The relationship between Iran and the US has been discussed by many from
many different angles. This article discusses several points, some of them
visited for the first time. The conclusion the author makes is misleading. The
nuclear deal was made because of the FEAR Iranian government had of the US, as
the US has a large navy in the Persian Gulf, has its military present in battle
posture in the east and west of Iran, and has the north controlled by NATO. In
addition, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other US friends in the area are directly
verbal attacking Iran. The deal was actually submission of total Iranian
independence. In that case, the deal was good for both parties. The article is
copied from the following link:
pr. 7 2015, 10:44 a.m.
It’s hard for some
Americans to understand why the Obama administration is so determined to come
to an agreement with Iran on its nuclear capability, given that huge
Iranian rallies are constantly chanting “Death to America!” I know the chanting makes
me unhappy, since I’m part of America, and I strongly oppose me dying.
But if you know
our actual history with Iran, you can kind of see where they’re coming from.
They have understandable reasons to be angry at and frightened of us — things
we’ve done that if, say, Norway had done them to us, would have us
out in the streets shouting “Death to Norway!” Unfortunately, not only
have the U.S. and our allies done horrendous things to Iran, we’re not even
polite enough to remember it.
Reminding
ourselves of this history does not mean endorsing an Iran with
nuclear-tipped ICBMs. It does mean realizing how absurd it sounds when critics
of the proposed agreement say it suddenly makes the U.S. the weaker party
or that we’re getting a bad deal because Iran, as Republican Sen. Lindsey
Graham put it, does not fear Obama enough. It’s exactly
the opposite: This is the best agreement the U.S. could get because for the
first time in 35 years, U.S.-Iranian relations aren’t being driven purely by
fear.
1. The founder of Reuters purchased Iran in 1872
Paul Julius Reuter (Getty) Getty Images
Nasir al-Din Shah, Shah of Iran from 1848-1896, sold Baron
Julius de Reuter the right to operate all of Iran’s railroads and canals, most
of the mines, all of the government’s forests, and all future industries. The
famous British statesman Lord Curzon called it“the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire
industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever
been dreamed of.” Iranians were so infuriated that the Shah had to rescind the
sale the next year.
2. The BBC lent a hand to the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s
Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh
If the Reuters thing
weren’t enough to give Iranians a grudge against the Western media, the
BBC transmitted a secret code to help Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy’s
grandson) lay the groundwork for an American and British coup
against Mosaddegh. (BBC Persian alsoassisted by broadcasting pro-coup propaganda on the orders
of the British government.) Soon enough the U.S. was training the regime’s
secret police in how to interrogate Iranians with methods a CIA
analyst said were “based on German torture techniques from World War
II.”
3. We had extensive plans to use nuclear weapons in Iran
In 1980 the U.S.
military was terrified the Soviet Union would take advantage of the
Iranian Revolution to invade Iran and seize the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian
Gulf. So the Pentagon came up with a plan: If the Soviets began
massing their troops, we would use small nuclear weapons to destroy the
mountain passes in northern Iran the Soviets needed to move their troops into
the country.
So we wouldn’t be
using nukes on Iran, just in Iran. As
Pentagon historian David Crist put it, “No one reflected on how the Iranians
might view such a scenario.” But they probably would have been fine with it,
just as we’d be fine with Iran nuking Minnesota to prevent Canada from gaining
control of the Gulf of Mexico. “No problem,” we’d say. “Nuestra casa es su
casa.”
4. We were cool with Saudi Arabia giving Saddam $5
billion to build nukes during the Iran-Iraq war
You probably know
that, after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, Iraq went all out (with our
help) trying to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and actually
used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers. What you probably don’t know is
that Saudi Arabia was funding Saddam’s nuclear program with billions of
dollars, and the Reagan administration knew all about it and didn’t care.
To understand how
this looks to Iran, remember that at least 0.75% of Iran’s total population
died during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the per capita equivalent today of
2.4 million Americans. For comparison’s sake, we still constantly talk about
World War II — in which 400,000 Americans died, then 0.3% of our
population — 70 years later.
5. U.S. leaders have repeatedly threatened to outright destroy
Iran
It’s not just John
McCain singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran.” Admiral
William Fallon, who retired as head of CENTCOM in 2008, said about Iran: “These guys are ants.
When the time comes, you crush them.” Admiral James Lyons Jr., commander of the
U.S. Pacific Fleet in the 1980s, has said we were prepared to “drill them
back to the fourth century.” Richard Armitage, then assistant secretary of
defense, explained that we considered whether
to “completely obliterate Iran.” Billionaire and GOP kingmaker Sheldon
Adelson advocates an unprovoked nuclear attack
on Iran — “in the middle of the desert” at first, then possibly
moving on to places with more people.
Most seriously,
the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review declared that
we will not use nuclear weapons “against non-nuclear weapons states that
are party to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and in compliance
with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.” There’s only one non-nuclear
country that’s plausibly not in this category. So we were
saying we will never use nuclear weapons against any country that doesn’t have
them already — with a single exception, Iran. Understandably, Iran
found having a nuclear target painted on it pretty upsetting.
6. We shot down a civilian Iranian airliner — killing 290
people, including 6 children
On July 3, 1988,
the USS Vincennes, patrolling in the Persian Gulf, blew Iran Air
Flight 655 out of the sky.The New York Times had editorialized about “Murder in the Air”
in 1983 when the Soviet Union mistakenly shot down a South Korean civilian
airliner in its airspace, declaring, “there is no conceivable excuse for any
nation shooting down a harmless airliner.” After the Vincennes missile
strike, a Times editorial announcedthat what happened to Flight 655
“raises stern questions for Iran.” That’s right — for Iran. Two
years later the U.S. Navy gave the Vincennes’s commander the highly
prestigious Legion of Merit commendation.
7. We worry about Iranian nukes because they would deter our
own military strikes
Our rhetoric on
Iran seems nonsensical: Do U.S. leaders actually believe Iran would engage in a
first nuclear strike on Israel or the U.S., given that would lead to a quick
and devastating retaliation from those well-armed nuclear powers?
Even conservative
U.S. foreign policy experts know that’s incredibly unlikely. They’re not
worried that we can’t deter a nuclear-armed Iran — they’re
worried that a nuclear-armed Iran could deter us. As Thomas
Donnelly, a top Iran analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, put it in 2004, “the prospect of a nuclear
Iran is a nightmare … because of the constraining effect it threatens to impose
upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East. … The surest deterrent to
American action is a functioning nuclear arsenal.”
This perspective —
that we must prevent other countries from being able to deter us from waging
war — is a bedrock belief of the U.S. establishment, and in fact was touted as
a major reason to invade Iraq.
Photo: Sipa/AP
This article has been updated since publication
with an additional item