SOURCES and NOTES - Narration - Pt.1, Some History

Part One
some history

"In 1953 CIA Agent Kermit Roosevelt organized a coup to overthrow Iran's popular nationalist-leftist prime minister Muhammed Moseddegh in favor of the Pahlavi Shah."

SOURCE: Kinzer, Stephen (2003). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-26517-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=Wv4B6C-wTG8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=All+the+Shah%27s+Men:+An+American+Coup+and+the+Roots+of+Middle+East+Terror.&ei=qTK3SMb_KIuUiAHLioAx&sig=ACfU3U1g_SdriumGFc0ID4vzthkB3bXf9g

History lecture by our minder

Here's our minder being translated as he lays a hard-line Islamist-nationalist version of recent Iranian history on thick. Mixing legitimate grievances with conspiracy theories that …. weren’t very convincing.

COMMENT: When I first heard his spiel I assumed it was a "hard line version", the minder being a supporter of Ahmadinejad and the story seeming - to my Yankee ears - too crude and over the top to be the work of an actual government. But according to the book Guests of the Ayatollah, the most recent and thorough book on the hostage crisis, at least much of what he told us was IRI official history http://books.google.com/books?id=-nl2BhEZ9ykC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Guests+of+the+Ayatollah&ei=bHnWSO2YLJTsiQHN77TnDg&sig=ACfU3U33dlNfSf3ci5ATyzqkWAcKMUrcvA
- the history Iranian children are taught in school.

What annoyed me about our minders speech was not so much that it was propaganda (what do you expect?) but that it felt so obviously - even insultingly - untrue. Few people who watched TV at the time of the crisis (in America or in Iran), have forgotten the images of the hostages - hands bound, eyes blindfolded - being marched before angry crowds. This is "treated with respect and kindness"????

Overthrow of the Shah

The Shah is not so much an autocrat as a sort of naughty boy who is kicked out of Iran when he ignores once too often the warnings of the Imam Khomeini to behave.

COMMENT: The minder told how Khomeini didn't want to rule but was forced to when his repeated warnings to the Shah went unheeded. The idea here seems to be to suggest both powerlessness of the police and military power of the shah in the face of the Iranian people’s devotion to the Imam; and Khomeini's pious reluctance to take power – he could overthrow the Shah anytime he wanted, but was too holy and lacking in ambition for power to be bothered … until provoked beyond endurance.

The truth is that Khomeini did originally write (in 1942) that monarchy was OK provided the kings followed the Sharia, but later changed his mind (sometime on or before 1970) and started telling his followers that leading clergy needed to rule to save Islam. http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_works.html#answer_kashf_al-asrar

But the claim the Khomeini was reluctant to take power also seems directed at the widely agreed upon belief (fact) that he was deceptive in representing to Iranians (outside his circle of loyalists) what it was he wanted for Iran after the revolution. Anti-IRI folks point out Khomeini had given a series of lectures made into a book 9 years before the revolution calling for the Muslim world to be ruled by a leading Islamic jurist with no parliament or elections to assist this government, http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_works.html#answer_velayat
This theory seemed to be tailor-made for him (a leading jurist and the only one talking about the necessity of rule by jurist). However, it was not until revolutionaries had taken over and he had a solid grip on power that he and his followers let the general Iranian public know about this theory of Islamic government requiring rule by an Islamic jurist. http://gemsofislamism.tripod.com/khomeini_promises_kept.html#Islamic_Clerics

So the question is just when did Imam Khomeini decide he needed to take up the heavy burden of ruling Iran.

Womping the opposition

The post-revolutionary opposition to theocracy aren’t hapless civilians, their political parties banned and peaceful demonstrations crushed by Hezbollahi thugs. They’re villains ... repaying the regime’s offers of dialog and friendship with treachery and brutally - this brutality financed and controlled by the American embassy.

COMMENT: Were they victims not villains?

SOURCES: Khomeini warning opponents: "Those who are trying to bring corruption and destruction to our country in the name of democracy will be oppressed. They are worse than [[Banu Qurayza and Bani-Ghorizeh]] Jews, and they must be hanged. We will oppress them by God's order and God's call to prayer." (In a talk at the Fayzieah School in Qom, August 30, 1979, from: [http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/August/Khomeini/ "Democracy? I meant theocracy." By Dr. Jalal Matini, The Iranian, August 5, 2003 Khomeini defending forced closing of opposition newspapers and attacks on opposition protesters by club-wielding vigilantes:

`The club of the pen and the club of the tongue is the worst of clubs, whose corruption is a 100 times greater than other clubs.` [from: Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs, (1984), p.146]

Hostage Crisis

... All this led to the American embassy hostage-taking, but don't worry about the 444-day hostage of its employees, they were treated just fine.

Documents not withstanding, it turns out there all of three CIA agents at the embassy, none of whom spoke Farsi or had been in Iran longer than four months. They were not involved in sabotage and killing let alone its nerve center.

Actually, when the students took the Americans hostage, their demand was the return of the Shah to Iran for trial and execution – the Shah having just been allowed in the US for cancer treatment. When the Shah died a few months later the Americans were still kept hostage on grounds of beings spies, though countries usually deal with misbehavior by foreign diplomats by expelling them, hostage taking being against international law.

SOURCES: "On November 4, 1979, the students following the Line of the Imam (SFLI) attacked and seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took embassy personnel hostage and confiscated documents. The takeover, like an earlier one, would have been brief had it not got the support of Khomeini, who saw in it a chance to get rid of the liberal government, radicalize the revolution, and increase his power. After the SFLI refused Bazargan's order to evacuate the embassy, his government resigned."

"The Khomeinists prolonged the crisis in order to weaken moderates and non-Khomeinist senior ulama, pass the constitution, and consolidate power. Debate on the constitution was undermined by claims that such debate was treacherous. A selective release of U.S. embassy documents defamed the moderates, the only ones who were shown as meeting with Americans, though senior Khomeinists had also done so. The left, including the Mojahedin, joined this attack." (Keddie, Nikki, Modern Iran : Roots and Results of Revolution, Yale University Press, 2003, p.248-9)

"A few observations might be in order. The U.S.A. had roughly 5000 `sources of information` in Iran, ranging from paid CIA agent to voluntary informants. These `sources were recruited from all walks of life and included almost all the Shah's known non-clerical opponents over some 25 years.`" (Taheri, Emir, The Spirit of Allah, p.267)

The Iranians were convinced that the embassy staff “was engaged in a massive spy operation intent on stopping the revolution, killing Khomeini, and restoring the” Shah to power, writes Bowden. There were three CIA agents among the staff, engaged in “routine, prudent espionage conducted at diplomatic missions everywhere.” In fact, says the author, the CIA work in Iran at the time was notably ineffectual, gathering little information and hampered by the fact that none of the agents spoke the local language, Farsi. (from: http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Default.aspx?oid=63&ocat=2
review of Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly 2006)

Iran Iraq War

Not a word about the about the Great Satan, slogans like “war, war until victory”

COMMENT: As for America never admitting Iran was invaded by Iraq, what's he talking about???
Yes, there was much anger in America with Iran over the holding of hostages, but there was no denial that Iraq invaded. Here's the first line of story on the war in the New York Times less than 2 weeks after the war started:
"Iraq's invasion of Iran appears to have come to a dead stop along most sectors of the front, according to reports reaching Western analysts." (October 2, 1980 p.A16)
And in any case how would he know? His English was .... very poor and he'd never been to America.

Taliban

The Taliban – Iran’s enemy - are not homegrown Afghan fundamentalists but a - quote - intelligence service that occupies Afghanistan, created by the U.S. government - which also controls Pakistan’s intelligence service.

COMMENT: The taliban did indeed get training, financing and equipment from Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, and their Pashtun ethnicity was resented in non-Pashtun areas, maybe even considered an occupation. But the Taliban fighters and leaders were predominately madrassa-educated, Afghan refugees from camps in Pakistan. They were extremely ignorant, and could in no way be called "an intelligence service." And had little or no contact with, let alone instruction from the U.S. government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

Bush-Bin Laden construction company

....But a Bush-bin Laden construction firm?

COMMENT: Most "information" on the internet dealing with Bush-bin Laden financial connections seems to be 9/11 denial stuff such as http://tvnewslies.org/html/bin_laden_ties.html
Wikipedia has a very short section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family#Alleged_business_connections_of_the_Bush_and_bin_Laden_families ... but I found zero on a "Bush-Bin Laden construction company."