Or, it's not Bush's fault at all, it's all down to the 'Old Coloniser'
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You'd think, considering the state of American-Iranian relations since the Ayatollahs came to power, that America would be right up there at the top of the Mullah's 'countries we love to hate list'. Nope. America is the Great Satan, but whenever some crisis threatens Iran it's always Britain, the 'Little Satan' or the 'Old Coloniser', that's seen as the Moving Hand of all things sinister and malign.
Britain has been involved in the affairs of Afghanistan (where British troops are presently fighting far more ferocious and deadly battles than their counterparts in Iraq are faced with) and Iran since the 19th century rivalry between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia - the 'Great Game', as it was called. Both were vital to the Empire, Afghanistan as a buffer against Tsarist forces invading India, and Iran as a source of oil. In 1901, in return for £20,000, William Knox D'Arcy, a London-based lawyer and businessman, was granted exploration rights in most of Iran's oil fields, including the region now known as Masjid-e Suleiman, even today still the largest known oil-field in the world. The company originally formed to explore and exploit Iran's oil riches (which were not perceived by the Iranians as such at the time) was first known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), subsequently became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and is now known as British Petroleum (BP).
In 1913 the British government purchased a 51% stake in APOC - and spent the next forty years making certain nothing was allowed to threaten its holding, or Britain's exploitation of the wealth it produced. In 1947, out of an annual profit of £40m, Iran received just £7m. Added to the outrage caused by this siphoning off of profits was the distinction between Iranian workers who were restricted to low paid menial work, and the unahamed luxury in which British managers lived. Even today, modern Iranians will still say of the British "You are the masters and we are the servants."
To have a 'Little Satan' is a very useful thing. After a series of six bomb blasts in the town of Ahvaz, capital of the south-western province of Khuzestan, the Iranian authorities pointed to the presence of British troops rather than to the presence of Arab separatists within the population of the largely Arabic-speaking province. Much better to blame the Little Satan than to address seperatist demands. Revolutionary Guard eulogists spoke at funeral ceremonies, decrying the evil machinations of 'criminal England'.
And were believed. I quote from the linked article: "When I visited Ali Narimousayi, whose 20-year-old daughter, Ghazaleh, had been blown up [...], it became clear that the message carried a wider currency. "We know they want to come here and take our oil for free and we won't let them," he said. "Why is Britain so against our nuclear programme? Have we ever mistreated their ambassador or their people? What have we ever done to them? Go back to Britain and tell [the politicians] to be in good relations with Iran."
As a response to such machinations in the past such an attitude is rational and historically accurate. Britain has played a very significant role in manipulating the internal affairs of Iran. In conjunction with the USA, Britain fomented the collapse of the nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh "[...] a lawyer and leftwing secular nationalist politician fated to go down as perhaps Iranian history's biggest martyr before British perfidy." Mossadegh nationalised oil production and threw British managers out of Iran. In response, in 1951, a joint operation carried on by the CIA and MI6 (the British intelligency agency responsible for dealing with external threats to British security) mounted Operation Ajax. Britain blockaded Iranian ports, stopping all trade, while the CIA brought together a loose coalition of Monarchists, Generals, conservative Mullahs, and rioters in the streets to bring internal disorder together with economic chaos in order to overthrow Mossadegh's regime. It worked perfectly, bringing back from exile in Paris (ironically, it was also from Paris that Ruhollah Khomeini returned as leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
His subsequent regime was at least as repressive as that of Saddam Hussein, maintained in power by SAVAK, the Shah's Secret Police, notorious for their use of torture. A regime that was also maintained in power by the enthusiastic support of Britain and America over the next twenty five years. David Owen, Britain's foreign minister in 1979, gave vocal support to the Shah even as the Islamic Revolutionaries were about to hurl him from the Peacock Throne. But even so, in the last chaotic days of his rule, Reza Pahlavi is reported to have told the American Ambassador that he 'detected the hand of the English' in his overthrow.
Iranian suspicions of 'criminal England' can't have been much allayed by the British government's equally enthusiastic support of Saddam Hussein during the eight years of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), suspicions which are shared equally by those who support the current clerical regime in Iran and those who oppose it.
"Shahim Nouri, 24, working in an optician's across from the British Council in Shariati Street, summed up the views of many affluent anti-regime Iranians. "I'm not old enough to know the history but everybody says Britain is behind the clerical regime. If it is not behind the mullahs, it is definitely in a relationship with them," he said."
Apparently, and despite the glaringly obvious decline in Britain's power to influence international events, despite Britain's utter subservience to American foreign policy in the Middle East, it is still the Little Satan, 'criminal England', that is at the root of and the benficiary of every woe that afflicts Iran.
If only it were so. Then, perhaps, we'd be making a better fist of the job of getting the kidnapped British Service personnel back home, and wouldn't have to rely on 'strong statements' by the EU, or upon the UN Security Council issuing statements 'deploring' Iran's acts... something which last night it refused to do, preferring to express 'grave concern' instead. (Link)
Just as the Germans in 1930s Europe were singularly unimpressed by the grave concerns of the League of Nations in regard to what they were doing (massively re-arming and re-equipping the Army, Navy, and Airforce they weren't supposed to have), the Iranians will regard such 'strong statements' with similar contempt. And quite properly so, since there appears to be not a single 'leader' in the 'coalition of the willing' with balls enough to do what needs doing.
Every government building in Tehran should by now have been levelled to its foundations. If that didn't prove to be enough, then every piece of Iranian infrastructure in the Shatt-al-Arab should be destroyed. If that proved insufficient then every mosque, shrine and holy place should be destroyed. And if, in the last resort, that too proved insufficient then the residential areas of Tehran should be carpet-bombed until nothing remains of them but dust and blood.
We are already referred to as 'criminal England'. If we have the name then we ought to have the game that goes along with it.
And be damned to the 'grave concerns' of the incompetent, impotent, dickless wonders whose fat arses warm the seats around the table at which the Security Council meets. Diplomacy in that region never worked better than when it was backed up by overwhelming firepower. "