The dramatic happenings in Iran have their roots in events that took place in 1953, the last time there was a proper democratic government in power in Tehran. The then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the oil fields of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later known as British Petroleum (BP).
The CIA and the British intelligence agency MI6 engineered a military coup to oust Mossadegh – it’s always about oil in the Middle East - and installed a monarchy under the Shah. U.S. and British corporations flourished in Iran subsequently, but tens of thousands of Iranians were tortured and killed. This is one of the main sources of the half-century conflict between the United States and militant Islam. Iran rose up against the American-backed Shah in the Islamic Revolution of 1978, and in November 1979 Islamic students seized 66 diplomats hostage in protest at the United States giving asylum to the Shah.
That is when I first arrived in Iran, as a correspondent for The Irish Times. The only crowds in the streets were supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini. Pro-western elements dare not show their faces, as anti-American sentiment was running so high. In the twelve-storey Intercontinental Hotel the staff didn’t hesitate to let their feelings be known. As a group of American journalists was checking out, the cashier made a little speech, saying, “I am glad to see you leave. We don’t like Americans. The day is past when Iranians can be bought by dollars.”
The exterior walls of the U.S. embassy complex on Taleghani Avenue were plastered with slogans such as “CIA, Pentagon, Uncle Sam: Vietnam wounded you, Iran will bury you”. The three main U.S. television companies – CBS, NBC and ABC – had crews stationed at the gates to monitor the hostage situation (In the days before cable and satellite television, Americans got their television news from the three networks, and their reporters in Tehran played a game of chicken, betting on which crew could hold back the longest from doing their daily “stand-up” report from the embassy gates; as soon as one camera went into action, the Revolutionary Guards and their hangers-on would crowd round and shout anti-American slogans.The first to give in had to buy the others dinner that night in the Intercontinental.)
The US correspondents were abruptly ordered out of the country half way through the siege. As the holder of an Irish passport I was treated as neutral and allowed to stay. (A few years later Oliver North used a false Irish passport to visit Tehran in the Iran Contra scandal and when this became known, Irish passport holders were treated with more suspicion by the Revolutionary Guards at the airport. Thanks Oliver.) Revolutionary Guards admitted me to an embassy annex where a sign indicated that it had housed the State Department intelligence unit. Two unshaven students in zip-up sweaters and khaki windcheaters lectured me for over an hour on the perfidious Americans.
One, named Rahim, with drooping mustache and deep brown eyes, asked why Europeans were not supporting the overthrow of a cruel regime. “If the people of England knew of the crimes committed in their name in Northern Ireland, they would not allow the government to remain in power,” he asserted solemnly The students presented me with a “revolutionary pack” of embassy documents to prove that the CIA was still operating in Tehran after the Revolution. One document, dated August 1979, six months after the revolution, stated: “With regard for the great sensitivity locally to any hint of CIA activity, it is of the highest importance that cover is the best we can come up with. Hence there is no question as to the need for second and third secretary titles for these two officers, Kalp and Dougherty.” Another document specified cover for a third agent, with the alias Paul Timmermans.
It stated, “According to personal data in your passport, you are single, were born in Antwerp, Belgium 08 July ‘34, have blue eyes, have no distinguishing characteristics and are approximately 1.88 meters tall. Your occupation is that of a commercial business representative. Your Belgian passport was ostensibly issued in Jette [and] to enhance its validity the following back travel has been added, a trip to Madrid, Spain, in April 1977, a trip to Lisbon, Portugal, in August 1977, a trip to Helsinki, Finland, in 1978.”
Other embassy documents contained accounts of routine conversations with prominent Iranians, all of whom were subsequently banished from public life for their “collaboration”. Diplomats in other Western embassies, while sympathizing with the Americans, told me privately how angry they were at their American counterparts for allowing such documents to be seized so easily. Their own contacts now declined to meet them.
I next visited Iran in 1980 in the company of Iraqi soldiers advancing on the Iranian border town of Qasr-e Shirin, an ancient provincial capital where the modern boundary between Iran and Iraq had been drawn up by the British in the nineteenth century. Saddam Hussein had declared war on the Ayatollah. Saddam was a Sunni Moslem and hated the Shi-ite regime in Tehran. He also wanted their oilfields. Oil again the curse of the region. A year after that the Iraqis were driven back from Abadan and Qasr-e Shirin, and it was Iran that was invading Iraq.
The Americans came to Saddam Hussein’s aid. Donald Rumsfeld, special envoy for President Ronald Reagan and future US Secretary of Defense, paid two visits to Baghdad to meet Saddam Hussein and discuss efforts to defeat Iran. One was on 24 March 1984, the day the United Nations reported that Iraq had used mustard gas and tabun nerve agent against Iranian troops. "The New York Times" reported that American diplomats pronounced themselves satisfied with the meeting and that “normal diplomatic ties have been established in all but name”. US Vice-President George H.W. Bush subsequently ensured that, throughout the mid-1980s, Iraq received American financing, intelligence and military help.
Before the Iran-Iraq war ended in stalemate in 1988, over a million soldiers and civilians died. I recall all this to help put the passions in today’s Iran into historical context. The anti-Americanism that arose from the deposition of Mossadegh and the help Washington gave to Saddam, not to mention the Western boycotts that have held the country back since then, still simmers, but it has done the nation little good.
Perhaps the Islamic forces in Iran which are still in the ascendancy today see some of the largely middle-class protestors of this week as connected by class to the secular elite that enjoyed life under the hated Shah. But for many of the younger generation protesting against what they see as a rigged election, this is history. It reminds me of the way people in the Soviet Union lost their fear and took to the streets just as the USSR crumbled in the late 1980s.
That was achieved without much bloodshed. Perhaps a similar dynamic is at work in Iran as people say “Enough, there must be a better way.” The next weeks will be critical. It strikes me that the Gorbachev-like reformer who might make history this time is not the leader of Iran, it is the President of the United States, Barack Obama. His “outstretched hand” may have done as much to raise expectations in the streets of Tehran as the former Soviet leader’s perestroika did in the old Russia.
Comments