Stephen Kinzer's books are must reading for anyone interested in the history of US foreign policy

[hifiguy]

I've read Overthrow, his brilliant history of a hundred years of US-backed regime change" operations around the world, and The Brothers, his dual biography of the malevolent, Manichaean Dulles brothers, who ran foreign policy in the Eisenhower years. Both are immensely informative, well-written and definitively clear up any misapprehensions about why the rest of the world fears and mistrusts the US.

Currently reading his Reset: Iran, Turkey and America's Future. It's a small tour-de-force rethinking the last disastrous years of Middle East policy and a very fresh and historically grounded approach to a modernized ME policy.

There is no way to read Kinzer without coming away better informed and mentally stimulated about what might have been and yet be.

[Octafish]

1. Amy Goodman spoke with Mr. Kinzer on CIA-BP role in Iran Coup d'Etat of 1953

History of BP Includes Role in 1953 Iran Coup After Nationalization of Oil

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap-up, as tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill, we continue our series on BP. Yesterday we looked at their horrendous safety record on the millions of dollars they’ve spent on lobbying congress to prevent regulation. Today, we’re going to look at the history, sixty years ago, BP was called Anglo Iranian Oil Company. In an interview on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times bureau chief, author of "All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror", told the story of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Let’s go to a clip of what Steven Kinzer says.

STEVEN KINZER: At the beginning of the 20th century as a result of a corrupt deal with the old dying monarchy, one British company, owned mainly by the British government, had taken control of the entire Iranian oil industry.

SNIP...

...What happened was that Prime Minister Mossadegh, who really was an extraordinary figure in his time, although he’s in somewhat forgotten by history, came to power in 1951 on a wave of nationalism aimed at this one great obsession, we’ve got to take back control of our oil and use the profits for the development of one of the most wretchedly impoverished nations on earth at that time. So the Iranian parliament voted unanimously for a bill to nationalize the Anglo Iranian Petroleum Co. and Mossadegh signed it and he devoted himself, during his term of office, to carrying-out that plan. To nationalize was then Britain’s largest and most profitable holding anywhere in the world. Bear in mind that the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and 30s and 40s all came from Iran. The standard of living that people in England enjoyed all during that period was due exclusive to Iranian oil. Britain has no oil. Britain has no colonies that have oil. every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi, was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran. Suddenly Iran arrives and says, 'Oh, we're taking back the oil now.’ So this naturally set-off a huge crisis. And that’s the crisis that made Mossadegh really a big World figure around the early 1950s. At the end of 1951 Time magazine chose him as 'Man of the Year,' and they chose him over Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower; and they made the right choice because at that moment, Mossadegh really was the most important person in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer. Wrote "All the Shah’s Men." Talked extensively about the Anglo Iranian Oil Company which was renamed British Petroleum. That’s BP. That does it for our show.

SOURCE: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/6/history_of_bp_includes_role_in

Thank you for the heads-up, hifiguy. Kinzer is a top mind and a great writer.