Iran's Islamic Revolution
by Ed Sawicki
When U.S. support for Israel is mentioned in the mainstream media, it's justified by saying that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. There are a few problems with this explanation. Israel is not quite a democracy—only certain citizens enjoy the full benefits of citizenship. It's often described as a “Jewish state”. It's more accurate to describe Israel as an “ethnocracy.”
There was one other Middle East democracy in the past. Before 1953, Iran was a secular democracy with strong ties to the West. But this democracy was destroyed by the West.
In July 1952, Iranians elected a progressive government led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who would have used the proceeds from oil sales to fund infrastructure and social programs. But the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company didn’t want to pay market rates for Iranian oil. They underreported the amount of oil they extracted and refused to allow Iran to audit their books. Iran’s parliament responded by voting to nationalize Iranian oil production.
The US and British spy agencies engineered a coup d'état that overthrew Iran’s democratic government and installed a puppet government led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, known in the Western press as “the Shah of Iran.” The Shah converted Iran's democracy into an authoritarian government friendly to U.S. and British business interests.
The Shaw ruled Iran for 25 years. During that time, Iranians dressed in Western clothes, women wore French fashions, and had chic hair doos they picked from French fashion magazines. Julija Televičiūtė collected photos of Iranian women from 1970s magazines and published them. This Western-like society with its non-democracy fell apart in the late 1970s when political unrest grew.
In 1979, the Shah was in failing health due to cancer, and escaped to Egypt. An Islamic Revolution turned Iran’s government into an Islamic theocracy that now hates the United States, Britain, and Israel. They imprisoned Americans who worked at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
If the U.S. and Britain had not staged the coup d'état in 1953, Iran would today likely be a secular democracy friendly to the U.S. (and possibly Israel) with McDonald’s restaurants, Dunkin Donuts, and no nuclear enrichment program.
There's a straight line from the 1953 coup to the problems in the Middle East today.