Las raices del terror en el Medio Oriente

OVERTHROW(Derrocamiento)

Después que Irán nacionalizo su industria petrolera en 1951 el Primer Ministro Iraní Mohammad Mossadegh fue derrocado por un golpe de estado orquestado por la CIA y el Servicio Británico de inteligencia. Nosotros hablamos con Stephen Kinzer autor de ALL THE SHAH’S MEN: AN AMERICAN COUP AND THE ROOTS OF MIDDLE EAST TERROR(Todos los hombres del Shah: UN GOLPE DE ESTADO ESTADOUNIDENSE Y LAS RAICES DEL TERROR EN EL MEDIO ORIENTE Y el Catedrático de Baruch College Ervand Abrahamian.

Monday, August 25th, 200350 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government We Take a Look at the 1953 US Backed Coup in IranListen to Segment Download Show mp3 Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend Purchase Video/CD
After nationalizing the oil industry Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and British intelligence. We speak with Stephen Kinzer author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror and Baruch College professor Ervand Abrahamian. [Includes transcript]
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This month marks the 50th anniversary of America’s first overthrow of a democratically-elected government in the Middle East.
In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d’etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Iran. The government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The aftershocks of the coup are still being felt.
In 1951 Prime Minister Mossadegh roused Britain's ire when he nationalized the oil industry. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves which had been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The company later became known as British Petroleum (BP).
After considering military action, Britain opted for a coup d'état. President Harry Truman rejected the idea, but when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, he ordered the CIA to embark on one of its first covert operations against a foreign government.
The coup was led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. The CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. Kermit Roosevelt had help from Norman Schwarzkopf’s father: Norman Schwarzkopf.
The CIA and the British helped to undermine Mossadegh's government through bribery, libel, and orchestrated riots. Agents posing as communists threatened religious leaders, while the US ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American nationals.
Some 300 people died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.
Mossadegh was overthrown, sentenced to three years in prison followed by house arrest for life.
The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.
After the 1979 revolution President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah into the U.S. Fearing the Shah would be sent back to take over Iran as he had been in 1953, Iranian militants took over the U.S. embassy - where the 1953 coup was staged - and held hundreds hostage.
The 50th anniversary of the coup was front-page news in Iranian newspapers. The Christian Science Monitor reports one paper in Iran publishing excerpts from CIA documents on the coup, which were released only three years ago.
The U.S. involvement in the fall of Mossadegh was not publicly acknowledged until three years ago. In a New York Times article in March 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted that "the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
In his book All the Shah’s Men, Kinzer argues that "[i]t is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax [the name of the coup] through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."
Stephen Kinzer, author All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror
Prof. Ervand Abrahamian, Middle East and Iran Expert at Baruch College, City University of New York . Author of numerous book including Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (University of California Press, 1993).
www.democracynow.org