Unconventional history
The New York Times "Week in Review" section contained this excerpt from Abbas Milani's article in The New Republic.Perhaps it ought to be a footnote or more to our textbook's chapters on Iranian political history. It would help to know more about the ideological preferences of the author Milani and the publication.
The ‘Great Satan’ Myth
In The New Republic, Abbas Milani, an expert on Iran at Stanford, challenges the enduring “Great Satan” myth — that the C.I.A. “deposed a democratically elected Iranian leader back in 1953, and then spent 26 years propping up a despotic Shah while he mercilessly abused his people.”
In fact, Milani writes, Iran’s clerics played a much bigger role than the C.I.A. in the 1953 ouster of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh — so it’s ironic that the mullahs today draw heavily on the “Satan” myth to maintain their grip on power. He says the myth has also “seduced” the “very meddlers themselves in Washington” — meaning the Obama administration — and that’s clouding thinking about civil unrest in Iran now...
The New Republic article:
The Great Satan Myth
It was the clerical establishment’s animosity towards Mossadegh that laid the groundwork for his ouster. A broad swath of clerics--Islamists like Ayatollah Abolgasem Kashani, a mentor of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini--had initially supported Mossadegh. But, by late 1952, the clerics turned against him after he bucked their demands. The Ayatollah Kashani unsuccessfully pressed Mossadegh for the right to appoint key ministers. Another top cleric called on the prime minister to purge the civil service of Baha’is--a bane of Shia clergy. The clergy’s allegiance to Mossadegh weakened further as he allowed the communist Tudeh Party to gain ever more power, despite his own personal abhorrence of communism. Once Mossadegh squandered the allegiance of the clergy, the inevitability of his fate became increasingly clear. (He had also alienated the middle class, increasingly weary of ideological warfare; and the army had pleaded for his ouster.)
None of this is to defend America’s role in the coup. But it was hardly the only or even the decisive factor in his fall. Indeed, in the most obvious instance of its meddling in Iranian history, the United States actually meddled on the side of the very religious establishment that now complains so bitterly about the Great Satan...
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Labels: history, Iran, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:45 AM
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