An ecumenical delegation of church officials recently has
returned from a warm meeting with the Iranian president in Tehran.
Unfortunately for them, they got to Iran too late to join in the
annually celebrated “Death to America” holiday. But they still, no
doubt, got the flavor of Iranian antipathy towards the U.S. And
they understand the reasons for the justifiably deep pain.
After all, the U.S. helped restore the Shah to power in a
counter-coup in 1953. According to lore, Iranians have been reeling
with anger ever sense.
The Religious Left, like the secular left, believes that
indigenous cultures everywhere are sinless until corrupted by
Western culture. Iran was yanked from the Garden of Eden when the
CIA helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
Rev. Shanta Premawardhana, an official with the National Council
of Churches, explained the mythology upon his return with the
ecumenical delegation from the Islamic Republic:
“When Iranians think about the United States, the first images
that come to their mind are from 1953, when the CIA collaborating
with the British intelligence overthrew Iran’s first democratically
elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. His sin,
nationalizing the oil industry! He argued that Iran should benefit
from its oil industry rather than the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,
which later became British Petroleum. In his stead, they placed the
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Iranians recall how this U.S. backed
dictator oppressed them for 25 years, until in a popular rebellion
inspired by a confluence of factors, including religious fervor,
the people overthrew the Shah and instituted the world’s first
Islamic Republic.”
So who can fault the Iranians for their rage?
IN TRUTH, THE CHURCH OFFICIALS did not need to go to Iran to learn
what they already surmised about the Iranian 50-year angst over
America. Delegation member Jim Winkler, who heads the United
Methodist Church’s lobby office in Washington, D.C., explained in a
speech last year:
“I well remember living among Iranian students in the late 1970s
in college dormitories in Illinois. These students carried out
lonely protests against the Shah of Iran wearing paper bags over
their heads for fear of detection by the Shah’s secret police,
SAVAK, which operated with impunity in the United States thanks to
the close relationship between the United States and Iran. In fact,
the Shah owed his very throne to the United States. The
democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, had been
overthrown with the support of the U.S. in 1953. Although most
Americans have forgotten this fact, I assure you it is well known
in Iran. There is a direct line from the events of 1953 to the
revolution of 1979 to the present tensions between Iran and the
United States.”
Blaming America is reflexive for leftist church officials. But
their Iranian mythology, like their other myths, is more
ideological than historical.
Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, after having forced
the young Shah into exile, was himself dethroned in a counter coup
covertly supported by the United States and Great Britain. No less
than Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, the premier statesmen
of their age, directly approved of the covert action. Churchill
called Mossadegh an “an elderly lunatic bent on wrecking his
country and handing it over to the Communists.”
Mossadegh had risen to power based on his uncompromising
opposition to British influence in Iran. He urged Iran’s parliament
to seize the British oil facilities in Iran, to which Britain
responded by blockading Iran’s oil shipments. Iran’s parliament
elected Mossadegh its prime minister, with the acquiescence of the
young Shah. Initially, nationalists, Islamists and Iran’s communist
Tudeh party all supported Mossadegh, based on their common
opposition to the British. But the British embargo, Mossadegh’s
refusal to compromise or accept foreign mediation, along with his
socialist economic plans, all fueled an economic meltdown.
Mossadegh eventually dismissed parliament, called for a national
referendum, and claimed election results of 99.9 percent for
himself. He also had successfully seized the Shah’s constitutional
authority over the armed forces. Mossadegh then ruled by emergency
powers. The Shah attempted to dismiss him, but Mossadegh arrested
the Shah’s messenger, prompting the Shah to escape into exile.
Meanwhile, Churchill had returned to power in Britain, in part by
condemning his predecessor’s failure to act strongly against the
seizure of British oil assets in Iran. The United States under
Truman, and initially Eisenhower, had urged both Britain and Iran
to compromise. But Mossadegh explained to the U.S. before
concluding a Washington visit: “Don’t you realize that in returning
to Iran empty-handed, I return in a much stronger position than if
I returned with an agreement which I would have to sell to my
fanatics?” One British newspaper called him a “Robespierre fanatic”
because of his obsession with Britain.
Eisenhower was eventually persuaded to back a coup that would
restore the Shah to power. Iran was economically and geographically
too important to allow to slide into chaos. When the Shah’s father
had foolishly sided with the Nazis at the start of World War II,
the Soviets and British forced him from power and helped enthrone
his son. After the war, the Soviets had refused to leave northern
Iran. Their intransigence helped inspire Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”
speech, and eventually persuaded Harry Truman to issue an ultimatum
demanding their departure. Not willing to risk another Korea,
Eisenhower believed that Iran under the Shah was more reliable than
Iran under the quixotic Mossadegh.
Thanks to the economic upheaval, once supportive nationalists,
communists, clerics, and army officers peeled away from Mossadegh.
The Shah, from his exile, once again dismissed Mossadegh from the
premiership. Concurrently, the CIA and British organized
demonstrators to agitate against Mossadegh, who surrendered after
marchers and army tanks surrounded his house. He spent most of the
next 15 years of his life under house arrest. The Shah returned in
triumph and told the CIA officer in charge: “I owe my throne to
God, my people, my army — and to you!”
THAT CIA OFFICER, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, afterwards met
with Churchill who told him: “Young man, if I had been but a few
years younger, I would have loved nothing better than to have
served under your command in this great venture.” Eisenhower
awarded him the National Security Medal. The Shah would rule for 25
years, modernizing the economy, granting rights to women,
protecting religious freedoms, aligning with the United States, and
maintaining some ties with Israel. He also was an authoritarian
who, like nearly all other rulers in the region, imprisoned and
sometimes executed his enemies. Often weak-willed, and with a
political tin ear, he did not understand the Islamist Revolution
that rose against him in 1979. Nor would he use his powerful army
against it. Instead, he fled into exile, this time permanently.
In its first years of power, the Islamic Republic of Iran, under
the Ayatollah Khomeini, would quickly murder many times the number
of victims whom the Shah had tormented during his 25 years. The
Ayatollah imposed a vicious Islamic theocracy that suppressed all
political and religious opposition to his form of Shiite Islam.
Iran also has funded and armed terrorist groups like Hezbollah that
share its religious and political enthusiasms.
The countless crimes of the Islamic dictatorship in Iran did not
interest the ecumenical church delegation that visited Iran last
month. Instead, delegation member Jim Winkler has recalled that the
Shah was “a dictatorial, murderous tyrant,” words that none of the
delegation members have ever applied to the current Iranian
theocrats. Winkler and others grudgingly acknowledge that Iran’s
current regime is imperfect. But for that, isn’t America to
blame?
