In August of 1953 Iran had a democratic government.
Its parliament and prime minister,
the popular Mohammad Mosaddegh,
had nationalized the oil industry
to control the country's chief asset.
Then, the CIA intervened.
I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo.
We meet at a time of great tension
between the United States and Muslims around the world.
Tension rooted in historical forces
that go beyond any current policy debate.
For many years Iran has defined itself in part
by its opposition to my country and there is,
in fact, a tumultuous history between us.
Since the Islamic revolution Iran has played
a role in acts of hostage taking and violence
against US troops and civilians.
In the middle of the Cold War the United States
played a role in the overthrow
of a democratically elected Iranian government.
This history is well known.
I have never heard anything about the CIA,
especially in 1953.
I don't know anything about it.
I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that.
I have no knowledge of that whatsoever.
Something I've never heard of, never known anything about.
I have no clue.
Uh... can you repeat that?
Well I wasn't born in 1953 so I've never heard of the coup.
That was a little bit before my time.
After the Eisenhower administration made its decision
to overthrow Mosaddegh, Allen Dulles selected Kermit Roosevelt
to carry out the coup. At the beginning of august 1953
Kermit Roosevelt arrived in Tehran
and began this covert operation.
It's really a fascinating operation to study
because it answers this odd question.
How do you overthrow a government?
Former Premier Mosaddegh's ruined house is a mute testimony
to three days of bloody rioting culminating in a military coup.
Suppose you get sent to a country and you're told
"overthrow the government" so what do you do on the first day?
What do you do on the second day?
In the quick shift of power, Mosaddegh
was finally apprehended and awaits trial for treason.
The Shah, who had fled to Rome, comes home
backed by General Zedekiah, military strongman,
who engineered his return to power.
The general will now have a strong voice
in the newly formed government whose cabinet
is seen here with Shah Pahlavi.
How do you overthrow a government?
Many countries in the Middle East are what you might call
fake countries or invented countries.
They're countries that were created by outside powers,
usually in the wake of World War I and I think
there's a temptation for people that aren't familiar
with the region to see Iran in that category
but that's not true. Actually the opposite is true.
Iran, formerly known as Persia,
is one of the world's oldest civilizations.
At a time when Europeans are still living in caves
and wearing animal skins people in Persia
were conducting experiments in astronomy
and learning about mathematics
and writing beautiful poetry.
So this is a civilization that has a great deal of sense
of its history, a sense of self confidence, a sense of identity
and a sense of being rooted
in the long course of world history.
This is not a country that just arrived and it is trying
to figure out who or what it is.
In 1908 the British discovered oil in Iran.
Geologists soon learned that Iran sits on an ocean of oil.
The British decided that they needed oil to run their cars,
to power their Navy and to fuel their economy.
But Britain has no oil.
When oil was discovered there the British decided
that they would like to control that entire resource.
Soon after the discovery this Anglo Iranian Oil Company
was formed and it purchased the majority stake
and then the oil company arranged a concession with Iran.
The entire stock of Iranian oil was the property
of this British company and all the rights to exploit oil
in Iran belonged to this company.
Oil, of course, became very profitable
from the 1920s onwards
and the way the division was, was abysmal.
For instance, Iran was getting sometimes
16 percent of the profits
and the profits were defined in such a way
that it actually short changed Iran.
Books were not open to the public,
even to the Iranian government.
In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was chosen Prime Minister of Iran.
Mosaddegh was a tireless social reformer,
fiercely nationalistic and incorruptible.
No account of the 20th century
is complete without a chapter on him.
Mohammad Mosaddegh was an outstanding politician,
political figure in Iran for a long, long time.
He had relatives who were part of the previous dynasty,
The Qajar dynasty and he was a prominent figure
for a number of decades in Iran.
Before he became Prime Minister in 1951 he was
a vocal opponent of British control over Iran's oil industry
and generally Britain's control over Iran as a country.
We have to remember this is at a time
when there's a wave of nationalism going through Iran.
There's been long struggle against the British
since the late 1800s and there was a feeling in the country
that it was time for Iran to really be independent.
As Iran's vast petroleum reserves aroused nationalists
following seizure by the Iranian government
of the British operated refineries
and distribution facility.
Demonstrations at the huge oil port of Ibadan culminate
in the tearing down of signs over company offices
and the raising of the Iranian flag over the installations.
And here comes Gossamer, a very well respected person,
a lawyer, who managed to get himself
in this very powerful position in the country.
Mosaddegh was a fascinating figure.
He must be one of the towering figures
in the 20th century history of the developing world.
Bear in mind that when he emerged there had never been
a figure from a poor country who had risen up in such
a visible way to challenge the masters of the universe.
Nobody from a poor country had ever stood up and said
"we own this resource, it belongs to us,
it doesn't matter what companies you've imposed on us
or what agreements you've imposed on us;
All of that was unjust.
We have this resource and we are miserably poor.
We need the money from this resource
and we insist on having it."
Mosaddegh is very much interested
in national sovereignty but there's something more
than that. He's not just a national leader.
He was very sincerely committed
to the notion of liberal democracy.
Time Magazine made Mohammad Gossamer
its man of the year for 1951.
They chose him over Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman,
Winston Churchill and a number of other
towering world figures and they were right.
He was the most important person in the world at that time.
And he did what a lot of Iranians strongly agreed with,
which was to make sure that Iran would keep
the revenues of its own oil, at least a big portion of it,
whereas in the past it didn't keep any of it.
So people in Iran began challenging.
Anglo Iranian Oil Company and saying
"you've got to change your contract with us
and give us 50 percent, you keep 50 percent",
not keep 90 percent or more, whatever it was,
no one ever knew since Iranians were never allowed
to audit the books.
The Anglo Iranian Oil Company refused.
They would not concede an inch. They were quite pigheaded.
I think they were still maybe caught
in the colonial mentality of the past and thought that
the idea that some poor country could try
to pressure them or dictate terms to them was unthinkable.
The important thing is who actually controls oil production
because if you control oil production then you can decide
whether you're going to increase it or lower it
and that then determines, of course, price.
What Mosaddegh was doing was threatening that
because by nationalizing he was saying MANIOC is not going
to be in charge of production, Iran will be in charge.
We can decide how much to produce,
who to sell it to and that could influence the market.
So that's where it became the threat.
The ability of a foreign company to control oil
in the Middle East was also important, not just
for the British but also in the American's eyes.
They didn't want other countries in the Middle East
to begin thinking that all you have to do is make trouble
and foreign companies are going to have to
make concessions to you.
The pretense was that they were willing to compromise
but the Brits from right at the beginning
they didn't want to give up control.
They started spending some money on, you know,
parks, swimming pools and stuff.
So by '51 they were saying "the Iranians should be
grateful to us because we've built you
swimming pools and stuff."
Well of course a swimming pool might cost
the oil company 2,000 pounds.
What's that when you know profits are like
50 million pounds a year or something like that.
They were treating them kind of like the way
we treated black Americans in per civil war south,
or even post civil war south when we put them in
economic slavery instead of real slavery and persisted,
even more adamantly, in their desire to rape,
pillage and plunder Iran.
The Persians had every reason to dislike the way
that MANIOC was treating them.
The British didn't really know
how to deal with a situation like this.
It was a new era for them but they were
still thinking in an older era.
One of their first impulses was"well we're going to send
an army and we'll just invade Iran."
Harry Truman, in Washington, got wind of this and he went crazy.
You got this situation where Harry Truman, I think,
says"I'm not having any of this, this is imperialism,
this is colonialism. We've fought a damn war.
Winston Churchill when you come back to the
government you can go to hell."
President Truman was increasingly concerned about
the intensity of this argument between Iran and Britain.
At one point he sent a leading figure in the United States,
Aver ell Harridan, who had been famous as governor of New York
and had held a number of international positions,
to Iran with instructions to negotiate with Mosaddegh
and see if he could get Mosaddegh to make
some kind of a compromise with the British.
I want to express to you my appreciation
for your willingness to undertake this trip to Iran.
It's a very important job that you have undertaken
and one which I think you can handle
with satisfaction and success.
Mr Harridan undertakes a series of conferences
with Prime Minister Mosaddegh.
Out of these conferences hope emerges,
that the crisis that threatens world peace may now be averted.
Poor Averell Harriman was shuttling back and forth
between British and Iranian representatives,
trying to make a deal, and realised
that neither side was willing to.
The British policy was to actually undermine Mosaddegh
initially by putting economic pressure.
So one way of economic pressure was to try to close down
the oil industry, thinking that the Iranians
wouldn't be able to run the oil industry.
Actually Iranians were able to run it.
They kept turning up the pressure, hoping
that as one official of the old British company said
"when they need money they will come
crawling to us on their bellies."
So the next step was to have a blockade so Iran
couldn't sell its oil and so whenever tankers from Italy
or somewhere came to buy oil the British
would actually impound them.
This way the main source of revenue of course
for Iran dried up because Iran's main source
of foreign exchange and revenue was in fact oil.
The British then decided they would take Mosaddegh
to international tribunals.
The first thing Britain did was to submit a resolution
to the United Nations Security Council
in which the Security Council would order Iran
to give back the oil company.
When Mosaddegh heard about this he decided to do something
that no leader of any poor country had ever done.
He would fly himself to New York, which wasn't so easy
in those days, and personally present Iran's case
to the Security Council.
He made quite a splash in New York City.
He went to visit the Liberty Bell, went to Washington DC.
He was a very colorful figure, something like your beloved
but perhaps slightly eccentric favourite uncle.
His speech at the Security Council was very potent.
It was the first time that most people at the UN
and most people in the world had ever heard the leader
of a poor country explain a clash like this
from the perspective of the poor country.
We'd always been hearing it from the other perspective.
The United Nations, once again, confronts a grave problem
as Premier Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran arrives
with Secretary at the Security Council
to present his side of the explosive Iranian oil case.
The ailing statesman electrifies the Council as he denies
the right of the United Nations to intervene
in what he calls a purely internal matter.
He accuses Britain of intimidation by a display
of armed might after the nationalization
of the oil industry. Sir Goldwyn Ebb,
Britain's representative, is an attentive listener
to his arguments, as is America's Warren Austin.
The issue could be peace or war.
After that debate the Security Council did something
that it had never done in the brief history of the UN,
which was to refuse to pass a resolution that had been
sponsored by one of the leading members
of the Security Council, Britain.
So the UN refused to order Mosaddegh
to give back the oil company.
Then the British decided "we're gonna take Mosaddegh
to the world court in the Hague"
and Mosaddegh himself flew to The Hague.
Hearings before the International Court
at The Hague failed to solve the difference
as Premier Mosaddegh, with his parliament behind him,
firmly pursued his nationalist course.
The same thing happened.
He had a great impact, not just on public opinion
but on the judges there and those judges
also refused to order him to give back the oil company.
So the British were running out of options.
From their point of view Iran had stolen something
that belonged to Britain.
It seemed like an open and shut case.
"We had a contract with them.
They gave us the right to own their oil.
Now they want it back. But this is a contract,
it cannot be violated, they signed it."
The United Nations did not accept this argument;
The World Court did not accept this argument.
This was quite a shock for the British.
The British tried to oust Mosaddegh
by bribing members of Parliament.
But Mosaddegh got wind of the plot,
he promptly kicked the Brits out of the country.
After the British Embassy in Tehran was closed
the British were more or less out of options.
They had tried everything from blockading ports
to appeals to international bodies, threats,
embargoes, everything. Now they didn't even have anyone in Iran.
So they turned to the Americans. Churchill asked.
President Truman,"can you do us this favour?
Can you overthrow this madman
who has taken away our oil company?"
Harry Truman, I think, was violently opposed
on principle to supporting the coup and Britain
worked hard to get Harry Truman to support the coup.
And Truman said "no". The CIA had never overthrown
a government up to that time and it was.
Truman's firm belief that it never should.
That seemed like the end of the line for Britain.
Then, in November of 1952, a surge of excitement
charged through the British foreign service.
In Washington, a new President
had been elected - Dwight Di. Eisenhower.
IKE for President. IKE for President.
You like IKE. I like IKE.
Everybody likes IKE for President.
Hang out the banner and beat the drum.
We'll take IKE to Washington.
We've got to get where we are going,
travel day and night for President.
Let Ladling go the other way. We'll all go with Ike.
You like IKE. I like IKE.
Everybody likes IKE for President.
Hang up the banner and beat the drum.
We'll take IKE to Washington.
Now is the time for all good Americans
to come to the aid of their country.
There was a fundamental disagreement
between Truman and Eisenhower on the question of
whether Mosaddegh was the problem or the solution.
Truman and his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson,
had for some time been working fairly closely with Mosaddegh.
They had a fundamental sympathy towards Iran
and its efforts to get itself out
from under the influence of Great Britain.
They became convinced that negotiations
with Mosaddegh were the way to go.
Eisenhower and his group, on the other hand,
although they didn't reach this conclusion right away,
were much more disposed towards finding some other solution.
The British approached the incoming.
Republican Administration about overthrowing
Mosaddegh.
John Foster Dulles, the new Secretary of State,
had long railed against the dangers of
communism.
For much of his career, he had served as a top lawyer
for large mulch-national corporations.
His brother Allen became the new director of the CIA.
It was the first and only time that
siblings controlled both the overt and covert sides
of American foreign policy.
It wasn't hard for the British to talk the brothers
into overthrowing Mosaddegh.
The Dulles brothers then sold the new president
on the idea of a coup by playing the
communist card.
There's only one person in the whole Eisenhower administration
whoever raises this question of Mosaddegh's true beliefs
and that person was President Eisenhower himself.
There was a meeting of the National Security Council
at which Eisenhower said something like
"I'm glad we're overthrowing this communist Mosaddegh
but I actually wasn't aware that he really was
a communist" and Dulles had a great answer.
Dulles said"well it's true that Mosaddegh
is not a communist, however Mosaddegh
is an elderly man, he could die, he could be overthrown.
That would produce instability in Iran.
There is a communist party in Iran.
Iran is on the border with the Soviet Union,
therefore circumstances could unfold in a way
that might leave Iran open to communism."
And then the straw that breaks the camel's back
is "the Soviets are coming."
Where have we heard this before?
"The Soviets are coming, the Soviets are coming."
When Eisenhower heard that he said
"okay, you've convinced me."
And Eisenhower approves it and it goes ahead
and there's one other thing operating here.
Eisenhower has this incredible aversion for war,
not so counter intuitive if you think about it for a moment.
He doesn't want to see a nuclear war in particular
and so he develops this penchant
for clandestine operations
because compared to war they're cheap.
After the Eisenhower administration made its decision
to overthrow Mosaddegh, Allen Dulles
selected Kermit Roosevelt to carry out the coup.
Kermit Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt.
He's very well educated, my god he's a Roosevelt.
He is full of energy, the energy of youth,
the dynamism of youth and good education
and he wants to serve his country but he wants to do it
in a secretive way, he wants to do it
in an adventurous way, he wants to do it overseas and so forth.
As the chief of the Middle East section of the CIA
he was the logical choice.
So he's the perfect person for this kind of operation.
At the beginning of August, 1953 Kermit Roosevelt
arrived in Tehran and began this covert operation.
It's really a fascinating operation to study
because it answers this odd question;
How do you overthrow a government?
Suppose you get sent to a country and you're told
"overthrow the government" so what do you do on the first day?
What do you do on the second day?
Kermit Roosevelt, who really was something
like a true life James Bond,
carried out a very effective policy.
Roosevelt bribed tribal leaders and newspaper editors
who now claimed that Mosaddegh was a dictator and had to go.
Every day they were printing articles about
how evil Mosaddegh was, that he was a Jew,
he was a homosexual, he was a criminal,
he was an agent of the British;
Anything they could think of to undermine him.
Leaving nothing to chance,
Roosevelt bribed military officers, religious leaders,
and members of Parliament.
One of the most interesting things
that Kermit Roosevelt did, besides bribing
members of parliament and military officers
and everyone else, was his decision
to throw Tehran into chaos.
He had this idea that if there were riots
and outbreaks of violence every day around Tehran
people would begin to think that Prime Minister Mosaddegh
had completely lost control of the country.
So as the coup day drew closer he bribed
the chief leader of the protection rackets in Tehran,
a guy named Shaman the Brainless, to turn out his mob.
It was Kermit Roosevelt's idea that this gang, this mob,
should charge through the streets of Tehran,
beat up pedestrians, break shop windows,
fire guns into mosques and then yell
"up with communism, we love Mosaddegh"
and that wasn't even enough.
Kermit Roosevelt had an even better idea.
He hired another mob to attack that mob.
That created a huge outbreak of street violence.
The first idea that Kermit Roosevelt had
was to bring the Shah into the plot.
The British had occupied Iran
during the second world war, at which time they placed
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne
as Shah or "King".
Prior to doing so, they forced the Shah's father
a ruthless strongman - to abdicate the throne
due to suspected pro-Nazi sympathies.
In placing the son on the throne,
the Brits hoped the younger, weaker Shah would be
easier to control.
The Shah was a great coward and a great pipsqueak
and real afraid cat, very much different
from the image that we had of him 20 years later.
He was terrified of becoming involved in this operation
because he feared, perhaps quite rightly,
that if it went wrong he'd be finished,
he'd be chased all out of the country.
This was really dicey up to the last minute.
The Shah even didn't think this was gonna work.
They had to fly his sister in, for example,
who was hated and didn't even wanna go,
to try and convince him to do it.
It took a great deal of persuasion and a lot of pressure
by Kermit Roosevelt and a number of people
that he brought in to persuade the Shah to join the plot.
Now what did Kermit Roosevelt want the Shah to do?
It was his idea that the Shah should sign two orders,
"firmands" they're called in Farsi.
The first order dismisses Mosaddegh as Prime Minister
and the second order names.
General Zahedi as his successor.
So late one night, around midnight, one of the generals
or a colonel at that time, loyal to the Shah,
arrived with a few soldiers at Mosaddegh's house,
bangs on the door and when the door is opened
says, "I have two orders from the Shah."
Now everyone, including the Shah and Kermit Roosevelt
understood what Mosaddegh's reaction
to these orders would be.
He would say"these are illegal, I reject these orders.
You have no right to name a new Prime Minister
or to fire a Prime Minister without parliament's approval,"
and when he did that they would arrest him, that was the plan.
That simple plan failed because Mosaddegh
actually got wind of the plan so when the Shah's troops
came to Mosaddegh's home to arrest him
Mosaddegh had actually more troops there waiting for them.
So they arrested the Shah's kernel.
The next morning Radio Tehran broadcast the news
that a British plot,
that's what the Iranians, naively thought it was,
had been crushed.
When the Shah heard this he fled the country immediately
and went to Baghdad and then on to Rome.
The CIA cabled Roosevelt that the situation had become
too dangerous and to leave Tehran at once.
Kermit Roosevelt, however, thought to himself
"wait, I can still do this; I have many assets
I haven't used yet.
I can still get this done" and showing the resourcefulness,
for which he became famous, he decided to stay on in Tehran
and try, four days later, to stage another coup.
For the next several days,
Roosevelt played the roll of puppeteer.
Throwing Tehran deeper into chaos, he had one
gang take to the streets, followed by another.
After Mullahs marched to denounce Mosaddegh,
he had the military storm the streets.
They never had any idea that there was such a person
as Kermit Roosevelt, that he was operating
in the basement of the US Embassy.
When two Iranian agents working for the CIA got cold feet,
Roosevelt made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
Kermit Roosevelt produced a valise
with 50,000 dollars in cash.
He told them: "if you agree to continue helping me
I'll give you this 50,000 dollars, and by the way,
if you don't I'm gonna kill you."
Considering that option they changed their mind
and decided to help.
Roosevelt knew that the other officers under his control
hadn't been touched yet. He had Loyd Henderson,
the US Ambassador deliver a message to Mosaddegh:
Establish law and order and clear the streets
of demonstrators or the US would cease
to recognize him as prime minister.
Henderson falsely claimed that American lives were at risk.
Mosaddegh fell for the trap and effectively disarmed himself.
He ordered his supporters off the streets, and established
martial law which allowed the coup plotters
to gain access to needed fuel and weapons.
The military officers in on the plot then rolled their tanks
into Tehran - not to clear the streets of demonstrators,
but to arrest Mosaddegh.
At Mosaddegh's residence there was a final fire fight.
Mosaddegh's men with their 3 tanks were no match
for the 36 tanks that besieged the residence,
which was soon destroyed.
Finally, late at night, the firing stopped.
The people inside fled.
Mosaddegh jumped over a back wall and disappeared.
The house was looted. They brought out whatever
they could find and some of Mosaddegh's personal furnishings
were actually for sale on the street. His refrigerator
was sold to somebody for about 35 dollars.
It was time to deliver the coup DE grace,
that was the naming of Zahedi.
To head up the coup, the CIA had chosen.
Fazlollah Zahedi who had a reputation for ruthlessness.
General Zahedi had spent WWII in a British internment camp
due to his connections to Nazi agents.
Now General Zahedi was in the custody, essentially,
of Kermit Roosevelt. Roosevelt had stashed him at a safe house
near the American Embassy.
So he arrived there to tell him, "everything's worked out,
it's all set, you're gonna be the Prime Minister."
The guy was just sitting there in his underwear
waiting for news. Zahedi was brought out onto the streets
and rode aboard a tank through the streets of Tehran
to the radio station where he was to make his statement
announcing that Mosaddegh was overthrown
and, "I'm now your new Prime Minister."
It was quite a festive event although there was one hitch.
As he was about to make his radio speech
the radio announcers decided we need some marshal music
to show that Iranian patriotism has finally triumphed.
So he went running off, according to this account,
to the Embassy library, pulled the first, you know,
record album that he could find off the shelf
and immediately put this record on the turntable
and the very first song that came out
was The Star-Spangled Banner.
So this was another kind of wink of history
maybe since it actually was the Americans
who were coming to power. That was quickly changed.
Iranian music was put on. Zahedi made his speech,
announced that the evil Mosaddegh was gone
and, "I will now take over and restore Iran's greatness."
The Shah was sitting at lunch in a hotel in Rome,
probably thinking to himself what he was gonna do now.
He had already told people he would have to look for work
because he wasn't gonna be able to go back to Iran.
Suddenly some news reporters burst in and handed him
the news and they said, "you're back.
The coup... there was another coup... it succeeded.
You're back on, you're gonna be the king."
He was in complete shock and, for some time,
couldn't speak at all. Finally, his first words were
"I knew it, they love me."
Back at the US Embassy, the champagne flowed
as jubilation reigned.
The message the Dulles brothers took away
was that they had a whole new way to shape world events.
After the coup several hundred military officers were arrested,
about 60 were executed.
There was a purge of all officers who were deemed loyal
to the democratic government
and not loyal to Zahedi or the Shah.
It was a way of cleansing the army and doing something
that Mosaddegh had refused to do, which is build
an army loyal to the people in power at that moment.
For his part in the coup, Zahedi was paid
5 million dollars by the CIA.
The oil industry was denationalized.
An international consortium was formed with
40 percent of the shares now going to American companies.
Profits were split with Iran on a 50/50 basis.
But the British effectively retained overall control,
and its oil company renamed itself British Petroleum.
Three months after the coup, Mosaddegh was tried
in a military court on trumped-up chargers of treason.
His fiery defense electrified the courtroom
and is still remembered today.
Well the McCarthy era was a dark time in the United States.
This was from about 1950 to '54 thereabouts when McCarthy
was on the scene and he both was created by
and came to symbolize this period of absolute fear
of communism, excessive fear, hysteria, as it's often called.
I intend to go into those States and give the American people
the cold documented picture of the sell-out in Korea,
the extent to which communism has been directing
our foreign policy, our suicidal foreign policy if you please.
It was a time that created pressures against different
American administrations, presidential administrations,
to move their policies to the right. John Foster Dulles
was one of the big proponents of rollback of communism
under the Eisenhower administration. He had been,
for a long time, an outspoken critic of Truman's policies,
about the fears of the United States being soft on communism
and he is known for being a vocal advocate of pushing back
hard against the communists. He later admitted that
he tended to exaggerate the threat,
purely because it served certain interests.
I think the conclusion that the Soviets didn't have
any real implementable, executable designs on Iran
in '52, '53, '54, I think it's a pretty sound conclusion
but on the other side of that coin an even sounder conclusion
I think is that, at this time, the so-called communists,
the Tutor, in Iran was indisposed
to be a lackey of the Soviet Union.
Basically they were an indigenous group,
not a common turn group, not a group that was recruited
and funded and marshaled in Moscow and sent to Iran.
The ideas of communism were certainly very much opposed
to Mosaddegh's idea.
You could speculate on whether circumstances might
have changed over time and communist influence
might have grown there.
The question of communism threat is often used
as a rhetorical when it's useful.
So in the early part, when the oil crisis starts, the Americans
keep pressuring the British to actually deal with Mosaddegh
and the Americans say to the British"if you don't deal,
Mosaddegh will be overthrown and the communists move in"
and the British pooh-poohs this and say
"there's absolutely no danger of that.
We can pressure Mosaddegh as much as we want,
there's no communist threat." Later on you find the British
then say: "we have to get rid of Mosaddegh to stop
the communist guy" and then people like Acheson are then
repeating the earlier British pooh-poohing that really
there's no real danger of a communist takeover. At the time,
of course, you can say the discourse in the West
was the communist danger. So if you want to get anything
done you say that. Nowadays you can say the discourse
is international terrorism and you can justify anything.
But even the Dulles brothers' view that this country
was very susceptible to communist takeover
is something that they developed themselves
and is quite dubious from historical perspective.
The distortion we usually get in the conventional view
of the coup is that it's part of the Cold War;
It's the US/USSR rivalry that leaves the CIA to carry out
the coup. I would argue that the coup's really rooted
in the oil crisis, when Iran nationalized the oil company.
This wasn't just a threat to the British; It was as much
a threat actually to all the Western companies including
the American companies because the same thing
could happen to American companies in the Middle East
or South America.
The summer of 1953 was a turbulent time and of course
very threatening and dangerous for Mosaddegh.
Mosaddegh's house should have been sacrosanct.
It was not and the mob went after it.
I was horrified by the bloodletting in the streets.
There were tanks attacking the house, there was a lot
of killing then. 300 people died in that couple of hours.
I interviewed the Shah amongst a group of reporters there;
Me and people from United Press and he just was kind
of bubbling over with glee at having been saved.
I met Kermit Roosevelt for the first time after the coup.
I had several discussions with him later about
"do you really think now that was a good idea?"
And he said, "oh yes, it gave us another 20 years
or something like that." It was the most reactionary,
he was obeying orders Kermit was.
I think he truly believed in his mission.
The '53 coup is like a guillotine in Iran,
it inaugurated a massive repression
and it changed the landscape so the political situation,
besides being more repressive, secular organizations
like the National Front, the Etude Party,
were in fact disassembled, they've dismantled.
They couldn't function after '53.
The '53 coup was clearly a big success for the CIA
as they saw it at the time and it fit perfectly with the ideas
of President Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers and others
who thought that covert operations
was a very powerful tool in US foreign policy
and it clearly served as a model or, you know,
provided lessons for future operations,
including the following year, in 1954, in Guatemala.
At the time this coup seemed like a great success
but let's look back at it from the perspective of history,
from the perspective of today.
The Shah ruled for 25 years, with increasing repression.
His repression produced the explosion of the late 1970's,
what we call the Islamic revolution.
That revolution brought to power a clerk
of fanatically anti-American Mulls,
who had spent the next quarter century,
vigorously and sometimes very violently,
trying to undermine western power all over the world.
So from the perspective of history, this
coup doesn't quite so successful at all.
A lot of history came out of three weeks in Tehran,
in the summer of 1953.
These people remember this,
even if it's not something that necessarily happened yesterday,
you have to remember, Iran is a country with very long history.
It is a culture that is very much dependent on people,
understanding and knowing it's history.
So something that happened 50 or 60 years ago,
is not that very far back for a country
who's history stretches 3000 years.
What's interesting about 53,
that is the episode, that is the time
in which America in the Iranian mindsets,
becomes a violator, becomes an aggressor.
Prior to that,
the view of Americans and the view of America
amongst Iranian public, was an extremely positive one
and well deserving so because America was correctly viewed
as an anti colonial power, who opposed colonization,
who itself had fought a war of independence against who,
Great Britain.
You know we in the United States have short memories,
people in the Middle East never forget and I
think there is a political truth to that and the Iranian people
I believe know all about it but
the average American doesn't have the vaguest idea
that we interfered with an elected government.
What bothers me so much, is that the American people believe that
we can do no harm,
that we are willing to go to war, start a war
to promote democracy with force, at the same time,
sometimes when there's a leader in a country that's been elected
even in recent years.
Elected leaders in the middle east,
we don't like them, we don't support them.
What CIA for many years has warned about blow back
I know that when I brought that term up in the presidential
debate, it wasn't my term and I referenced it to it haven't been
established by the CIA, because they knew and understood this
that they can come back on us, it was an unintended consequence.
We should know what went on in 1953,
what happened with the coup there
but I think that
the goal of all individuals ot to be to know the truth.
The truth about our history and not to hide from us
and when history is distorted, I think we
just continue to make mistakes.
So history is helpful if we're honest with ourselves.
I think that's the most important thing
for any country or any people, is to be honest with ourselves
because when your own government does harm and you ignore it,
or pretended it never existed or defend it
for the wrong reasons, it's very detrimental.
If the United States
had not overthrown the Mosaddegh government
it's at least conceivable that democracy
would've continued to thrive and consolidate itself in Iran.
We might have had a stable democracy
in the heart of the Muslim middle east, all these 50 years.
I can hardly wrap my mind around how different
the middle east might look today, had that been the case.
The idea that
it is necessary nefarious, it's always engaged in
overthrowing governments, that's false.
Asides from the birds.
The government of Mosaddegh if you recall.
His was over thrown by the accident, the Shah.
As far a I know, we don't engage in
assassinations and kidnappings and things of that kind.
As far as I know, we never have.
I hope I have a reasonable moral standard.
Well the Iranians were organizing themselves
and really all they needed was support and to some extent
professional guidance.
It was my feeling then, that remains my feeling
that the British understood the extent
of paranoia in this country concerning communism
this was the day of Joel McCarthy
and the British consciously played on that fear in order to
help persuade us, to involve ourselves in the coup.
What we did from Washington, was to write some of the articles
that would appear on the Persian press
and these articles would appear thanks to the Dravidian's
who had contacts I believe
with probably 4/5 of the Iranian press
and they were designed to show most of that
as a communist collaborator and as a fanatic, as a person
who didn't understand that you could be
both nationalistic and positive.
These two agents
saw the opportunity, and sent the people we had
under our control, into the streets
and acted as if they were today.
They were provocateurs. We had more than just
provocateurs we had a lot of shot troops
who actually acted as if they were two dead people
throwing rocks at mosques, at priests.
That mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the
overthrow was a mercenary mob, had no ideology
and that mob was paid for by American dollars
and the amount of money that was used
it has to have been very large.
The CIA prepared a report on how the coup had be carried out.
It would serve as a guide for conducting coups in the future
bu the report left out key details.
But even if we saw the full report,
there were certain things
the author Donald Wilbert wouldn't have put in there
because it wouldn't have been caution to put those in.
Things such as the CIA working very closely
with the Iranian Nazi party.
That wouldn't have gone very well down in Washington.
He also doesn't deal with actually
questions of assassination
which I suspect the MI6 and the CIA were involved.
So that sort of sanitized out of the report.
I think that in the 53 coup, the CIA was much more involved
in the actual mechanics in of coup
that in other places like Guatemala
or Indonesia and places.
So there's much more very incriminating information
and that's why the CIA has been very reluctant to
release the stuff.
Well I remember the start of the CIA from when I was in college
it had just been recently started, 1947 after the war.
The main purpose of course was so there
would never be another pearl harbor.
When there were little snippets of information around
and nobody to, these days we would say connect the dots.
There was no one central place where
all this information together
and so Harry Truman was hell-bent and determined that
would never happen again, there would be one central place which
would be possessed of all the information
available on a given country or situation.
He was equally determined
to have it one place where he could go
and say look, Mr.Director I want to know what you and those
two universities worth of
specialists out there in the woods
in Virginia. I want to know what you really think.
I don't care what the State department is saying
or the pentagon. The pentagon is telling me that the Russians
are 10ft tall. I know they're not 10 ft tall.
They may not be 5'9ft like you're saying,
but I want to know what you think okay.
No, speak to me in truth. And man,
it was clear that that's what Truman Intended.
What we got instead, was an apparatus that seemed revel
in covert operations, Clandestine operations
spend billions of tax payer dollars
for those operations in total secrecy
and expend blood and treasure in those operations,
often times failing, in total secrecy.
He wrote a not bad, I have a copy of it here.
Not bad in the Washington Post
December 22, 1963. As he watched these things happen
you know, he watched Iran and he watched Guatemala and he saw
governments toppled and he said hey man, hey time out.
That's not what I intended here.
It says he simply does not recognize
the entity that he helped create in 1947
in the CIA and clearly his angst is about the
covert operations aspect of the CIA.
And he sees it as a danger to the integrity and the health
of our democratic republic.
I have a copy of this, this thing.
What he says is this, the title is.
Limit CIA Role To Intelligence.
Well ya, hello. That's what it's supposed to be all about right?
Okay.
Quote, I never thought that when I set up the CIA,
it would be injected into peacetime
cloak and dagger operations.
Now there are some searching questions
that need to be answered.
I, therefore, would like to see the CIA restored to
it's original assignment as the intelligence arm of
the President, and that whatever else it can properly
perform in that special field
and that its operational duties be
terminated or properly used elsewhere.
Well, you were right about a lot of things Harry.
You're dead right about that.
Truman ended his stinging rebuke of the CIA,
by writing that "The agency
is casting a shadow over our historic
position and I feel that we need to correct it."
Of course the Brits came over, as for our help, Allen Dulles
and yes that would be great covert action authorized by
the President and so they went in and they overthrew Mosaddegh,
They threw him out okay, now that's where history begins,
recent history for Iranians and Americans don't have
any idea that there is this very legitimate grievance.
And what came in? The Shah.
What he did was bring in the most brutal secret police,
bunch of torturers, second to none, even the German Gestapo.
They were called Saks.
With the help of American aid and training,
Savak was created in 1957, it's name alone would come to strike
fear in the hearts and minds of Iran's citizens.
Well the Savak becomes essentially the secret police
for the Shah and
their training and education and their mode to
stop Iranians so forth are more or less given to them
by the CIA person personnel who are, as far as I can tell,
are also some military involved in this. The CIA and the
military often work together, a very
insidious relationship in my view.
The 53 coup deprived the regime that ruled in Iran of legitimacy
and the overwhelming majority of the people, even many of the
people of were working for the regime.
They previewed the regime as dependent on the United States,
as fundamentally born of a sinful act.
What Savak becomes for the Shah, is secret police do and
many of these more autocratic societies, particularly when
they're becoming more and more autocratic as the Shah was,
is it takes care of all of it's oppositions, either arrest them
and spirits them away to sites unknown, for purposes unknown,
never to be contacted again, buries them in the desert,
or whatever but it becomes the.
Shah's way of dealing with residence and dealing with it
in a very draconian harsh way and of course this just breeds
more and more discontent amongst the populous in Iran and makes
him look more and more the tyrant rather than
the beloved leader that he always wanted to be seen as.
Under the Shah was unimaginable,
that anybody would say anything
critical within the political word, against anybody,
absolutely not.
So it was a combination of not that Savak was all pervasive
or powerful
but the physiological perimeter's of the Savak
and the political order
had created a situation that we were all
conscious and fearful of Savak.
So the aura was created that the Savak is everywhere
and it contributed to
the terrorization and internalization of
that terror in the society and the arch.
And I made so many trips to Savak's office
answering questions
and just, sometimes they take you in
and you sit there for 5 hours and nobody comes out
and there are a number of other people sitting in the room
you're too fearful to say a word because
you don't know who they are.
So I did experience,
it was the very beginning, it became far more viscous
as time went on because it was the beginning of its formation
when I was still in Iran.
Several of our students you know, got refuge on the roofs
the fifth floor, the sixth floor, they threw them away
just threw them like garbage, down and many
people got killed that way, many people had broken legs or arms.
Being in the center of this torture chambers hearing all
of these cries and screams coming everywhere.
I mean, I couldn't sleep for a minute, yet 24 hours.
Because of this you are in solitary
and this guy is screaming kill me! Don't do that, just kill me!
I mean screams all over, you feel like you are there
and they handcuffed me this way
there was this hook and they could
raise it so I could be kind of hanged from my hands
and the pain
and death would be, I mean just a relief.
This is difficult for you to talk about
it's a horrible experience.
You don't have to if you don't want to.
I have a duty to say these things
for American people to know
what it was like under the Shah.
The main reason that the Savak and the Shah was sent packing
was because ever other family in Iran knew somebody
or had one of the members of their family tortured.
That's what torture brings you okay.
After 25 years of increasingly despotic by the Shah
millions of Iranians took to the streets
in what would become known as The Islamic Revolution.
The Shah fled the country in January of 1979.
Later that year, Iranian students
overran the US embassy in Tehran
when the Shah was allowed to enter the United States.
The man who called me was a man by the name of.
Frank Re dice who as on the desk that Sunday
and he told me that
a number of
student demonstrators had broken into
the US embassy and apparently had
taken some American diplomats hostage
and he wanted me to come in the state department
I was then the senior diplomatic correspondent for ABC
to do a piece on it for that evenings news
and it was Sunday and I didn't want to come in
and I told him I didn't think this thing would last
more than an hour or two
as I said like this things going to die.
I mean it's not going to last.
But regrettably every single day in Iran
was a noninvasive day.
Ultimately the hostages were held for 440 days.
They appointed me as ambassador to the UN
in order to facilitate this agreement.
The group of us were throwing out names for this new program
and Dick Wald said
you know in racing, horse raising
there is something called The Morning Line
since this program is going at 11:30 at night
why don't we call it the Night Line.
And I said that the dumbest I've ever heard
I think that's a really stupid title for a program
I left Tehran
with the hope that I'm coming to the United.
States going to the security council
doing everything we could
to expedite the release of hostages.
I met Jimmy Carter at the White house
and he joked that the two people
who had benefited most from the hostage take
and were first the guy Ayatollah Khomeini
and second, me.
I didn't want to be the ambassador of a country
that had taken hostages.
I accepted the position in order to resolve the hostage crisis
and when I came to realize that the hostage
crisis is not going to be resolved
there was absolutely no reason for me to stay there
it would have been absurd
because I thought the act was criminal and
illegal and inhuman in every sense of the word.
Certainly in the initial months of America Held Hostage
I think the title was hysterical.
Later turned out to be
more accurate than it was at the outset.
Nightlife and many other television programs
and journalists, they were shocked.
But the immorality and the illegality of the act
which was understandable and yet after 25 years
of supporting an illegitimate government, overthrowing
democratic elected the prime minister in 1953
it was the responsibility of the press
to gain an understanding of why it happened
but at the same time "" The Nightlife
and other television programs did not do that
I forget whether we did that
if we didn't it would have been a huge oversight, we should've.
Because that clearly was
that was and is to this day
you know I mean, 50 whatever it is
56 years later.
That continues to be a very sole point
with the Iranian people.
When they had guests, or the newspapers
interviewed various people in an article you could read
a sentence or a phrase about the coup
but the reader of the article is not going to end up thinking
about the connection between what happened in 1953
and what happened in 1979.
And if you show just a little of imagination
and think how we would feel if some power
greater than the United States had overthrown
one of our presidents,
had assisted one of our enemies in assaulting the homeland of
the United States, had supported someone that
we felt was a pretender to the White House,
and giving him all kinds of weapons
and overlooked human rights abusers
that he and his secret police inflicted
on the people of the United States
I think we'd feel pretty upset about that and we would
probably harbor that grudge a generation or five.
The hostage crisis in one sense was a very simple thing
I mean you had a group of students
who wanted to demonstrate against the US
who were unhappy with the way things were going.
The role of the Shah was an important element
in the evolution of the events in Tehran
after the revolution.
What was going to happen to him?
Should we anticipate that he would
again be restored to the thrown?
Would we engage ourselves in the kind of coup we did in 1953
to restore him to the thrown?
That was the concern among the part of the revolutionary
elements in the city of Tehran at that time, in 1979.
The Shah had been admitted back into the United States
and this was considered to be the first
step to returning him to the thrown
that was not true but that's the way people remembering 1953
they thought this was the first step in bringing him back.
To admit him into the United States in the context
of the revolutionary afferment that was abroad in that country
at that time, in 1979.
There was something else
so I said no, let's not admit him.
Jimmy Carter was extremely reluctant to do this
in fact he was the very last one of all of his advisers to
finally agree to do this and in that final meeting that he had
where he looked around the room and
everybody in the room was telling him
yes you you've got to let him in,
he's dying, you can't reject his
you can't tell him he can't have medical treatment and so forth
and he looked around the room and I said well okay
he said I hear what all of you are
saying but he said I wonder what
you're all going to say to me when they
take our people hostage in Tehran.
It was clear that this was a dangerous thing to do.
He was admitted
and we paid for it.
The actions of Iran
have shocked the civilized world
for a government to applaud mob violence and terrorism
for a government actually to support
and in effect participate
in the taking and holding of hostages
is unprecedented in human history.
They do about sit ins
and they were going to come in, make their point
they had done it once before, it had
been done once before at the embassy
in February and ended within 48 hours
they very much had the same idea that
this would be a short lived thing
and they were as surprised as anybody else
when Khomeini threw his support to the students
they didn't come prepared to stay for 444 days
and suddenly they found themselves not
having a sit in, but running a prison.
Lousy.
Treatment during captivity was lousy.
Not in the sense where they beat me everyday
but it was
in-violation of something very
profound in the Iranian zone culture
one of the leaders of the student militants
who were then holding the three of us
in solitary confinement
each of us in separate cells.
He came in to see me one day, in my cell
and I proceeded, I took the opportunity to say look
why are you doing this?
It is totally contrary to all Iranian traditions
of freedom
human rights
treating us this way
physically abused as hostages
it is totally absolutely wrong
why are you doing this?
He responded by saying you have nothing to complain about
your country took my country hostage in 1953
totally and abrogated the opportunities that we had then
we're a free participatory democracy.
I was reminded of 1984
particularly if you remember the incident in there
of the two minutes hate
that everyday at Winston Smiths ministry
they would all stop work and they would get together
and they would have two minutes of hate
and they would scream, shout slogans and scream and yell
and get all excited and then they would have hate week
that seemed very much the situation we were in
I couldn't identify today, where it was or is
but it was a prison, a dark cold prison
where my colleagues had been held
in and out of prisons during those months
and I could do nothing to help them, that was my hurt
that was my mental hurt if you will.
But beyond what happened to me personally
the event still
resonates, it resonates in this country
it resonates around the world
and for better or worse and mostly for worse
it shapes the way people look at Iran.
The student captures also controlled
all of the library of the embassy compound
and so we all got access to books, eventually
not the books you wanted
one of my colleagues is much quoted as having said
first book they gave me was a god damn geometry book.
I never liked geometry but I read everything in that book.
You ignore history and you ignore Iranians view of history
and you ignore the history of the.
United States and Iran at your peril.
To give you the simplest example
in October of 1979, when the White House
decided to admit the Shah to the country
it said alright we will do this
but we will tell the Iranians
that we're doing this only for humanitarian reasons
because the Shah is sick and so he's coming to the.
United States only for medical treatment
and there is no political agenda.
Well, that may have been true
but given the history of US Iranian relations
I doubt that any Iranian over the age of 3
would have believed such an explanation
and perhaps that was why the events of 1953
and the Americans coming eventually
siding with the British
working to overthrow.
Dr.Mosaddegh's nationalist government
came as such a profound shock.
I mean had it been the British they
probably would've been expected, had it been the Russians
would've been expected
but from someone who you thought was your friend
it was seen as a
very deep betrayal.
Freedom
as one comes to appreciate, eventually and certainly
as a hostage in solitary confinement
is a beautiful thing.
They were 20 years old at the time
we were all 20 years old at the time.
When we're at that age you're emotional
you don't think through what you do.
I don't blame them so much for what they did.
I blame those who rode the wave
who did not take up their responsibilities.
I understood their zeal
you have to understand that even though you think they are wrong
you give them credit for being zealous
and they sure as hell were
determined to hold as long as they could.
I have no particular malice towards each
and every one of them except
my hope my them, my I wish for them
is they never get a visa to come to my country.
I can get emotional in that subject.
You make gestures, you lower the tone
of the rhetoric, you stop the sermonizing
you put your preconceptions aside
I have said since the day I left
since the moment I entered the Algerian
aircraft to return me to freedom
I said it to the principle hostage
taker at the top of the ramp
I look forward to the day your when your country and mine
can again have a normal diplomatic relationship
I have advocated that ever since,
I have preached the need to talk.
We should be talking.
Now, will that bring
an immediate change?
Will that bring
immediate positive results?
Probably not, suspicions still run deep
you don't overcome 30 years of hostility
with one speech or one gesture
but you keep at it.
Khatami made a speech in January of 88'
in which he basically went as far as any
Iranian leader is ever likely to go
and saying that clearly we would never do that again
and those were different times and so forth
he can't come out and say
oh we were completely wrong, he can't say that
I mean Khomeini was behind it, he supported it all the way
and he's the father of their country
it's like saying George Washington
made a foolish mistake
you don't just say things like that.
The problem with US Iran relations
is not so much foreign policy
it's domestic policy.
In the United States, Iran is a dirty word
and has been since the time of the hostage crisis
it's very hard to get politicians
to say anything constructive about Iran
and our relations with Iran
it's easier to dismiss them, to criticize them
or to suggest harder sanctions on them or punishment.
In Iran it's the same thing.
The revolution was as much an anti-American revolution
as it was an anti-Shah revolution
we're going to have to give up something
but Iran is going to have to give up something
and that's what negotiations are all about.
In January of 2002, George Bush gave his second state
of the union address
he singled out Iran for special attention
and thereby damaged chances for a better relationship.
Here we've got after all
an administration that finds in Afghanistan in 2000
late 2001, 2002 that the Iranians are very cooperative
that the Iranians are helping you
that the Iranians are helping you with everything from
rounding up the Taliban, finding Al-Qaeda
who might have flown into Iran
working for The Bonn conference, in stalling Karzai
that they are helping you as much
as anybody else in the region
and you pay them back by giving a
state of union address which calls them
a member of the access of evil
which is imponderable to them
they don't even know what that means
but they know it's bad
Iran aggressively prosue these weapons and exports terror
states like these and their terrorist allies
constitute and access of evil
arming to threaten the peace of the world
and so their payback for having cooperated in Afganistan
is to be called a member of the access of evil
imagine their befuddlement and imagine their anger
I'm Iranian and that's funny cause people I tell them
my American friends, I go ya I'm Iranian
they go oh so you're Arab and I'm like no we're actually
different we're not Arab but I mean you know we're similar
you know we're all getting shot at, you know that's one thing
but you Iranians are actually ethnically, we're actually Arian
we're white, we're white, so stop shooting you know
a lot of the times I would get in an argument with people
around the time of the Iraq war, cause I was against the war
and a lot of the times people would say we got to do this
got to do that and I'd always say do you know the history
let's go back a little bit and see how we got here in
the first place and I would always
bring the 53 coup into the argument.
The Iranians don't even say their Iranian
Iranians say they're Persian.
In Iran we say we are Persian
you know it sounds nicer and friendlier
we even smile, when we say we're Persian we smile
"I am Persian!"
"I am not dangerous, I am Persian!"
"I am Persian like the cat."
"I am the cat!"
"I am Persian like the rug, hello
rug colorful, hand woven."
I have a friend who's conservative
and we have these debates and I go
go back and look that Iran had a democracy
and that US with England, they came in overthrew that democracy
to implement a monarchy for the oil.
So you know you got to have a historical perspective before
before you get into these debates.
People think that just because I'm from the Middle East
I'm an expert on the Middle East.
So like I got a friend, every time the gas prices go up
he'll always ask my opinion about it
he'll always corner me, "hey Mass, hey Mass
in your opinion what's going on with this gas thing
what's going to happen, what's going on
50 words or less, breakdown would you
you're my middle eastern friend."
like dude I don't work at Opek, I don't know.
I pay the same price as you you know, like I don't have a
discount pump at the gas station.
I don't want in like.
"Hassan Hussein discount pump, okay my friend."
Fuck America.
I joke about that, I said you know it was funny cause
the hijackers were Saudis and Egyptians and somehow
Iran ended up in the access of evil
I remember watching that and he was like
there's an access of evil, I was like yes there is
and he goes it's North Korea, I'm like ya
he goes it's Iraq, I go right on
he goes it's Iran, I'm like what the hell, what do we do
you know okay we might have a nuclear program
but we're not admitting to it, maybe we have a nuclear program
maybe we don't, define nuclear.
I think that goes back to that whole
cause Iran also calls America the great Satan.
It's kind of like five year old's
on a playground just name calling.
So it was unfortunate, it's undiplomatic
let's put it that way.
The Bush administration came into office thinking there was
a quick and easy solution to the proliferation problem
fortunately there is now a wide spread
at least expert consensus that this strategy of forced
regime change didn't work, that the solution is to leave the
regime change up to the people of the country themselves
the only ones who can really change the regime
and to seek other combinations of pressures and incentives
to convince those countries, convince those people to abandon
nuclear programs.
The Iranian program is a threat in many ways, but the answer
isn't to force the regime to give up the program
no country has ever been forced to give up a nuclear program
but lots of countries have be convinced to do so.
The NIE also correctly understood that the drivers
behind Iran's program were not some crazy idea
of a global genocide or annihilation of Israel
they were the same motives that have motivated most countries
who have pursued nuclear weapons,
a desire for security to protect them from attack
a desire for enhanced prestige.
Think India getting the bomb,
there is no real military option here
history is very clear on this score, an attack on a country
causes the people of that country to rally
around the leadership, not flee from it
it often will lead to an acceleration
of military programs
containment works, deterrence is alive and well
the worst case, scenario is not good
but it's a lot better than starting a nuclear war
in the neighborhood.
No US President has ever spoken that way to the Muslim people
and when he referenced the 1953 coup against the democratic
leadership of Iran, he was doing so not as an apology
but just stating a truth
everybody knows what the US has done in that region
and when he coupled that with an explicit reference
to colonialism, for many Muslims this was unbelievable
that you heard a western leader acknowledging this
just as a fact that we have to deal with
and then let's move on, let's have a new relationship
new structures, based on our needs now, fully aware
of the sins and omissions hat both sides have committed
in the years passed.
Iran's a country, it's a very youthful country
vast majority of the country are less than 30 years old
born after the revolution actually
and very well educated, it's a majority Shia country
over 90% Shia
but it's also pretty ethnically diverse
and there are lots of minorities, there's Arabs
there's Kurd, there's Turks, there's Christians,
Jews, Muslims, Sunnis as well as Shia
so it's pretty ethnically diverse, at the same time
it is overwhelmingly Shia.
Ya every Iranian you can talk about in the 1953
CIA backed coup against the
democratically elected government of.
Prime minister Mosaddegh and the reason every Iranian knows
knows that history is cause they're taught it
every school kid knows about it, the same way we know
that George Washington fought the British,
the same we way know who Benjamin Franklin
was and Iranians will know
that there was a democratically elected government
that was overthrown by the CIA.
President Khatami expressed regret rather than an apology
or feeling shameful about it, certainly not proud of it
I don't think hardly anybody is proud of it
including the students who took over the embassy.
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing
there's a field, I'll meet you there
and the reason I put that in the introduction was because
I think it speaks very well to the idea of why I wrote
the book in the first place,
which is complete misunderstanding
between Iran and the United States and it's accusations
fly back and forth, you did this, you did this
you are doing this, you are doing that
you're wrong here, you're right here
I'm right here, you're wrong there
none of that ever gets us anywhere, that's all rhetoric
and it's always accusations, like a fight
any fight and we're in this conflict
but there's place where you go, go beyond those accusations
beyond those fights, beyond those issues
that we have between us, there's a place where
we could meet and discuss things.
On June 12th 2009
Iranians went to the polls in large numbers.
When the Presidential election appeared stolen, they took
to the streets in protests,
situations seem to harpen back to what happened to Iran's
nascent democracy of the 1950's.
The protests have subsided but it's obvious that peoples
sense of anger and injustice hasn't subsided
and millions of people which represented diverse swathe
of Iranian society,
not only in Tehran but throughout the Country
are risking their lives, almost on a daily basis
for greater political voice, for more economic opportunities
for more social freedoms
and I think Iranians have really
inspired people throughout the world.
Mousavi has earned a tremendous respect from people
for not backing down to the hardliners,
for continuing the fight
and in a way the relationship between Mousavi and the crowd
is somewhat symbiotic
in the sense that I think that the crowds are inspired by.
Mousavi unwillingness to back down
and Mousavi is frankly is odd I think by
the courage of the crowd and that allows him the
political capital to remain defiant.
What's interesting about Mousavi is that he is not
an opposition candidate who has actually been an opponent
of the regime, he's someone with
impeccable revolutionary credentials,
he was prime minister for 8 years, he was someone
who was close to the father of the revolution,
Ayatollah Khomeini
and he's not for a wholesale revolution, what he's saying is
that the revolution, the ideals of the 1979 revolution
have veered off onto a dangerous path
and we need to take it back onto the
as they say in Persian, 'the right path'.
In the last 1970's, the iconic images which emerged from
the revolution were bearded, middle aged, traditional men.
The iconic images from this movement have been
young, educated, modern female like.
Neda Agha-Soltan
who was killed
and women's role in these protests I think have been
quite frankly awesome.
Women have continued to go to the streets despite the regimes
indiscriminate use of words.
I think any change which takes place in Iran
will and will have played an incredibly important role in
bringing about that change
and it's remarkable that days and weeks and months and
I'm sure years after Neda's death,
people from around the world are never going to forget that
image and are never going to forget her tremendous bravery
and are never going to forget the conditions
under which she died.
Right now theres an incredible whirlwind
of emotions that Iranians are feeling
there's tremendous hope and tremendous fear
all at the same time.
There is this hope that finally after 30 years
there is light at the end of the tunnel
there's hope for a more modern, progressive, tolerant Iran.
You have a unique situation in the sense that,
right now about two thirds of Iranians are under 33
so they don't remember the 1979 revolution
they have no inherent enmity towards the United States
they have no inherent loyalty towards the Islamic republic.
2009 is a much different world than 1979
1979, there wasn't internet,
there wasn't satellite television, people couldn't see
what was taking place beyond their borders
this has been a movement which has transcended
age, it's transcended gender,
it's transcended geographic location,
it's transcended religiosity,
it's transcended socioeconomic class
and again when millions of people have taken to the streets
despite the risk of wars
despite the risks to the security
you can only imagine that there's millions of people
who feel solidarity with them at home.
So we should not underestimate the magnitude of
this moment.
The problems are not that intractable
we have huge common interest here
and we have resolved problems much greater than this.
In my life, I've seen miracles happen
I've seen Germany unite, the Soviet Union collapse,
the war in Vietnam
now embraces American tourism.
I've seen Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland
who swore never, never, never,
and denounced each other as terrorists, shake hands
and form a united government.
I've seen a man walk out of a prison cell that held him for
28 years to become the majority leader of South Africa.
Don't tell me that miracles can't happen
don't tell me that any of these challenges are too big
or too intractable that we have to
use military force to resolve them.
I think that the US and Iran are
destined to become partners once again.
We have the power to make the world we seek
but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning
keeping in mind what has been written
the Holy Qur'an tells us.
Oh man kind, we have created you male and a female
and we have made you into nations and tribes
so that you make know one another.
The Talmud tells us:
"The whole of the Tūrān is for the purpose of promoting peace."
The Holy Bible tells us:
"Blessed are the peacemakers
for they shall be called sons of God."
The people of the world can live together in peace
we know that is Gods vision
now that must be our work here on earth.
Thank you and may Gods peace be upon you.
I do believe that when democracy
finally returns in it's full form to Iran,
Mohammad Mosaddegh will be revered as a hero,
you will see his picture once again
on every banner in every office
on every street corner
and he will be understood officially
as he is now understood privately: As the great hero
of 20th century Iran.
"If I sit silently, I have sinned."