Assigned Iran Homework: <i>The Great Satan Myth</i>

By John Ballard

As a student I hated history. It is filled with stories and dates that no longer make any difference. Or so I thought. But as I got older I came into contact with people for whom history was more important than the present. In fact, it was history that animated their present belief and behavior. The civil rights movement was history going to seed. A Korean national contempt for anyone and anything Japanese derived from Japan's colonial subjugation of that country from the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) to World War II, during which Koreans were forced to change their names to Japanese names, learn to speak the language in schools and commerce as young Korean women sent to be sex-slaves, serving the Imperial Japanese armed forces ("comfort women" they were called). And in my own family a lost legacy with roots in the Civil War carried more weight than any contemporary accomplishments. Yes, history proves to be far more important than we like to admit.

So a closer look at all the histories of places where we claim "interests" is more than a conversational pleasantry. Knowing history is a way to avoid catastrophes in the present. As recent experience has shown, great numbers of ordinary people lacking both curiosity and resources can be led to believe anything they are told. Nevertheless, those of us who know better have a duty to continue pointing them in the right direction. To that end, this post points to a reading assignment about the history of modern Iran (post World War Two) in an excellent piece (H/T Abbas)  The Great Satan Myth subtitled
Everything you know about U.S. involvement in Iran is wrong Here is a sample.

If there�s one event that has come to define perceptions of U.S. meddling, it is the coup that ejected the popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power in 1953. Both Madeleine Albright and Barack Obama have acknowledged America�s role in the coup in speeches that were widely taken to be apologies.

In no small measure, the American understanding of the event derives from a 1979 memoir published by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Theodore�s grandson. Roosevelt, a CIA operative, had indeed slipped across the border and spent considerable sums on black propaganda intended to inflict mortal wounds against Mossadegh. But Roosevelt�s memoir inflated his own and, in turn, America�s centrality to the coup. He tells the story with the relish of a John le Carr�nock-off. Although declassified CIA documents would later confirm many details of his account, his version is exceptionally self-serving. Despite having little knowledge of Iranian society and speaking no Persian, he describes launching an instantly potent propaganda campaign. Eisenhower, for one, considered reports like this to be the stuff of �dime novels.�

The Roosevelt book, however, has an enduring legacy. It depicts the coup as an American and British concoction and inadvertently absolves Mossadegh of his many missteps. But the backstory of his fall is far more complicated. Mossadegh had initially seen the Americans as his staunch ally. And the United States reciprocated this warmth. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who first paid attention to events in Iran. During World War II, American soldiers were stationed in Iran to manage the transnational railroad, an essential supply line for the badly bruised Red Army. And, as Roosevelt departed from the 1943 Tehran Conference with Stalin and Churchill, he met at the airport with his envoy, General Patrick Hurley, and formulated a new Iran policy. Its primary goals included promoting democracy and ridding Iran of colonial forces. In rhetoric that might now be tainted as neoconservative, the policy clearly aimed to transform Iran into a showcase of democracy and the vanguard of the decolonized Middle East. As Hurley later distilled the new policy, �[Iran] can achieve for herself the fulfillment of the principles of justice, freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of want, equality and opportunity, and to a degree, freedom from fear.�

Mossadegh seemed to represent the promise of post-colonial Iran. Even as ardent a proponent of Pax Americana as Henry Luce felt comfortable making him Time�s �Man of the Year.� But the idea of supporting a post-colonial democrat necessarily put the United States on a collision course with its allies. Winston Churchill despised Mossadegh for nationalizing Iran�s oil fields and refineries, which the British considered their rightful heirlooms. Back in London, the Brits mulled plans to seize those assets back militarily. For nearly two years, the Truman administration, particularly the diplomat Averell Harriman, worked furiously to broker a solution to this standoff. And, even though those efforts failed, they did prevent a British attack. The British grew so frustrated by the U.S. efforts to fashion a compromise that, according to documents in their archives, they came to believe that the United States was dealing with Mossadegh behind their backs.

None of these subtleties, of course, ever merits a mention in the regime�s version of events. Nor do the clerics mention a detail that grows richer in irony with each apology by an American politician. It was the clerical establishment�s animosity towards Mossadegh that laid the groundwork for his ouster. A broad swath of clerics--Islamists like Ayatollah Abolgasem Kashani, a mentor of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini--had initially supported Mossadegh. But, by late 1952, the clerics turned against him after he bucked their demands. The Ayatollah Kashani unsuccessfully pressed Mossadegh for the right to appoint key ministers. Another top cleric called on the prime minister to purge the civil service of Baha�is--a bane of Shia clergy. The clergy�s allegiance to Mossadegh weakened further as he allowed the communist Tudeh Party to gain ever more power, despite his own personal abhorrence of communism. Once Mossadegh squandered the allegiance of the clergy, the inevitability of his fate became increasingly clear. (He had also alienated the middle class, increasingly weary of ideological warfare; and the army had pleaded for his ouster.)

This is but a glimpse into how American good intentions in Iran morphed into the depiction of America as The Great Satan. I don't find remedies here, just better understanding. It's a modern political tragedy.
Considering the impact of sanctions on Iraq that over time only served as tools used by a tyrant against his subjects, I cannot imagine that sanctions against Iran will be much different.