An article in yesterday’s Washington Post provides a perfect example of the obtuseness of the mainstream press to the U.S. deep state and its dark-side practices. The article is entitled “Iran’s Hostage Factory” by Jason Rezalan.
Rezalan’s article revolves a condemnation of Iran’s dictatorial regime. No surprise there. Criticizing Iran, which is considered an “enemy” or “opponent” or “rival” by the U.S. deep state, has become standard fare for critiques by the U.S. mainstream press, just like Russia and China.
What’s fascinating about Rezalan’s article, however, is how he fails to draw parallels in his article with the dark-side policies and practices of the U.S. deep state.
Rezalan details many of the horrors committed by the Iranian government, such as taking hostages for political purposes, holding people without charges or trial, denial of due process of law, forced confessions, and other such things. He writes that Iran takes hostages to use as bargaining chips to extract political concessions from other countries.
One of the things he doesn’t mention is that it is the U.S. deep state, and specifically the CIA, that is indirectly responsible for the existence of Iran’s tyrannical regime.
Not surprisingly, Rezalan brings up the Iranian revolution in 1979, when radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took U.S. diplomats hostage. He says that that hostage-taking episode laid the seeds for later episodes of Iranian hostage-taking.
What he doesn’t say, however, is why those radical students took those American diplomats hostage. Why doesn’t he? Surely he’s familiar with the story. And yes, it would involve criticism of the U.S. deep state, but why should that matter? Why should the U.S. deep state be given a pass for its dark-side policies and practices in the context of criticizing the dark-side policies and practices of the Iranian regime?
Those radical Iranian students took those American diplomats hostage because they were afraid that U.S. officials were conspiring to return their brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran, to power in Iran. That’s what their revolution was all about it — ousting the Shah from power and making sure he couldn’t be returned to power by the U.S. government.
Why were they concerned about that possibility? Because the U.S. deep state, specifically the CIA, was the one that had placed the Shah into power in Iran in the first place!
In 1953, Iran had a working democracy. A man named Mohammad Mossadegh was elected by the Iranian parliament to be prime minister. Mossadegh was highly admired in Iran. Time magazine named him its “man of the year.”
The CIA didn’t like Mossadegh because he dared to nationalize British oil interests in Iran. In the eyes of the U.S. deep state, that made Mossadegh a Soviet-Union-leaning communist, one who had to be targeted for ouster.
Thus, the CIA conspired (yes, conspired) to engineer a top-secret coup, one that succeeded in ousting Mossadegh from power and replacing him with the Shah, who the CIA immediately vested with total, dictatorial powers over the Iranian people. To fortify his dictatorial rule over Iran, the CIA helped him to form his SAVAK internal police force, which was a combination military, CIA, and NSA. The CIA also trained the SAVAK in such dark arts of torture, indefinite detention, and censorship. To the CIA’s “credit,” it didn’t assassinate Mossadegh, instead deciding to permit him to continue living, albeit under house arrest.
The Shah’s 25-year reign turned out to be one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, one fully supported by the U.S. government, especially the deep state part of the government. The U.S. deep state didn’t care one iota about the Shah’s horrific abuse of the Iranian people. On the contrary, they supported it. In their eyes, the Shah was a “patriot” because he was “pro-U.S.” and any Iranian who objected to the Shah’s dictatorship was considered a “traitor.”
in 1979, the Iranian people had had enough of this horrific U.S.-supported tyranny. That’s when they initiated the violent coup that ousted him from power. That’s also why the U.S. deep state has hated the Iranian people ever since. In their minds, the Iranian people were wrong to oust the U.S.-installed Shah. That’s why the U.S. deep state has been committed to regime change ever since 1979. Their aim ever since the revolution has been to oust Iran’s independent, anti-U.S. regime and install another Shah-like dictator, one who will once again do the bidding of the U.S. deep state.
Unfortunately, in the aftermath of their successful revolution, the Iranian people were unable to restore their experiment with democracy that the U.S. deep state destroyed in 1953. They ended up with a theocratic regime that was every bit as dictatorial as the Shah’s regime.
Thus, while condemning Iran’s tyrannical regime, Rezalan fails to point out that it was the U.S. deep state that is indirectly responsible for bringing it into existence. If there hadn’t been a CIA coup in 1953 that destroyed Iran’s experiment with democracy, there wouldn’t have been a 1979 revolution to oust the CIA’s dictator, the Shah, from power and, therefore, there wouldn’t be a dictatorial theocratic regime in Iran today.
Rezalan also fails to point that the same U.S. deep state that trained the Shah’s SAVAK in the dark arts of tyranny, which have been adopted by Iran’s current regime, are still being employed by the U.S. deep state.
Hostage taking for political purposes? Go talk to Meng Wanzhou, an executive in the major Chinese company Huawei. U.S. officials are holding her hostage in Canada under a ridiculous extradition effort arising out of supposed violation of ludicrous U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Why should a Chinese official have to obey U.S. sanctions on a foreign country?
Exactly!
But you can rest assured that as soon as the U.S. trade war with China is settled, she’ll be released as part of the deal.
Denial of due process? Indefinite detention? Torture? Forced confessions? Go talk to the U.S. deep state’s victims at Guantanamo Bay. Hey, at least Iran ends up giving people “trials,” even if they are kangaroo in nature. The U.S. deep state doesn’t even go that far. There are people who have been languishing in the deep state’s torture and prison camp in Cuba for more than a decade without a trial.
Pointing out the faults and foibles of foreign regimes is always popular and acceptable in every country, including Iran. But wouldn’t it be better to lead the world by cleaning up the faults and failure of one’s own government?
