First of a series
WHEN I was a graduate student at the Department of International Relations of the Catholic University of Korea from 2009 to 2011, one of the topics that our American professor enthusiastically discussed in class was Operation Ajax, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed plot to oust the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. By all accounts, and according to then-United States presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (during the nomination process), Mossadegh was ousted through American and British action because of his initiative to nationalize the Iranian petroleum industry, thereby threatening British oil interests in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., previously known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. in the country.
The CIA have also interfered in democratic elections, particularly in newly decolonized states in the so-called Third World to install more US-friendly (and anti-communist) leaders through democratic elections. A case in point here is the CIA support for the presidential run of Ramon Magsaysay in 1953. However, the case of Mossadegh is striking and shocking because it represented an aggressive move for regime change in Iran, essentially signaling a radical turn in US foreign policy.
This is where it all started.
Gregory Brew, writing in the Texas National Security Review, argues that “growing fears of a ‘collapse’ in Iran motivated the [American] decision to remove Mossadegh.” To be sure, Mossadegh was being besieged by the Iranian communists on the left and the pro-monarchy forces supporting the exiled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the right, justifying somewhat the American anxiety about instability in that country.
The ouster of Mossadegh paved the way for similar American intervention toward regime change elsewhere, including in the Guatemalan coup d’etat of 1954 and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961, not to mention the active role of the United States in the exile of dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to Hawaii in the aftermath of EDSA 1986.
The perception in the Third World from the 1950s onward was that the US had no aversion to regime change should the circumstances in their calculation warrant such intervention. This was something that leaders in the Philippines, for example, were aware of, explaining why Marcos Sr. called for snap presidential elections scheduled for February 1986 after the Americans questioned the currency of his mandate. This was especially so in the context of a raging domestic communist insurgency in concert with the broader communist threat globally in the raging geopolitics of the Cold War.
As a schoolboy during the days when most households only had one television set — black and white, with a rotating dial — I watched with the entire family the nightly newscast on television, invariably with the immortal Harry Gasser front and center, with regular reporting about the hostage crisis in the US Embassy in Tehran in the late 1970s and the Iran-Iraq War from the early to the late 1980s.
After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was exiled a second time, entering the United States for extensive medical treatment during the term of President Jimmy Carter, who really did not want him in America. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, himself exiled outside of Iran for a good part of the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was allowed to return and became Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1979 to 1989. Iran had a tumultuous relationship with the United States during Ayatollah Khomeini’s time.
The Iran Hostage Crisis began on Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries, with the go-signal from Khomeini, stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took dozens of American diplomats and civilians hostage — many of whom were held until Jan. 20, 1981. The revolutionaries demanded the extradition of Pahlavi back to Iran to be executed.
The hostage crisis overlapped with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War on Sept. 22, 1980, when the Iraqis invaded Iran. Alan Friedman outlines the support provided by the United States to Iraq during this time: “billion of dollars worth of economic aid, dual use technology, intelligence sharing... and special operations training.” However, Reza Simbar reminds that the Americans were also committed to maintain “Iran’s strategic position and integrity in the region as a buffer to the Soviet Union, since the Islamic government in Tehran was at once anti-American and anti-Soviet.”
Adding to the convolutedness of the situation was Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Kuwait in 1990, two years after the Aug. 20, 1988, ceasefire with Iran, putting them in direct opposition to the United States during the Gulf War. In the meantime, poor health led to the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. He was succeeded by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader in the same year. In the 1990s, focus veered toward Iraq, and Saddam Hussein practically became the bigger bad guy — at least in the eyes of Western media.
Iran, however, was never completely out of the United States’ sight. According to Simbar:
“By 1987, the import of Iranian goods into the United States had been banned. In 1995, President [Bill] Clinton... [barred] US investment in Iran’s energy sector... [eventually] eliminating all trade and investment, and virtually all interaction between the United States and Iran.”
The US continued to keep an eye on Iran, particularly the latter’s support for radical organizations like Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as its active opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and its suspected “weapons of mass destruction” programs.
Iran reeled from the American-initiated economic sanctions, coming as these did on the heels of the destructive war with Iraq that lasted eight years. According to Simbar:
“Iran’s ability to develop and modernize its own energy sector has been seriously hampered, even though Iran remains the second-largest oil producer in the Persian Gulf today, despite its isolation from much of the rest of the world, partly as a result of US pressure.”
The animosity between Iran and the United States never disappeared for both parties since the ouster of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.
To be continued
