Explanation: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah (monarch) of Iran, was overthrown by his own people in 1979, for a variety of reasons, most prominently running a tyrannical autocratic police state. Despite the US being his biggest backer for the past 20 years, and the totality of our ‘betrayal’ of the Shah being to not back him to the hilt when it was apparent he had lost popular legitimacy, in his memoir, Answer To History, the Shah managed to lay the blame on his subordinates, the British, the Israelis, the Palestinians, and… the Americans. In other words, everyone except himself.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
A shame about the the Islamists outmaneuvering the leftist parties after the Iranian Revolution tossed the Shah out.
(SAVAK was the Shah’s secret police, infamous for their brutality. Trained by the CIA no less- fan-fucking-tastic, another contribution of the CIA to Iranian history)
A shame about the the Islamists outmaneuvering the leftist parties
Doesn’t that somehow support the view of the shah? If the shah had remained in power by further support, Iran would have fallen to the communists, which made it necessary to let him fail.
It does, but not like that. If the Americans hadn’t intervened at all, it was more likely the revolution wouldn’t need to loop in the extremist fringe to succeed. So it was USA’s fault after all.
(This bit of mental gymnastics brought to you by procrastination.)
I mean, it’s not like the US thought that the Shah remaining in power would have led to the Communists taking over. US intelligence at this point considered the Shah’s hold over the country to be solid for another 10 years, at least.
Common CIA L.
Do you have any recommendations to read about the events? To me, from far away, it looks like the usual usage of religion to prevent communism.
Unfortunately, most of what I’ve read is in scattered articles and papers over the years rather any single source - it’s not a core interest of mine, so I typically only read up on individual incidents as I became aware of them, or in the course of educating myself on related topics.
I will, however, point out that the leftist and Islamist parties initially cooperated until the Islamists suddenly and viciously turned on them after several years of power-sharing. If the US plan was to let the Islamists win over the Shah to prevent leftism, that was a pretty risky setup.
Thanks.
I have always found his little desert picnic as good demonstration of how insane he was…
Here is a hood video on it:
Thanks for sharing!
