BBC NEWS: America's secret engagement with Khomeini during the Iranian Revolution

[yurbud]

Khomeini wanted the US to know "our" economic interests would not be threatened if he took over, but he needed Carter to help calm the Iranian military to make the transition peaceful.

This doesn't sound like the raving fanatic presented in our press at the time or since.

Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh made similar conciliatory overtures to the United States before we spent decades try to assassinate Castro and going on a decade long killing spree in Vietnam.

Even Iran after Khomeini and before the Obama peace deal reached out to us after Bush invaded neighbors on either side of Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, and they said everything was open to negotiation.

Russia and China are now about as capitalist as any other countries in the world. Do we really need to ramp up a new cold war with them if enemies we had far less in common with were willing work with us on very amicable terms?

We have a bigger military than the rest of the world combined, so talking rather than fighting isn't a matter of cowardice, it's a matter of having friendly relations with less powerful countries without forcing them to be the absolute slave of corporate and banking interests.

Doing so might allow us to cut that massive military spending a bit too since fewer countries and groups would have grievances with us.

I think I could live with that.

From his home in exile outside Paris, the defiant leader of the Iranian revolution effectively offered the Carter administration a deal: Iranian military leaders listen to you, he said, but the Iranian people follow my orders.

If President Jimmy Carter could use his influence on the military to clear the way for his takeover, Khomeini suggested, he would calm the nation. Stability could be restored, America's interests and citizens in Iran would be protected.

At the time, the Iranian scene was chaotic. Protesters clashed with troops, shops were closed, public services suspended. Meanwhile, labour strikes had all but halted the flow of oil, jeopardising a vital Western interest.

Persuaded by Carter, Iran's autocratic ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, known as the Shah, had finally departed on a "vacation" abroad, leaving behind an unpopular prime minister and a military in disarray - a force of 400,000 men with heavy dependence on American arms and advice.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36431160

[leveymg]

1. Yes, PM Bakhtiar wrote about his role and the American Amb. in these back-channel negotiations.

By their increasingly open cooperation with the opposition, US Ambassador William Sullivan and the military attache were instrumental in the decision of the Shah to depart. After six months of increasing chaos and violence, the Americans supported the rise of a National Front figure, Shahpour Bakhtiar, to his temporary position as the head of government and smoothed the way for the return of Khomeini from exile.

The simultaneous rise of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran opposition, and the overthrow of Somoza, was received with alarm by some in the CIA and Congress. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan sealed the fate of the Carter Administration's policy of loosening of the reigns of US support for dictators, and heralded a new policy of proxy warfare against Russia and its allies led by the Saudis, Pakistan and their growing irregular armies of Holy Terror.

[yurbud]

2. Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed our support for the mujahideen preceded the Soviet invasion

[leveymg]

3. Absolutely.

We were involved with the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser in the '50s.

[MisterP]

4. right--Ho, Castro, and Ortega all appealed to Washington with nothing but friendliness at the start

Bush wouldn't give Honduras cheap oil and Chavez did, so we more-than-winked at Zelaya's ouster because he was "turning to the leftists"

a combination of self-interest and a completely Manichean view of the world makes the slightest deviation from our orbit "enemy"

[Eugene]

5. Iran leader slams 'fake' BBC report on secret US contact

Source: BBC

Iran leader slams 'fake' BBC report on secret US contact

3 June 2016 US & Canada

Iran's Supreme Leader has dismissed a BBC report revealing secret contact between late Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and US presidents before the Iranian revolution.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "Britain has always been hostile to us" and the report was "fake".

The story was based on newly declassified US government documents from the Cold War.

Mr Khamenei suggested they were forged.

The original report revealed how Ayatollah Khomeini had courted the Carter administration from exile in Paris to broker his return to Iran.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36447219

[yurbud]

6. I wonder why they felt the need to say that.