As Americans gradually learn more responses to "Why do they hate us" than "They hate us for our freedoms," more and more citizens of the U S A have become aware that the CIA and British Intelligence service collaborated to overthrow Iran's democratically elected, popular leader, Mossadeqh, because he insisted on nationalizing Iran's oil industry, rather than continue to permit Great Britain to take the lion's share of profit from Iran's natural resources.
Stephen Kinzer, author of "All the Shah's Men," the story of that overthrow of a budding democracy, has said of that momentous event,
"I can hardly get my mind around what a difference it would have made if Iran had been a thriving democracy these past 50 years."
But the 1953 overthrow of Mossadeqh was not the first strangling of the hopes and efforts of Iranians to create a democratic state.
Culminating in 1911, a 20+ years long effort by Iranians to establish a constitutional democracy was strangled by the British and Russians.
And in 2008, the US Treasury Department is celebrating its actions aimed at strangling Iran.
"The Strangling of Persia," available online as well as in a new paperback released by Mage Press tells the story every American, and certainly every American legislator, should be required to know and understand before one more threatening word is uttered against Iran.
In 1911, an ambitious American was invited by a budding Iranian democracy to bring financial stability to the country. He went with the blessing of the British and Russian governments, both of which enjoyed a wide sphere of influence in the region. However, no one expected him to succeed so quickly in making Iran into a credible democracy and he was ousted by the actions of the Russian and British governments. After he was forced to return to the US, Shuster wrote a book revealing the true motives of the superpowers of the time and how the region's course of history was forever altered. Strangling of Persia offers keen insights into the timeless methods used by powerful nations to achieve their own ends. More than 85 years after its' first publication, it remains a powerful indictment of a short-sighted policy that crushed a fragile but promising democracy.
Read important passeges from the book here: The Strangling of Persia: A Story of the European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue that Resulted in the Denationalization of Twelve Million Mohammedans
read a fascinating twist on the tale that emphasizes American exceptionalism, as "Strangling of Persia's" author W Morgan Shuster did, that in the era of European empire, the United States was trusted above all others, and the enlightened Iranians sought the assistance of America in creating a democracy and a constitution.here.
British imperialists treated Iranians precisely the same way America treated Blacks not so long ago: Iranians were not permitted to drink from the same fountains as the British because the Brits considered Iranians to be lesser beings, and filthy.
The U S shed its "exceptionalist" aura in the early 1900s and in the years of the World Wars, when Iran was a transit point for Allied supplies to the Russian theatre, and the US military caroomed around Iran with abandon, maiming and killing hundreds if not thousands of Iranian civilians, with impunity. When Iranians complained of the recklessness of the American military, their pleas were disregarded. When once complaints did reach the ears of someone with a little authority in the American chain of command, and he asked why so many Iranians were being killed by American military vehicles, he was told: "Iranians are too backward to understand what a motorized vehicle is."
Why do they hate us?
The stunning fact is, in spite of the fact that the US has been responsible for denying democracy to Iran for over 50 years, Iranians do not hate the US.
The question should be, Why does the US hate Iran?
Fast forward to the era of Bush's wars.
As even its neocon planners and cheerleaders such as Doug Feith and William Kristol acknowledge, the unintended victor of Bush's war on Iraq is Iran.
And that is intolerable to the neocons and to the US administration who followed their advice.
Iranian Nuclear Watch has been blogging the congressional and administrative actions that the US has been pursuing to strangle Iran. Yesterday (Apr. 7, 2008), Iran Nuclear Watch blogger Carah Ong wrote:
U.S. Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Stuart Levey has been on a campaign, meeting face-to-face with allies to encourage them to squeeze Iran. Last week, Levey testified at a Senate Finance Committee hearing and singled Iran as the "biggest problem" with respect to sponsoring terrorism and weapons of mass destruction proliferation. He told the Committee that while most other countries to do not have a financial designation system to target entities as the U.S. has done with Iran, "Nonetheless, U.S. designations in this area gain worldwide recognition, particularly among financial institutions. My colleagues and I have traveled worldwide explaining our actions to, and sharing information with, foreign government officials and private sector representatives to help them understand the nature of the threat.
What is the nature of the threat Iran poses?
Once again, Iran Nuclear Watch points us to information on how this question is being answered.
In testimony before the Senate Finance committee in hearings concerning S 970, styled by the Senate, the "Iran Counter proliferation Act of 2007," but tagged by blogger John McGlynn, The US Declaration of War on Iran and by Paul Craig Roberts, A third American war crime in the making
The answer to this question is obscured in massive and increasingly ominous clouds of demonization and propaganda.
Demonization destroys the ability to think critically.
And Propaganda kills: it kills children, innocent civilians, and democratic aspiration.
Economic strangulation of Iraq, based on propaganda and demonization -- otherwise known as lies -- resulted in the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children and the weakening of an entire, ancient culture to the point that it could be destroyed in mere days.
The same cast of characters is levying the same program on Iran, based on the same demonization and propaganda. The results will be the same: millions of innocents will die, and an ancient culture will be forever destroyed.
God damn America.