Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 05:29:24PM -0400, Scott Boggs wrote:
> >Erm, we didn't put the Shah in place.
> 
> I sit corrected.
> 
> I thought I'd read/heard (a shaky basis for making claims) that they
> actually had the makings of democracy in the works in the 50s or so, and
> that the US worked to put the recent Shah in power.

They /did/ have a quasi-democratically elected prime minister, Mossadeq
- and we /did/ help push him out of power and restore the Shah's full
control over Parliament (which was later dissolved, IIRC - or maybe the
Shah just made opposition parties illegal). But we didn't just set up a
monarchy in Iran, that had been there for a long time. We just helped
restore it to its full totalitarian power after their experiment in
democracy got a little too close to the Soviets and nationalized the
oil. Oddly, Truman refused to get involved in ousting Mossadeq - it was
apparently Eisenhower, who when informed (falsely, according to the
Wikipedia article) of Mossadeq's pro-Soviet leanings, approved the
operation. So you could argue that the whole thing was the UK using the
US' native anti-communist leanings, during the McCarthy era, to restore
the constitution and parliament of Iran in exchange for ousting a pretty
weird guy with little practical sense and getting a good deal on oil.

Not that history means much to the nutjobs currently running Iran, tho.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

-- 
hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com/
antispam news, solutions for sendmail, exim, postfix: http://enemieslist.com/
rambling, amusements, edifications and suchlike: http://interrupt-driven.com/