What Can Obama Do to Promote Democracy in Iran?

Jane Vandenburgh — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:32:34 +0000

In 1953,our CIA helped toppled Mohamed Mossade, Iran’s only democratically elected prime minister. Called Operation Boot in the UK and Operation Ajax in the US, it was promoted by British Petroleum, also Preston Bush (father of George HWB) & the rest of the oilmen who frankly prefer to deal with a person like the Shah, since the shahs had ruled Iran “repressively, savagely, corruptly and in imperious isolation” on the behalf of the West for most of the 20th century, as Robert Fisk reports in his masterful GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION, which is a history of the West’s involvement in the Middle East in modern times.

I also have this first hand from my great uncle Bobby, who drank too much, and was supposedly in the State Department (he really was in the State Department) but was also CIA and would, after he’d had too much to drink, BRAG about how American Oil put the Shah back in power while he was there in Tehran. My cousin Mark was born there in 1952.

The tragic result? the Islamic Revolution that brought the Ayatollah Kohmeiny to power 25 years later, putting educated women of all classes back into compulsory chador.

Given this history of US’s polluting the cause of democracy in Iran for our own self interest, what do we urge the President to do?

Jane Vandenburgh » US Medding in Iran’s Democracy

What Can Obama Do to Promote Democracy in Iran?