A friend of mine who is from Iran, said it was a cool country until the USA brought them the mullahs

[Smith_3]

He is among those who left when Khomeini seized power. He still talks rather favorable of the Shah.
He went on and on of how secular Iran used to be and how it had all the clubs and all the brothels and now those village idiots are in power because the USA wanted oil. I don't know if he is oversimplifying but that is how he sees it.

[EFerrari]

1. That's pretty much how it worked out.

We put in the Shah, the people didn't like the brutal SOB and that left a power vacuum that the mullahs filled. Oops.

[eridani]

2. It started before that, actually. In the 1953 coup--

--the CIA funded the mullahs opposing the secular nationalist Mossadegh.

[EFerrari]

3. Right. We make our own right wing enemies by taking out the moderates.

[bigbrother05]

10. Big oil and the West couldn't have a Socialist in charge

So they installed the Shah, wanted someone who would do bidness in a similar manner to the Saudis. Eventually, the Iranians got tired of the abuse, regardless of the secular trappings, and ousted him.

Went to school with lots of Iranians in the early 70's. They were either well connected or so freaking smart the gov't was paying their way. Didn't usually talk politics, but most were hoping to figure out a way to stay in the states.

Also saw the start of student protests against the Shah's regime. They would wear masks while marching to prevent identification by Iranian security (or their US buddies). With that amount of activity by folks that were privileged by their system, was not too surprised that they eventually as a country got rid of the Shah.

It's too bad that the US was so narrowly focused on self interest that we didn't act in the interests of the people of Iran a long time ago. Oh well, hindsight is said to be 20/20, but it's also colored by the pain of our lessons learned.

An interesting thing is that most of the Iranians I knew well were studying nuclear engineering, wonder what they are doing now?

[ConsAreLiars]

4. Iranians chose a secular socialist, but the US killed him

and put a secular English trained fascist/monarchist. Fascism wasn't all that popular, what with all that torture and shit. So they supported a crazy fundie who at least claimed to have some sense of human decency and integrity. Bad luck. Imagine what might have happened if the US had not engineered a coup and installed a fascist?

(edit punctuation typo)

[EFerrari]

5. People freak out over sharia but it used to be the remedy

for no rule of law at all. A small measure of justice where none existed.

[ConsAreLiars]

7. Exactly.

A high percent of Iranians would rather go with more modern values, but for the great majority it is better than foreign domination and arbitrary state authority to murder and maim on a whim.

[frylock]

16. the US didn't kill him..

but they did assist in manufacturing the coup.

[Monaco3]

6. This makes it sound as if the brothels were a good thing

[Smith_3]

8. Well, ever since we liberated Afghanistan they have prostitutes there.

Under the Taliban it was outlawed. :shrug: Can't have your cake and eat it too.

[timtom]

12. And the opium...

Ahhh, the opium...

Taliban had outlawed that, too.

Cut into OUR cash cow, will ya, ya turban-headed heathens!

Shock and awe for you, me fine lads...

[BlueMTexpat]

9. It is in the interest of our radical RW'ers to keep demonizing Iran

and Iranians. What a tragic shame! And your friend is understandably a product of his times and his own experience. But that is certainly NOT the whole story.

And yes, it is true that the US, having helped to eliminate Mossadegh and installed its own puppet shah (to whom it literally gave "carte blanche" insofar as US arms purchases were concerned and looked aside when abuses against Iranian civil liberties were committed), is largely responsible for the mullah backlash and subsequent empowerment.

An excellent book to read that gives a better picture of what the situation under the mullahs in Iran was, prior to BushCo in any event, is Robin Wright's "The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran." It gives a picture of the country over nearly 20 years of mullah rule from the perspective of a Westerner (and a Western woman at that) who had reported events there from 1973 (i.e., pre-Revolution) on. If anything, BushCo's foreign policy set back continuing progress and reforms in Iran, bringing the hard-liners back into power. Thanks again, Cheney-Bolton-PNAC-bots.

But the Persian culture has endured for thousands of years, much longer than our own. Unless we or any other country acting as our surrogate commits a totally immoral, illegal and irresponsible as well as reprehensible act such as beginning a war there and with real goodwill on both sides, Iran and the US will find a way through the current impasse. Hopefully, we will once again be "friendly" nations with open cultural and educational exchanges as a part of restored diplomatic relations. Also hopefully, that day will not be too long in coming.

[pnutbutr]

11. Persepolis

Anyone seen it? I thought it was rather good and provided the perspective of a child growing up during that time.

[Hekate]

15. I was just going to recommend that. The Shah was no sweetheart of democracy either. nt

[terisan]

13. He is greatly oversimplying. nt

[frylock]

14. All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

With breezy storytelling and diligent research, Kinzer has reconstructed the CIA's 1953 overthrow of the elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who was wildly popular at home for having nationalized his country's oil industry. The coup ushered in the long and brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah, widely seen as a U.S. puppet and himself overthrown by the Islamic revolution of 1979. At its best this work reads like a spy novel, with code names and informants, midnight meetings with the monarch and a last-minute plot twist when the CIA's plan, called Operation Ajax, nearly goes awry. A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent and the author of books on Nicaragua (Blood of Brothers) and Turkey (Crescent and Star), Kinzer has combed memoirs, academic works, government documents and news stories to produce this blow-by-blow account. He shows that until early in 1953, Great Britain and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company were the imperialist baddies of this tale. Intransigent in the face of Iran's demands for a fairer share of oil profits and better conditions for workers, British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison exacerbated tension with his attitude that the challenge from Iran was, in Kinzer's words, "a simple matter of ignorant natives rebelling against the forces of civilization." Before the crisis peaked, a high-ranking employee of Anglo-Iranian wrote to a superior that the company's alliance with the "corrupt ruling classes" and "leech-like bureaucracies" were "disastrous, outdated and impractical." This stands as a textbook lesson in how not to conduct foreign policy.

http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236196071&sr=8-1