
on August 26, 1953, covertly removed the duly-elected Iranian
government of Mohammad Mossadegh and installed our puppet in his place, Mohammed
Reza Pahlavi, the Shaw of Iran.
The leader we removed was parliamentary-elected Mohammad Mossadegh, elected in 1951. Mossadegh soon nationalized
the Iranian oil fields, taking them away from British control for the
first time since 1913. The oil fields were controlled
by the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company/Anglo Iranian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), known to us today as
British Petroleum, or BP. [Note: Look up Winston Churchill's involvement with lobbying British
Parliament for APOC, a subsidiary of Burmah Oil, in 1923] The intent of the seizure was for Iran to
control its own economic future as Iran was making little money off
the huge oil exports, but the U.S. and Britain used the threat of
“communism” to covertly remove the Mossadegh government and
install one of their own. The Shaw was “returned to power”
because he was guaranteed of not going “communist.” The control
of the oil fields was returned to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company under the Shaw.
When the westernized Shaw tried to modernize Iran by giving voting
rights and education to Iranian women in 1963, the resulting protests
by religious clerics led to Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini being exiled from Iran
and he fled to France.
So far so good, but unfortunately for us, the
Shaw of Iran was not the great leader the West expected, and his
brutal government fell
in a popular revolution in 1979 that led to the return of the exiled
Ayatollah. The secular government was replaced by a militant religious one. The collapse of the Shaw's government led to the 444 day
hostage situation, where 52 U.S. Embassy staff were taken
hostage. The hostages were released, incidentally, when word was
received in Tehran by the new, revolutionary
government that Ronald Reagan had been sworn
in as U.S. President, as agreed in the
secret Algiers Accord that guaranteed Iran's sovereignty.
To complicate the Middle East even further, we then backed and
supplied Iran's arch enemy in the bitter eight-year Iran-Iraq war
that soon followed. That war, from 1980 until 1988, killed over one
million soldiers and civilians. Who did we back with money, weapons
and training? Why, none other than our dear friend, Saddam Hussein!
To muddy the waters even more, President Reagan initiated the
Iran/Contra affair, where we supplied illegal arms to Iran at the
same time we backed the Iraqis. You don't think we have a bad
reputation in the area, do you?
Iran has been run by conservative religious clerics ever since 1979,
even though the day-to-day government is run by the Iranian
parliament. Attaining a nuclear bomb is a status symbol, leverage for
political supremacy, but certainly not a viable, usable weapon. The Iranians can't bomb Israel, or anyone else for that matter,
without removing most of the Middle East, including Iran, from planet
Earth. The Israeli nuclear arsenal can remove every Arab capital and still have bombs left over. [The North Koreans on the other hand have nothing to lose in a
nuclear war, a vast radioactive wasteland there might be an
improvement.] Terrorists getting nuclear weapons? Iran and Saudi
Arabia could themselves be targets from radical Muslims extremists, and especially Dubai and Qatar. I don't think nuclear weapons are going to be handed out to
Hezbollah or Al-Quaida, ever. The policy of stopping the nuclear proliferation taken by the Obama administration is the first step of defense just in case I'm wrong.
I have no love for Israel ever since their controversial attack on
the U.S.S. Liberty, in 1967 during the Six Day War, where they killed
34 Americans and wounded another 171. I was still active duty Air
Force at the time, and U.S. Military sentiment against Israel reached
fever pitch. But Israel is considered the "stalwart of Democracy” in the
Middle East by most American politicians. Israel is without a doubt
the economic and educational leader in the Middle East. However,
insuring their security is not something I want my children to die
for. The Israelis are tough enough to do it by themselves, but also
smart enough to get us to do it for them, just like British
Intelligence (MI5) who convinced President Eisenhower to implement
CIA Operation Ajax to install the Shaw. Perhaps we just aren't as
smart as we think.
Any step toward normal relations with Iran is going to be tough, but
one thing we don't need are the people who want “to get even.”
The Crusades are over, at least to most of us. The Muslim religion
will eventually evolve and leave the medieval standards of the past
just as Christianity did. The question is not whether we can wait that
long, the question is whether we as a people want war or peace.
***
"On the evening of September 11, 2001, about ten thousand
Iranian people gathered in Madar Square, on the north side of Tehran,
in a spontaneous candlelight vigil to express sympathy and support
for the American People"2
On September 18, 2001, Iranian women lit candles in Teheran’s
Mohseni Square in memory of the victims of the terror attacks on the
World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC.
Even the most hardline Islamic clerics, who despise the United
States, have been shocked into silence by the attacks. President
Mohammad Khatami set the tone for Iran's reaction with a statement
that in Persian rang with deep compassion: "On behalf of the
Iranian people and the Islamic Republic, I denounce the terrorist
measures, which led to the killing of defenseless people, and I
express my deep sorrow and sympathy with the American people."3
Huge crowds attended candlelit vigils in Iran, and 60,000 spectators
observed a minute's silence at Tehran football stadium.
In 2007, U.S. Presidential candidate John McCain sang, “Bomb, bomb,
bomb... bomb, bomb, Iran.” The question is not just “why” but who wrote the music?
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