America’s brutal puppet fled Iran giving Ayatollah Khomeini and his religious thugs the opening they needed to create a different, brutal Islamic theocracy which has been a thorn in the world’s side ever since.
The outcome shouldn’t be a shock though. The West’s most recently meddling began during WWII via the UK and Soviet Union. I think the British won out because I can’t imagine the Soviets being thrilled with Iran becoming a constitutional monarchy under the asshole who became the Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. America’s overthrow of their fledgling democracy with Premier Mosaddeq in 1953 showed the world that our paranoid fear of the Soviet Union and love of cheap oil were our true values. Freedom and democracy were only for White Americans as the Shah was the absolute ruler through his CIA-trained secret police (Savak). I guess the CIA taught them how to torture citizens without leaving visible marks.
According to the ladies from the podcast Ethnically Ambiguous, despite Reza being very powerful, he was filled with self doubt and not wasn’t very strong willed. He was also a super horny scumbag. Allegedly, an executive from a Fortune 500 company let the Shah sleep with his wife in order to get a major contract.
The regime began to crumble when he was diagnosed with cancer. It was kept secret for a while but the damage was done. Reza became reclusive, depressed and lost interest in governing with the iron fist he needed to stay on stop. When a strongman stops exerting force, allies quickly become enemies and existing enemies get emboldened. Eventually the army revolted leaving Reza no other option but to flee Iran with his family.
Iranians of all stripes were thrilled to be rid of the murderous asshole. It was short lived as Khomeini and his thugs took over, killing or expelling the opposition to their designs, an oppressive state governed through a Medieval interpretation of the Koran.
- Women are second class humans.
- Elements of Western culture were destroyed, except weapons.
- Other interpretations of Islam are wrong, hence Iran meddles through their terrorist allies.
Eventually Khomeini’s followers had lost their collective shit when they seized the US embassy and held the occupants hostage for over a year unless we returned the Shah to face trial for his crimes. Never happened yet it probably weighed heavily in Jimmy Carter losing his bid to be re-elected president to a B-movie bullshit artist. I have no doubt St. Reagan’s goon squad met with Iranian officials to keep the hostages in place until the election since the Shah died in July 1980, eliminating the Iranian’s motivation.
Today, Iran’s population is quadruple what it was 40 years ago thanks to their war against Iraq in the Eighties. This means the majority were born well after Khomeini’s coup and many are realizing the ayatollahs and mullahs are crooks of another color. Western sanctions have been successful, the Iranian economy has been strangled for decades causing high unemployment and stagnant growth. Some have spoken out against the government funding so much on foreign policy (aka terrorism) when the money would’ve been better spent at home fixing the economy.
American policy hasn’t matured much neither, see the Iraq debacle of Dubious Bush and the war criminal named Dick Cheney. We continue to hold a grudge over those past events. Now I’m not a proponent of the Islamic Republic of Iran but maybe it’s time to grow the hell up, deal with them in a more mature fashion as the present regime isn’t going away soon. Preventing their ambitions for nuclear weapons isn’t impossible and it can be done without going to war until we have a better plan to undermine their government.
Just not until we get our house in order.