You probably have seen Les Kinsolving even if you don’t know his name. He’s roughly speaking the male equivalent of Helen Thomas. He had been the White House correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner and wrote a syndicated column. He became a White House correspontant during the Nixon years and started doing radio. He’s been a fixture on talk radio since 1986 (currently at WCBM). He’s the guy who pokes pointed questions at the White House press secretary and the other reports stand back to let him ask a followup, knowing how he tends to ask the precise questions the President doesn’t want to answer (regardless of the party)
Les is reasonably called a “Neocon” in the actual sense – a former Berkeley liberal who “turned” Conservative for whatever his reasons – but even so, he isn’t a hard line Conservative. He is an Anglican minister – he had been an priest in the Episcopalean church until 1978, which is eessentially the American franchise of the Anglican church.
So tonight, Les was talking about Iran and sanctions. I arrived as he took a call from someone who thinks it is time to end the sanctions on Iran. The caller stated he thinks much of the reason Iran hates the United States (other than Israel) is that the United States overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953.
That’s a fact, and I’ve written exactly the same thing. Whether you agree with what the United States did (or not), the facts are what they are.
Iran’s civilization goes back to 2800 BC and has historically been called Persia in the West. Persia dominated much of that part of the world until Islam swept through in the 7th century.
Iran became a Constitutional Monarchy in 1906, with a sitting Parliament and Senate. In 1925, Rezā Shāh took power, overthrowing the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty. During his reign, Iran made significant progress as a country, and felt confident enough to challenge England’s rate of payment for extracting Iran’s oil.
In 1941, the US and USSR occupied Iran to seize their railroads to fight against Germany and forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favor of his son (the man we remember as the Shah of Iran)
Following the World War II occupation as things returned to normal, Iran held elections in 1951 and elected Mohammad Mosaddegh to be Prime Minister after the assassination of the General the Shah had appointed as Prime Minister. At the time, the Parliament was pushing the English controlled oil company (what we know today as BP) to give Iran a 50/50 split on oil revenue – the deal Saudi Arabia had just been given. There was also significant anger at how England had occupied Iran during the way, which has historically resisted all attempts of other countries to colonize or occupy them.
The elected Parliament voted 79–12 for Mosaddegh to become Prime Minister – and the Shah could see he couldn’t just appoint his generals. The Parliament went ahead and nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and England responded with economic sanctions blocking Iran from selling the oil and throwing the economy of Iran into turmoil.
In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower took over as President and accepted the idea that Mosaddegh might be too friendly with the Communists in Russia and Winston Churchill and Eisenhower agreed to launch Operation Ajax to overthrow the elected government of Iran. Teddy Roosevelt’s son Kermit was the point man in Tehran to lead the operation. Mosaddegh was charged with treason and removed from power and the Shah appointed the CIA’s choice for Prime Minister (no, his name wasn’t Hifter)
So that’s the historical context of the caller’s opinion to Les. Initially, Les misunderstood and thought the caller was talking about the 1979 revolution and how the Islamic radicals took over the country. After that came out of Les, the caller made it more clear that he was talking about the 1953 overthrow of the elected government of Iran by the CIA.
Les responded that “Well, his family had ruled the country for generations, so he had the right to take over”.
*sigh*
The Shah of Iran was already the Shah at the hands of the US and Soviet Union. What changed in 1953 was we told the Shah the US and England were taking over – he could be our puppet or he could no longer be Shah.
Not only was Les factually wrong – his father had taken over in 1925 and was not a hereditary descendent of the prior “Family” of shahs, Les seems to be taking the point of view that a claim of a hereditary right to rule trumps a freely elected democratic government. The United States had a little war starting in 1776 that was supposed to put that idea to rest.
I don’t know if Les doesn’t know the history of Iran in the 1940s and 50s (that seems umlikely – Les is 84 years old) or just is so much now part of the Beltway mentality that he doesn’t question what we did in 1953 or at least integrate it into his understanding of Iran / US relations and why the Iranian people rushed to take over the country in 1979 when the Shah left the country for cancer treatment. Unfortunately for us, since the Shah had been so harsh as a ruler, it was the political extremists to took over, not the reasonable secular people.
If Iran didn’t view us as their mortal enemy, we wouldn’t be so dependent on Pakistan as our “friend” in Western Asia. Iran is not a country of 7th century throwbacks herding sheep and growing heroin poppies – it was the place that civilization started, and was where much of what we know today about philosophy, medicine, math and science was preserved and flourished under Islamic influence. The invasion of the Mongols under Ghengis Khan ended much of that progress in the 13th century.
Persians are not Arabs and have fought for centuries to not be dominated by their Arab neighbors (or their European or Turkish ones). Until that sinks in to the talking heads on TV, people will continue to not understand how that part of the world works.