Iran was targeted by British and U.S. imperialism to rip off their oil. When they elected Mossadegh, he put a stop to it. The CIA was sent in to overthrow him with the plan being hatched at the U.S. embassy. Twenty years of oppression under the pro-US Shah led to a revolution led by Khomeni and they unsurprisingly hit the embassy where it all started. From there, it was decades of U.S. and partners getting back at them for their intolerance of oil-stealing dictatorships with sanctions that hurt civilians, media BS, funding for Iraq's side of their war, Stuxnet, etc.
CIA didn't admit what they did for decades. Just recently admitted it and the real reason why ("resources"). Not crazy Arabs and their religious agenda: just a result of America doing horrible stuff to innocent people for decades for evil reasons. Admitted it, but no apologies or end to sanctions. Most Americans still read lies in history books. Politicians still screwing with them.
And that's just Iran. I'm sure you can only imagine that the truth behind situation in other Middle Eastern countries is similarly dark and with Western influence. phaedryx's link at least will get you started on this one. Next look up all that funding Bush Sr and CIA gave Saddam and bin Laden while docs warned that it could have "blowback." Can't blame them for later wars or terrorist attacks involving same names, though, can we?
I may be misremembering, but weren't the Americans supporting the crazy religious? At the time, they were considered less scary than the godless communists.
Eh, not really. There is a whole group within the Pentagon that evaluates long term strategy, J5. The problem is, it's impossible to tell what will happen in the years after a particular conflict subsides on either side.
I could've told you whether a coup was likely to increase or worsen stability: always default on the latter if imperialism is the motive. Likewise, financing dictators' wars or religious nutjob's training in beating superpowers. Either this group you mentioned is incompetent or nobody listened to them. I'm going with the latter since many of the documents warn of high risk of blowback.
Except you would probably be wrong. I know the crowd here likes to think they can solve all problems better than the status quo but the reality is that for these kinds of things data doesn't help much. See: COIN
What are you responding to? What you're saying doesn't contradict what the article claims, just provides more background. Calling the article propaganda is uncalled for, it doesn't exactly put the US in a favorable light.
So first you move to dispel the notion that Iran is 'evil'. That's good, very enlightened of you. But then you go on to attribute 'evil reasons' to the US? I think you still have quite a way to go along your path of self-enlightenment.
Nah, I move to add a bit of history in to show that the U.S.'s evil is at the root cause of a series of events that lead to the current Iran situation. I also point out that our wonderful media and educational system have worked to prevent Americans from connecting those dots when the topic of our response to Iran comes up. Americans realizing our impact on the situation might realize sanctions and Stuxnet aren't going to help us in the long-term. More debate and better ideas might happen that undermine the imperialist activities still going on in Middle East.
They certainly don't want that. Mainstream media continues to dutifully vilify Iran without context and make it look like our actions are purely self-defense against aggressive, religious nutjobs. Military and spooks continue playing games over there. Problems and potential blowback continue to add up. And so on and so forth.
Can you elaborate on the oil deals that existed, what the terms were, who made what investments and who discovered what oil, and on what legal basis Iran claimed the right to nationalize those deals?
I would highly recommend Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" if you want to know more about this and other nationalization attempts.
IIRC, it was the British who discovered and worked to extract the oil before oil became such a force in industrialization. When this first happened, oil wasn't that valuable and I believe the usual term was a flat fee per barrel extracted. The agreement was reach before Iran had any form of democratic government. As oil became more valuable in the period before, during, and after WWII, most governments who signed these deals renegotiated these deals once they realized how valuable the oil is. I believe they wanted to be paid based on market price per barrel.
"Legal basis" is a funny term to use when you're dealing with national governments. In truth, there is very little legal foundation for resolving these dispute until recently and even now it's pretty shaky. I mean, who's legal system do you use? It would seem since all this is happening in Iran, it should be Iranian laws. If that's the case, then the nationalization attempt was legal.
What actually happens, however, is that national governments get involved and other forms of leverage is used. I once talked to a lawyer for a major oil company involved with a dispute with Venezuela. The State Department was involved to some extend but at the end of the day, their leverage was their ability to extract the oil. So "legal basis" is usually not something involved in these sorts of disputes because usually the country with the oil has the upper hand in that case.
Isn't it true though, that in the case of Venezuela, international assets became an excellent leverage point?
For example, Exxon getting court orders to try to have $12 billion in Venezuelan assets frozen in 2008. If I recall, Exxon in its case only received 10% of what it asked for in compensation though.
- Did the Iranians pay market-rate compensation for the nationalization?
- Whose technology and investments made it possible to find and extract the oil to begin with?
- What were the terms of the deal, and in what way were those terms violated (or not) by the foreign oil companies? Is it an 'Iran says so' situation, or is there tangible proof of impropriety regarding the deals?
Suppose for a minute what you're hinting at is the truth: Iran ripped off British oil companies (hah!) in a strange case of reverse-colonialism, and it was totally unfair, and this even affected British civilians.
This still is in no way justification for toppling a democratically elected government and supporting a dictatorship. No matter what, commercial interests do not trump a country's rights. Even if Iran's oil nationalization had been completely unfair, Britain and the US would still be directly responsible for installing a dictatorship and indirectly responsible for Iran's "fall out with the West".
There are three defining occurrences in Iran-US relationship:
1. The US organized a coup, removing liberal elected prime minister of Iran to bring back the king Iranians despised and have effectively overthrown. This would change the course of Iranian history forever:
For an article which wants to find why Iran fell out with the west, it is not merely ignorant to remove the first and most important cause of the current mistrust. It looks very much like propaganda.
"The same shah whom Washington was now trying to shun had been lifted to power in a 1953 coup engineered by the CIA and the British, displacing the elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had had the temerity to nationalise the Iranian oil industry. "
The U.S. had a chance to do things right if they had left Mohammad Mossadegh alone. Can you blame the Persians for being pissed? We are the authors of our own misfortune.
Your average American has never heard of Mossadegh.
We are making steps. For example, there is a nice exhibition in a Washington DC's Hirshhorn Art Museum called Facing History by Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat that talks about history of Iran and illustrates how heavy in propaganda news was in 1953 at giving justification for British intervention in toppling Mossadegh. I think the Museum in allowing such an exhibition to be shown in the US is in some sense admitting US made a mistake (with the CIA intervention). It also teaches future generations that whatever the media and the government says should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's not possible to know what would have happened if Mossadegh was left alone by the US. It seems to me that the article hinted at conservative elements taking over regardless, and there could have been many other events troubling Iran's relationship with the west.
> It's not possible to know what would have happened if Mossadegh was left alone by the US. It seems to me that the article hinted at conservative elements taking over regardless
Sure, but there's a difference for the US between "conservative elements taking over" in Iran and "conservative elements taking over buoyed on a wave of anti-US feeling directly resulting from the US imposition of an unpopular, brutal regime" in Iran.
The author is a nearly 70 year old Cambridge-educated staunch BBC journo. The Arabic world is his thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Muir .. Iran isn't.
He claims government policies bankrupted the country, and they may have contributed heavily, but he neglects to mention the oh-so-subtle truth that Israel and the US pressured Europe to rubber-stamp disconnecting the entire country from the international interbank financial transfer monopoly SWIFT through a slapdash front entity known as 'United Against a Nuclear Iran', billing itself as a "non-partisan, non-profit
advocacy organization" whose members included the former director of Mossad, Council on Foreign Relations fellows and Bush's homeland security advisor. SWIFT had previously carefully cultivated a nominally apolitical image, and its director described the move as "unprecedented".
Sort of on-topic, and about the Iran deal: It basically green-lights Iran's continuing atomic weapons program. I have read the agreement, and there is nothing in there that actually will impede Iran's progress towards creating nuclear weapons. Also, it lets them keep their centrifuges (!) and ballistic missiles (!). I really am at a complete loss to explain what the purpose of the "deal" was, considering it does absolutely nothing towards our goal of stopping Iranian atomic weapons development.
The entire point of the deal, politically speaking, is to dismantle Iran's nuclear program in a way that allows Rouhani and the Iranian moderates to save face to their own people by maintaining the apparent shell of a nuclear program. So they get to claim, "we still have centrifuges, we still do nuclear research", and those claims are literally true but substantively false. In fact they're only keeping a small number of very old centrifuges that are carefully monitored, the equipment necessary to make new centrifuges is locked down with constant inspections, future imports of such equipment are highly restricted, extraction of their natural uranium deposits is carefully monitored, along with many other measures designed to make it impossible to move towards a bomb.
Ernest Moniz, the US energy secretary who helped negotiate the deal, is a nuclear physicist. US national labs employ many of the world's top nuclear experts, who consulted on the deal. When they, and most of the rest of the world's experts on nuclear physics and nuclear policy, say this is a good deal (http://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8337347/iran-deal-good), I'm inclined to think it has some merit. Could it be flawed? Sure. But you need a better argument than "OMG it lets them keep some centrifuges".
The OP is either being untruthful about having read the agreement, or has some type of agenda and is intending to mislead. Hard to argue that they're making claims in good faith giving out inconsistent their claims are with facts.
You don't use centrifuges for anything but refining weapons-grade nuclear fuel. The fact that they have them -- and are allowed to keep them -- flies in the face of any paperwork claiming that it wants to dismantle a nuclear weapons development programme.
I personally have friends living in Iran who tell me that the people of that nation widely believe their government is developing nuclear weapons, and are terrified that this deal will allow them to continue, and I can't say I blame them one bit.
This deal is not going to stop the mullahs from making the bomb. Mark my words.
> You don't use centrifuges for anything but refining weapons-grade nuclear fuel
Not true. Centrifuges are used to make reactor fuel too.
> allowed to keep them
They are being phased out over the next ten years. Under close IAEA scrutiny.
> This deal is not going to stop the mullahs from making the bomb. Mark my words.
You know, it's not just Obama and Kerry who signed off on this, it's China, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany too. The only ones who don't like this deal are the Republicans, Benjamin Netanyahu, and you. And the Republicans reflexively oppose anything Barack Obama supports, so their opinion can pretty much be discounted.
Just out of curiosity, though, what exactly do you suggest we do?
Draft up a document that doesn't let Iran keep centrifuges and missiles and schedule their own inspector visits at their leisure? "They are being phased out" but the thing you're not mentioning is that they're only phasing out a portion of those. If Iran abides by the entire agreement, they will come out the other end with working centrifuges (and therefore the ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade).
Elsewhere in your response, ad hominem, appeal to authority, appeal to popularity. Come on.
But that's not the claim that you made. The claim that you made was:
"It basically green-lights Iran's continuing atomic weapons program. I have read the agreement, and there is nothing in there that actually will impede Iran's progress towards creating nuclear weapons."
And that is simply flat-out false. The document does not "green-light" Iran's atomic weapons program, and there is actually quite a lot in there that will impede their progress if they try to cheat.
They let them keep their centrifuges. They have everything they need to create nuclear weapons, and all of those things (including being able to dictate/schedule their own nuke inspector visits) are right there in the document. Whatever the "restrictions" spelled out in there, and whatever the "punishments", this document gives (or lets keep) everything Iran needs to continue developing nuclear weapons. That is what I am saying.
Even if they do develop nuclear weapons, so what? I can see only see a positive side to it where the USA will think twice before messing with the internal affairs of a country again.
The greater threat is the Middle East destroying each other.
Israel has been very clear that it thinks Iran will drop the bomb on them. Then you'll also find Sunni verses Shia. The region is a powder keg of history.
> Israel has been very clear that it thinks Iran will drop the bomb on them.
Israel's real concern is probably that its own nuclear arsenal stops being an absolute trump card that makes it undeterable as soon as any of its regional rivals also has nuclear weapons.
But, you know, that's obviously not the way any government is going to publicly frame their concerns, for obvious reasons.
As long as the existing nuclear powers are not considering to bring their nuclear arsenal down to zero, trying to force other countries not to develop nuclear weapons is pure hypocrisy. Why can the USA and Russia and the others have nuclear weapons but not Iran? There is no justification for that. If you don't want them to have nuclear weapons provide them incentives, guarantee military support, pay them or whatnot. Embargoing them and attacking them with Stuxnet is just evil.
> Why can the USA and Russia and the others have nuclear weapons but not Iran? There is no justification for that.
Most non-proliferation activists, Obama included, have the stated goal of a "world without nuclear weapons", in which the US and Russia also bring their stockpiles down to zero. Superpowers are already wealthy enough to win wars by conventional means, and they have the most to lose from rogue nuclear strikes, so they have strong incentives to work in this direction.
That said the fact of the matter is that the US and Russia do have large nuclear stockpiles, and don't like each other very much, so coordinating simultaneous arms reductions is a tricky game-theoretic dance. Hopefully we'll get there, but it may take a long time. While that progresses, preventing new nuclear powers from springing up is an equally important part of the nonproliferation agenda.
> If you don't want them to have nuclear weapons provide them incentives.
That's exactly what the sanctions regime against Iran has been: a set of incentives engineered so that giving up nukes is in their best interest.
The USA and a few other countries have not yet signed or ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. If your goal is zero nuclear weapons there is not much harm doing so. At worst you would have to break or cancel the agreement one day and I can hardly imagine negative consequences if the situation in the world developed in a way that doing so is deemed necessary.
Also unilaterally decreasing the nuclear stockpile from about 5000 right now to say 4000 or 2000 is not really dangerous. If you ever come into a situation where you need more than 2000 nuclear weapons I can't imagine that it makes any real difference whether you have one more or 3000 more. And this would really send a strong message to the other nuclear powers. Russia one, USA one, Russia one, USA one, ... is pretty silly in the current situation. Maybe if there is only a handful left.
Sanctions is exactly what I did not mean. Yes, it provides incentives but absolutely in the wrong way. If you want something you offer something in return, you don't take the other party as a hostage.
> The USA and a few other countries have not yet signed or ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. If your goal is zero nuclear weapons there is not much harm doing so.
Zero nuclear weapons is Obama's goal; it's unfortunately not the formal policy of the US government. Treaty ratifications require Senate approval, which will not be forthcoming anytime soon. Yes, that's a valid criticism of the US political system.
> If you want something you offer something in return, you don't take the other party as a hostage.
What Iran is being offered in return is access to international markets. We -- in the broad sense of all six parties including Russia and China -- are offering to sell them new technology and equipment, invest in their businesses, buy their oil and other products, etc. That kind of commercial relationship is not something that any nation is obligated to offer to another (barring free trade agreements). Iran could keep bumbling along by itself, trading with whatever states are willing. But the incentive of commerce with major, wealthy powers seems to be a strong one.
You are of course right when you say that no country is obliged to trade with other countries but I would still argue that trading with other countries is the normal status. Then putting an embargo on a country and only lifting it under conditions you dictate is a form of punishment to achieve your goals. The nice way to achieve your goals is to offer something in addition to the normal status. Essentially I see it as the same difference as between giving you money to buy your car and forcing you to hand me the key by pointing a gun at you. Or an even better analogy, I deny you access to gas stations - I own all of them - making the car useless for you. Here too I have no obligation to sell you gas but the normal status is that I sell it to everyone asking for some.
> Essentially I see it as the same difference as between giving you money to buy your car and forcing you to hand me the key by pointing a gun at you.
I'd argue a more apt comparison would be saying "I'll buy your car, but only if you stop waving that gun around".
In any case, the point of foreign policy isn't to be nice or fair; it's to create norms and incentives that lead to a stable and peaceful world. If the international community pays off Iran, above and beyond normalized participation in international commerce, to dismantle its nuclear program, then the incentive is clear for other nations to start such programs in hope of a payoff. Regardless of the fairness arguments (which cut both ways - it's not really "fair" to peaceful nations if Iran gets rewarded and they don't), that is a precedent you don't want to set.
If the international community pays off Iran, above and beyond normalized participation in international commerce, to dismantle its nuclear program, then the incentive is clear for other nations to start such programs in hope of a payoff.
You want something from them, waiver of nuclear weapons to which they have the same right as any existing nuclear power, why would you expect to get this for free? And nuclear programs are expensive, I don't think starting one only because of possible compensations when you stop it would be a worthwhile move.
But let me turn the thing around. Would you say it would be good foreign policy if the rest of the would put an embargo on the USA until the USA dismantles all its nuclear weapons and facilities? If the rest of the world would start sabotaging those weapons and facilities? Ignoring for the argument that the USA is as power
> waiver of nuclear weapons to which they have the same right as any existing nuclear power
No one has a "right" to nuclear weapons. You can search the Magna Carta, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the United Nations Charter, etc. No international agreement recognizes any such right. In fact the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran is a party to, does exactly the opposite.
> Would you say it would be good foreign policy if the rest of the would put an embargo on the USA until the USA dismantles all its nuclear weapons and facilities? If the rest of the world would start sabotaging those weapons and facilities?
Anything that forces the current nuclear powers to give up their weapons would be excellent. In the current balance of power, that's unlikely to occur outside of mutual disarmament agreements.
I will point out that it's not like the rest of the world is refraining from sanctioning the US out of some sense of higher morality. International relations is power politics for everyone. Aside from the pure power differential and the economic consequences of refusing US trade, many countries (not all, obviously) benefit from the security of the American military umbrella. Many countries (e.g. much of the EU) refrain from developing their own nuclear programs precisely because of American security guarantees. Those guarantees would still exist in a post-nuclear world, but only if everyone disarms at the same time, which is, again, hard to coordinate.
I did not mean any written right just that if it is okay for one country to have nuclear weapons then it is okay for every country. There is nothing to justify the position that only a selected group of countries is entitled to poses nuclear weapons.
You have a bit of a point with non-proliferation treatise but they essentially mean that countries voluntarily refrain from spreading nuclear weapons.
And you sidestepped the question about embargoing the USA by discussing it powerful position. I am only arguing that it would be better foreign policy to, for example, offer a discount on oil for 20 years if the USA dismantles its nuclear weapons as opposed to enforcing an oil embargo until they do so.
And party you are saying what I mean, some countries refrain from having nuclear weapons because they got military protection in return which in turn also implies that in some sense possessing nuclear weapons is a good thing. Here the USA is essentially paying for other countries wavering a good thing.
Or compare Russia and Iran. The USA is giving something to Russia in return for the reduction of it's nuclear stockpile namely the reduction of its own nuclear stockpile. Iran on the other hand is not as powerful as the USA and company and so they can bully them to achieve similar goals. This looks like abuse of power to me.
The deal doesn't mean they have to abandon all weapons. I'm sure Iran would argue they have ballistic missiles for the very same reason the USA has them - for defence, i.e. to dissuade other countries from attacking them.
You really have to take the long view to understand Iran. For 500 years, Iran had a monarchy, until after WW2 when the "Shah of Iran" took over. In order to modernize his country, he formed a parliament like England, which appointed Mossadegh as PM. Unfortunately, Mossadegh exiled the Shah, nationalized the oil industry, and suspended elections. The British were the main oil industry, there, so they fought back with the help of the US. The US gave opposition groups money since we were fighting the cold war and Mossadegh was pro-communist. The money was to be used in a campaign for democratic elections. However, the Iranians could not agree on the rules for the elections. There as a large bloc that wanted to return to a monarchy who brought back the Shah. The Shah then took control of the country. Later, the Islamist took over the country by revolution, much as ISIS is doing today. They have been in power ever since enforcing radical Sharia law. The narrative that America overthrew a democratically elected government in a coup is just false.
This is consistent with my statement above. The CIA admitted it had a role, which I acknowledge. They gave them money and assisted the local faction in the return of the monarch. And, since elections had been suspended, the depose was not democratically elected. The newspaper sensationalizes the actions of the CIA, and that has become the new narrative.
CIA didn't admit what they did for decades. Just recently admitted it and the real reason why ("resources"). Not crazy Arabs and their religious agenda: just a result of America doing horrible stuff to innocent people for decades for evil reasons. Admitted it, but no apologies or end to sanctions. Most Americans still read lies in history books. Politicians still screwing with them.
And that's just Iran. I'm sure you can only imagine that the truth behind situation in other Middle Eastern countries is similarly dark and with Western influence. phaedryx's link at least will get you started on this one. Next look up all that funding Bush Sr and CIA gave Saddam and bin Laden while docs warned that it could have "blowback." Can't blame them for later wars or terrorist attacks involving same names, though, can we?