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1954: Project Ajax: A secret CIA plot to overthrow leftist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh codenamed the Old Bugger. The Shah would be maintained on the throne. Secrets of War s5e1: Cold War: Eisenhower’s Operatives, History 1999
You create a nation who hates you enormously. Who views you as a devil, an evil force. You create in that state sufficient forces of unrest that you don’t have stability. And those chickens come home to roost. You end up with a violation of the constitution. And a hatred that is propagated today until you have embassies taken, hostages held, hatred engendered; hatred simply doesn’t come to rest. Professor Edward Firmage
Undeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object less in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran's experience will prevent the rise of Mossadeghs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and more far-seeing leaders. The New York Times
In August 1941 Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran to guarantee this supply line, effectively deposing the pro-Nazi Shah ... Nearly a quarter of all supplies sent to the Soviet Union in the war came by this southern route. World War II: The Complete History: The End of the Beginning, Discovery 2000
Doctor Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 – 1953: he was elected in Iran. He was considered to be the best hope for democracy in the Middle-East and around the world; he was Time magazine’s man of the year. But one of the things that he ran on and began to implement was the idea that foreign oil companies needed to pay more to the Iranian people a lot more for their oil, for the oil they were taking out of the ground. The Iranian people should benefit from their own oil. A strange policy. We didn’t like that of course. But we were afraid of sending in the troops, instead we sent in one CIA agent, Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s relative. He went in with a few million dollars and was every effective and efficient. He managed to get Mosaddegh overthrown and he brought in the Shah of Iran to replace him, and he who was more sympathetic to oil. John Perkins, author Confessions of an Economic Hitman, economist for Chas T Main Inc
The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 28
After the coup Iran became a kind of American base, and the Shah just became an American puppet. And all disaffection, all opposition, all nationalism, all neutralism was simply crushed. Tom Mangold, war correspondent
By failing to understand the degree of hatred of the people in the streets I think they [US] failed to predict the invasion of the Embassy and the hostage taking crisis. Tom Mangold
1953: US overthrows Prime Minister Mosaddegh of Iran. US installs Shah as dictator. Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, 2002
1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis. ibid.
On April 20th this year twenty-one Iranians living in London went to the Iranian Embassy to protest against the murder and torture of political prisoners in their country. They were allowed into the Embassy. They sat down. And ten minutes later they were asked by police to leave. And they left peacefully. The resulting publicity was one of the few reminders that Britain is deeply in pawn to the oil-rich Shah of Persia. A strutting Mussolini style dictator who runs one of the most effective police states in the world. And on the admission of his own regime has a habit of torturing and murdering those who oppose them. John Pilger, A Nod and a Wink
The Khomeini cry for the execution of Rushdie is an infantile cry. From the beginning of time we have seen that. To murder the thinker does not murder the thought. Arnold Wesker
The Reagan administration had cozied up during the Iran war to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, turning a blind eye to his repeated use of chemical weapons, sometimes against his own people. Made in part from US-supplied chemicals. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IX: Bush and Clinton – American Triumphalism – New World Order, Showtime 2013
Arms for hostages ... Why was the Reagan administration so willing to sell arms to a country so openly hostile to America? America’s Book of Secrets: Presidential Cover-Ups s2e7, H2 2014
Nicaragua: Reagan believed strongly that the Contras deserved American funding and support. Any such funding had been banned by Congress. ibid.
In the end several high-ranking members of the Reagan administration were either indicted, convicted, or had their careers for ever tarnished by the affair and the cover-up ... directed by George H W Bush. ibid.
In 1953 in fact the CIA secretly sponsored its first full-scale coup in Iran, and as a result the USA kept control of one of the largest oil producers in the world. Secrets of the CIA
In 1951 Prime Minister Mosaddegh became Iran’s first democratically elected leader. His first act in power was to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, and his second was to begin talks with Iran’s Soviet’s neighbour. ibid.
In February 1979 the Iranian people staged the first ever Islamic revolution, which not only changed the face of Iran but changed the face of the entire Middle East. And the CIA had no idea that any of this was going to happen. ibid.
I’m very embarrassed my government two weeks ago they renewed the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. I’m very embarrassed. And I’ve been asked to say on behalf of all Iranian dyslexics we want to apologise for the death of Willie Rushton. This was an accident waiting to happen. Omid Djalili, comedian
In the course of hundreds of interviews in the US, Europe and the Middle East I’ve been told repeatedly that individuals associated with the Reagan campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages until after the presidential election. For this favour, Iran was rewarded with a substantial supply of arms from Israel. Gary Sick, author The October Surprise, congressional evidence 5th February 1992
The United States had defied its own embargo on arms to Iran. Ronald Reagan was offering weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini in return for the release of American hostages. The President went on television to deny it. Bill Moyers, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, 1987
Iran 1953: the CIA mounted its first covert operation to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. He held power legitimately through his country’s parliamentary process. And he was popular. ibid.
If laws are needed, Islam has established them all. There is no need … after establishing a government, to sit down and draw up laws. Ruhollah Khomeini
I would like to inform all the intrepid Muslims in the world that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed and published in opposition to Islam, the Prophet and the Qu’ran, as well as those publishers who were aware of its contents, have been declared madhur el dam [those whose blood must be shed]. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no-one will dare to insult Islam again. Whoever is killed in this path will be regarded as a martyr. Ruhollah Khomeini
Yes, we are reactionaries and you are enlightened intellectuals. You who want freedom for everything – the freedom that will corrupt our country, corrupt our youth, and freedom that will pave the way for the oppressor. Freedom that will drag our country to the bottom. Ruhollah Khomeini, first sermon in power
Revolution creates seismic shifts in power and ideology. At the end of the twentieth century two revolutions set the destiny of the twenty-first. Romania: which defined the collapse of Soviet communism in Europe. And Iran: which heralded the rebirth of Islam as a potent force for political change. Days that Shook the World s3e8: The Road to Revolution, BBC 2003
Months of unrest have caused a crippling national strike that all but destroys the economy. ibid.
There has been five months of Marshal law on the streets of Tehran. ibid.
The Shah is one of the richest men in the world. ibid.
America will never make concessions to terrorists. Ronald Reagan