Diplomatic Insanity with Regards to Iran

AJacksonian:

Iran, the hostage-taking, lovely Islamic Republic of Iran is back up to its old tricks of taking Americans hostage and then looking to get America to back down for the fact that Iran has taken hostages. Got that?This thing started in 1979 with the Iran Hostage Crisis, when Iran committed a casus belli against the United States by invading the Embassy in Tehran, Iran, taking hostages and looting the place. You know, the 'nest of vipers' from the CIA - the Embassy of the United States. And do you remember the response of President Carter?First was condemnation of the act!“I ask that you release unharmed all Americans presently detained in Iran” - President Carter.And then the diplospeak of appeasement: “I have asked both men to meet with you and to hear from you your perspective on events in Iran and the problems which have arisen between our two countries. The people of the United States desire to have relations with Iran based upon equality, mutual respect and friendship.”Actually, before that was the internecine squabbling inside the National Security Council between Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to back the Shah of Iran 'to the hilt' and had guaranteed the Shah that this would be done, and Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State, who wanted to come to terms with the Khomeini regime.

These two would have had some basis in that outlook if the Khomeini regime would play the 'Great Game' and resume its place as a strategic ally or at least neutral to the US.That, however, was not to be as it would not commit to the Soviets or the US, but put forth hostility to both. The schizophrenia on the part of the Carter Administration was due to the fact that President Carter really had no conception of what the role of the US was in the Middle East, beyond protecting oil supplies. It was this incoherence and swinging back and forth that originally led to having the Shah left in Mexico as the coup happened, then, when the Shah needed medical treatment for his cancer, having pressure from Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockerfeller, convincing Carter to then let the Shah into the US for treatment. That ticked off the Ayatollah and led to the hostage taking which *then* got us the condemnation of that act.

Because the US couldn't decide who to support in the 'Great Game' of 'Geostrategic Politics' with respect to Iran.Yes, 'Realism' and not supporting democracy in and of itself, so that criticism could have been put against the Shah, Khomeini and anyone without regard to alignment in the 'Great Game'. Iran was a 'buffer state' and ally of the US and seen as a means to keep the Soviet Union from expanding power into the Middle East, but only if you were aligned along the 'Realist' mindset. Khomeini was not, and President Carter could not hold to any formulation of supporting democracy across-the-board due to what understandings he had about foreign policy. Mind you, the folks in Iran didn't like the repressive Shah, would have hated an autocratic Communist regime and came to detest their hijacked revolution as the radical Islamists took power.Got that?

Brzezinski could have dealt with the Iranians if they cooperated, but they wouldn't, and Vance wanted to cooperate no matter what (diplomacy is *always* the right choice). And there was a loud absence of anyone trying to stand up for actual people to have a right to self-government.There are some that are putting forth the idea that President Carter pushed an Islamic 'Green Belt' between the US and USSR in the Middle East, to form up a number of 'moderate muslim nations' that would serve as a bulwark against Communism and that this was supported by Brzezinski. A few push this idea further back to support of Saudi Arabia and countering Nasser. While some objective concepts are seen via this, like the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood into something that would become a terrorist sponsoring and ideology hot house to put Soviet sponsored regimes at threat, they do not account for Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Libya and a number of other Nations that had Nationalistic outlook that also had strong elements of secular rule. Mohamar Ghadaffy would attempt to sponsor his *own* Islamic organization to sponsor terrorism to counter MB and other regimes have been able to keep out Islamism either via autocratic and dictatorial rule, like Iraq and Syria, or via a secular means like Turkey.

In either event, the support of Brzezinski was more aligned with the direct, Nation State containment system that was not theocratically aligned. This is not a dismissal of the concept out of hand, but putting forth that if it *was* a conception carried through by the likes of Kissingers, Brzezinski, Baker, Scowcroft, and other foreign policy 'Realists', it remains one that is so low key as to be unrecognizable.Ah, now back to that great ideal that President Carter put forth: "The United States of America will not yield to international terrorism or to blackmail."One of the things that President Carter didn't do, before this, was actually address the FIRST time the US Embassy was invaded in Tehran nine months previously. That FEB 1979 break-in and invasion was left unaddressed by the Carter Administration as a whole, but it avoided any confrontation with the new regime in Tehran over that. So we did, indeed, yield to international terrorism BEFORE the hostage taking by not addressing the terrorism of that first go-around. To put forth this concept after the second break-in and full hostage taking is disingenuous by President Carter: the time to speak up is whenever National Sovereignty is broken and even in the 'Great Game' that is a necessary thing to do so as to extract any advantage over the other side whenever possible.

Of course it would have helped if the US Ambassador to the UN would have spoken up in a disapproving manner after that first break-in, also. But even that was not to be done when Ambassador Andrew Young put forth that Khomeini was “a Twentieth Century saint”. Add that to the initial openness of Brzezinski and is it any wonder that things got *worse*?And when nice words and appeals to a religious radical who has taken over a Nation don't work?

Then we see freezing of assets, ending oil imports from Iran (as if the world oil market cared), expelling Iranian diplomats, and actually expelling Iranians in the country ILLEGALLY. So that's what it takes to get a Democrat to move on this? Holding an Embassy's staff hostage? No *wonder* we have so many illegals in the US....Finally, somewhere in there, President Carter realized that this was being done in 'bad faith' and he would cut off diplomatic relations and then stage a failed rescue attempt. Plus go to the UN and get those ever-so-handy sanctions that other Nations can bypass and ignore.

Iran finally got tired of the game when Saddam invaded and gave President Carter a final tweak by releasing the hostages after he left office. No thanks to the UN, 'international community', 'sanctions' or the like.That moves us onto the lovely era of Ronald Reagan where... hey, no fair reading ahead and getting to Iran/Contra where zealous staffers thought it would be 'a neat idea' to NEGOTIATE with Iran by giving them arms to release hostages and use those same connections to help funnel Saudi money and illegally gained money through intermediaries to fund the Contras. And one of those was a Syrian! No, those would only come *after* Iranian sponsored Hezbollah had attack the US Embassy in Beirut, bombed the US Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, force the US to leave Beirut and then, for good measure, bomb the Embassy AGAIN! Then all the NEW hostage takings in Beirut would have the Administration working behind the scenes to do the above. You see, we wouldn't 'reward terrorism'.So what is that called when terrorists bomb your Embassy, kill your soldiers, kidnap your government officials and then you deal with them by trading arms and utilize one of the intermediaries to buy arms for someone else... and his cut then goes to help those that had done all of that? Ronald Reagan was a great foe of the USSR, yes. His ability to actually hold terrorists accountable to anything they did against the US was lackluster at best and actually encouraged them at worse.

Remember, if you like the McFarlane/North/Poindexter/Secord thing, then you *also* support the idea of paying Syria to support Hezbollah via that and reward it for getting our Embassy bombed and our Marines killed. This is not a 'neat idea' it is rewarding terrorists.What other great ideas were presented on Iran, beyond rewarding them for killing Americans? President Reagan sent a cake to Ayatollah Khomeini. Let us hope that this remains only 'purported' to have done so...I do applaud President Reagan for the things he got right. I do shake my head that in getting other things wrong, he set the Nation up for long term problems that would go unaddressed and get worse because they remained unconfronted.Then the grand total of George H.W. Bush's attitude towards Syria was to 'reward' it for not doing much of anything during the first Gulf War. And what was that reward? About $5 billion.

Not bad for 16,000 men not doing much of anything, isn't it? Don't mind you that their hands are bloody from helping Hezbollah kill Americans... that is far too un-'Realistic'.Now President Clinton, what did he do to stop the Iran-Syria axis from expanding? Did he finally punish either of them? Confront them at least? Hold them accountable for *anything*?Heavens, no! That might take some forethought, guts and standing up for the US, its ideals and actually blaming other Nations for things they have *done*. Can't have that! Instead the Clinton Administration helped Iran expand its influence into the Balkans by dithering on doing anything about Bosnia. They would also reach out to help bomb the Israeli Embassy and cultural center in Argentina and establish themselves in the Tri-Border Area of South America and further expand influence into Chechnya and begin interfering with Turkish politics, beyond their regular nasty work with Hezbollah in Lebanon.Yes, not only not confront Iran or Syria but actually ensure that nothing was done to stop their spread and, even, *encourage it* via inaction! What a great President, no? To hold no one accountable for the killing of American Embassy staff and Marines? Plus do nothing to stop them from killing more Americans like in the Khobar towers attack.

Can't do anything about it, don't you know, someone might get a bit upset.Just step around the dead Americans, nothing to see here...Save for three American hostages in Iran and thank you to Mark Steyn and h/t to Scott Johnson at Powerline for pointing this out! Apparently this is a great 'secret' that the MSM doesn't want to release and that the Bush Administration doesn't want to talk about. Because, as Scott Johnson points out, there will be a 'diplomatic push' coming up.With Iran.Can't interfere with diplomacy!Thank you, America, for 28 years of cowardice and being unable to stand up to tyrants, despots and dictators. The Nation seems to have run its course after confronting Communists.All ideologically tuckered out.

And freedom bartered away for 'diplomacy'.Bake them a cake before talking with them, these kidnappers and killers.It is traditional.Before you appease them.And weaken the Nation more.And forget that President Jefferson won respect by fighting, and meant what he said about 'not one red cent for tribute'.And that the first US vessel to circumnavigate the globe was a warship, sent by President Jackson to deal with Pirates who threatened us, literally on the other side of the planet.Apparently the only cakes involved then, were of gunpowder.That was the international language for dealing with them.Sent a clear message, too, come to that.

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This is Why the Late Shah Got sacked!

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran gives statement on oil ownership at OPEC conference: Tehran; 25 January 1971

The statement at the start of video clip reads, "The vast world's oil empire is one the most inhumane governments that the world has seen throuought history. A government with no ethics or principles and no social or humane justice. Their exploitation and inhumanity and force is limitless and knows no bounds because these world eaters are detached from humanity, justness, equity, fairness and ethics."--Mohammad Reza Shah

Sarbazekouchak: "Buyers" of what they regard as theirs? The global mafia, of course, wanted none of that. They had for years regarded the Iranian King as a threat.* And so began a world-wide campaign of the vilification of the Shah, a campaign led by self-described “leftists” and “liberals”. Vilification is actually an understatement, for the Shah was turned into the Devil himself. That is why, while Chomsky’s friends were massacring hundreds of thousands in Cambodia, the Shah of Iran was singled out by Amnesty International as the “world’s number one violator of human rights.” I mention Cambodia only, because in Apartheid South Africa, Red China, Uganda, Zaire, Middle East and Latin America,… the governments there were singing of brotherly love, while others were preoccupied with dropping flowers on Vietnam.). The greatest crime of the "Liberal-Left" intellectuals in the past century was their vindictive campaign of lies, fabrications, and treachery against Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi; a campaign that will go down in history as the most vivid manifestation of a "double standard" aimed at demonizing an anti-Communist leader, while prolonging a deafening silence about the atrocities of leftist dictatorships.

Today, with the exception of those relegated to the marginalized swamps of the "liberal-left" dogma, any reputable observer would concede that virtually every aspect of Iranian life and society (education, health, arts, sports, infrastructure, banking, justice system, the military, women's rights, social and religious freedoms…) was breathtakingly modernized and "civilized" under the Shah. When it came to the participation of Iranian people in the political process, while the Shah's system of government was "authoritarian", Iran was far from being a brutal "totalitarian" state, examples of which were plenty under Communist and strict Islamic regimes. In the words of historian "George Lenczowski" -the author of “Iran Under the Pahlavis”- Iran under the Shah was not only "freer" than all of its neighboring Islamic and most other Middle Eastern countries, but also all the Communist "Utopias" to which the intellectual “Mafia” was comparing its government.
Did these "facts" ever interfere with the Leftist intellectuals’ "war" against the Shah? Did any of them ever offer a similar critique of “Castro’s Socialist Paradise”? To them, and to the Left in general, the Shah's regime was a tool of American influence in the region.

The poor Shah had envisioned refining the nation's own oil in 1971 and manufacturing related products whereas in 2007 the Islamic Republic has to import 40% of its oil and has to resort to brutal tactics to suppress rebellion against fuel rationing. No government has benefited from such a surge in oil revenues in the entire history of Iranian nation as the IRI has in recent years. Even the IRI's own economists are telling the murderous mullahs that they're wasting the unprecedented oil wealth. Where does the money end up you might ask? The oil revenues buy the mullahs Arab/islamists mercenary militias across the ME and wasted on propganda networks such as PRESSTV or AL-MANAR and manufacturing fake "dissidents", fraudlent Islamic women movemnt (Reformers women movement), front organizations and web of all extractions to manipulate and control the sheeple inside and outside of Iran.


And on the social justice and freedom front, the debate for freedom and liberty has been reduced to appropriate size of stones used in stoning men, women and children or the amount of blood money prescribed when a woman is killed by a man whereas before the pestillence of Khomeini, they would automatically go to jail instead of following the stupid sharia's Diyah doctrine.
Mike Wallace Interview with the late shah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-jkx36BPc&mode=related&search=

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Iran: Carter's Habitat For Inhumanity

This article is an exceptionally significant piece in light of Pelosi et al's attempt to resurrect the failed and catastrophic policies of one the most incompetent presidents in the world, Jimmy Carter. I hope and pray that history doesn't repeat itself again. (Red is my interjection)




Link Via Iranian Plateau



INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 5/24/2007

Leadership: In the name of human rights, Jimmy Carter gave rise to one of the worst rights violators in history — the Ayatollah Khomeini. And now Khomeini's successor is preparing for nuclear war with Israel and the West.

When President Carter took office in 1977, the Iran of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a staunch American ally, a bulwark in our standoff with the Soviet Union, thwarting the dream held since the time of the czars of pushing south toward the warm waters of the appropriately named Persian Gulf.

Being an ally of the U.S. in the Cold War, Iran was a target for Soviet subversion and espionage. Like the U.S. in today's war on terror, Iran arrested and incarcerated many who threatened its sovereignty and existence, mainly Soviet agents and their collaborators.

This did not sit well with the former peanut farmer, who, on taking office, declared that advancing "human rights" was among his highest priorities. The shah was one of his first targets. As he's done with our terror-war detainees in Guantanamo, Carter accused the Shah of torturing some 3,000 "political" prisoners. He chastised the shah for his human rights record and engineered the withdrawal of American support.

The irony here is that when Khomeini, a former Muslim exile in Paris, overthrew the shah in February 1979, many of the 3,000 were executed by the ayatollah's firing squads along with 20,000 pro-Western Iranians. (Khomeini also sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its own people in extending that war for six years after an Iraqi cease-fire offer, in a bid to spread the Islamic revolution to Iraq, and it sent tens of thousands of its own youngsters to their deaths in that war, clutching plastic keys to paradise, charging artillery units or clearing minefields.What are the cost in terms of blood and treasure for Khomeini's delusional ambitions? A golden opportunity to end the war as victors was denied to our nation and 8 years later, after so many Iranians were maimed and martyred, the poison chalice had to be drunk.)(see this)



According to "The Real Jimmy Carter," a book by Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute: "Kho-meini's regime executed more people in its first year in power than the Shah's Savak had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years." (SEE: Emad Baghi's Report; He is rehabilitated former collaborator of the regime)

The mullahs hated the shah not because he was an oppressive dictator. They hated him because he was a secular, pro-Western leader who, in addition to other initiatives, was expanding the rights and roles of women in Iran society. Under Khomeini, women returned to their second-class role, and citizens were arrested for merely owning satellite dishes that could pick up Western television.

Khomeini established the first modern Islamic regime, a role model for the Taliban and jihadists to follow. And when the U.S. Embassy was stormed that November and 52 Americans taken hostage for 444 days, America's lack of resolve was confirmed in the jihadist mind.

On Nov. 4, 1979, some 400 Khomeini followers broke down the door of the embassy in Tehran, seizing the compound and the Americans inside. The hostage takers posed for the cameras next to a poster with a caricature of Carter and the slogan: "America cannot do a damn thing."

Indeed, America under Carter wouldn't do much. At least not until the 154th day of the crisis, when Carter, finally awakening to the seizure of U.S. diplomats and citizens on what was legally American soil, broke off diplomatic relations and began planning economic sanctions.

When Carter got around to hinting about the use of military force, Khomeini offered this mocking response: "He is beating on an empty drum. Neither does Carter have the guts for military action nor would anyone listen to him." (Carter or one of his advisors upon the establishment of IR called, Khomeini, "A Saint")

Carter did actually try a military response of sorts. But like every other major policy action of his, he bungled it. The incompetence of his administration would be seen in the wreckage in the Iranian desert, where a plan to rescue the hostages resulted in the loss of eight aircraft, five airmen and three Marines.

Among the core group of hostage takers and planners of the attack on our embassy was 23-year-old Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who learned firsthand the weakness and incompetence of Carter's foreign policy, one that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid are now attempting to resurrect.

According to then-Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Ahmadinejad was among the hostage takers and the liaison between them and prominent Tehran preacher Ali Khameini, later to become supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

The shah was forced into exile and on the run from Morocco to Egypt, the Bahamas, Mexico and finally Panama. In July 1979, Vice President Walter Mondale and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter they had changed their minds about offering the shah permanent asylum. Carter's response was: "F*** the shah. I'm not going to welcome him here when he has other places to go where he'll be safe."

In October 1979, the shah, gravely ill with cancer, was granted a limited visa for treatment at the Cornell Medical Center in New York. He would die in Cairo in July 1980, an abandoned American friend. Our enemies took notes.

If the shah remained in power, it isn't likely the Iraq-Iran War, with upward of a million casualties on both sides, a war that saw Saddam Hussein first use mass-murder weapons, would have taken place.

Nor is it likely there would have been a Desert Storm, fought after Hussein invaded Kuwait to strengthen his strategic position. That led to bases in Saudi Arabia that fueled Islamofascist resentment, one of the reasons given by Osama bin Laden for striking at America, the Great Satan.

Khomeini introduced the idea of suicide bombers to the Palestine Liberation Organization and paid $35,000 to PLO families who would offer up their children as human bombs to kill as many Israelis as possible.

It was Khomeini who would give the world Hezbollah to make war on Israel and destroy the multicultural democracy that was Lebanon. And perhaps Jimmy has forgotten that Hezbollah, which he helped make possible, killed 241 U.S. troops in their Beirut barracks in 1982. (I would add this to the list)

The Soviet Union, seeing us so willingly abandon a staunch ally, invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, just six months after Carter and Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev embraced after signing a new arms-control treaty.

And it was the resistance to the Soviet invasion that helped give birth to the Taliban. As Hayward observes, the fall of Iran, hastened by Jimmy Carter, "set in motion the advance of radical Islam and the rise of terrorism that culminated in Sept. 11."

Writer Christopher Hitchens recalls a discussion he had with Eugene McCarthy. A Democrat and former candidate for that party's presidential nomination, McCarthy voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Carter in 1980.

The reason? Carter had "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was quite simply the worst president we ever had."

Quite simply, we concur.

Profile In Incompetence:
Fourth In A SeriesMore on this series



Previously related posts: Entrusting our Strategic and National Security to Tehran: Baker Recommends!

A Second Hizballah in the Making; this time in Syria

A Century of War--Oil Politics and the New World Order

Akbar Ganji: We Lied about the Shah! (Have any of these liars been punished in the court of law? )

Why are Democracy and Secularism Losing to Totalitarian Islam in the Middle East?

Iran’s Long presence in Iraq ; Feeding the Hand that Bites You, Part II!

photo's source

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Follow the (Saudi) money

Tiger Hawk: "If you are who your donors are, then we now know who Jimmy Carter is. Harvard University, which is known neither for its moral subtlety nor its cavalier attitude toward gifts, managed to locate principles that were beyond a man who claims more for his own "morality" than any three other former presidents."

I respected and supported The Carter Center Conflict Resolution Center until I read this two years ago. No longer, I will trust anything that comes out of his mouth.

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Manufactured Coup of 1979 Against the Late Shah of Iran

Excerpts from the "A Century of War":

"In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.

Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis, then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States.Lewis's scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines.

Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public 'credit' for getting rid of the 'corrupt' Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.

During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement. By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil. With their dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.In its lead editorial that September, Iran's Kayhan International stated: In retrospect, the 25-year partnership with the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran … Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle all operations by itself.

London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day.This imposed dramatic revenue pressures on Iran, which provided the context in which religious discontent against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and U.S. intelligence.

In addition, strikes among oil workers at this critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production. As Iran's domestic economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.At the same time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human rights' under the Shah. British Petroleum reportedly began to organize capital flight out of Iran, through its strong influence in Iran's financial and banking community.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's Persian-language broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC 'correspondents' sent into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah.The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran during this time. The British government-owned broadcasting organization refused to give the Shah's government an equal chance to reply. Repeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded no result. Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling the Shah. The Shah fled in January, and by February 1979, Khomeini had been flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his repressive theocratic state to replace the Shah's government.

Reflecting on his downfall months later, shortly before his death, the Shah noted from exile, I did not know it then perhaps I did not want to know but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted What was I to make of the Administration's sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran? Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.[1][1]

With the fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical Khomeini adherents in Iran, chaos was unleashed. By May 1979, the new Khomeini regime had singled out the country's nuclear power development plans and announced cancellation of the entire program for French and German nuclear reactor construction. Iran's oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the critical days of January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per day. To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply. Prices on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and Royal Cutch Shell as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as a result.The second oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way. Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's defeat a year later.

There was never a real shortage in the world supply of petroleum. Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any time have met the 5-6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a U.S. congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office months later confirmed. Unusually low reserve stocks of oil held by the Seven Sisters oil multinationals contributed to creating a devastating world oil price shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in 1978 towards the astronomical heights of $40 per barrel for some grades of crude on the spot market. Long gasoline lines across America contributed to a general sense of panic, and Carter energy secretary and former CIA director, James R. Schlesinger, did not help calm matters when he told Congress and the media in February 1979 that the Iranian oil shortfall was 'prospectively more serious' than the 1973 Arab oil embargo.[2][2]The Carter administration's Trilateral Commission foreign policy further ensured that any European effort from Germany and France to develop more cooperative trade, economic and diplomatic relations with their Soviet neighbor, under the umbrella of détente and various Soviet-west European energy agreements, was also thrown into disarray. Carter's security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, implemented their 'Arc of Crisis' policy, spreading the instability of the Iranian revolution throughout the perimeter around the Soviet Union.

In 1978, the Iranian Ettelaat published an article accusing Khomeini of being a British agent. The clerics organized violent demonstrations in response, which led to the flight of the Shah months later. See U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, Iran. The Coming of the Revolution. December 1987.

The role of BBC Persian broadcasts in the ousting of the Shah is detailed in Hossein Shahidi. 'BBC Persian Service 60 years on.' The Iranian. September 24, 2001.The BBC was so much identified with Khomeini that it won the name 'Ayatollah BBC.' [2][2] Comptroller General of the United States. 'Iranian Oil Cutoff: Reduced Petroleum Supplies and Inadequate U.S. Government Response.' Report to Congress by General Accounting Office. 1979.

A Century of War:: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

Read more about the manufactured coup against the late Shah here.

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Complicity of France in Manufacturing the Iranian Revolution and Jimmy Carter's betrayal of the Iranian People

Aryamehr posted a very good article from The Brussels Journal about the French's involvement in creating the Iranian coup d'etat in 1979. His post also links to a previous post of his about Jimmy Carter's involvement in the sickening affair. I've posted some excerpts below fyi, but the whole thing (not very long) is definitely worth a read when you have a minute.

...The inaction and general incompetence displayed by former US President Jimmy Carter, today an apologist for the Islamic Jihad against Israel, certainly contributed, but we mustn’t forget former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

The irony is that while the Ayatollah Khomeini could establish an Islamic state directed from the suburbs of Paris, the French 30 years later have hundreds of Islamic mini-states on French soil. Khomeini and his cronies used this window of opportunity at a critical stage of the uprising against the Shah to consolidate their power and establish their lead over the direction of which the Revolution was heading

As Ambassador Freddy Eytan says:
President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had invited the Shah of Iran as his first official foreign guest, in view of France’s interest in Iranian oil. In 1978, Giscard and his Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski foresaw the collapse of the Shah’s government, which would damage France’s commercial interests.
The proposal was then raised to bring the Ayatollah Khomeini to Algeria. Before, he had been chased from one place to the other. The DST, the French secret service, opposed his entry but Giscard overruled them and granted Khomeini political asylum in France. He stayed in Neauphle le Chateau near Paris. From there, he distributed cassettes to Iran inciting against democracy, peace in the Middle East, the Jews and Israelis. He also called for jihad, a violent holy war. The PLO distributed Khomeini’s cassettes to Iran. When the American embassy in Teheran was attacked in November 1979, PLO members were among the perpetrators. Yasser Arafat was the first official guest in Teheran. He received a popular welcome as a great hero for supporting the Islamic revolution.

Today, we know that Khomeini’s concepts of the Islamic Republic have led to a major expansion of militant Islam. Both Hizbollah and Al Qaeda have their origins in the revolutionary ideas developed in Khomeini’s Iran. The violent speeches in the Iranian mosques and international Islamist terror would not have developed without Khomeini’s stay in France and the publicity he received there. Without Giscard’s hospitality, Khomeini would not have been able to take power in Iran and develop an infrastructure for international propaganda and terrorism.

See my earlier post on Carter's involvement in the coup of 1979 which brought the demonic mullahs and the father of militant Islam, Khomeini to power. Here are some excerpts:

"The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public 'credit' for getting rid of the 'corrupt' Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement. By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil. With their dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.In its lead editorial that September, Iran's Kayhan International stated: In retrospect, the 25-year partnership with the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran … Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle all operations by itself. London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day...

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How Democrats Lost Iran and Now Could Lose Iraq

Adapted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11” (Doubleday). D’Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.


How We Lost Iran

And why we can’t afford another loss in Iraq.

By Dinesh D'Souza and (Annotations by Alan Peters)

There are four important Muslim countries in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Islamic radicals control Iran, and have since the Khomeini revolution a quarter century ago. Now they have their sights on Iraq.

If they get Iraq, we can be sure they will target Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Let’s remember that this is a region upon which the United States will continue to be oil-dependent for the foreseeable future. If the Islamic radicals succeed, the American way of life will be seriously threatened.

To understand the high stakes in Iraq, it’s helpful to understand what happened in Iran a generation ago. How did America “lose” Iran, (a closer and stronger ally - under the Shah - perhaps even than Israel) and how can we avoid another debacle in Iraq?

Islamic radicals have been around since the 1920s, but for decades they were outsiders even in the Muslim countries.

(The original Islamic radicals of those days were avid fans of Hitler and his writings and beliefs. Something which still creeps into their "fascist" or purist approach to religion, where all bow to Allah rather than Hitler's Mein Kampf philosophy or "master race").

One of their leading theoreticians, Sayyid Qutb, argued that radical Muslims could not just promulgate theories and have meetings; they must seek to realize the Islamic state “in a concrete form.” What was needed, he wrote, was “to initiate the movement of Islamic revival in some Muslim country.”

Once the radicals controlled a major state, he suggested, they could then use it as a beachhead for launching the takeover of other Muslim countries. The ultimate objective was the unification of the Muslim community into a single Islamic nation, governed by Islamic holy law. (Blanketing the whole globe).

In 1979, Qutb’s goal was achieved when the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran.

Muslim scholar Hamid Algar terms the Khomeini revolution “the most significant event in contemporary Islamic history.”

It was an event comparable to the French or the Russian revolutions. Virtually no one predicted it, yet it overturned the entire imperial structure and created a new order, even a new way of life.

The mullahs restored the Islamic calendar, abolished Western languages from the schools, instituted an Islamic curriculum, declared a new set of religious holidays, stopped men from wearing ties, required women to cover their heads, changed the banking system to outlaw usury or interest, abolished Western-style criminal and civil laws, and placed the entire society under sharia, or laws based on the Koran.

(Actions emulated by the Pakistani Taleban in Afghanistan. The Taleban are NOT Afghans by nationality and the Afghans repudiate them as being of Afghan origin or nationality. They come from the border regions from inside Pakistan but after some three decades, as brother Pashtun tribesmen, can claim to be whatever nationality they want to be - specially since fanatical Islam recognizes no borders or national divisions).

The importance of the Khomeini revolution is that it demonstrated the viability of the Islamic theocracy in the modern age. Before Khomeini, the prospect of a large Muslim nation being ruled by clergy according to 8th-century precepts would have seemed far-fetched, even preposterous.

Khomeini showed it could be done, and his successors have shown that it can last.

(Albeit, lasting only by executions, torture, oppression and tyranny against the general populace of what was Iran and is now an Islamic Republic, which by its very nature accepts no national identity. The clerics even tried to have the name changed in the United Nations and be called the Islamic Republic but this was rejected).

To this day, post-Khomeini Iran provides a viable model of what the Islamic radicals hope to achieve throughout the Muslim world (and eventually the whole world, as non-Moslem countries are taken over and lose their original identities. This has already begun in Europe and there are schools in Scandinavia where there are no students who are original ethnic Swedes). Khomeini also popularized the idea of the United States as a “great Satan.” Before Khomeini, no Muslim head of state had said this about America.

Muslim leaders like Nasser might have disagreed with the United States, but they never identified it as the primary source of evil on the planet. During the Khomeini era, there were large demonstrations by frenzied Muslims who cursed the United States and burned its flag.

For the first time, banners and posters began to appear all over Iran:

DEATH TO AMERICA! THE GREAT SATAN WILL INCUR GOD’S PUNISHMENT! USA, GO TO HELL! AMERICA IS OUR NO. 1 ENEMY!

These slogans have since become the mantra of Islamic radicalism. Khomeini was also the first Muslim leader in the modern era to advocate violence as a religious duty and to give special place to martyrdom.

Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalism has continued to attract aspiring martyrs ready to confront the Great Satan. In this sense, the seeds of 9/11 were sown a quarter of a century ago when Khomeini and his followers captured the government in Tehran.

Khomeini’s ascent to power was aided by the policies of Jimmy Carter and his allies on the political left. The Carter administration’s own expert on Iran, Gary Sick, provides the details in his memoir “All Fall Down,” a riveting story that has been largely erased from our national memory.

Carter won the presidency in 1976 by stressing his support for human rights. From the time he took office, the left contrasted Carter’s rights doctrine with the Shah’s practices. The left denounced the Shah as a vicious and corrupt dictator, highlighting and in most cases magnifying his misdeeds.

Left-leaning officials such as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, U.N. envoy Andrew Young and State Department human-rights officer Patricia Derian pressed Carter to sever America’s long-standing alliance with the Shah. Eventually Carter came to agree with his advisers that he could not in good conscience support the Shah.

When the Shah moved to arrest mullahs, who called for his overthrow, (in concert with Soviet driven Tudeh - Communists - and Marxist groups) the United States and Europe denounced his actions.

Former diplomat George Ball called on the U.S. government to curtail the Shah’s exercise of power. Acceding to this pressure, Carter called for the release of political prisoners and warned the Shah not to use force against the demonstrators in the streets. (Carter's own pro-Soviet leanings, which resulted in so many of his actions around the world benefitting Soviet policies were part of this anti-Shah mindset).

When the Shah petitioned the Carter administration to purchase tear gas and riot-control gear, the human-rights office in the State Department held up the request. Some, like State Department official Henry Precht, urged the United States to prepare the way for the Shah to make a “graceful exit” from power.

William Miller, chief of staff on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the United States had nothing to fear from Khomeini since he would be a progressive force for human rights.

(The State Department, too, which openly states they are there only to talk and negotiate not propose aggressive actions, appear to be pushing to "talk" directly with Iran as if this would provide results any more concrete than the misjudgments of Khomeini in the past.

Is not a description of lunacy that of repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result?).

U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan even compared Khomeini to Mahatma Gandhi, and Andrew Young termed the ayatollah a “20th-century saint.”

(In their left leaning, blind ignorance, they described Khomeini's future role as that of an Islamic "Pope" who would settle in holy city of Ghom, in Iran, and behave like the Catholic Pope at the Vatican.

As the resistance gained momentum and the Shah’s position weakened, he looked to the U.S. government to help him. Sick reports that the Shah discovered he had many enemies, and few friends, in the Carter administration.

Increasingly stressed, he pleaded with the United States to help him stay in power. Carter refused.

(Read Carter's Illegal Demands on the Shah on my site - link in the left hand column. There was greed, not only stupidity and lack of an understanding of the world balance of power, motivating Carter).

Deprived of his last hope, with the Persian rug pulled out from under him, the Shah decided to abdicate. The Carter administration encouraged him to do so, and the cultural left celebrated his departure. The result, of course, was Khomeini.

The Carter administration’s role in the downfall of the Shah is one of America’s great foreign-policy disasters of the 20th century. In trying to get rid of the bad guy, Carter got the worse guy.

(And thus triggered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, since the Shah was no longer there to prevent it as a key player and later gave rise to the 8-year Iran -Iraq war - again because the Shah was no longer there to stop it. A previous time Iraq invaded Iran, the Shah's military sent them scurrying back in a matter of four days and Iraq quickly signed the new border agreement, using the Talweg line (mid-river channel) instead of the long-set British border, which was on Iran's side of the river shoreline separating the countries).

Carter's failure, as former Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, was the result of being “unable to distinguish between America’s friends and enemies.”

According to Moynihan, the Carter administration had essentially adopted “the enemy’s view of the world.” Carter does not deserve sole discredit for these actions. This intellectual framework that shaped Carter’s misguided strategy was supplied by the political left.

Of course, the primary force behind the Shah’s fall was the fundamentalist movement led by Khomeini. (And heavily bolstered by Soviet backed groups hoping to finally take control of Iran, which years of the monarchy and British oppostion had prevented).

But it is possible that the Shah, with U.S. support, could have defeated this resistance.

A clear example of this comes from when the Shah ordered his Imperial Guards Commander, General Oveissi, to be ready to take over as Prime Minister from Amir Abbas Hoveida the next day. He also called in both the British and American Ambassadors to advise them of this action.

These two men strongly insisted that he should appoint a religious general called Azhari instead. The communist Tudeh party and the clerics, who had turned quiet, expecting a firm reaction, immediately rose up when Azhari went to parliament and prayed with the elected members. A surprising sign of weakness).

Another option would have been for the United States to use its influence to press for democratic elections, an option unattractive both to the Shah (who was already trying out political dress rehearsals along these lines with an unsophisticated population only just enterring the 20th century) and to the Islamic militants (in whose belief structure democracy could have no standing as all allegiance had to be solely to Allah and nobody or nothing else).

Even after the Shah’s departure, a U.S. force could have routed the Khomeini regime – an action that would have been fully justified given Iran’s seizure of the U.S. embassy and the taking of American hostages.

(Increasingly detailed information from Iranian sources who were in charge on the ground at the time and from US military, who were on standby to execute the "clusterf**k" cobbled together hostage rescue attempt compiled by Carter's people, now indicate that there was NEVER a hostage rescue attempt!

The so-called rescue was in fact a cover for another mission gone wrong in the same general geographical area. To avoid having to declare war on the Soviet Union, the failed mission became the plausible "hostage rescue" attempt - which failed but avoided the declaration of war. Avoiding the true mission.

Time permitting, this exclusive story will break on this site in the near future)

Determined at all costs to prevent these outcomes, the left sought not only to demonize the Shah but also to favorably portray Khomeini and his radical cohorts.

In Sick’s words, Khomeini became “the instant darling of the Western media.” The tone of American press coverage can be gleaned from Time’s cover story on Feb. 12, 1979: “Now that the country’s cry for the Ayatollah’s return has been answered, Iranians will surely insist that the revolution live up to its democratic aims.

Khomeini believes that Iran should become a parliamentary democracy. (Carter forgot to tell Khomeini this was to be his belief, since Khomeini never had this in mind - as proved by his writings on religious jurisprudence and his response to what should be done about the Ministry of Justice. He replied: "if someone is against me, he is against Allah and should be killed on the spot. Why do I need a Ministry of Justice or any other justice?"

Carter and other liberals opined those who know the ayatollah expect that eventually he will settle in the holy city of Qom and resume a life of teaching and prayer.”

Immediately following Khomeini’s seizure of power, political scientist Richard Falk wrote in the Feb. 16, 1979, New York Times, “To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. He has been depicted in a manner calculated to frighten. The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.

His close advisers are uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals ... who share a notable record of concern with human rights. What is distinctive about his vision is the concern with resisting oppression and promoting social justice. (These moderate advisors became the most virulent and blood thirsty executioners almost immediately).

Many non-religious Iranians talk of this period as Islam’s finest hour. Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a Third World country.” The naiveté of Falk’s essay is of such magnitude as to be almost unbelievable.

Falk should have known better, and I believe he did know better. Sick notes that in terms of the kind of regime he wanted to institute in Iran, “Khomeini was remarkably candid in describing his objectives.” As an expert on international relations, Falk was surely familiar with what Khomeini had been consistently saying for three decades.

Along with Ramsey Clark, former attorney general in the Johnson administration, Falk met with Khomeini on his last day in Paris, before his triumphal return to Iran. Shortly after that meeting Clark conducted a press conference to champion Khomeini’s cause. Falk, too, seems to have acted as a kind of unpaid public-relations agent for the ayatollah’s regime.

Upon consolidating his power, Khomeini launched a bloody campaign of wiping out his political opposition and reversing the liberties extended by the Shah to student groups, women’s groups and religious minorities.

In one year, the Khomeini revolution killed more people than the Shah had executed during his entire quarter-century reign.
(Watch Islamic Republic's Political Prisoners Society's Video)

Despite the fact that many progressive figures were imprisoned, tortured and executed, Khomeini’s actions produced a great yawn of indifference from America’s cultural left. The same people who were shocked and outraged by the crimes of the Shah showed no comparable outrage at the greater crimes of Khomeini.
They knew, as well as everyone else, that liberty would be largely extinguished in Iran, and they greeted this prospect with equanimity.

Even when radical students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and took more than 60 American hostages, the left’s sympathy was with the hostage-takers.

During this period, three liberal clergymen – William Sloane Coffin of New York’s Riverside Church, National Council of Churches executive director William Howard and Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton – visited the hostages and looked with approval as they recorded anti-U.S. statements for use as Iranian propaganda.
The U.S. religious leaders did not seem embarrassed to be used by the Iranian hostage-takers. Many of the allegations against the United States launched by the Iranian radicals corresponded exactly with the views of these liberal clergymen.
(Today, a highly similar situation exists with a hand-in-hand set of viewpoints expressed by Al Qaeda, which parrot the leftist liberals of the USA and the Democratic party now again in power. To an extent that Al Qaeda took credit for getting these "anti-Bush at any cost" legislators back into power).

Going beyond the expectations of the hostage-takers, Coffin even faulted his fellow Americans for “self pity” and urged them to hold hands with their captors and sing.

In the hostage crisis, these clergymen quite consciously contributed to America’s humiliation.

By aiding the Shah’s ouster and with Khomeini’s consolidation of power, the left collaborated in giving radical Islam its greatest victory in the modern era. Thanks in part to Jimmy Carter, Muslim radicals got what they had been seeking for a long time: control of a major Islamic state.

Now, irony of ironies, Carter and some of the same people who lost Iran are back in the news, criticizing the Bush administration for what it is doing in Iraq. Some of their points may be valid, but once again, they are forgetting that when you try and get rid of something terrible, you should at least make sure that you don’t get something even more terrible.

Carter never understood that, and he still doesn’t. (Nor does the newly elected U.S. House and Senate).

Rather than dispensing advice, the 39th president should be offering the United States an apology.

Yes, what’s going on in Iraq today is not pretty, but that could be said of just about any war. In trying to escape from a difficult situation, America should not put itself into an even more perilous situation. We should always keep in mind what’s at stake in this conflict. (Not what some distant past military, mid-level officer, with political Committee chairmanship ambitions proposed. Which make Carter appear to be wise by comparison).

Today in Iraq, the Islamic radicals are after their second big prize. Iraq is, in a sense, even more important to the radicals than Iran. The reason is that the Khomeini Revolution, despite its global aspirations, proved to be very difficult to export.

Iranians are Persian, and thus ethnically distinct from the Arabs who dominate the Middle East. Even within Islam, Iranians belong to the Shia minority, while 80 percent of Muslims worldwide are Sunni.

Consequently, Islamic radicals have been attempting for the better part of two decades now to carry the revolution beyond Iran, to bring a second Muslim state under radical control, and to establish a model for theocracy and terrorism that the Sunni majority in the Islamic world can emulate.

So, unlike in Vietnam, the United States faces an adversary that is not merely ideologically hostile, but one whose success would threaten our vital interests and our security, as well as our economic well-being.

Given this, the insouciance and even anticipation with which some of the Bush administration’s critics propose prompt U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is remarkable. (Liberal Democrats, back in power appear to be insisting on repeating Carter's irreparable mistakes - cutting off their noses to spite their face).

In a recent article in Harper’s, former presidential candidate George McGovern proposed that the United States get out of Iraq, give up its bases there, apologize for having invaded in the first place, accept responsibility for any bloodbath that ensues, and offer to pay reparations to Iraq for its war crimes.

This advice goes beyond recklessness. What do McGovern and his allies think is going to happen when U.S. troops leave?

They seem eerily eager for the insurgents to topple the elected government and seize power. Apparently their dislike for President Bush is great enough that they are willing to risk the country falling into the hands of Islamic radicals.

(And consequently - similarly to regional events triggered by the removal of the Shah, to have those Islamic extremists operating their deadly missions inside the USA, suicide or homicide bombing our malls and mostly unprotected and impossible to protect infrastructure).

Little do the people waging “the war against the war” know that, in exchange for a temporary political advantage, they are gravely endangering America’s security and well-being, ultimately even their own.
Like Carter and his liberals, they will be to blame for the pain and suffering which will make the minimal deaths - by comparison - in Iraq of US soldiers - look like a walk in the park to the civilian bodies that will be strewn about in our cities. The Islamic perpetrators are already in place here and as France discovered, they cannot be appeased. Nor as liberals in England discovered, will sypathetic legislation prevent subway or airline attacks. Successful or otherwise.

Here in the USA, with liberals again blocking or impeding government efforts to intercept and prevent attacks through NSA phone taps, bank overview or other methods, our people are being put in to ever graver danger in the name of freedoms the enemy will never allow us to have but will eagerly abuse to get us.

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A Century of War--Oil Politics and the New World Order

Excerpts from the "A Century of War":

"In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier. Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis, then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States.

Lewis's scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.

The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public 'credit' for getting rid of the 'corrupt' Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.

During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement. By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil. With their dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.

In its lead editorial that September, Iran's Kayhan International stated: In retrospect, the 25-year partnership with the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran … Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle all operations by itself. London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day.

This imposed dramatic revenue pressures on Iran, which provided the context in which religious discontent against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and U.S. intelligence. In addition, strikes among oil workers at this critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production. As Iran's domestic economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.

At the same time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human rights' under the Shah. British Petroleum reportedly began to organize capital flight out of Iran, through its strong influence in Iran's financial and banking community. The British Broadcasting Corporation's Persian-language broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC 'correspondents' sent into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah.

The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran during this time. The British government-owned broadcasting organization refused to give the Shah's government an equal chance to reply. Repeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded no result. Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling the Shah. The Shah fled in January, and by February 1979, Khomeini had been flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his repressive theocratic state to replace the Shah's government. Reflecting on his downfall months later, shortly before his death, the Shah noted from exile, I did not know it then perhaps I did not want to know but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted What was I to make of the Administration's sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran? Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.[1][1]

With the fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical Khomeini adherents in Iran, chaos was unleashed. By May 1979, the new Khomeini regime had singled out the country's nuclear power development plans and announced cancellation of the entire program for French and German nuclear reactor construction. Iran's oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the critical days of January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per day. To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply. Prices on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and Royal Cutch Shell as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as a result.

The second oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way. Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's defeat a year later. There was never a real shortage in the world supply of petroleum. Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any time have met the 5-6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a U.S. congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office months later confirmed. Unusually low reserve stocks of oil held by the Seven Sisters oil multinationals contributed to creating a devastating world oil price shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in 1978 towards the astronomical heights of $40 per barrel for some grades of crude on the spot market. Long gasoline lines across America contributed to a general sense of panic, and Carter energy secretary and former CIA director, James R. Schlesinger, did not help calm matters when he told Congress and the media in February 1979 that the Iranian oil shortfall was 'prospectively more serious' than the 1973 Arab oil embargo.[2][2]

The Carter administration's Trilateral Commission foreign policy further ensured that any European effort from Germany and France to develop more cooperative trade, economic and diplomatic relations with their Soviet neighbor, under the umbrella of détente and various Soviet-west European energy agreements, was also thrown into disarray. Carter's security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, implemented their 'Arc of Crisis' policy, spreading the instability of the Iranian revolution throughout the perimeter around the Soviet Union. Throughout the Islamic perimeter from Pakistan to Iran, U.S. initiatives created instability or worse." --

William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, © 1992, 2004. Pluto Press Ltd. Pages 171-174. [1][1]

In 1978, the Iranian Ettelaat published an article accusing Khomeini of being a British agent. The clerics organized violent demonstrations in response, which led to the flight of the Shah months later. See U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, Iran. The Coming of the Revolution. December 1987. The role of BBC Persian broadcasts in the ousting of the Shah is detailed in Hossein Shahidi. 'BBC Persian Service 60 years on.' The Iranian. September 24, 2001.

The BBC was so much identified with Khomeini that it won the name 'Ayatollah BBC.' [2][2] Comptroller General of the United States. 'Iranian Oil Cutoff: Reduced Petroleum Supplies and Inadequate U.S. Government Response.' Report to Congress by General Accounting Office. 1979.

A Century of War:: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

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