Iran and the West
Sir, –
...David Morgan notes that “it probably was the British who initially told the Americans what to do about Prime Minister Mossadeq after his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951” (February 6)...It might be helpful to clarify that one of the companies nationalized was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, later known as British Petroleum), whose own profits were greater than the entire Iranian government’s oil revenue – £170 million in 1950...The diplomatic record has demonstrated that MI6 and the Foreign Office teams met with the CIA in 1952 and Churchill himself authorized the action of overthrowing Iran’s head of state and replacing him with the Shah...
...Finally, in highlighting Iran’s nuclear capability rather than its possession of nuclear weapons, Morgan might have noted that it was during the Shah’s rule that the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, held that the “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals”.
Moreover, American universities offered training to Iranian nuclear engineers, and the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld played significant roles in assisting these efforts. However unpalatable these facts may be to Morgan, they should be brought to light so that readers may judge for themselves how Anglo-American military and diplomatic history has informed modern-day relations between Iran and the West.
One never knows, eh?
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