Getting involved in the internal politics of another country in an attempt to elicit ‘favourable outcomes’ has led to more problems than solutions. Iranian history provides one of the most damning examples of foreign collusion to secure what was, at the time, considered a ‘favourable outcome’ – the removal of Mohammad Mossadegh, the last truly democratically elected leader of Iran, in a joint British-American operation known as Operation Ajax.
When Mossadegh came to power the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company controlled most of the country’s oil and was, at the time, the UK’s largest foreign asset. In a move to regain control of Iranian resources and improve the lives of the Iranian people, Mossadegh did the unthinkable – he nationalized Iranian oil, triggering the Abadan Crisis. The British fought back, promoting a global boycott of Iranian oil that plunged Iran into financial crisis while attempting to convince the Truman Administration that orchestrating a coup was in the best interest of both nations. While Truman refused, his decision did not stop the British from reintroducing the idea to the Eisenhower Administration, which was the first to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake a covert operation against a foreign government. In the end, Operation Ajax succeeded in destroying Iranian democracy, placing Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the throne for almost three decades. Had Britain and the United States not interfered, the Middle East as we know it today would most assuredly be a very different place.
Cause and effect. The revolution may have deposed the Shah in 1979, but Iran has still languished in an undemocratic state for 56 years. Imagine how that must make young Iranians feel knowing that there was a time, decades before they were born, that foreign countries robbed them of that possibility, a robbery that led to the rise of what is, for all intents and purposes, a hard line theocracy, one in which public dissent is now being labeled treason.
The rhetoric being employed by Iranian clerics in the aftermath of the mass protests that followed what was most likely electoral fraud on a grand scale is proof positive that the government of Iran has little interest in entertaining the possibility of change, however slight. When any government sets up an informant hotline you can rest assured that the subversion of liberty is well in hand.
While condemning the Iranian regime is easy, and entirely justified given present circumstances, it is vital that we never forget how Iran arrived at this juncture. That there was a time, decades ago, that it was the best hope for a modern democratic force to take root in the region, and that those that now claim the safeguarding of democracy the most crucial of undertakings were the ones responsible for its undoing.
