Remembering western sponsored coup in Iran

Solly Rakgomo | Thursday August 24, 2017 16:54

Since the revolution, Iran has endured and survived brutal sanctions from the West whose intention is to overthrow the theocratic regime in Tehran and replace it with a Shah Pahlavi  style puppet dictatorship ready to pander to the whims of western countries. 

Andre Viltchek says that after WWII, the West had one huge ‘problem’ on its hands: all three most populous Muslim countries on Earth namely Egypt, Iran and Indonesia  were clearly moving in one similar direction, joining group of patriotic, peaceful and tolerant nations. They were deeply concerned about the welfare of their citizens, and by no means were they willing to allow foreign colonialist powers to plunder their resources, or enslave their people. In the 1950s, the world was rapidly changing, and there was suddenly hope that the countries that were oppressed and pillaged for decades and centuries by first the European and then North American geopolitical and business interests, would finally break their shackles and stand proudly on their own feet. Several Communist countries in Eastern Europe, but also newly liberated China, were actively helping with rapid de-colonising process in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Those developments were exactly what the West in general was not ready or willing to accept. Ancient belief in some sort of inherited right to colonise, to loot and to control entire non-white world, was deeply engraved in the psyche of the rulers in both Europe and North America. Peaceful, tolerant and socially oriented Islam was seen as a tremendous threat, at least in London, Washington and Paris. It had to be stopped, even destroyed, resolutely and by all available means. Only the pre-approved Wahhabism (from Saudi allies of course) which was collaborative with the West and from the onset at least partially co-produced by the British Empire, was singled-out and allowed to ‘bloom and succeed’.

Iran fell first in 1953. Actually, it did not fall; it was brutally destroyed. According to the logic of the Empire, Iran had to be derailed and ruined, in order to prevent so-called domino effect. As written by Irfan Ahmad, “Major theatre of de-democratisation was Iran, whose elected government was overthrown, in 1953, by a US-UK alliance. Mohammad Mosaddeq was Iran’s elected Prime Minister. He enjoyed the approval of Iran’s Parliament for his nationalisation programme. The US and UK organised a CIA-led coup to oust Mosaddeq, because Iran refused to make oil concessions to the West. Historical accounts show that during World War II, the UK had taken control of Iran to prevent oil from being passed to its ally, the Soviet Union. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the UK continued to control Iran’s oil after the war. The French-educated Mosaddeq was highly critical of Iran’s draining of resources to the West. Soon after getting elected as prime minister in March 1951, Mosaddeq and his National Front alliance had moved to nationalise Iranian oil and throw out foreign control of oil fields. The UK retaliated by imposing economic sanctions, backed by its heavy naval presence in the region. Mosaddeq, however, was undeterred; his popularity only increased amongst the Iranian people. Faced with Mosaddeq’s resistance, the UK-US alliance staged a coup to over throw Mosaddeq’s government.”

In Indonesia, a progressive and religiously tolerant President Ahmed Sukarno was also overthrown more than a decade after Mohammad Mosaddeq in Iran. The coup took place in 1965, with direct involvement of the United States. Between one and three million people were brutally slaughtered. Sukarno’s main ‘sins’, at least in the eyes of the Western Empire, consisted of strong left wing, patriotic stands, which included nationalisation of almost all natural resources. Sukarno was also one of the founding fathers of non-aligned movement.

By the end of the 1960s, socialism in the Muslim countries had been almost thoroughly demolished. Dark era of collaboration, particularly in the Persian Gulf region, arrived. The 1953 coup in Iran was later replicated in various parts of the world, even as far as a Latin America.

For years it has been no secret that the US and the UK. planned and executed this deadly event.

Although the US government was originally hesitant about supporting the UK in planning to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq, it soon changed its mind and allowed the CIA to plot and execute the coup. What followed was 26 years of perversely brutal rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi, as well as of the British-US control over almost all great natural resources of Iran.