Khamenei Crosses the Rubicon, Becomes the 'Great Satan'

By reaffirming the legitimacy of President Ahmadinejad's election victory yesterday, the so-called Ayatollah Khamenei placed his theocracy on the same (im)moral plane as the "Great Satan" that had deprived the Iranian people of its duly elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953.

In order to understand the significance of Khamanei's decision, it helps to recall what the United States did in 1953 to earn the moniker of the "Great Satan".

For decades Iran had supplied Britain's and much of Europe's oil under an agreement very favorable to British oil companies. Mossadegh's campaign to become Iran's Prime Minister included a stated intent to nationalize its oil industry. Mossadegh's admittedly populist appeal was to stop the pillage of Iran's precious resource by Western powers.

To thwart nationalization after Mossadegh's victory, the British planned a coup d'état to restore the Shah to power. It was to be hatched in their Teheran embassy by intelligence operatives. Mossadegh learned of the plot, and shut down the embassy.

The British then turned to the US. To his everlasting credit, Truman rebuffed them.

Upon the election of Eisenhower, and most importantly the appointment of John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, the US government changed character.

Dulles's brother, Allen, was the Director of the CIA. Under the Dulles boys the US overthrew Mossadegh in 1953 (and then, for good measure, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954).

Most importantly, the US not only ousted Mossadegh, it also uprooted a democracy and restored the autocratic, unelected Shah who developed a increasingly brutal dictatorship to retain power.

That is worth repeating -- the US did not just oust a Prime Minister, it uprooted a democracy in Iran, and replaced it with the Shah, whose brother ran Savak, the brutal secret police that suppressed the people of Iran for 25 years and confiscated mosque properties, while the Shah himself developed delusions of grandeur, trying to recreate the glory of Cyrus the Great, and spending lavish sums on feathering the nest of his Peacock Throne from oil revenues while the teeming masses remained poor.

Fast forward to the late 70s. Using radical Islam as the cause, the mullahs overthrew the Shah, and later seized the US embassy (where the overthrow of Mossadegh had been hatched) when the Shah was admitted to the US, and started spreading their radical brand of Islam through the Middle East.

Any mystery, then, why characterizing the US as the "Great Satan" was so easily and enduringly accepted by the Iranian people, and why American protestations of being pro-democracy do not ring true in Iran?

Khamenei has now crossed that same Rubicon. He has stolen from the Iranian people their franchise, just like the United States did in 1953. Having stoked anti-Americanism on that principle, Khamenei can hardly diminish its importance and he is forced to repeat as fact that which everyone knows is false.

Some Iranians hate the theocracy, others like or tolerate it, but its legitimacy was generally intact, even Khamenei's phony elevation to the status of Ayatollah.

That legitimacy is now undermined.

"We have met the 'Great Satan', and he is us."

Comments

[ModernTimes1]

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. -Friedrich Nietzsche

[ModernTimes1]

So let's review this.
UK and US overthrew the democratic government of Iran.
And to protest this, Iranians instituted a a despotic theocracy.
Genius.

[morgan1]

This has the ring of a Neocon and Imperial Americana graduate. Historically, some of this is true but the overall end is Iran is a country we have no business involving ourselves in with an intent to overthrow the existing govt. with one more friendly to us--We have done that in dozens of countries with horrible consequences. We have covert ops there working to undermine the govt while the WH keeps saying we are not. We pay dissidents to make demonstrations and protests while saying we are not. This is US policy and has been for decades. What we need to do is stop what doesn't work and continues to make enemies, sit down and really talk out these differences and come to an agreement that is mutual for everyone. That is real diplomacy and what real adults do.

[GoodwithWood]

The CIA called it "Operation Ajax'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

[larry278]

The USA's domestic disinformation programs are effective. I was talking about the 1979 hostage crisis to a lady of 50. She didn't know that the former Shah was hated & feared by Iran's people. Since I went to school with Muslims & I had dated a few Muslim women, I learned what Muslims knew.
Many Muslims saw the Shah & his relatives as disgraces to Islam. The Shah & his relatives weren't what I'd call nice people.
I gained insights of the American sponsored coup of 1953. To say the least the USA wasn't a friend to Iran's people. I choose to feel shame, as American, for what the USA has done to Iran.
Use your favorite search engine to learn of US-Iranian relations during & after WW II. Judge for yourself. You might also want to explore British-Iranian & USSR-Iranian relations after WW I & Russian-Iranian relations from 1990 to the present. The story is exciting, at the least.

[ModernTimes1]

"I was talking about the 1979 hostage crisis to a lady of 50. She didn't know that the former Shah was hated & feared by Iran's people."

Well that certainly justified talking U.S. diplomats as hostages. ( sarcasm on).
Talking about falling prey to propaganda...

[MED1025]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Bundenthal]

Re: fast forwarding to the revolution... It is a mistake to oversimplify and say the radical islamists overthrew the Shah. The revolution had three prongs and must be connected to the Shah's "White Revolution" reforms. The white revolution was key - some were opposed to it, others perhaps enabled by it. The groups, however, included "students" and the middle class of business - actually a "bourgeoisie" and "petty bourgeoisie." The radical religious leaders more accurately stole the revolution and then were able to consolidate power due to the onset of the Iran-Iraq War. What is happening now is a revolutionary event in what had been an evolutionary process in Iran. That is the incremental development of a modern, semi-democratic Iran. That process had been dammed (damned?) by the US neglect to use the opening provided by the Khatami presidency and then further by the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent reactionary election of Ahmadinajad.
What is happening now is that the Iranian people are trying to take back the revolution of 1979 and the younger generation is realizing it is their turn to reshape their nation. The clerics may win out short term, but this is the begining of the end. The smart clerics will work toward changes that will meet the nascent demands of the populace while retaining as much of their position as possible. This process of bargaining is key to shaping any regime change whether velvet or violent.

[Paul Abrams - Huffpost Blogger]

The Shah was pretty damned brutal, via his secret police.
Very clear that Bush had an opening with Khatami that he did not WANT to work---he was convinced that he would be the great liberator of history, and so did not WANT to improve relations with Iran.

I completely agree that Bush certainly improved the likelihood for an Ahmadinejad to win and take over, even including Iran in his axis of evil speech, where one was invaded, would make any regime paranoid about what happens to them, and thus circle the wagons.

In the context of prior US action in Iran, in 1953, they had to believe that Bush would have, if he could have, invaded. Some of his cowardly (never volunteered themselves) neocons were said to have said, "the wimps go to Baghdad, the real men go to Teheran".

[Lahonda]

America the beautiful.

[mamacat]

For the purposes of historical context, I think it is worth reflecting upon that the "...brutal dictatorship..." of the Shah did not resort to the brutal methods that the mullahs are using today. If the Shah had been willing to treat the Iranian people as cruelly as the Imams of today are, then he would have been able to retain his power over the country. To his credit, he chose to leave the country, rather than turn his police and military on the crowds who demanded his ouster.

Pres. Carter has been criticised for allowing the Shah to have refuge in the United States, during treatment for his terminal illness. I think Pres. Carter felt it was inhumane for America to turn its back on the man installed by one of his Republican predecessors, even if he and the other Democratic Presidents would not resort to overthrowing a Democracy for the benefit of the oil cartel.

[NourCA]

Excellent.

[savertime]

Thank you! I've been trying to explain how the west (US and UK) stole democracy from Iran. You did it .

[argyle]

Concise, correct and brilliant.