The Shah, his second wife, and Churchill. Is it World War III yet?
“One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another” Kenneth Koch, One Train May Hide Another
On Trump’s recent visit to England, he was greeted by a large projection on the Tower of London: UK approval ratings—72% for Obama and 21% for Trump.
The reason for these numbers—if they are true—is simple.
Like most intellectuals, Obama doesn’t tend to brag about the United States of America.
Trump is not an intellectual. He does tend to brag about the U.S.
Trump has spoken out against the Iraq invasion; he doesn’t agree with everything America has done—nor does Obama condemn everything American. But these things tend to be either/or. You are an “intellectual”—you read books. Or you do not. 1 in 5 people don’t read books—and at the same time don’t care if people know it. This is what 72/21 “Trump Visits London” poll means. Obama is vaguely identified with intellectuals who read books, and Trump, who disparages the New York Times, is not.
Iran, the 40 year old fortress of reactionary pain, is supported by Obama and Kerry, and London, which is becoming a Muslim city, seems to as well. But Trump is not happy with it.
Since Jimmy Carter, false friend to the Shah, let Iran go to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic has been a burning heart of reactionary Leftism—which has finally found its true enemy in Trumpism.
When it comes down to Christopher Steele versus Donald Trump, who needs to read books?
The political Left self-identifies as intellectual—if they fill out a survey, they will always check “Reads A Lot.”
But in the rarefied world of intellectualism, it’s impossible to tell what sorts of books people really understand, or who is wise in other ways. Who is really getting things done? Who is just kissing ass, and trying to look smart? True worth will not be seen in self-perceptions captured by polls.
In Cairo, in 2009, Obama, gave a “New American President speaks to the Muslims of the World” speech. It was neither sublime, nor informative, nor beautiful. It sounded like what a bright fifteen or sixteen year old student might write.
If this is what intellectualism is, then congratulations, you are probably an intellectual.
Politics is a pragmatic matter—if politicians are boring, and Obama is boring, it is because they are saying what lots of different people want to hear, and can understand easily. They are boring on purpose. And to speak to Muslims without offending them, you have to be either a poet, or deeply religious, and if you’re not, you’re just going to have to be really, really boring. Which is what Obama was in Cairo in 2009.
Pundits on the Left argued that Obama wasn’t apologizing for America; he was just “being diplomatic,” making nice speeches as a new president. And the Left wing pundits, as far as that goes, were probably correct.
Ironically, if Obama was apologizing at all, he was apologizing for Bush. Which is a nice thing about democracy; you can be a nasty country, you elect the new, and then you can “apologize” to the world, and go right on being a bully—destabilizing the Middle East, for instance.
A non-democratic country can “elect” presidents.
Iran does this.
Whenever there is a new Iranian president, he repairs the latest quarrel between the UK and Iran. Diplomatic ties between the United States and Iran have not been in place since 1979, but London and Tehran are still schmoozing—thanks to Iranian presidents. A Iranian Supreme Leader fatwa against an author and his publishers (1989)? The new Iranian president will smooth things over. Your embassy is stormed (2011)? Here comes a newly elected Iranian president to make things right!
One thing intellectuals like argue to about in think tanks and learned foreign policy journals is whether ideology (religion) or strategy (chess) is more important in world affairs.
Trita Parsi, author, founder of the National Iranian American Council, and a professor at Georgetown University, who received a Ph.D. under the guidance of Francis Fukuyama (End of History) and Zbig Brzezinski (National Security Advisor when Khomeini took Iran) can talk for hours about Iran without once mentioning Islam. With Parsi, everything is dry, logical, and strategic.
Kasra Aarabi, former parliamentary researcher for UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and currently an analyst focusing on Iran at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, makes a far different case.
Arabi cannot speak a single sentence without mentioning Shia, sharia, velayat-e faqih, and the Supreme Leader’s plan (in the Iran Constitution itself) to spread Islam throughout the world. End of history? Not in the minds of the mullahs.
But there’s a third factor, besides ideology and strategy: face saving diplomacy. Obsessed with democracy and power, political pundits often overlook niceties born from spy work.
Spies are associated with assassinations and coups. But the most important work of intelligence agencies cements alliances. Spies are just as much about love as they are about war.
Why, for instance, does the UK forgive Iran, and even more surprisingly, why does Iran forgive the UK?
There is no logical answer. Or, at least, none the public knows.
The Shah, the one toppled by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, was British-made.
Looking back hundreds of years, Iran has always lived under a British boot, not a US one.
The British boot pressed even harder on the throat of Iran when oil became the world’s most important commodity in the early 20th century. Unlike the US, oil rich with Texas and Pennsylvania, the UK had no oil of there own. It could be said that the dumb, friendly, easy-going, US eclipsed the savvy British Empire in the 20th century for this one reason: the US had more oil.
The British were quite touchy, in fact, about their Middle East oil, even towards their “ally,” the US.
In the first half of the 20th century, when Britain was still an empire, Iranian oil was Britain’s top overseas asset.
In 1924, Robert Imbrie, American Vice-consul in Tehran, was murdered. Defying their British masters, Iranians had invited Standard Oil into their country; the American oil company was all set to loan 10 million to the Iranians, when Imbrie was murdered—and the Americans got cold feet. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, “the circumstances leading to Imbrie’s death are still controversial; several groups, including the British chiefs of APOC, have been accused of plotting the murder in order to prevent American oil company activities in Iran.” (added italics)
British Petroleum (BP) began as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. A Mr. William Knox D’arcy, from a village in SW England, found oil in Iran in 1908 after making an agreement in 1901—before oil was considered gold: 84% profits, 60 years, and a drilling area containing nearly the whole of Iran.
The steady pressure—from the early days of oil extraction from Iran’s Abadan refinery during the First World War for British warships, right up until the Islamic revolution of 1979—was always on Britain to give oil ownership back to Iran. The US was not the villain in this drama. We’ve already seen that the Iranians invited the U.S. in as a buffer against the Brits as far back as the 1920s—when there was still geological doubt about how much oil was in the earth, and doubt about how valuable oil would become.
Iranians viewed the US as a savior. There were solid reasons: the US didn’t like the Soviets, who had long dominated Iran in the north, just as the Brits ran things in the south. Right after WW II, the US kicked Stalin out of northern Iran. The Americans proved themselves as important allies in that action, alone. The US had tons of oil—US oil fueled both of Europe’s world wars—and so it was obvious to Iran that the US could be far friendlier and more objective towards their country than the UK—who was heavily invested in Iran’s oil.
Iran and the UK maintain official diplomatic relations today. The US hasn’t had an embassy in Tehran since 1979. The US, not Britain, is “The Great Satan.” What happened?
Did MI6 outfox the CIA?
Pretty much, yes.
Anyone who assumes Britain is America’s true ally needs to look at what happened in Iran.
The trouble began with Mosaddegh, a complicated character who was part possible Soviet agent, part nationalist hero, part media star, and completely anti-American.
The prime minister Mosaddegh was finally a patsy, more MI6 than Soviet. His premiership was beaten up (warship blockade, sanctions, boycott, world court appeals, Churchill begging for US help) by the British. Mosaddegh was also allied with, and then rejected by, an important Islamic priest, Kashani—one generation older than Khomeini—and these two things led to his demise, but with Mosaddegh’s media star status (Time magazine’s Man of the Year) and fake credentials as the “democratically elected leader of Iran” defying the “monarchy” of the Shah, those who controlled this secular, socialist prime minister were able, as he fell, to point to the CIA—who, as a part of the anti-American operation, were all too happy to revel in their “role” in the “coup.” Iranian law gave the Shah the authority to dismiss Mosaddegh—if there was a CIA operation it, was one to make it look like the CIA had a major role in the dismissal of Mosaddegh. Frame the United States. Make the United States, who had just defeated the Nazis, appear as the world’s bully against poor, defenseless nations. Give credibility to Leftist, anti-American propaganda all around the world. It looks like it was a sucker operation.
Trita Parsi is just one of many pundits who calls the 1953 coup a US backed “regime change”—and one can hear Parsi use the words “regime change” in a podcast interview with the pleasantly agreeable Mark Hannah of the Eurasia Group Foundation.
In this one controlled event, America—with such potential to help Iran and stabilize not only Iran but the entire region—replaced Britain overnight as Iran’s villain, and the Shah, too, earned the reputation as an anti-democratic tyrant, with the US and the Shah wrapped up together as the “enemy of the people,” the “people” in this case, the combustible mixture of communism and Islam. Khomeini was active in Iran at this time, and he was learning the magic formula which would lead to his success: terror, socialism, Islam, and fighting the U.S. With the Shah now identified as a pro-U.S. reactionary, the events of the early 1950s set up 1979.
The importance of 1979 cannot be underestimated. Khomeini was the first true “Marxist Pope,” and the stunning success of his Islamic Revolution was a terrible thing, simply because this new tyranny of Marxist Papacy won in a very large, very strategically located, and consolidated manner.
A recent piece in the Spectator is typical of how the mainstream media discusses Iran. “Should we bomb Iran?” is the question, and John Bolton, who has “had it in for Iran for decades” is the villain, compared to the Iranian leaders who are benignly described as seasoned survivors. And the answer to “Should we bomb Iran” is no—mostly because the price of crude would increase. This is how the press talks about Iran today.
Or, we might see a piece in places like the NY Times or the Washington Post, cheery and anecdotal: how the Iranian people are finding ways to drink and party, in spite of the regime. Don’t worry about Iran, these articles say; the rulers are a bit harsh (they kill women and gays) but the people are delightful, endearing and resourceful!
The recent Hollywood treatment of Iran, Argo, focused on a minor, feel-good sideshow of the hostage crisis—the rescue of a few hostages. It didn’t explore the tragedy Iran at all.
How many now remember that shortly after the hostages were taken, the ayatollah Khomeini released blacks and women, saying he did this because America oppressed blacks and women? This is a glimpse into how insultingly clever this murderous, anti-US Islamic priest, Khomeini really was.
In the wake of the 1979 betrayal, the press continues to avert its eyes, when it comes to Iran.
The world-historical tragedy of Iran 1979 needs a new, hard look.
In an eerie prelude to 1979, the Shah briefly fled Iran in 1953—not because he feared Mosaddegh and the people of Iran’s success; Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi feared the communists, who supported Mosaddegh, as well as the assassinating priesthood, the clerical entity known as Fada’iyan-e Islam. Both gained strength in the power vacuum triggered by the morale-crushing destabilization of his country—thanks to Britain’s world boycott in response to Mosaddegh’s fruitless oil crusade. The Shah did not oppose Iran having control of its own oil. But the Shah also got it: the British would, and could, destroy Iran first.
Here’s a news story from 1949—before Mosaddegh’s brief rise to power—which might shed some light on the Shah’s position:
“Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi was shot and wounded today in an unsuccessful assassination attempt”
“The reporter-photographer, pretending to take the Shah’s picture, fired at point blank range, when the Shah got out of his car on the steps of Tehran University.”
“One bullet entered his body and another his mouth. The other three went through his hat.”
“The assassination attempt came one day after 2,000 students marched around the Majlis (Parliament) building and demanded cancellation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s concession to take oil out of Iran”
—The New York Times, Feb 5, 1949
Becoming oil independent—for a puppet nation like Iran—was not as easy as it looked. Britain had a signed deal with Iran—during a previous dynasty of shahs. Britain owned the equipment to take oil out of the ground and deliver it to market. Britain had experienced oil workers on the ground in Iran, who worked the equipment and ran the show. Britain had warships to back up this claim. The Anglo/Iranian Oil company was a “British restaurant” in Iran. The owners were British. A few Iranians washed the dishes. Mosaddegh as prime minister thought: we’ll hire other foreign workers to get the oil out of the ground for us. Every European nation—save Italy—said no. And when Britain saw an Italian tanker in the Gulf, they chased it away.
The Shah’s father, Reza Shah, secular and modernizing, like his son, was deposed by the British in 1941. A better oil deal with Britain was tried by the father in the 1933. It failed. Britain stood in the way—in 1933 and in 1953, and every year in between. And in every year afterwards. Britain stood in the way—until 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution, when the new deal (which involved other countries but still favored Britain) made in 1954, was set to expire.
The Shah presided over what was a wealthy, western-friendly, secular, modernizing nation in the 1970s, riding the giant oil wave created by OPEC—formed in 1960—making the 1953 days of British warships, and a few CIA operatives in Tehran taking orders from MI6, seem rather quaint.
In the 1970s, the Shah’s public battles with the Ayatollah Khomeini—the number one sharia priest (and terrorist,) fighting with all his cleric might for the soul of the Iranian people against the Shah, and the Shah’s push for woman’s rights in the early 1960s, during the Shah’s White Revolution (white for bloodless) also seemed a distant dream—Khomeini was licking his wounds as an exile in Iraq, hoping one day to get back into Iran with western help.
The Shah doubted any westerner—even the most wild-eyed MI6 agent, or even the most radical, leftist, French philosopher—would agree to allow Khomeini, a murderer of moderate prime ministers, back into his country.
Especially not the friendly United States.
The Shah was wrong.
Also in the 1970s, the Shah—recalling how much western intellectuals admired Mosaddegh for his oil nationalizing crusade—stated publicly—starting in 1973—that he intended (for real this time) to make Iranian oil fully Iranian in 1979, when the 1954 agreement was due to expire. The Shah must have thought it strange, then, when, instead of being treated like a hero in the western press, as Mosaddegh had been, as the 70s went on, the Shah was portrayed as a murderous tyrant. SAVAK, run by MI6, was brutal, but only because the Khomeini’s assassinating priesthood was brutal. SAVAK has since morphed into something much larger and far more terrible under the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Since the 1953 “coup” has been given so much importance by those who blame America for Khomeini, a new examination is needed.
Let’s look at Obama’s exact words during his “apology tour” in Cairo, in 2009 (the year Obama deliberately failed to help democratic protests against the Iranian regime):
“In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. soldiers and civilians.”
The “apology” charge (coined by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal in April of 2009, and weakly pursued by Romney and other Republicans) was countered by outlets like the Washington Post, who said Obama consistently balanced his “apology” with rebuke, and one can see that Obama blames America for “a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government,” but then says Iran played “a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. soldiers and civilians.”
The problem with this “balance,” however, is that the United States never stole Iran’s oil, the US helped Iran to grow rich and stable, and this assertion: “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government” is patently and cravenly false.
The “overthrown” issue:
Mosaddegh was not “overthrown.” He was dismissed under the Iranian constitution by the Shah. Period. Mosaddegh refused to step down, because he thought communist and Islamist thugs would protect him. And these were thugs: this is why the Shah decided to flee the country, legitimately fearing for his life. This incident is known as the “first coup attempt.”
The second “coup attempt” was simply when Iranian forces, the military, mostly, who supported the Shah, took steps to arrest Mosaddegh for refusing to give up power. The CIA, despite what agent Roosevelt has written in his book Countercoup, had nothing to do with Mosaddegh’s actual fall. Yes, America was known to be in favor, along with Britain and everybody else, of Mosaddegh’s departure. And so were the majority of Iranians. Maybe a couple of CIA agents (doing the bidding of MI6) believed they had something to do with it—the CIA was a new, untested agency; they wanted glory. At best, the CIA on the ground may have given the Shah moral support—the Shah was terrified of being killed. The U.S. did not “play a role” in the sense that they had any actual role in Mosaddegh’s dismissal—a simple, legal action by the Shah. The US was a drop in the waterfall. The troubles in Iran were due to British boycotting, an assassinating priesthood inspired by Khomeini, communist stirrings, and the fight between Iran and Britain over Iranian oil. The US, who had the mantle of the great villain handed to them, in one of the great role reversals of all time, were mere witnesses at this point.
The “democratically-elected” issue:
The “democratically-elected Iranian government” is even more of a myth.
Under Iran’s constitutional monarchy, the Iranian people voted for members of parliament, and the parliament, not the people, voted to nominate a prime minister, with the final appointment approved by the Shah. Mosaddegh, the 35th prime minister of Iran, was no different.
But here’s where it gets even more interesting. Before Mosaddegh became prime minister on April 28th 1951, prime minister Haji Ali Razmara was murdered on March 7th, 1951, by Fadayan-e Islam, the group founded in 1946, a sharia, nationalist, terror organization, one of the world’s first Islamic terrorist groups, and associated with a younger Ayatollah Khomeini—yes, that one.
The Fadayan-e Islam were good at killing major officials in Iran.
And now it gets even better. The parliament, during the premiership of Mosaddegh, used its “democratic” parliamentary powers to pardon and free the assassin of prime minister Razamara, calling the assassin a “soldier of Islam.”
This is the same “democratic” parliament which lends the sobriquet “democratic” to Mosaddegh—somehow, according to the political pundits, and in the words of Barack Obama, Mosaddegh, by virtue of this Iranian parliament, was somehow between 1951 and 1953 the leader of a “democratically-elected Iranian government.”
If this doesn’t make you laugh it ought to make you cry.
Interestingly, the Fadayan-e Islam assassin of prime minister Razmara was executed in 1955—after Mosaddegh was deposed.
As time went on, the Shah, relying on younger and more forward-looking officials, began to put the thugs in their place, and things got better for Iran.
In the early 60s, Khomeini reacted badly to the Shah’s White Revolution, and went public and confronted the Shah over women’s rights. The Shah won. Khomeini was exiled. In 1963 Lesley Gore released “You Don’t Own Me.” But Khomeini won in 1979. By then, it was a different world. Pol Pot had happened. The Wings had replaced the Beatles. And in 1979, with Carter in the White House, Khomeini came to power—complete power.
The Shah of Iran—for almost 40 years as a brave and savvy puppet ruler, playing communists, Islam fanatics, Britain, the U.S. and the Soviets against each other whenever he could—made his country western, modern, rich, and free. But the Shah finally lost out to terror, religion, and mobs. A persistent, dignified killer in a cloak stalked cold Tehran. In the end, a bikini on the Caspian Sea never had a chance.
A priesthood which kills is the greatest political weapon. The sanctimonious, who are simultaneously savage, win converts. Lots of them. We now know this.
Sanctimony, to be respected, evolves in the following manner to preserve itself: it becomes more sanctimonious, perpetuating moral shame and prohibitions across the board, so that the soul, the world, and the future blend into one act of obedience. This obedience joins devotee and priest in a fanatical bond, where pleasures are diverted into worship of the the very bond which prohibits the pleasures, and members rejoice in a membership that replaces the formerly lone and vulnerable individuality—which once defined the devotee against the world. The final validating fact of this sanctimony is uncompromising violence which defends the bond. Insult me, the Muslim, and you insult us, the Muslims, and you die. Sanctimony which kills is especially equipped to rule. Khomeini knew this.
To promise heaven to the pliant, and threaten death to your enemy, especially in corrupt times, is a political win-win. The toothless priest, who is sanctimonious only, becomes an object of ridicule, and chases converts away. God is only God with a sword.
The most popular, secular work of literature in Iran over the last 50 years is a comic novel, My Uncle Napoleon.
From the preface of the book’s English translation: “The book was obsessed with “the widespread Iranian belief that foreigners (particularly the British) are responsible for events that occur in Iran. First published in Iran in the early 1970s, the novel became an all-time best seller. In 1976 it was turned into a television series and immediately captured the imagination of the whole nation.”
A strange fact. In 1978, the Shah publicly accused Khomeini, through a pro-Shah newspaper, of being a British agent—and this incident triggered pro-Islamic, anti-Shah mobs, as the Islamic revolution truly began in earnest.
It seems the real life “British show” had to be shut down and hidden—so Islam could be in charge, with the United States as the “Great Satan.”
This is now the an even more popular and horrible “TV show” we all watch.
The UK, as its prominent empire dwindled, and its military was saying goodbye to the Middle East, played the Muslim card.
Great Britain, in the crucial window of time after WW II, was Iago to the US Othello. Iran and Iraq now sell most of their oil to China, America’s enemy. The UK pretends to be a US ally, but only to make use of the US. Britain was neutral towards the US Confederacy, which encouraged Lee to start a bloodbath in 1862 to be “recognized.” The Civil War almost destroyed the US. But since then, as the US got stronger, the UK finally decided, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” But this was done cynically. India was a colony, perhaps America would be one again, too. The UK never wanted the US to get too strong and promote modernizing stable nations all over the world—such as Iran under the Shah in the 70s. MI6/CIA ran SAVAK to protect Shah—but also to make the Shah look ruthless. The Shah, after nearly losing to the priesthood in the 1950s became too successful. When it was time for a switch, Khomeini made SAVAK look like boy scouts. Keeping Iran western and friendly? That’s not how the globalist, deep state “British Empire” does things. It plays the Muslim card, the Socialism card, it divides and conquers, and uses other countries and groups as proxies. Just as Iran is doing now. The US turned away from what made it “great” and got Iago-ed by the UK sometime between 1945 and 1952.
Shirin Ebadi, former Iran lawyer and judge, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, in a recent interview with Aljazeera, reminded everyone how Iran today functions.
All policy is decided by “one Supreme Leader,” appointed for life.
The president, the defense minister, and every official in Iran, is a “puppet” to the Supreme Leader.
A single, Islamic, Sharia, Judge says how the entire nation eats, dresses, treats women, educates itself, the amusements and information they can have, the work they can do, where they can go, who will be their enemies, and who will be their friends.
As we know, the Supreme Leader tells his people, in no uncertain terms, that the United States of America is “Satan.”
This is not a Star Wars movie. This is not a piece of science fiction. This is real. This is Iran.
The rise of Iran’s priesthood followed when the Persian Empire lost battles and great amounts of territory to the Russian Empire throughout the 19th century—the humiliation of Iran culminating in the December 1891 fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi against tobacco. Even the shah couldn’t smoke. His wives said no.
Iran’s diplomatic existence with the West is about 500 years old, and for centuries the Persian Empire was reasonably successful as a balancing act between itself, the Ottoman Empire (enemy), Russia (meddling friend/enemy) and Britain (meddling friend/enemy).
By the beginning of the 20th century, however, in the wake of the tobacco fatwa, Iran was weak, beaten, and depressed. To state it irreligiously, by 1900, Iran had no balls.
The Muslim priests, who would eventually rule Iran, never stopped bragging about their tobacco fatwa triumph.
Religious clerics always gain strength when they successfully prohibit things.
Somehow it is no surprise, when we read, in The Guardian a few years ago: “US had extensive contact with Ayatollah Khomeini before Iran revolution. Documents seen by BBC suggest Carter administration paved way for Khomeini to return to Iran by holding the army back from launching a military coup.” —June 10, 2016
Jimmy Carter, unwilling to defend U.S. interests, the world’s interests, or the people of Iran, allowed an airplane to fly in from radicalized France, with Peter Jennings and other western journalists on board, containing the head of the assassinating priesthood: the Ayatollah Khomeini. Recently declassified documents do reveal (denied, of course, by the Iran regime) that the Carter Administration was secretly contacting Khomeini in discussions about his return to Iran—Khomeini had been exiled from Iran since 1965.
In a crucial contest of ideas in 1963-1965, the modernizing Shah, with his White Revolution, advocating democratic, economic growth and worldly freedoms, soundly defeated “Islam & Iran First” Khomeini.
This was not a fatwa against tobacco; this was embarrassing, backwards rhetoric by Iran’s top priest.
But Khomeini was not just reactionary. He was murderous. Why didn’t the west seem to know this in 1979? As Peter Jennings and other journalists rode with Khomeini back to Iran on Air France, did they know this?
When Jennings asked Khomeini on the plane how he was feeling about his triumph, the Ayatollah replied, “Nothing.”
Some have interpreted this as a mystical, priestly response.
It was probably simply the response of a stone cold killer.
The Shah’s 41 year old prime minister, Hasan Ali Mansur, a progressive, White Revolution intellectual, met with Khomeini in the spring of 1965, asking the ayatollah to apologize for his hysterical, anti-government antics. He made the mistake, apparently, in a fit of anger, of slapping Khomeini across the face. Two months later Hasan Ali Mansur was murdered—by the same group, the Fayadan-e Islam, who murdered Prime Minister Razmara in 1951. After the 1979 revolution, Mansur’s grave was desecrated. The Shah’s last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, who weakly surrendered to Khomeini’s demands in 1979, was murdered in exile in Paris, by the regime, in 1991, with kitchen knives.
Iran continued to do well in the wake of the White Revolution, but as the Shah grew older and weaker (by 1978 he was quite ill, and died shortly after the 1979 Revolution), the future of the dynasty was in jeopardy. The head of the snake, having moved to France in 1978, and poised to return, was publicly supported, not as the assassinating priest which he was, but as a “nationalist” who would help the Iranian people.
In Cairo, in 2019, Trump’s Secretary of State Pompeo attacked Obama’s “willful blindness” on Iran, and said, “When America retreats, chaos often follows. The age of self-inflicted American shame is over.” During the 2016 campaign, Trump made it clear to the American people he was furious at the “Iran deal.”
Let’s not bomb Iran—but if we must, let’s bomb Iran with leaflets—telling the truth of 1953, correcting the story peddled by Obama and Parsi and the Iran regime. To fix 1979, we first must tell the truth of 1953. And while we’re at it, let’s bomb London with leaflets, too.
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