a Western puppet gets overthrown, like Fulgencio Batista or Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

I guess this is one of the "warts" that the GOP rarely cites, but they are never explicit. After all, Iran was trying to nationalize our oil!!

In 1953, nearly everyone (except a few brave independent reporters like I.P. Stone) were enthusiastic supporters of CIA coups. Today, most are a little more wary of unintended outcomes, but the corporate media still knows its role, the potential consequences of dissent and criticism, and who signs everyone's paychecks.

The Iran Hostage Crisis: The Shah and the C.I.A.

The Iran hostage crisis had its origins in a series of events that took place nearly a half-century before it began. The source of tension between Iran and the U.S. stemmed from an increasingly intense conflict over oil. British and American corporations had controlled the bulk of Iran’s petroleum reserves almost since their discovery–a profitable arrangement that they had no desire to change. However, in 1951 Iran’s newly elected prime minister, a European-educated nationalist named Muhammad Mossadegh, announced a plan to nationalize the country’s oil industry. In response to these policies, the American C.I.A. and the British intelligence service devised a secret plan to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with a leader who would be more receptive to Western interests.

Through this coup, code-named Operation TP-Ajax, Mossadegh was deposed and a new government was installed in August 1953. The new leader was a member of Iran’s royal family named Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. The Shah’s government was secular, anti-communist and pro-Western. In exchange for tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, he returned 80 percent of Iran’s oil reserves to the Americans and the British.

For the C.I.A. and oil interests, the 1953 coup was a success. In fact, it served as a model for other covert operations during the Cold War, such as the 1954 government takeover in Guatemala and the failed intervention in Cuba in 1961. However, many Iranians bitterly resented what they saw as American intervention in their affairs. The Shah turned out to be a brutal, arbitrary dictator whose secret police (known as the SAVAK) tortured and murdered thousands of people. Meanwhile, the Iranian government spent billions of dollars on American-made weapons while the Iranian economy suffered.

http://www.history.com/topics/iran-hostage-crisis

The man who trained the initial agents for the Shah's brutal, torturous secret police (SAVAK) was none other than Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, the Persian Gulf general's father.

And what of the fate of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, whose riches the U.S. and Britain staged the overthrow to protect? It eventually changed its name to British Petroleum, aka BP.

It's the same cast of characters, folks.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner

Thank you for the information! It seems the WORLD is being destroyed by a few people that 'keep it in the family'.

and especially Big Oil's bankers, who were clients of Sullivan and Cromwell, the Wall Street law firm. John Foster Dulles, the then Sec. of State, was managing partner of S&C before his days in Foggy Bottom. His brother Allen, also a S&C partner, was made CIA director when Foster was named SoS. That should answer any questions about the "whys" of the coup.

a chord with me. I believe this 1953 happening was the petri dish that taught the U.S. how to infiltrate other countries and bring about a coup. It has happened in so many places since....

but that's because they see the whole world as their employees, the masses as inert and unmoved, and their definition of "success" is about a 3-6-month timeframe: this worldview is key to any CIA or DoJ document you read

"let's whip up Islamism to keep the Bear out of AfPak" "let's drop said Islamists like a hot potato once the USSR's over" "let's dump billions into cruel secularist dictators" "let's dump hundreds of millions into the Islamists to overthrow the cruel secularist dictators" "let's train 'moderate' approved forces against these Islamists that suddenly popped out of nowhere and we had nothing to do with them so stop saying that"

the real challenge is to be against what they're doing NEXT: sure it's profitable for the MIC--but we're watching people who think they have everyone hoodwinked and can pull millions in any direction they like, but fire anyone who knows TOO much about the country they're about to go into because he'd be simpatico

for 1944 they sent Carleton Coon in his tweed to Morocco to translate FDR's Flag Day speech into Berber and thought that'd be powerfully and universally resonant enough to "turn" the horsemen and have them sweep down from the Atlas onto the Vichyites ...

It is history. I remember it vaguely. I remember the nationalization of the oil fields and the Shah of Iran who was our puppet.
It is not reported today because it happened 62 years ago.
Also to get the whole context you need to go back to WWII and the fighting for oil then.

1. It provides some context for the gigantic lie told by State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki just yesterday. ("As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by nonconstitutional means.&quot

2. It also provides insight into the animosity between the U.S. and Iran. It didn't start with Khomeini. Not even close.

we would have long forgotten it by now. Mm-hm.

On July 3, 1988, the U.S.S. Vincennes, an Aegis-class cruiser, shot down Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger airliner, over the Strait of Hormuz. The American SM-2 surface-to-air missile that downed the Iranian plane killed 290 passengers, including 66 children.

Oopsie! Our bad!

One can only imagine how we would've fetishized such an incident had we been the victims.

At the time, some were saying that Iran had loaded that airplane with corpses


A 45 rial postage stamp released by Iran on 11 August 1988 titled
Disastrous U.S. missile attack against Iranian air liner

his secret police gave rise to the ayatollahs.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

All over South America, Viet Nam, the first Iraq invasion, the second Iraq invasion to overthrow Saddam, etc. etc. etc.

It is very relevant because we keep making the same mistakes, and the latest crop of republicans sure are itching for a war with Iran

supported the open letter to try and derail the negotiations going on right now. He admitted that, and referred to Iran as a terrorist nation who should not be negotiated with. A little historical perspective would be nice.

The rise of the ayatollahs and radical Islam as a reaction to the repression of the Shah, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, Carter's subsequent failure to win a second term, America's grooming of the thuggish Saddam Hussein as a counter-balance to Iran, the Persian Gulf wars past and present, including the inflammatory placement of military bases in the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina (which outraged alleged former CIA asset Osama Bin Laden), and the general disarray of the Middle East today can all be traced back (at least to some degree) to the ouster of Mossadegh. That's essentially Kinzer's thesis in All the Shah's Men, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

is a "close friend" of H. Clinton.

intentional, or more concerned with Linsey Lohan, it is this public ignorance why we keep making the same mistakes I think.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017251123

masterminded by the monstrous brothers Dulles, John Foster and Allen. Their utter malignity is still the source of much evil in the world and they set the course for US foreign policy from which there have been no significant deviations in 60+ years.

and didn't bring up the coup even once. Because it was classified. So people watching Ted knew nothing about the causes. This should be called Treason.

American Coup
A documentary film about the CIA's first coup – Iran, 1953

If you can find it (it used to be on Hulu for free) this is an excellent movie
http://americancoupthemovie.com/

Kinzer, a New York Times correspondent, recounts the events of August 1953 which resulted in the overthrow of Iran's Prime Minister Mossadegh. A really thorough, detailed piece of work. And agree, a largely forgotten episode of intervention in the Mid East.

+1

is terrifying but essential reading. No book better explains why the US government is so hated, feared and mistrusted around the world.

there are decades, sometimes centuries, of blowback and the lives of millions are affected, adversely.

And of course, to the Imperialists down through history, it is ALWAYS the victims of these coups and invasions, who are to blame.

The pattern that emerges since after WW11 at least, of US FP is that we always side with the right wing dictators, I am not aware of the US helping democratically elected leaders, in Africa, in the ME, or in South America.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

WikiLeaks Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/wikileaks-honduras-state_b_789282.html


The US and the Honduran coup




Washington’s criticisms of the June 28 military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras lack any element of sincerity or historical truth. The Obama administration is uneasy at the ouster of Zelaya, a conservative-turned-populist allied to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, because it reveals all too clearly the character of US foreign policy.

President Barack Obama’s condemnation of Zelaya’s overthrow as a “terrible precedent” is belied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s refusal to characterize it as a coup. Under US laws, such a designation would force the government to cut off tens of millions of dollars in aid to Honduras and its armed forces. Clinton also declined to call for Zelaya’s reinstatement, saying, “We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on, because we’re working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives.”

Zelaya was overthrown because his populism was seen as a threat both to conservative sections of the bourgeoisie in Honduras and to US strategic interests in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In October 2008, Zelaya joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA in Spanish), a regional alliance organized by Chávez that includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda. Member states receive subsidies coming largely from Venezuelan oil earnings. One provision, which Zelaya chose not to ratify, calls for common defense in case one of the member states is attacked by the US.

Zelaya’s efforts to hold a constitutional referendum that would allow him to run for a second term provoked an escalating conflict with the Honduran military, the Congress and the courts, which culminated in his ouster.

US diplomats worked closely with the Honduran opposition to Zelaya. A US official speaking anonymously confirmed to the New York Times that US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas A. Shannon, Jr. and US Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens spoke to “military officials and opposition leaders” in the days before the coup. He explained: “There was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that.”

The identities of the Obama administration’s point men on Honduras demolish claims that it is formulating a new US foreign policy. Shannon was special advisor to President Bush in 2003-2005, when he was also senior director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council. From 2001 to 2002 he served at the State Department as director of Andean affairs—covering Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

Llorens was the National Security Council’s director of Andean affairs in 2002-2003, holding the post when the Bush administration backed a military coup in Venezuela that nearly toppled Chávez.

The official speaking to the Times complained, however, that the administration did not expect that the Honduran army would go so far as to carry out an overt military coup. The Obama administration was evidently seeking to engineer a de facto coup, but with a gloss of constitutional legality. Thus Washington’s main complaint about the Honduran coup is not that the army intervened in politics. Rather, it is that the Honduran army’s open intervention has exploded the democratic veneer that the bourgeois media tries to give to US foreign policy.
The Washington Post editorialized on Tuesday: “The military’s intervention may have the unintended effect of saving Mr. Zelaya. The Congress voted him out of office on Sunday by a large margin; had the generals merely allowed events to proceed according to the rule of law, the president could have been legitimately deposed or isolated.” It called on Obama to “speak out more clearly about the abuses that prompted removal.”

Revelations of US complicity with Honduran coup leaders comes at an inopportune time for Washington. It is waging a campaign to weaken or topple Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrapping itself in invocations of democracy and alleging that Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 election in Iran.
The administration is relying on the US media to limit the political damage resulting from its role in the Honduran coup and the exposure of its hypocrisy in relation to the Iranian elections. In contrast to the media’s coverage of Iran, there have been few breathless reports, amateur videos or Twitter feeds coming from Tegucigalpa.

The US role in Honduras must be appraised in the historical context of Washington’s violent and oppressive relations with Central America and its longstanding ties to the most reactionary forces in the region. As political and economic tensions mount, the big landowning and corporate interests and the US-trained officer corps in America’s traditional “back yard” fear the effects of populist appeals against US imperialism by left-nationalist figures like Chávez and Zelaya.

During the debate over Honduras’ joining ALBA, anti-Zelaya Honduran deputy Marta Lorena Alvarado attacked Chávez and warned, “We are allowing a man with a strange ideology to make his way into our population and into our manner of seeing Honduras’ history.”

Considering just the post-World War II period, the US and Honduran ruling elites have collaborated in huge crimes against the Central American masses. In the US-engineered 1954 coup against Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, Honduras served as a base and training camp for a CIA “rebel force” on Guatemala’s southern border. The US intervention in Guatemala would ultimately provoke a series of civil wars prosecuted by US-backed anti-communist death squads, lasting over 30 years and claiming 200,000 lives, according to US figures.
In 1963, Honduran President Ramón Villeda was overthrown by military officers led by General Oswaldo López Arellano. US President John F. Kennedy then decided to end US adherence to the Betancourt doctrine, which held that the US should not recognize extra-constitutional governments. López Arellano called elections in 1971 but lost. He regained power through another coup in 1972.
The US responded to the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza family in neighboring Nicaragua by setting up the anti-communist Contra insurgency, which it funded in violation of US laws banning aid to the Contras. Based in Honduras, the Contras fought a war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas that lasted until 1987, costing 60,000 casualties and displacing 250,000 people
.
Seen in the context of Honduras’ historical role as a center of US-backed counterrevolution, the ouster of Zelaya constitutes a sharp warning to the working class in the Americas. Prompted by concern over the political ramifications of Zelaya’s links to Venezuela, a US-backed coup in Honduras could well be the signal for a broader regional campaign by US imperialism against Venezuela and allied regimes throughout the continent.


http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/07/pers-j01.html

I think Americans are owed an explanation regarding when this country turned into an Empire.

The fear of South America creating its own form of NATO to protect the region from further coups and brutal puppet Dictators has been intense.

I just don't get it. It should be something we support, the democratization of South America. But it's clear that is not the case.

We're even on scores to settle.