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Iran So Far Away
Stephen Kinzer chronicles the coup that could come again
 By John Hood
If those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, what about
those who’ve made history and not learned from their mistakes?
Are they equally doomed? When it comes to the
United States and Iran, that just may be the case.
Of course, we’d have to assume our current administration is aware
of its history; then we’d have to hope against hope that it
knows history is still in its hands. And while the former is
highly unlikely (the past is so yesterday), the latter is almost
mutually assured — at least if the last seven years of saber
rattling against
Iran is any indication.
But there remains a slim chance that someone in this administration
would rather not deepen the everlasting scar of its legacy —
someone who not only knows his or her history, but knows enough
to heed it; someone smart enough to have read Stephen Kinzer’s
All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle
East Terror (Wiley, $14.95).
Here’s some of what they’d learn:
Once upon a very different time, believe it or not, Iranians viewed
Americans with near universal regard. After all, a young
Nebraskan schoolteacher named Howard Baskerville had fought and
died alongside his Persian pals in 1909 during the
Constitutional Revolution, and a Princeton Theological Seminary
alum named Samuel Jordan not only founded one of the country’s
first modern secondary schools (Alborz High School), his
Presbyterian mission ran both a hospital and one of Iran’s only
schools for girls.
Then
Iran
democratically elected a leader named Mohammed Mossadegh and all
the goodwill went to hell. Why? Because of the British and their
pesky yen for crude, that’s why.
See, before
Mossadegh,
Britain had always run Iran as a kinda puppet fiefdom, first as
a strategic crossroads between its colonial territories, then as
a wellspring of oil. Sure, there was the occasional skirmish
(those natives can be so restless), but that patently British
brand of strong-arm diplomacy usually managed to keep a lid on
things.
But those who’ve been bent over backward for decade after decade
eventually reach a breaking point, and when that happens it
takes something decidedly brawnier than a strong arm on a lid.
It takes a coup.
When Mossadegh dared nationalize
Iran’s oil concerns, the Brits got the Yanks to gang up on him
with every dirty trick yet to be written in the newly formed
CIA’s handbook, from mass media manipulations to out-and-out
arrest. Unfortunately, Mossadegh, who till the end remained
unequivocally committed to democracy, never suspected his
American friends of betrayal; if he did, he refused to believe
it. And that proved his downfall.
Kinzer, a former New York Times correspondent with more than
50 countries notched on his belt, chronicles the proceedings
with a reporter’s attention to detail and a dramatist’s eye for
some of history’s most inexplicably prized minds: General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf, 40 years before his same-named son would
lead us into Desert Storm; CIA op Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of
Teddy, and his relentless commitment to mission; the Dulles
brothers, Allen and John Foster, two of the archest, most
adamant of Cold Warriors; outgoing President Truman, who had no
taste for coups, implicit or otherwise; incoming
Commander-in-Chief Eisenhower, who suffered no such compunction,
especially after the Brits convinced him that Mossadegh was
about to go Commie (which he wasn’t). And, the most pivotal
player of all, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now more commonly
known as British Petroleum.
It’s an ugly story, full of high stakes and hubris, but it’s all
too true. It also happens to be the basis of what’s at best a
very deep suspicion, and at worst, a very base hatred of the
West. And since we’ve just nine months to go before the
warmongers leave the Oval Office, it needs to be told and
retold, lest we end up retelling it all over again, with an even
uglier cast and at far greater consequence.
Stephen Kinzer reads from and discusses
All the Shah's Men, at
6
p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, at Books & Books,
265 Aragon Ave.,
Coral Gables. For more information, call 305-442-4408.
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