CIA’s 1953 Overthrow of Iran Reaps Bitter Harvest For USA

Sherwood Ross | opednews.com | September 12, 2008

Iranians’ hatred of America dates back to the CIA’s violent 1953 overthrow of democratic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh’s government in order to arrange sweetheart contracts for western oil companies, author Stephen Kinzer writes in “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq.”

The CIA’s installation of despot Shah Mohammed Reza Palevi on a throne, Kinzer writes, “ultimately set off a revolution that brought radical fundamentalists to power” in Iran and led to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.“

Not satisfied with the humiliation they visited on the United States by holding 54 American diplomats hostage for 14 months,” Kinzer writes, “these radicals sponsored deadly acts of terror against Western targets, among them the United States Marine barracks in Saudi Arabia and a Jewish community center in Argentina. Their example inspired Muslim fanatics around the world, including in neighboring Afghanistan, where the Taliban gave sanctuary to militants who carried out devastating attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.”

“None of this” would have happened, Kinzer continued, quoting one Iranian diplomat, “if Mossadegh had not been overthrown.”

In his new book, “An Enemy of The People” (Doukathsan), Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, notes that after Kermit Roosevelt, (grandson of President Theodore), then head of Mideast Operations for the CIA, created a state of anarchy that toppled the legitimate government, the U.S. oil companies cashed in.

“Our oil companies—Gulf, Standard of New Jersey, Texaco and Mobil—received a 40 percent share of the new National Iranian Oil Company, and the shah established a tyrannical dictatorship, with the dreaded Savak doing dirty work for him,” Velvel writes. “So our misconduct of yesterday contributed greatly to, (and) probably caused, the terrible situation in the Middle East we find ourselves in today.”

Who Started Cold War II?

Patrick J. Buchanan | Taki’s Magazine | August 18, 2008

The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.

Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow’s superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.

If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.