According to many politicians our history with Iran begins in 1979? - CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup

[cliffside]

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

"Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 – Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.

.... Also, the public release of these materials is noteworthy because CIA documents about 1953 are rare. First of all, agency officials have stated that most of the records on the coup were either lost or destroyed in the early 1960s, allegedly because the record-holders' "safes were too full."[2]

Regarding public access to any remaining files (reportedly about one cubic foot of material), the intelligence community's standard procedure for decades has been to assert a blanket denial. This is in spite of commitments made two decades ago by three separate CIA directors. Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch each vowed to open up agency historical files on a number of Cold War-era covert operations, including Iran, as a sign of the CIA's purported new policy of openness after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.[3]

....But all 21 of the CIA items posted today (in addition to 14 previously unpublished British documents — see Sidebar), reinforce the conclusion that the United States, and the CIA in particular, devoted extensive resources and high-level policy attention toward bringing about Mosaddeq's overthrow, and smoothing over the aftermath."

[UpInArms]

1. The Dulles brothers

Evil people

[cliffside]

2. Always good to look a bit further, thank you :) ...

Meet 'The Brothers' Who Shaped U.S. Policy, Inside And Out
Fresh Air | By NPR Staff
Published October 16, 2013 at 12:33 PM EDT

https://www.wunc.org/2013-10-16/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

"In 1953, for the first and only time in history, two brothers were appointed to head the overt and covert sides of American foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles secretary of state, and Allen Dulles director of the CIA.

Journalist Stephen Kinzer says the Dulles brothers shaped America's standoff with the Soviet Union, led the U.S. into war in Vietnam, and helped topple governments they thought unfriendly to American interests in Guatemala, Iran, the Congo and Indonesia. In his new book, The Brothers, Kinzer says the Dulles' actions "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises."

John Dulles died in 1959. President Kennedy replaced Allen Dulles after the covert operation he recommended to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba ended disastrously in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Kinzer tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the Dulles' shared background and ideology played out in their policy decisions: "They had this view of the world that was implanted in them from a very young age," Kinzer says. "That there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones."

The 1953 US-Led Coup in Iran
The Dulles Brothers back at it... again

https://skippedhistory.substack.com/p/the-1953-us-led-coup-in-iran


".... To understand Mossadegh’s ouster, let’s first chat about some other patricians—the British!— whose empire peaked 40 years earlier. In 1913, close to a quarter of the world’s population lived under the Union Jack, and one of the empire’s crown jewels was Iran, which Winston Churchill called “a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams.” Why did Churchill describe Iran like The Rock describes GNC? Well, Churchill lived on an island whose chief source of fuel was oil. And Iran not only had oil but thanks to a series of deals that Britain imposed on Iran dating back to 1907 it, magically, also had oil that Britain controlled!

This was the imperial context in which a young Mohammad Mossadegh grew up. At turns theatrical, intimidating, and patriotic, he entered the Irani Parliament in 1924—Iran had a constitutional monarchy. There, he became Britain’s most vocal critic, declaring, “The Iranian is the best person to manage his home.” Mossadegh also became a vocal critic of Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran’s monarch, or just the Shah for short, who was so detested in Iran for his coziness with the British that he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Of note, the Shah was also close with Allen, who when still working as a lawyer in 1949 secured the Shah’s support of a $5 billion construction deal with a client of Allen’s. Although the Shah assured Allen and OCI that the Iranian people “were eager to welcome American capital,” his statement proved almost as wrong as Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy, and Mossadegh’s political party killed the deal with Allen’s client. The following year, 1951, Mossadegh became Iran’s new Prime Minister and with unanimous consent from parliament nationalized the country’s oil industry.

.... But now there was a new empire in town. As planned, Allen’s pal the Shah consolidated his power and split Iran’s oil profits with an international consortium that included the British and a handful of companies in the US. The Shah also spent billions of dollars on US weaponry, and over the ensuing 25 years became a dictator who crushed dissent by any means necessary, including employing torture techniques honed by the CIA. The extreme repression of his regime led Iranians to further detest him, which led to his overthrow during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which led to the Iran Hostage Crisis, which led to the sour state of US-Iranian relations that has persisted ever since. And as one Iranian scholar mused in 2002, “It is a reasonable argument that but for the coup Iran would now be a mature democracy.”

[multigraincracker]

3. 2 big oil companies, one British and the other

American were involved in it too.

[cliffside]

4. Adding this link or two now - A Short Primer on Iran: Several Helpful Readings

Bottom line it is always about resources, the money that ensues and who controls it as we move on to other resources needed for the AI and digital age.

I remember reading years ago as we were attacking Iraq that China was acquiring the rights to rare earth minerals in other countries.

Just a quick search of "china buying up rare earth minerals"

"AI Overview China completely dominates the global rare-earth minerals supply chain, controlling an estimated 60% of worldwide mining and over 90% of refined output and magnet production. By utilizing state subsidies, overseas asset acquisitions, and specialized academic ecosystems, China has created an unassailable chokehold over materials essential for consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and defense manufacturing."


https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/iranprimer.html

".... BRITAIN WAS AT THAT MOMENT FACING A GRAVE CHALLENGE. ITS ABILITY TO project military power, fuel its industries, and give its citizens a high standard of living depended largely on the oil it extracted from Iran. Since 1901 a single corporation, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, principally owned by the British government, had held a monopoly on the extraction, refining, and sale of Iranian oil. Anglo-Iranian's grossly unequal contract, negotiated with a corrupt monarch, required it to pay Iran just 16 percent of the money it earned from selling the country's oil. It probably paid even less than that, but the truth was never known, since no outsider was permitted to audit its books. Anglo-Iranian made more profit in 1950 alone than it had paid Iran in royalties over the previous half century.

... Mossadegh, a European-educated aristocrat who was sixty-nine years old when he came to power, believed passionately in two causes: nationalism and democracy. In Iran, nationalism meant taking control of the country's oil resources. Democracy meant concentrating political power in the elected parliament and prime minister, rather than in the monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah. With the former project, Mossadegh turned Britain into an enemy, and with the latter he alienated the shah.

In the spring of 1951, both houses of the Iranian parliament voted unanimously to nationalize the oil industry. It was an epochal moment, and the entire nation celebrated. "All of Iran's misery, wretchedness, lawlessness and corruption over the last fifty years has been caused by oil and the extortions of the oil company," one radio commentator declared.

Under the nationalization law, Iran agreed to compensate Britain for the money it had spent building its wells and refinery, although any impartial arbitrator would probably have concluded that given the amount of profit the British had made in Iran over the years, Iran's debt would be less than nil. Mossadegh loved to point out that the British had themselves recently nationalized their coal and steel industries. He insisted that he was only trying to do what the British had done: turn their nation's wealth to its own benefit, and make reforms in order to prevent people from resorting to revolution. British diplomats in the Middle East were, of course, unmoved by this argument..."

[H2O Man]

5. Way recommended.

Thank you.

[cliffside]

6. Thank you :) :) nt

[H2O Man]

7. It is so important

that people know accurate history. And it would be impossible to fully grasp the impact that the US installing the shah on Iranian culture today without the information that you have provided here. Your post is DU at its very best.

[cliffside]

9. Thank you very much ....

for your lovely message. I've learned so much from you and other posters at DU over the years, we all do what we can.

Wishing you a very Happy Father's Day

[malaise]

11. Not just politicians

US media as well

[DFW]

8. Cause and effect

You’d think that all of these educated “statesmen” would have remembered what happened in Central Europe after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It is not enough to defeat a foe. It must be ensured that nothing worse takes his place. Less than 20 years after disposing of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany had Hitler. Less than 30 years after deposing Mossadegh, Iran had the Ayatollahs. The two are not exact parallels, but still: cause and effect.

It’s not very smart to poison a well if you will some day need to drink from it.

[malaise]

10. Ding ding

We have a winner.
Great OP

[cliffside]

20. Thank you :) nt

[Kaleva]

12. The current Iranian regime would not have tolerated Mosaddeq

[Kid Berwyn]

13. 1953: The Time When Iran Learned to Hate America

In the photo below, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh is carried on the shoulders of supporters after announcing plans to nationalize Iran's oil fields. This really, really ticked off the Western powers -- the former owners of all that oil, including the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum) and their swell friends on Wall Street, who worried what might happen to Standard Oil of the great state of Rockefeller. So, MI-6 and their muscular cousins at CIA, overthrew him and his government in 1953 -- the last time Iran was a Democracy.



CIA publicly acknowledges 1953 coup it backed in Iran was undemocratic as it revisits ‘Argo’ rescue

by James Gambrell
Associated Press (AP), October 12, 2023

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — While revealing new details about one of the most famed CIA operations of all times — the spiriting out of six American diplomats who escaped the 1979 U.S. Embassy seizure in Iran — the intelligence agency for the first time has acknowledged something else as well.

The CIA now officially describes the 1953 coup it backed in Iran that overthrew its prime minister and cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as undemocratic.

Other American officials have made similar remarks in the past, but the CIA’s acknowledgment in a podcast about the agency’s history comes as much of its official history of the coup remains classified 70 years after the putsch. That complicates the public’s understanding of an event that still resonates, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington over the Islamic Republic’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, its aiding of militia groups across the Mideast and as it cracks down on dissent.

The “CIA’s leadership is committed to being as open with the public as possible,” the agency said in a statement responding to questions from The Associated Press. “The agency’s podcast is part of that effort — and we knew that if we wanted to tell this incredible story, it was important to be transparent about the historical context surrounding these events, and CIA’s role in it.”

Continues...

https://apnews.com/article/iran-1953-coup-cia-218323db3cc1aca6bde1e54827527e8d

Didn't see this story at all when first published in 2023 -- and haven’t seen the real history or the National Security Archive at George Washington University mentioned much at all since — until today. Thank you, cliffside!

[malaise]

15. It's always about land and resources

Yet folks bullshit their way around it.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Truly. Private Property

It’s magical, almost, how fast mineral extraction prints money. And thanks to colonialism and modern law, the money skips the true owners and goes straight into the pockets of the thieves.

[malaise]

18. Well said

Rec

[cliffside]

22. So true! nt

[H2O Man]

16. Recommended!

Oh, thank you! I had said the OP represents the best of DU, involving essential content including the content of the conversations in the thread. And your post is a prime example.

Knowing the actual history actually makes the war seem even more tragic. It doesn't translate to favoring one side or the other -- kind of the opposite, you don't want anyone to "lose" by way of death, injury, and destruction. You are thinking of the psychological damage this causes for little children, who are the upcoming generation.

[Kid Berwyn]

19. My Brother

You, one who understands how hatred and violence destroy souls and communities, understand that only love can build a true and just future and nation. We may grow hoarse shouting it over and over, but we will never lose our humanity or kinship.

[cliffside]

21. Thank you for adding this :) nt

[MineralMan]

14. Yes. We've been fiddling with the Middle East for a very long time.

Too long. It never works out well. You'd think we'd learn. But, we don't. Ever.