Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
June
28, 2003
Recollections of the
Overthrow of Mosaddegh
Keep
Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
By
KAM ZARRABI
Fifty years ago I was also young, and a student
in Tehran. Those days most student strikes and political demonstrations
began at senior high school level, and then gathered momentum
in the streets of the Capital. Iran's population was somewhere
around eighteen million, and Tehran, perhaps 500,000. The size
of the entire student body at the University of Tehran, plus
other campuses around the country, such as Jondi Shapoor, was
less than 10,000.
In those times, when a flood of four
or five hundred marching and shouting students poured out into
the streets, it was quite a sight. When two hundred and fifty
senior high school students, and often some of the teaching staff,
left Alborz High Schools and joined in with a hundred from Firooz
Bahram, and maybe another three hundred from Dar-el-Fonoon, Tehran's
high schools were literally shut down. We were out there demonstrating
for democracy and in favor of the National Party of Dr. Mosaddegh,
and against the dictatorship of the ruling regime.
To demonstrate the popular support for
Dr. Mosaddegh, some of the more active students, such as myself,
would go door to door to private homes, businesses and stores,
to collect signatures, often in blood, on fifty or a hundred
foot-long rolls of print paper, which we then took to the one
and only radio station to be read on an almost daily basis. In
the much smaller and less crowded Tehran, we were much more visible
and quite obviously a lot more vulnerable to arrest and abuse.
Fifty years ago, the dictator returned,
our champion faded away, and our fire subsided. Protest demonstrations,
albeit futile, continued for a while, as my own bayonet scar
where "the sun don't shine!" attests.
Three years later, here in Los Angeles,
California, I watched on a tiny television screen the proceedings
of a Senate investigation into CIA activities. There I saw the
accounts of the 1953 coup d'etat unfolding in front of my eyes,
which, along with similar operations in Guatemala, were considered
as great successes by the Agency.
The coup d'etat of 1953 in Iran was America's
first-ever peacetime interference in foreign affairs, even though
it was masterminded by the sole regional manipulator, Great Britain,
who remained the gatekeeper of the Middle East for another decade
and a half. The Arab states of the region had not awakened as
yet from their "inconsequential" status, and it would
be some years before Israel, like a transplanted organ, would
begin to require increasingly heavier doses of anti-rejection
medication to survive. Oil was flowing, and the Soviet Union
was effectively contained behind the borders of Middle East's
client states.
The mindset then was, as long as insisting
on neutrality or remaining non-aligned was not a practical option
in the strategic Middle East, why not join the camp of the rich
and the powerful? After all, ideologies work best when you have
food in your stomach, a roof over your head, and clothes on your
back.
Well, in spite of all the undemocratic
and repressive practices of the Pahlavi regime, characteristic
of all totalitarian, corrupt governments, the nation's economy
and the standard of living did improve, reaching its explosive
climax by the mid-seventies. Of course, much better use of our
oil income could have been made under a less corrupt and self-serving
management; and, yes, important aspects of a people's cultural
identity and heritage were almost totally neglected in the pursuit
of superficialities and pseudo-modernity.
Nonetheless, as the population, particularly
our youth, became better educated and more acquainted with the
modern world, demand for a whole spectrum of much needed social
reforms gradually increased to the point of insurrection. At
the time, and in the absence of democracy, the only vehicle of
expression that could best muster enough public support to overcome
seemingly insurmountable odds was our historical common denominator,
Islam. The cataclysmic flood of public sentiment that mowed down
any resistance in its path, soon sidelined all the intellectual
hopefuls who had joined the movement hoping to give it proper
management and direction.
But, the aspiration for meaningful reforms
toward democratization and broader global integration did not
remain dormant for too long. Mismanagement from inside and economic
and political pressures from the outside have continuously strengthened
the hardliners' stranglehold over the affairs of the nation,
having now reached a breaking point not too dissimilar to the
circumstances that brought them to power in the first place.
Today's student demonstrators are different
from those of us who engaged in similar activities a half century
before. Today's youth are much more knowledgeable, politically
more sophisticated, and under a great deal more pressure than
we were. To us, some fifty years ago, Mosaddegh represented a
symbol, an idle. He was to us everything that His Majesty was
not and couldn't be. We weren't sociologically educated enough
to judge, or even cared, whether Dr. Mosaddegh's chosen strategy
could or would lead the nation to democracy and prosperity. Most
scholars of sociology and economics have debated that for quite
some time. That really didn't matter at the time. People simply
wanted relief from the dictatorial rule of a spineless, incompetent
leadership, whose very existence was secured by its ability to
ruthlessly crack down on voices of opposition and dissent. If
it sounds familiar, it should.
What is different this time? For one
thing, the world is a much more complex world now. There is also
a much broader global awareness, thanks partly to access to the
electronic media. There no longer exists a superpower stalemate
that would keep the global designs by one or the other empire
in check. Iran is now surrounded by unstable nations, some with
nuclear and other catastrophic weapons. Little Israel is now
rated as the world's fourth largest nuclear power. Its intolerance
against any opposition or resistance to its regional ambitions,
on the one hand, and its unequivocal support by the world's only
superpower, on the other, have resulted in American Administration's
near paranoid posturing against Iran. From France to the United
States, Marxist women "Mojaheds" in tennis shoes, and
cocky young Royalist studs with the dreams of conquest at any
cost to the suffering nation, threaten the integrity of the Motherland
to its foundations.
The propaganda machines are also at work,
providing guidance and advice from half-way around the world,
giving encouragement and promising support to those who stand
to suffer if the brave and cavalier advisors prove incompetent
or worse.
These are extremely troubling odds against
the dreams of success for an independent, strong, and democratic
Iran. Fifty years ago we were just as dedicated to our cause
and didn't have to deal with so much complexity, and we still
failed to bring the desired results. We old-timers clearly see
that the same aspirations for social reforms, independence and
democracy exist today, but this time in much better minds and
capable hands. The time is ripe and the nation is ready. And,
unlike fifty years ago, so is the vehicle that is able to traverse
the obstacle course ahead. The infrastructure of reform does
exist in Iran today. Unlike practically any other Islamic country
in the world, Iran is a democracy in the making, struggling to
break the shackles of the old, anachronistic hierarchy that is
dominated by religious conservatism. This vehicle is not an import
or dependent on imported parts; it is made in Iran by Iranians
and for Iranians. The vehicle is stuck in the quagmire of outdated
fanaticism and fear: it can and must be freed without any outside
help, with relentless effort, prudence and intelligent diplomacy.
Let's not blow it this time.
Kam Zarrabi
lives in California and can be reached atl KZarrabi@aol.com.
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|