German TV show on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

[Jesus Malverde]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=109_1445595463

It's funny for not the millions dead.

[EdwardBernays]

1. That's the simple version

The longer version is this:

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (AIOC) was an arm of the British government

"The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was an English company founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and in 1954 it became the British Petroleum Company (BP), one of the antecedents of the modern BP public limited company."

"In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite, negotiated an oil concession with Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia. He assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. In exchange the Shah received £20,000 (£1.9 million today), an equal amount in shares of D'Arcy's company, and a promise of 16% of future profits."

"Churchill, as a part of a three-year expansion program, sought to modernize Britain's Royal Navy by abandoning the use of coal-fired steamships and instead adopting oil as fuel for its ships instead. Although Britain had large reserves of coal, oil had advantages in better energy density, allowing a longer steaming range for a ship for the same bunker capacity. Furthermore, Churchill wanted to free Britain from its reliance on the Standard Oil and Royal Dutch-Shell oil companies. In exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in APOC. The contract that was set up between the British Government and APOC was to hold for 20 years. The British government also became a de facto hidden power behind the oil company."

"During this period, Iranian popular opposition to the D'Arcy oil concession and royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16% of net profits was widespread. Since industrial development and planning, as well as other fundamental reforms were predicated on oil revenues, the government's lack of control over the oil industry served to accentuate the Iranian Government's misgivings regarding the manner in which APOC conducted its affairs in Iran. Such a pervasive atmosphere of dissatisfaction seemed to suggest that a radical revision of the concession terms would be possible. Moreover, owing to the introduction of reforms that improved fiscal order in Iran, APOC's past practice of cutting off advances in oil royalties when its demands were not met had lost much of its sting.

And AIOC had been promising to pay for education and other benefits for Iranian oil workers for years.This promise was put into writing in an extension of the original agreement in the early 1930s:

"Under the 1933 agreement with Reza Shah, AIOC had promised to give laborers better pay and more chance for advancement, build schools, hospitals, roads and telephone system. It had not done so."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Persian_Oil_Company

Then, in 1941, the US and Soviets INVADED and occupied Iran, and put Reza Shah's son into power, as a they thought he'd be more pliant to the West's wishes.

Reza Shah appealed directly to Roosevelt, who basically told him to do what the West wants or get out of the way...

"In response to the Shah's defiance, the Red Army on 16 September moved to occupy Tehran. Fearing execution by the communists, many people (especially the wealthy) fled the city. Rezā Shāh, in a letter hand written by Foroughi, announced his abdication, as the Soviets entered the city on 17 September. The British wanted to restore the Qajar Dynasty to power, because they had served British interests well prior to Rezā Shāh's reign. But the heir to the throne, Hamid Hassan Mirza, was a British citizen who spoke no Persian. Instead (with the help of Foroughi), Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took the oath to become the Shah of Iran. Rezā Shāh was arrested before he was able to leave Tehran, and placed into British custody. He was sent to exile as a British prisoner in South Africa, where he died in 1944. The Allies withdrew from Tehran on 17 October. However, Iran was effectively divided between Britain and the Soviet Union for the duration of the global war, with the Soviets stationed in northern Iran, and the British not moving beyond Hamadan and Qazvin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran

"Following World War II, nationalistic sentiments were on the rise in the Middle East; most notable being Iranian nationalism. AIOC and the pro western Iranian government led by Prime Minister Ali Razmara initially resisted nationalist pressure to revise AIOC's concession terms still further in Iran's favour. In May 1949, Britain offered a "Supplemental oil agreement" to appease unrest in the country. The agreement guaranteed royalty payments would not drop below £4 million, reduced the area in which it would be allowed to drill, and promised more Iranians would be trained for administrative positions. The agreement, however, gave Iran neither a "greater voice in company's management", nor the right to audit the company books. In addition, Iranian royalties from oil were not expected to ever drop to the proposed guarantee of £4 million and the reduced area covered all of the productive oilfields. When the Iranian Prime Minister tried to argue with AIOC head Sir William Fraser, Fraser "dismissed him" and flew back to the UK.

In late December 1950 word reached Tehran that the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company had agreed to share profits with Saudis on a 50-50 basis. The UK Foreign Office rejected the idea of any similar agreement for AIOC.

On March 7, 1951 Prime Minister Haj Haj Ali Razmara was assassinated by the Fadayan-e Islam. Fadayan-e Islam supported the demands of the National Front, which held a minority of seats in Parliament, to nationalize the assets of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. As Prime Minister, Razmara had convinced the majority that nationalization would be folly, but his assassination eliminated the sole voice powerful enough to oppose the demands of the National Front. Iranian anger towards lack of progress in the nationalization of AIOC was apparent when the assassination of Razmara, yielded a distinct lack of mourning from the Iranian public. A raucous walkout of protest by newspaper reporters ensued when a visiting American diplomat urged 'reason as well as enthusiasm' to deal with the imminent British embargo of Iran.

By 1951 Iranian support for nationalisation of the AIOC was intense. Grievances included the small fraction of revenues Iran received. In 1947, for example, AIOC reported after-tax profits of £40 million ($112 million), but the contractual agreement entitled Iran to just £7 million or 17.5% of profits from Iranian oil. Britain was receiving more from AIOC than Iran. In addition, conditions for Iranian oil workers and their families were very bad."

After years of not living up to their agreements, and after the Iranians became suspicious (historians think rightly) that the Brits were cooking the books and ripping off a chunk of the Iranian government's oil revenue, the Iranian's demanded to audit AIOC's books. AIOC refused.

And the oil workers, after almost two decade of broken promises, were not having their lives improved.

Here's what their lives were like:

"Wages were 50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a shanty town called Kaghazabad, or Paper City, without running water or electricity, ... In winter the earth flooded and became a flat, perspiring lake. The mud in town was knee-deep, and ... when the rains subsided, clouds of nipping, small-winged flies rose from the stagnant water to fill the nostrils ....

Summer was worse. ... The heat was torrid ... sticky and unrelenting—while the wind and sandstorms shipped off the desert hot as a blower. The dwellings of Kaghazabad, cobbled from rusted oil drums hammered flat, turned into sweltering ovens. ... In every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil .... in Kaghazad there was nothing—not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree. The tiled reflecting pool and shaded central square that were part of every Iranian town, ... were missing here. The unpaved alleyways were emporiums for rats."

So, the new Shah, the one the US invaded to install, nationalised the oil.

That led to the US/UK led coup, called Operation AJAX:


"The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom and the United States."

And hey, guess who organised the coup:

Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. a grandson of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt... coordinated CIA's Operation Ajax, orchestrating a multifaceted coup d'état against Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq"

(It's somewhat - ironic I suppose - that Mohammed Mosaddeq was the nephew of Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar's wife. If you've lost track he was the one that signed the original absurdly concessionary deal with the Brits in the early 1900s.)

Mosaddegh was then replaced by a Western puppet, General Fazlollah Zahedi.

In order for Zahedi to maintain power, the CIA created the Iranian secret police. Created, paid for and trained. And sat by as the murder and tortured many thousands of people.

"SAVAK was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran's Mohammad Reza Shah with the help of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA) and Israel."

"TIME magazine described SAVAK as having "long been Iran's most hated and feared institution" which had "tortured and murdered thousands of the Shah's opponents." The Federation of American Scientists also found it guilty of "the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners" and symbolizing "the Shah's rule from 1963-79." The FAS list of SAVAK torture methods included "electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails.

Thanks CIA!

"Following the coup, the United States helped build up the Shah's regime. In the first three weeks, the American government gave Iran $68 million in emergency aid, and an additional $1.2 billion over the next decade.

During his reign, the Shah received significant American support, frequently making state visits to the White House and earning praise from numerous American presidents. The Shah's close ties to Washington and his Westernization policies soon angered some Iranians, especially the hardline Islamic conservatives.

Fast forward 20 years:

"In the late 1970s, American President Jimmy Carter emphasized human rights in his foreign policy, including the Shah's regime, which by 1977 had garnered unfavorable publicity in the West for its human rights record."

Watch as the US lectures the puppet they put into power, and the secret police they created, about human rights... and yet, the Shah actually tried in some small way to placate the Americans:

"That year, the Shah responded to Carter's "polite reminder" by granting amnesty to some prisoners and allowing the Red Cross to visit prisons. Through 1977, liberal opposition formed organizations and issued open letters denouncing the Shah's regime."

Remember though that the Shah was basically a US backed puppet, who had been put into power through a series of US coups and an invasion. Not surprisingly, some Iranians weren't big fans of the Shah.

"At the same time, Carter angered anti-Shah Iranians with a New Years Eve 1978 toast to the Shah in which he said:

Under the Shah’s brilliant leadership Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troublesome regions of the world. There is no other state figure whom I could appreciate and like more."

This all eventually led to the Iranian hostage crisis.

Most people have some idea about that - Thanks Argo - but did you know that the US shredded hundreds of documents, in that embassy. Those documents were "unshredded" by skilled Iranian carpet weavers, and the resulting documents have been published all over the world - well - everywhere but America.

You can read all the original documents here: http://basij.aut.ac.ir/revolution/ Scroll down to the PDfs.

There's an overview here:

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/teheren.htm

You see, the initial goals of the students who took US citizens hostage were:

"The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line demanded that the Shah return to Iran for trial and execution. The U.S. maintained that the Shah, who died less than a year later in July 1980, had come to America for medical attention. The group's other demands included that the U.S. government apologize for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran, for the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953, and that Iran's frozen assets in the United States be released.

However, as the shredded documents began to reveal their secret, something came to light... the US was in early stages of planning yet ANOTHER COUP:

"Theocratic Islamists, as well as leftist political groups and figures like the socialist People's Mujahedin of Iran, supported the taking of American hostages as an attack on "American imperialism" and its alleged Iranian "tools of the West". Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents purportedly taken from the embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding, to buttress their claim that "the Great Satan" (the U.S.) was trying to destabilize the new regime, and that Iranian moderates were in league with the U.S."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#cite_note-34

I could go on, but I hope you see that the US/West's relationship with Iran has been one of us being a horrible dictatorial oppressor, and the Iranians have EVERY RIGHT to hate the US.

Imagine is a country did that to the US... we'd never forgive them... and yet, the right in America calls them an evil threat to the world... forgive me - and anyone with access to a history book, for thinking the US is more of a threat to Iran, and pretty much any everywhere else, than Iran could ever be.

So let's see, two, almost three coups - one organised by the US President's grandson, and an invasion, the creation of one of the most brutal secret police forces of all time, and decades of crippling economic sanctions...

Who's the bad guy here?

If I was Iran I'd look at Pakistan and North Korea and think, "the only way to stop the US from invading us again is if we have nuclear weapons".

I know that sounds harsh, but consider just how atrocious our behaviour has been towards the Iranian's - completely unforgivable... Remember this the next time the "hawks" warn you about Iran.