Watching footage of un-armed demonstrators going up against heavily-armed riot cops stirs up any working person. It especially stirs up those of us who’ve been in a similar situation here in the US. The sympathy of Vice President Biden for the demonstrators, on the radio this morning, didn’t carry much water for me.
It was heartening to see the working people of Tehran out on the streets taking on their authoritarian religious regime. It is 30 years since the Mullahs and their backwardness took the reigns in a revolution initially dominated by working people. In the subsequent decades lot of workers attempting to organize have subsequently been jailed, tortured or even killed. No different to the history of any single nation in this world.
But what inflamed me the most this morning was the indignation of the Bidens and Clintons at the Iranian Elections. That the elections were not free or fair.
In 1951 the Iranian people elected Mossadegh as Prime Minister. He took back Iran’s oil, by nationalizing the industry. Two years later British and US capitalism took back Iran’s democracy by organizing a coup against the elected government. In its place they made the Shah king once again. Eisenhower’s Operation Ajax is not even denied by the US establishment’s historians.
The Shah, the bloody dictator, that essentially brought us the current regime, was supported by the great US Democrats of the last century: John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, along with all the other US Presidents in-between.
I think the Iranian opposition’s claim that 10 million votes went missing is quite likely to be true. What is far, far less credibleis the tears for democracy cried by the tops of US capitalism. Every iota of democracy in this country came from below and is always claimed from above.
Solidarity from one union and socialist activist in the US to all those fighting for a better world on the streets of Tehran today.
Rob
2 comments:
Most Americans would have no idea that their government orchestrated the coup that overthrew the secular democratic government of Mossadegh.
The CIA man in charge was Kermit Roosevelt, the President's grandson.
and, as the post says, they installed the murderous Shah who ruthlessly suppressed all opposition.
The Dulles brothers were heavily involved and this team orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government during the same period. This was on behalf of the giant landowners and, fruit companies and other corporate interests.
If you want to find the source of the Mullah's rise to power look no further than the White House. The main obstacle to secular democracy in this part of the world has been US and British capitalism.
Along with Mullah's and the Shah of course there is Mobutu, Marcos, Pinochet. Hussein and Bin Laden are have also found US capitalism a very generous and trustworthy ally.
The list is a long one.
The US government's cries of foul have no credibility whatsoever, particularly among workers in the former colonial world. The election is surely tainted, but the folks in Washington can't say too much about tainted elections can they?
I forgot to mention that a good book on the US overthrow of Mossadegh is All The Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer
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