Blasting With Boyles
OPINION
How did this great hatred emerge between Iran and the United States? Always remember that when you get a degree in history you get an arts degree, you don’t get a science degree, because history is interpretive. And you can’t interpret two plus two equals other than it’s four, it can’t be five and it can’t be three. But in history two and two can equal five, or for that matter 105. So why do the Iranians hate the United States of America?
There is a short answer and there are long answers. But if you go back into the end of the Second World War, the Shah’s father was considered pro Germany. And he was overthrown by the Soviet-British movement. After the Second World War British Petroleum moves into Iran.
There as a democratically elected prime minister in 1953. His name was Mohammed Mossadegh.
There were enormous environmental crimes taking place in Iran around the oil. The Nazi Shah’s son was being placed back on the throne by an overthrow of the democratically elected government and the American CIA, British intelligence. The oil multinationals overthrew him and installed him again, through the eyes of history some say, with a brutal dictator, the Shah. For 27 years the Shah ran Iran. He was diagnosed with cancer, the United States said give him asylum, while the Iranians wanted to try him for his crimes. If you consider the reasons that the Iranians see the U.S. as a bully in the Middle East, ask yourself what would you or the U.S. do if a foreign power treated our country in that manner. Why is Iran our enemy?
After the arrival of the Ayatollahs and the Shah flees, then comes the Iran-Iraq War. Beginning in September of 1980 through August of 1988 some people believe the war continued off and on for years. It was triggered when Saddam invaded Iran. The United States, when Saddam was a good guy, supports Iraq giving Saddam several billion dollars in aid which included Bell helicopters. We now know through declassified CIA documents that the U.S. knew Saddam was using chemical weapons. Iranian death estimates are between 100,000 and 250,000 and the United States was helping pick targets for Saddam. And as I’ve said before you may not know much at all of this but the Iranians sure as hell do. That friendship was one of the green lights for Saddam to invade Kuwait thinking the U.S. was his ally.
Again, the country that I love engineers a coup against a democratically elected, mind you, secular government, and imposed a monarchy on the country for all of those years.
It’s important to remember Iranians are not Arabs. They consider themselves Indo Europeans and they are Shia Muslims which has set them on course against other Muslim countries.
My experience is most Iranians love our country, but the real issue, pretty much like everyone else, is with the government.
Following 9/11, George W. Bush, arguably the worst president in my lifetime, when now we all know that Saddam had nothing to do with that terrible day as well as Baby Kim in Korea, and they put Iran on what they call the axis of evil. I’m not defending them but none of those countries had anything to do with the terrible attack on our country on 9/11. The real perpetrators were the Saudi Arabians. And as history tells us December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. As we all know December 8th FDR declared war against Japan. But in his stead George W. declares war against Saddam. That’s not lost on the power in the middle east. It may be lost on you and I, but for the so-called man in the street in the Middle East, it’s not lost on them. So, what’s the way out?
I come back to those moments that historians have said there are places in the world where there is no tomorrow it’s simply yesterday repeating itself.
You gotta ask yourself why are we there? And now we seem to have a host of enemies that could have been avoided. The Iranians that I have met are very generous people and what do you do when they say they want to defend the honor of their people? And the killing continues.
Thanks for taking time out to read this. I remain as puzzled as you are.
— Peter Boyles
