Notes on Iran VII

Of Covert Action and Missionary Work

Notes on Iran VII

Of Covert Action and Missionary Work

“In May 1972, just 24 hours after agreeing in Moscow to a set of basic principles on US-Soviet relations that committed both nations to minimize international tensions, Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger were in Tehran offering to sell the Shah any US weapon he wanted – other than nuclear weapons. Over the next seven years, the United States sold $21 billion worth of arms to Iran, compared to $1.2 billion in the previous 22 years. Iran became the largest US arms recipient in the world, buying the latest US aircraft, as well as destroyers, more advanced than those being produced for the US Navy…”

“In the same May 1972 meeting…Nixon and Kissinger worked out with the Iranian leader that both their countries would give military aid to the rebellious Kurdish minority in neighboring Iraq…According to a classified report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence:

‘documents in the Committee’s possession clearly show that the President, Dr. Kissinger and the (Shah) hoped that our clients (the Kurds) would not prevail. They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap (Iraqi) resources…’”

“The Select Committee concluded that had the United States not reinforced Iran’s prodding, the Kurds might have ‘reached an accommodation’ with Baghdad, ‘thus gaining at least a measure of autonomy while avoiding further bloodshed. Instead, our clients fought on, sustaining thousands of casualties and 200,000 refugees.’”

“In 1975, the Shah and Saddam Hussein of Iraq signed an agreement giving Iran territorial concessions in return for Iran’s closing its borders to Kurdish guerrillas. Tehran and Washington promptly cut off their aid to the Kurds and, while Iraq massacred the rebels, the United States refused them asylum…Kissinger justified this U.S. policy in closed testimony: ‘Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.’”[1]

Of Regime Change, Nuclear Power and Oil

“With the fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical Khomeini adherents in Iran, chaos was unleashed,” F. William Engdahl tells us in ‘A Century of War’. “By May 1979, the new Khomeini regime had singled out the country’s nuclear power development plans and announced cancellation of the entire program for French and German nuclear reactor construction.”

“Iran’s oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the critical days of January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per day. To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply. Prices on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and Royal Dutch Shell as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as a result. The second oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way.”

“Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter’s defeat a year later.”

“There was never a real shortage in the world supply of petroleum. Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any time have met the 5–6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a U.S. congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office months later confirmed.”[2]

Deindustrialization in the US & UK

“In October 1979, Volcker unveiled a radical new Federal Reserve monetary policy. He deceived a shocked Congress and a desperate White House by insisting that his radical monetarist cure was aimed at ‘squeezing inflation out of the system.’”

“The defect in Volcker’s monetary shock therapy was that he never addressed the fundamental origins of the soaring inflation—two oil price shocks since 1973, which had raised the price of the world’s basic energy and transportation by 1,300 per cent in six years. And Volcker’s insistence on restricting the U.S. money supply by cutting credit to banks, consumers and the economy, was also a calculated fraud.”[3]

“In early May 1979, Margaret Thatcher won the British general election against her Labour Party opponent, James Callaghan. She had campaigned on a platform of ‘squeezing inflation out of the economy.’ But Thatcher, and the inner circle of modern-day Adam Smith ‘free market’ ideologues which surrounded her, promoted a consumer fraud, insisting that government deficit spending, and not the 140 per cent increase in the price of oil since the fall of Iran’s Shah, was the chief ‘cause’ of Britain’s 18 per cent rate of price inflation.”[4]

How America Started the Iran-Iraq War

“The Saudis and Kuwaitis agreed to fund Saddam Hussein’s attack into Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province at Zbigniew Brzezinski’s request. The idea was to sever Khuzestan from the rest of Iran, then install a pliable government with which the Four Horsemen could do business.”

“Khuzestan contains the strategic Shatt al-Arab Waterway, which flows into the Persian Gulf and forms the Iran/Iraq border. Kharg Island, in the waterway’s delta, is home to the bulk of Iran’s oil processing facilities, including the Abadan and Ahwaz refineries.”

“Khuzestan is also home to 90% of Iranian oil reserves and most of Iran’s significant natural gas reserves, which are surpassed only by those in Russia and Turkmenistan. Khuzestan is the stronghold of the Tudeh and People’s Mujahadeen Parties, thorns in the side of the

Ayatollah, the Shah and Big Oil alike. The population of the province is largely Arab and Kurdish, while Persians predominate elsewhere in Iran. The CIA hoped to exploit these ethnic differences as it so often does.”

“Brzezinski told Saddam that his Revolutionary Guard would be seen entering Khuzestan as, ‘great Arab liberators’. Hussein was also assured control of the Shatt al-Arab, which former Iraqi President al-Bakr had ceded to Iran under the 1973 Algiers Agreement in return for a cessation of Shah and CIA backing of Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan rebels. In 1980 Hussein’s troops invaded Iran. Iraq gained control of the prized Shatt al-Arab only briefly. Its troops were seen by the Khuzestanis for what they really were - tools of US imperialism. The real US goals were quite different from what Brzezinski had told Saddam Hussein.”[5]

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A Two-Track Policy in Iran

“Shortly after coming to office in January 1981, the Reagan administration decided to allow Israel to ship several billion dollars’ worth of U.S. arms and spare parts to Iran…In addition, U.S.-made arms from Belgium and Holland were sent to Iran, which, according to the testimony of arms dealers, the United States also replenished. Gary Sick, who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, believes that these weapons shipments represented payment by the Reagan administration to Iran for its service in delaying the release of the U.S. embassy hostages until after the 1980 election.”[6]

“Former SAVAK agent and CIA liaison Mansur Rafizadeh said the CIA was pursuing a two-track strategy in Iran. On the one hand they were arming the Ayatollah and helping him crush the Iranian left. On the other hand, they were working to destabilize the Khomeini regime in a variety of ways.”[7]

“Starting in 1982 the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in Paris called the Front for the Liberation of Iran, headed by Ali Amani, who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953. The United States also provided support to two Iranian paramilitary groups based in Turkey, one of them headed by General Bahram Aryana, the Shah’s army chief, who had close ties to Shahpur Bakhtiar, the Shah’s last prime minister.”[8]

Nothing has fundamentally changed in US policy in the course of half a century. The Deep State remains guided by treachery, opportunism, cynicism, duplicity, hypocrisy, double standards, mendacity and “Real Politik” while its underlining and interlocking twin aims: deindustrialization and depopulation in both the “Third World” and the “West” remain the same.

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[1] pp. 40-41 Imperial Alibis, Stephen Rossman Shalom

[2] pp. 206-207 A Century of War, F. William Engdahl

[3] p.209 Ibid

[4] p.217 Ibid

[5] p.213 Big Oil & Their Bankers, Dean Henderson

[6] pp.73-74 Imperial Alibis, Stephen Rosskamm Shalom

[7] pp.208-209 Big Oil & Their Bankers, Dean Henderson

[8] p.73 Imperial Alibis, Stephen Rosskamm Shalom