America-Iran tension: a summary of the origins

Duck · May 6, 2011

"adbusters" said:

It's the Blowback, Stupid!

The 1953 coup is widely seen as having set the conditions for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It is a consequence the US and Iran are still dealing with today.

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After the discovery of oil, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now known as BP) was created, and for the next four decades Iranian oil fueled the British Empire. Since England didn't have another oil-producing colony, Iran's oil kept every British factory, home and car up and running. For its part, Iran received a mere 16 percent of the revenue.

When the British government refused to renegotiate a fair deal with Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized the oilfields in 1951. But Britain would not let the loss of its most important resource go unanswered. By convincing the US government that an encroaching Soviet Empire was inching into Iran, the British got the Central Intelligence Agency to orchestrate a coup d'état. Two years after Iran took back its oil, the democratically elected Mossadegh was removed and replaced by the pro-western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Over the course of his 25 years in power, the Shah terrorized his people, imprisoning and torturing tens of thousands of political opponents, while blowing millions on extravagant celebrations as his people lived in abject poverty.

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Full Article

Vlawrrr · May 7, 2011

We're also flanking Iran currently.

midgardsun · Nov 9, 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ujyLeLb8dc"]'War with Iran will be a catastrophÐµ' - YouTube

midgardsun · Dec 8, 2011

I fix this before they change their mind

War on Iran has already begun. Act before it threatens all of us

They don't give up. After a decade of blood-drenched failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, violent destabilisation of Pakistan and Yemen, the devastation of Lebanon and slaughter in Libya, you might hope the US and its friends had had their fill of invasion and intervention in the Muslim world.
It seems not. For months the evidence has been growing that a US-Israeli stealth war against Iran has already begun, backed by Britain and France. Covert support for armed opposition groups has spread into a campaign of assassinations of Iranian scientists, cyber warfare, attacks on military and missile installations, and the killing of an Iranian general, among others.
The attacks are not directly acknowledged, but accompanied by intelligence-steered nods and winks as the media are fed a stream of hostile tales – the most outlandish so far being an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US – and the western powers ratchet up pressure for yet more sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme.
The British government's decision to take the lead in imposing sanctions on all Iranian banks and pressing for an EU boycott of Iranian oil triggered the trashing of its embassy in Tehran by demonstrators last week and subsequent expulsion of Iranian diplomats from London.
It's a taste of how the conflict can quickly escalate, as was the downing of a US spyplane over Iranian territory at the weekend. What one Israeli official has called a "new kind of war" has the potential to become a much more old-fashioned one that would threaten us all.
Last month the Guardian was told by British defence ministry officials that if the US brought forward plans to attack Iran (as they believed it might), it would "seek, and receive, UK military help", including sea and air support and permission to use the ethnically cleansed British island colony of Diego Garcia.
Whether the officials' motive was to soften up public opinion for war or warn against it, this was an extraordinary admission: the Britain military establishment fully expects to take part in an unprovoked US attack on Iran – just as it did against Iraq eight years ago.
What was dismissed by the former foreign secretary Jack Straw as "unthinkable", and for David Cameron became an option not to be taken "off the table", now turns out to be as good as a done deal if the US decides to launch a war that no one can seriously doubt would have disastrous consequences. But there has been no debate in parliament and no mainstream political challenge to what Straw's successor, David Miliband, this week called the danger of "sleepwalking into a war with Iran". That's all the more shocking because the case against Iran is so spectacularly flimsy.
There is in fact no reliable evidence that Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons programme. The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report once again failed to produce a smoking gun, despite the best efforts of its new director general, Yukiya Amano – described in a WikiLeaks cable as "solidly in the US court on every strategic decision".
As in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, the strongest allegations are based on "secret intelligence" from western governments. But even the US national intelligence director, James Clapper, has accepted that the evidence suggests Iran suspended any weapons programme in 2003 and has not reactivated it.
The whole campaign has an Alice in Wonderland quality about it. Iran, which says it doesn't want nuclear weapons, is surrounded by nuclear-weapon states: the US – which also has forces in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as military bases across the region – Israel, Russia, Pakistan and India.
Iran is of course an authoritarian state, though not as repressive as western allies such as Saudi Arabia. But it has invaded no one in 200 years. It was itself invaded by Iraq with western support in the 1980s, while the US and Israel have attacked 10 countries or territories between them in the past decade. Britain exploited, occupied and overthrew governments in Iran for over a century. So who threatens who exactly?
As Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, said recently, if he were an Iranian leader he would "probably" want nuclear weapons. Claims that Iran poses an "existential threat" to Israel because President Ahmadinejad said the state "must vanish from the page of time" bear no relation to reality. Even if Iran were to achieve a nuclear threshold, as some suspect is its real ambition, it would be in no position to attack a state with upwards of 300 nuclear warheads, backed to the hilt by the world's most powerful military force.
The real challenge posed by Iran to the US and Israel has been as an independent regional power, allied to Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas movements. As US troops withdraw from Iraq, Saudi Arabia fans sectarianism, and Syrian opposition leaders promise a break with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the threat of proxy wars is growing across the region.
A US or Israeli attack on Iran would turn that regional maelstrom into a global firestorm. Iran would certainly retaliate directly and through allies against Israel, the US and US Gulf client states, and block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Quite apart from death and destruction, the global economic impact would be incalculable.
All reason and common sense militate against such an act of aggression. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel's Mossad, said last week it would be a "catastrophe". Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that it could "consume the Middle East in confrontation and conflict that we would regret".
There seems little doubt that the US administration is deeply wary of a direct attack on Iran. But in Israel, Barak has spoken of having less than a year to act; Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has talked about making the "right decision at the right moment"; and the prospects of drawing the US in behind an Israeli attack have been widely debated in the media.
Maybe it won't happen. Maybe the war talk is more about destabilisation than a full-scale attack. But there are undoubtedly those in the US, Israel and Britain who think otherwise. And the threat of miscalculation and the logic of escalation could tip the balance decisively. Unless opposition to an attack on Iran gets serious, this could become the most devastating Middle East war of all.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/07/iran-war-already-begun

midgardsun · Dec 13, 2011

next drone/missile attack on Iran?

Explosion follows two blasts that occurred in Iran in recent weeks at sites linked to Tehran's nuclear program.
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-editio...eel-mill-linked-with-nuclear-program-1.401080

snowtiggernd · Dec 13, 2011

Obama is asking for our downed survallience drone back..But they dont think Iran will..

midgardsun · Feb 9, 2012

War plan Iran- a collection of articles on the background

As we have consistently analysed on Global Research, the conflict between the US-led powers and Iran has wider ramifications. It is part and parcel of Washington’s bid to engineer the social and political upheavals across the Arab World in order to redraw the region in its strategic interests. It is no coincidence that fresh from NATO’s conquest of and regime change in Libya, the focus has quickly shifted to Syria – a key regional ally of Iran. As Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out “the road to Tehran goes through to Damascus”. Regime change in Syria would serve to isolate Iran. Subjugating Iran and returning it to Western tutelage is the prize that Washington and its allies have been seeking for the past 33 years ever since their client the Shah, Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28675

Asmodean · Feb 9, 2012

Pre-sovjet Russia was seriously interested in Iran as well at the time the UK had oil grounds there. Not saying the UK had rightfully dragged the US into it but it was another political and economical game long before there even was a soviet russia. I just read a book about the sjah that reigned Iran in the 1880's. Lovely insights (you even get a bit of sympathy for him too)

Duck · Feb 9, 2012

^ funny, I just read a biographical comic about Ronald Reagan.

You don't get much sympathy for that evil prick.

Existensile · May 11, 2012

Duck said:

...the Shah terrorized his people, imprisoning and torturing tens of thousands of political opponents, ...
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Back in the early 70s, c. 40% of the forn. students @the university were from Iran. Most were on scholarships & stipends to study pertoleum engineering or some variation thereon.

Most knew someone that had studied in the States, had made overtures against the Shah during their time here, & were unceremoniously arrested on their return. Some but not all of the dozen or so Persian students I met never intended to return to Iran. These were guys in their early 20s that knew they may never see their families again: I wondered whether I could do that.

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America-Iran tension: a summary of the origins

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America-Iran tension: a summary of the origins

Duck quack. Lifetime Supporter

Vlawrrr Member

midgardsun Senior Member

midgardsun Senior Member

midgardsun Senior Member

snowtiggernd Member

midgardsun Senior Member

Asmodean Slo motion rider

Duck quack. Lifetime Supporter

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