You learn a lot about the corporate media when they try to give you a history lesson—since what’s left unmentioned can say so much.
In the October 7 issue of Time magazine—the one with the headline “Iran’s Dubious Charms” on the cover—a long piece about Iran includes the graphic pictured to the right.
Now, anyone who might want to understand US/Iran relations is not going to find out very much from this. It’s not easy to summarize a half century or more of history, but the items selected here are more than a little curious.
How important was it, really, that Bill Clinton almost but didn’t quite meet the Iranian president in New York? It’s hard to think that will go down in the history books as being an especially notable non-event.
Likewise, Barack Obama’s Persian New Year’s video greeting to Iran’s Supreme Leader in 2009 is unlikely to be cited by many historians as one of the six most important events in the history of US/Iranian relations.
We’re told that the “history of hostility” in those relations begins in 1979, when Iran calls the US the Great Satan and takes American hostages. Of course, anyone with some basic knowledge of Iranian history could choose a different starting point—say, 1953, when the US helped orchestrate a coup that ousted Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. (Note to Time: It’s OK now to talk about this publicly—the CIA acknowledged its role this summer.)
Or one might point to the US support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran that spanned most of the 1980s—which saw the US offer intelligence support for Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on Iran.
Or one could recall that a United States cruiser shot down Iran Air Flight 665 in 1988, killing 290 passengers on board. The incident didn’t make a big impression on U.S. media at the time, which might help explain why Time wouldn’t see fit to acknowledge that this happened.
But there’s a good chance that Iranians do remember this history. By excluding these incidents, Time offers a clear lesson in how corporate media view history that is especially unflattering to the United States. Why remember it at all, when it’s so much easier to forget?
Excellent piece!
A much better time line with explanation:
1- Western countries led by UK started to steal Iran’s hydrocarbon reserves specially oil from 1901 and this oil was the only oil UK used during world war I and world war II. All royal navy ships and planes and trucks running in Europe, Africa or South Asia was being fueled by Iranian oil which Iranians never got paid for. Infact UK had nationalized Iranian oil in 1914 and all Iranian oil and gas had become property of British crown forever. After Iranians tried to get it back, UK with US help orchestrated operation Ajax. After this color revolution brought about by operation Ajax, Iran got some small share in oil revenues but still the biggest share holders in Iranian oil remained British, French and Americans.
2- Western countries after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which cut their access to Iranian oil greatly, supported Saddam to invade Iran and play havoc with its economy through sanctions. This was more than a revenge. It was being done to make sure, Iran would remain a poor country despite its oil wealth and stop Iran’s technological progress. US directly sided with Saddam and militarily attacked Iran on behalf of Saddam and since Saddam did not have a navy, US navy was used to support him to the point that US shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290 people including 66 children. In addition west provided Saddam with WMD’s which he used on Iranians making Iran the second largest victim of WMD in the world after Japan.
3- Iran had paid tens of billions of dollars to American and British companies in 1970’s to supply it with numerous weapon systems eg. Kidd class frigates, submarines, tanks and war planes etc etc. None of them reached Iran and neither the money was returned. US and France continued to supply Saddam with helicopters and war planes and holding back Iranian purchased weapons during the war. This was being done to ensure Iranian defeat and humiliation. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Mr. Jalili was a soldier in that war and he lost his right leg during the fighting with western supported Saddam. Today he walks to the negotiating table with a leg prosthesis.
4- Iran had paid 3 billion dollars to Germany in 1976 to build two nuclear power reactors for Bushehr plant which Germans never completed despite Germans being under obligation to complete under IAEA rules and NPT mandate which calls for nations with nuclear technology to help NPT members with all their needs. Germans only erected some buildings and refused to work any further. Germans never returned the money and Iranians had to literally beg the Russians for the technology. Russians took advantage and got maximum benefits from both Iranians and western countries by procrastinating the project. Finally the project which was supposed to be finished by Russians in 1999, became fully operational in 2012, that is 13 years later.
5- Iran had paid billions of dollars to France in 1970’s for France to build a nuclear reprocessing plant in Iran which they never did. Iran had also paid France to build Darkhovin nuclear power plant, which of course French never did. The Iranian paid reactors were instead installed in a French nuclear power plant and are now working there at Graveline C nuclear power plant. Iran had also shared the costs of building Eurodif Uranium enrichment plant which Iran owns 10% share of, to this day and France had agreed to provide Iran with enriched Uranium from that plant as well as the transfer of technology for Uranium enrichment. Iran never got even one gram of enriched Uranium from France neither got its share money.
6- Iran in 1970’s had invested in Rössing uranium mine, the world’s third largest Uranium mine and to this day owns 15% of the mine with government of Namibia holding 3%, South Africa holding 10% of shares and the Anglo-Australian corporation Rio Tinto having 69% of the shares. But as is the case, Iran still has not received a single gram of Uranium or any of the profits of the mine due to western pressures. Almost all of the Uranium taken out of this partly owned Iranian mine goes to US and EU and used in their nuclear power plants or used to manufacture nuclear bombs with which they threaten Iran.
7- The west is supporting terror inside Iran by financing Jundallah and MKO, this despite the Algiers agreement of US with Iran, which had called for US to stop interfering in Iran’s internal matters, US has kept interfering inside Iran. Now with unfair sanctions, US is trying to arm twist other independent countries that are trading with Iran as well in order to make Iran subservient to western desires for plunder.
8- US has been attacking Iran using sanctions, proxies, terrorists, media agitation, economic warfare, smuggling of drugs from Afghanistan into Iran, cyber attacks, assassinations etc. All these instances are declaration of war against Iran. Fortunately Iranians have been very restraint and have played cool. But this might not be the case in future.
9- Iran has been losing its territory to western and other imperialist powers and interests like Russia and UK since 18th century due to the bigger fire power of global imperialist powers. Iran still remains at risk today with so much terrorism against Iran and the fact that global imperialist powers openly talk about defeating Iran and breaking it up or encouraging secession from Iran. Under such serious threats, the only thing that guarantees peace from Iran’s stand point is nuclear weapons. Only nuclear weapons will be able to secure Iran against much larger, lunatic and aggressive powers like United States whose president is talked by God to invade other lands or arms infiltrating wahabi cannibal terrorists.
10- Almost all sanctions against Iran have been passed by US congress which is very and highly anti-Iranian and will not remove them short of after complete destruction of Iran. The US president has nothing to offer Iran. Even if Iran gives up its entire nuclear program tomorrow, the sanctions are going to stand. These sanctions are designed to weaken Iran over time and prepare it for an eventual invasion by US/NATO. Only one thing can stop it. Iran building nuclear deterrence and Iran building its industries taking care of national needs such as medicines, machines, etc. The sanctions were never designed to be removed. It is a folly to think that if Iran gives up its nuclear program, then everything is going to be ok and Iran is going to become a paradise.
Great article! Concise and hard hitting at once.
and Peter, how about the US accepting Dr. Shiro Ishii, the torture doctor, as a resident in the US after the Second World War? He was the main doctor responsible for establishing Unit 731, where thousands of Chinese were horribly tortured and killed in the name of biological warfare experiments. Ishii and his ilk vivisected many without anaethsia, dropped packages carrying anthrax, the plague, and other disease, and experimented on their prisoners, they called maruta (logs). Many young Japanese know little of this awful legacy, and the US granted asylum to Ishii because they claimed his “data” from his experiments was useful. Of course it wasn’t; that was banned by the Geneva Convention and various treaties.
@JackJellym. I agree with you in everything you said but I do not think that the Iranians are after Nuclear weapons. They are after the know-how.
All what you wrote is true history, and to add to that, The Americans gave the general who gave the order to shoot down the civilian Iranian plane a Medal, and to add to that also, the Navy did an investigation and it showed that there is no real excuse to back up the General’s claim that it was the flight captain fault. In other words, he shoot down a civilian plane while knowing that, and he got a medal for that.
You might also mention that when G W Bush placed Iran in his “axis of evil”, it had just been assisting in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. As the Institute for the Study of War observes: “Iran played a key role in Afghanistan’s state-formation and reconstruction process in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban’s ouster. Under the auspices of the UN, Tehran participated in the Bonn Conference, and was instrumental to the final agreement, which established the Afghan Interim Authority in December 2001.” And then Bush casually kicked Iran in the crutch.
@ E,
I know. I guess what it means, is that even if Iran get nuclear weapons, who can blame them for it. When US ordered Saddam to attack Iran, things for that nation changed for ever. It was the only conflict in history, in which both eastern and western block in addition to NAM supported Saddam, all the while Iran had to stand by itself alone.
As for the shoot down, it was all a pack of lies. That plane was shot down for purpose of forcing Iran to accept ceasefire under conditions favorable to US. The official US story is that they “mistook” it for an F-14. But the Iranian F-14’s had no air to ground or air to sea capability whatsoever. It was just a big lie.
What about the coup
Overthrowing Iran’s democratic government, helping with poison gas attacks against Iran, random mass murder of Iranian civilians (by shooting down airliner)… but hey, nobody’s perfect. So why would Persians get their panties in a twist? Oh, that’s right: like Al Qaeda, “They hate us for our freedom!”
It seems that sometimes we are so eager to find a compromise and avoid conflict that we trick ourselves into believing something we should know is false. It is when emotions override rationality, when a desire – like a desire for peace – overwhelms our understanding of politics, history, and security. Needless to say, this phenomenon is both common and dangerous. Unfortunately, we are going through a textbook episode right now: unwilling to engage in another conflict in the Middle East, many in the United States are tricking themselves into thinking that Iranian President Rouhani is a viable partner for peace, that he represents real change in Iranian policy towards its nuclear program and Israel. Indeed, a spell is being cast over us whereby we believe that Iran is finally interested in peace. Rouhani is not moderate.Since Rouhani’s election, Iran has stepped up public executions of political prisoners, he’s personally reinforced Iran’s right to build nuclear capacity, his choice for defense minister is now linked to the bombing of US Marines in Beirut in 1983, Iran has stepped up supplying arms and fighters to Assad in Syria, Iran is recruiting young men in Latin America to be radicalized and now this. So my question is: What’s changed since Ahmadinejad? The answer is nothing. Iran under Rouhani will be just as bad as under his predecessor, just with nicer manners. If you want to see what I mean, check out Rouhani’s career highlights at http://www.hassan-rouhani.info. The only real long term solution to Iran is regime change either at the ballot box or through street demonstrations just like the rest of the Arab world.
When the own the information, they can bend it all they want.
Kudos to Peter, excellent article! Kudos to the rest of you for filling in the blanks! The CIA formally acknowledged engineering the 1953 coup recently. But shortly after the hostage situation they were interviewing a CIA agent on national TV who much to my shock admitted that the CIA had spent $500,000 to pay thugs to beat up Mossadegh’s supporters on the streets of Tehran. They must have learnt that technique from the fat cats who in the thirties would hire thugs to beat up striking workers.
As for Ajax Lessome, had you even glanced at the article and the comments before spreading variations on the old British racist notion of the “Mad Untrustworthy Mullah”?
Winston Smith proposes a new name for TIME: “Memory Hole.”
Blah blah blah.Their own people hate their religious leaders hold on them.We hate them, and distrust them.A bomb in the hands of mad men is a destabilizing world force.They routinely lie in all ways at all times on the diplomatic front.Threats are part of their natural tongue it seems.They are a world supplier of terrorism and anti American movements.Bending like a willow just helps them reach your throat easier(a farsi saying)Yeah Im not being sold to their side or viewpoint.
Free spirit.You call me a racist though I am not talking of the Iranian people.Only their leadership.I think Iran and her people would be the easiest group to “befriend” Americans if not for their mad leadership.As far as history…I am a student of history.i am well aware of the bad aspects of Americas history over these past 300 years.Im also aware of the bumps in the historical road of the peoples who populated iran over the past 4000 years.It has little to do with what we are speaking of.I do not blame their rulers of 2000 years ago, if I find they are arming Syrian rebels today.I will tell you who is mad.YOU! You sound damn mad.At me and this wonderful country we call home.