Iran: How Did We Get Here?

Last night, our relationship with Iran boiled over. Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated by an airstrike ordered by the United States. While every media outlet quickly adopted the establishment line of “he was a terrorist so it’s good we killed him and this was totally defensive”, I’m here to bring you the real story.

In order to understand how we got to this point, we have to have a history lesson. Our tensions with Iran began somewhere around 1953. So let’s begin there, with our coup against the democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq.

Enforcing “Democracy” in Iran Through Violent Coup

Mohammed Mossadeq was the Prime Minister of Iran, elected through a legitimate electoral process. In other words, he was chosen by the people of Iran as the best person to lead their country. It was a fine display of democracy, which is exactly why the United States was mad about it.

You see, unlike the previous government of Iran, which had been more than happy to play ball with the United States (and the UK) when it came to giving them cheap oil, Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil supplies.

That means that he wanted to make the oil of Iran owned by the people of Iran. Crazy, I know. The United States and the UK were very much against this, as it meant an end to their “sweetheart deals” in the region.

So the CIA launched a coup and overthrew Mossadeq by force. The US then proceeded to install Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had been in charge of Iran prior to the Revolution that installed Mossadeq, as the “new” leader of Iran.

What followed was a period of simultaneous economic aid ($68 million initially, and $1.2 billion over the course of the next decade) and also a brutal purge, both sponsored by the US.

See, the people of Iran were generally not pleased that their chosen leader had been overthrown by a foreign power and began resisting. If history tells us anything, it’s that the US doesn’t like resistance. So they funded and supported their puppet dictator’s secret police forces which were responsible for thousands of murders of “dissidents”.

The 1979 Revolution & Aftermath

The puppet Shah was eventually overthrown by another Revolution in 1979. The new leader of Iran became Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an extremely anti-American Islamic cleric. One of his first proclamations upon taking power was to condemn America as “the great Satan”. Bit extreme, but considering what America had been doing in the country, it’s understandable.

So what happened to the Shah? Well, at this point he had terminal cancer and was desperately trying to get into the United States for shelter. As you might have expected, the Iranian people did not like this. They wanted him to stay in Iran and be executed for his MANY crimes against humanity.

To be fair, then-President Carter didn’t want to let the Shah in and refused to provide any aid to him. But after persistent pressure from such notable pro-American imperialism political figures such as Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller, caved and allowed the Shah asylum.

This proved to be a mistake, as the Iranian revolutionaries took this as confirmation of all their suspicions that the US was trying to overthrow their Ayatollah (probably true) and re-install the Shah to power.

They reacted by storming the US’s embassy in Iran, taking several hostages. You may remember this as the “hostage crisis” famously depicted in the movie “Argo” not long ago. Good movie, bad historical accuracy. But I digress.

Consequences

Although the hostage crisis ended diplomatically, it had far reaching economic consequences for Iran. Following the hostage taking, the US immediately froze $12 billion in Iranian assets. In 1981, as part of the Algiers Accords, approximately $2 billion was released back to Iran, leaving $10 billion still frozen, though the exact figure is up for debate. Either way, it’s a fuckload of money.

Many sanctions were also put in place by the US on Iran, severely limiting the flow of food, medicine, and other necessary goods into the country. This has lasted from 1995 until the present day, and is the subject of our next section, the Iranian Nuclear Deal.

The Iran Nuclear Deal, Or, How To Make Sure No One Trusts the United States Ever Again

Towards the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, he made the historic move of succeeding in signing a deal with Iran that would ensure the country did not develop a nuclear weapon. This is something that had been a sore point for decades between the two nations.

The United States was desperate, they claimed, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons because if they did, they would be able to threaten “stability in the region”.

What this means is that Iran would no longer be able to be bullied by the US and it’s proxy states, Israel & Saudi Arabia. Historically, countries that have nukes have been blessedly free (relatively) of the disgusting need of the US to dominate the world through any means necessary. China & Russia are good examples of this.

As a side-note, this is also the reason North Korea wants to develop a nuclear weapon: as a deterrent from US “regime change”. But I’ll cover that in a different article.

The Deal

Returning to Iran, the terms of the deal that were reached were quite reasonable. In brief, Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium just enough so as to be able to provide power for its infrastructure – nuclear energy, in other words, but not enough to be able to create a bomb. They would have to submit to constant monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is the body responsible for monitoring nuclear development.

In exchange, all sanctions imposed by the US on Iran would be lifted and the $10 billion or so in frozen assets that had been kept by the US would be returned to Iran.

Essentially, we would be giving them back their own money and allowing trade to happen again, AND there would no longer be a fear of them developing a nuke. Sounds like a win-win, right?

That is not how the Republicans saw the matter.

Aftermath

Warhawks on both sides of the aisle decried the deal. Republicans in particular, who often found reason to criticize Obama for the smallest of things, such as breathing, began spewing out propaganda about the deal to their largely brain-dead audience.

Most of this centered around the $10 billion in assets. Fox News, and other outlets, constantly said that the money was from the American taxpayers – a flat out lie. I reiterate, it was Iran’s own money being returned to them. But since the average American has the memory span of a few hours, few remembered that these assets had been Iran’s to begin with.

This went on for years. Warmongers continued to claim that Iran was breaking the terms of the treaty and enriching past the point they were supposed to, despite constant evidence that they were not. To make matters worse, Congress essentially immediately violated the deal by re-upping the sanctions on Iran “just in case”, or some stupid reason.

When Trump got elected, one of the first things he did was pull the US out of the Deal. That’s right. Despite ample evidence that Iran was doing nothing wrong, and all the other nations involved confirming this and remaining in the deal, the US unilaterally pulled out of it.

Sanctions were doubled on Iran, for no reason. Despite this, Iran stuck to the terms of the deal. That article I linked earlier was from April 2019, meaning that long after the US had its temper tantrum, Iran was STILL trying to maintain peace.

Further Escalation

Trump also increased drone strikes in the region. Yup. A pretty funny (in a “wtf is wrong with our media” way) moment about this came from a recent interview CBS did with Bernie Sanders. The interviewer was talking about Iran and mentioned that what was happening were “only limited strikes” by drones, not war.

Bernie laughed at this and reiterated that “limited strike” was a bullshit spin to make us bombing another country sound better. Indeed, if Iran bombed Ohio and then called it a “limited strike”, I really doubt the US would go, “Oh, ok, sure. No problem bro.”

But because the US is doing it, it’s fine apparently. That interview highlights an important problem with US political discourse. The default assumption is that whatever the US does it “right” and justified. It doesn’t matter if the action is reprehensible; the assumption is that we are correct by default. No other country enjoys such privilege.

Escalation Party

Not too long ago, Iran was accused by the US of bombing Saudi Arabian oil tankers, and an oil field. Iran denied all responsibility for both actions, and indeed, actual evidence not provided by the US is spotty. Now, its entirely possible Iran was lying. But examined in the broader context of the US’s rabid desire to go to war with Iran, any sudden action by Iran against the US or it’s proxy states must be thoroughly scrutinized.

In regards to the tanker attack, the US immediately blamed Iran, despite the investigation being in its infancy. Indeed, the owner of the tanker itself, a Japanese company, quickly denied that Iran was even involved at all.

There was also the matter of Iran shooting down a US drone that had flown into Iranian airspace. Most of the US media was busy screaming about “how could they have done this?!”, etc. No one seemed to be asking what a US drone was doing in Iranian airspace in the first place.

Again, I ask you what would have happened if Iran had a drone floating over Ohio and it had been shot down. Would we be totally cool with Iran flying drones through our airspace? You know the answer.

Iran also arrested 17 people who they claim were CIA backed spies. Of course the US denied all of this, but come on. Would any country just go, “oh, yea, haha, our bad. Totally our spies.”? The alleged spies were caught in Iranian nuclear energy facilities and military sites.

Again, taken in broader context, the claim bears some weight. Whether its true or not I don’t know for certain. But it’s certainly plausible.

There and Back Again

So that’s a brief history of the highlights of our long, ongoing conflict with Iran. Now it seems that the warhawks and Trump have finally gotten their wish. The assassination of Soleimani is an action that Iran cannot ignore. There will be retaliation.

At time of writing, Iran has already sworn vengeance and has stated that they’ve decided on a course of action. What it is has not been revealed as of yet.

As you follow this news story, Soleimani will be smeared as a terrorist and a really bad dude. He may not have been an innocent lamb. He has indeed been responsible for several horrendous things.

However, and this is important, that does not give the United States the right to murder him. No nation has the right to unilaterally go into another, sovereign country, and assassinate one of their leaders. This would be the equivalent of Iran (or whoever) drone striking John Bolton as he’s walking around DC.

For those who say “he was a terrorist”, let me leave you with this piece of information. Soleimani was instrumental in the fight against ISIS. You know, the terrorists we’ve been fighting for like two decades now. Kinda weird that suddenly he’s also a terrorist.

The United States has a habit of labeling anyone they don’t like as a “terrorist”. It’s happened before, it’s happening now, and it will continue to happen as long as our government is controlled by forces like the Military Industrial Complex. By the way, stock prices for every defense company skyrocketed last night and this morning.

War is good business.