#mossadegh

[mossadegh]

On the House floor in 2003, Sen. Vic Snyder of Arkansas displayed a photo of Mossadegh with Truman and discussed the hypocrisy of the 1953 coup in Iran. He was responding to Pres. George W. Bush’s speech espousing democratic values in the Middle East.

• United States Congress on Iran | Archive

[isanyonetoknow]

anyways I need so desperately to meet other people whose family is all still in Iran. No shade to the few Iranian friends I’ve had/have but like. Well one of them was like “I would like to go but I just can’t with the government like that” and one reason they can be that comfortable saying that is because a lot of their extended family is here in the us. If I said that then I would never get to see anyone from my extended family. like do you understand how there’s no choice in that situation for me.

[belle-keys]

10 book recommendations for if you like Persian culture or Iranian history

Here's another book recommendations post! Please note that I myself am not Persian nor have I ever even been to Iran. These are just some books by Iranian or Iranian-American writers that I enjoyed.

The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

- historical fiction, historical romance, based on the 1950s Mossadegh coup, broke my heart into a million pieces, beautiful story, love it

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

- memoir, set between the 70s-90s in Tehran, examines the role of literature and art and censorship in revolution, very feminist work

Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win by Susan Azim Boyer

- YA set in 1979, based around the Revolution and the American media's coverage of it, coming of age story with Iranian-American fmc

They Said They Wanted Revolution by Neda Toloui-Semnani

- memoir, set in the time way before and during the Revolution, about the memoirist's parents roles in the Revolution, super powerful book

An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi

- YA set after 9/11, Iranian-American fmc dealing with her faith and Islamophobia and family, coming of age story, sad and profound

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adim Khorram

- YA contemporary, persian mc goes to iran and discovers his roots, explores zoroastrianism in Iran, mental health emphasis, pretty funny ngl

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

- graphic novel memoir, relative of the Shah recounts the Revolution as experienced by women and girls in a rapidly changing Iran

The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahíyyih Nakhjavání

- set in 19th century Iran, about a mystical poetess who has the power of prophecy, themes of mysticism, very lyrical storytelling

The Essential Rumi by Rumi

- poetry, collection of Iran's greatest poet's works, lots of Sufi mysticism and beautiful poems about love and spirituality and the self

This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi

- YA fantasy, set in a fantasy world inspired by ancient Persia and is a retelling of the Shahnahmeh, there's romance and action

[wymanthewalrus]

Yknow you really can blame the British for originating most, if not all, of the modern conflicts in the Middle East, and the US for taking their side with the fallout.

The British were responsible for Israel existing, it was a British oil company refusing an audit by Mossadegh’s government that led to the 1953 Iranian coup, British drawing of borders after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire fucked the Kurds and multiple other groups, the list just goes on and on.

And the coup against Iran in particular is key to the current state of the Middle East, divided by proxy wars between the Saudis and Iran.

It’s the same as the Vietnam war - a US ally (france) fucked over local people and the US then decided to go all out supporting their ally’s garbage. Then when that wasn’t enough, we made buddy buddy with the worst possible regional power because that was easier than admitting wrongdoing.

[communist-ojou-sama]

But watching this drama, I'm only 2 episodes in but there are already a few interesting things about the Ideology here. The main character is a woman and a doctor, and she's noticeably headstrong, intelligent, and independent, and all of these things are presented squarely as good things, and not at all in tension with her implied devout Muslim faith.

Interestingly, in this drama set around the time of the coup d'état against Mohammed Mossadegh, it portrays the (implicitly secularist) monarchists as being the most pig-headed misogynists, most wedded to the idea that women shouldn't have public lives but should spend their time at home bearing and looking after children

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 19 August 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran was overthrown in a coup organised by the CIA on behalf of the British and US governments. Mossadegh's government had instituted a number of social reforms in the country like unemployment benefits, compensation for injured workers and the abolition of forced labour in the countryside. He planned to nationalise the British-owned oil fields to fund things like rural housing, public baths and pest control, so the British intelligence agency, MI6, asked the CIA to overthrow him. This is an account of what transpired: https://libcom.org/history/iranian-coup-1953 Pictured: President Truman with Mossadegh in 1951 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2061691574015982/?type=3

[doodoocumfart]

Forgive me and the fact this is nothing like what I usually post but—

In times of great stress this photo of Ali Shariati getting married moves me. It reminds me that no matter how powerful the west is, nothing will get in the way of love and joy and community. They cannot take our humanity away. They cannot break our spirits. SWANA is resilient.

He wrote of her:

What should I do, Boran? Even if one were as tough as Napoleon, he would still be helpless before the woman he truly loves.

I wish I could go to Damascus to see Agha Shariati's resting place. I am so glad he was so lucky. (Our PM mossadegh was couped, put on house arrest to slowly die of cancer and denied the right to be buried in a cemetery. Instead buried in his own living room, in the home he’d been trapped in). He was so important and formative to me as a Shia Muslim and an Iranian and a believer in liberation and democracy in a post capitalist society. His resilience, OUR resilience, in the face of the west trying to deny us decency, is why I’m so pro-Palestine. We are United in struggle.

May his soul rest in Jannah.

[mossadegh]

As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the overthrow of a nationalist government in Iran, we might also reflect on its broader implications — seven continuous decades of authoritarian rule.

The Mossadegh Project

[progressive-politico]

A Million Reasons To Abolish The Cia

The CIA is the deadliest terrorist organization in the world, bar none. In its 73-year existence, the CIA has been responsible for the murder of millions and the destruction of progressive movements and governments in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

The CIA engineered or assisted coups in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Iraq, Indonesia, Greece, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and more, and brought to power regimes that used extreme brutality in the interests of U.S. corporations and local elites.

CIA torturers beat detainees at Guantanamo and held them in stress positions literally for days, sometimes treating their wounds in such a way as to prolong the pain.... some prisoners were kept awake for 180 hours—in other words a week.

The CIA under the leadership of Allen Dulles recruited more than 1,000 Nazis as spies in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Many of these fascists were war criminals from the highest ranks of the Nazi command, and received U.S. govt protection.

CIA carried out brazen terror plots to bomb, starve, and sabotage the Cuban Revolution. Preparations were in place to incentivize the murder of Cuban communists through a “system of financial rewards .... for killing or delivering alive known communists”

CIA support for torture in Latin America was equally extensive. In Chile, the CIA-supported coup which brought Pinochet to power brought with it the torture and murder of thousands of activists. The head of Chile’s secret police was a CIA asset.

In 1953 the CIA overthrew the govt of Iran. The CIA organized right-wing military leaders, financed groups of criminals to attack parliament. CIA-designated generals arrested Mossadegh and declared Martial Law. The Shah was put on the throne as a tyrant with absolute power.

In 1978, the communist party and progressive members of the Afghan military overthrew the monarchy. Immediately following the revolution, the CIA organized counter-revolutionary mercenaries supported by feudal landowners. This militia called itself the Mujahedeen.

The CIA and NSA spy services worked at all levels for apartheid and against the African National Congress activists who were routinely murdered, tortured and sentenced to life in the hell holes of South Africa.

[crystalis]

What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the "Cold War" was never about [just] destroying socialism, as such. It was and is about destroying socialism but also any national liberation movement that loosens their control over the means of production in the periphery. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.

This remains the primary objective of Western aggression today. And it is the single greatest source of violence, war and instability in the world system.

The reason Western powers went after socialist movements across the global South during the "Cold War" (Cuba, China, the incineration of Vietnam and North Korea, etc) was because they knew socialism would enable the South to regain control over their own productive capacities - their labour and resources and factories - and organize them around local needs and national development.

When this happens - when people in the global South start producing and consuming for themselves - it means that those resources are no longer cheaply available to service consumption and accumulation in the core, thus disrupting the imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labour, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap). Remember, roughly 50% of all material consumption in the core is net-appropriated from the global South. This is what they are trying to defend.

But it wasn't only socialist governments that pursued economic sovereignty. After political decolonization, a wide range of movements and states across the South also sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development. And Western powers attacked them with equal brutality (Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, the DRC...).

This is the key reason that Western powers supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is why they support the Israeli regime today... as Western settler-colonial outposts that can be used to attack and destabilize regional movements seeking socialism or any form of real economic sovereignty, whether in Angola or Mozambique or Zimbabwe or any of the Arab nationalist or socialist movements in North Africa and the Middle East.

Iran has always been central to this story. Western states orchestrated a coup against the extremely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. He was a left-leaning nationalist, not a socialist. But he wanted Iran to have control over its own resources (notably, oil), and for the US and Britain this was unacceptable. Mossadegh was replaced by a brutal Western-backed dictatorship. The revolution that finally overthrew the dictatorship in 1979 - and constituted the current government - wasn't even left-leaning, much less socialist. But they want national economic self-determination and that is sin enough. They are a target for the exact same reasons that Iraq and Libya were targets.

The same goes for China. China's path toward sovereign industrialization - whether socialist or not - means that it is no longer an easy source of cheap labour for Western capital. And as the supply price increases so too does the sabre-rattling from Western states and media.

So this is the situation we are in. The Western ruling classes are backing obscene violence and plausible genocide in Gaza, against overwhelming international condemnation, because they must shore up their regional outpost at virtually any cost. The vast majority of the world supports Palestinian liberation, but Palestinian liberation would constrain Israeli power and open the way to regional liberation movements, and this is strongly antithetical to the interests of Western capital. And now they are provoking war with Iran, risking regional conflagration, while at the same time encircling China with military bases, ramping up sanctions on Cuba, trying to contain progressive governments in Latin America, threatening invasion of the Sahel states...

It is intolerable and it cannot continue. The violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South who yearn for freedom and self-determination... the whole world is dragged into this horrifying nightmare. They are willing to inflict enormous suffering and misery on hundreds of millions of people in order to preserve existing dynamics of capital accumulation. We will not have peace until this arrangement is overcome and post-capitalist transformations are achieved.

@/jasonhickel · Apr 16, 2024

[z34l0t]

"The aging leaders who came to power during the Islamic Revolution are completely out of touch with Gen Z — who are truly the leaders of this revolt. What started out as protests against compulsory hijab have evolved into calls for an end to the Islamic Republic itself, with shocking scenes of schoolgirls defiling images of Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Khamenei and Ayatollah Khomeini."

[...]

"The Islamic Republic is trying to fashion today’s unrest as a political protest instigated by the West, because there are historical hiccups where the U.S. and the U.K. have meddled and botched the job — like the 1953 Mossadegh coup, when a democratically elected prime minister was overthrown. This upcoming year is the 70th anniversary of the regime’s favorite excuse for anti-Western sentiment."

"But what’s happening in Iran is not a political movement as much as it is a civil rights movement. Women don’t have basic human rights. In many parts of their existence, a man must make decisions for them, according to the law. And yet they are highly educated. The slogan of the revolution — “zan, zendegi, azadi” or “woman, life, liberty” — is not about politics but about equality."

[sharpened--edges]

In the twentieth century, one of the most important functions of [international arbitration] tribunals became protecting alien property (property owned by foreign nationals and corporations) overseas. The expropriations of foreign property that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Mexican nationalisation of foreign petroleum companies in 1938 provided the impetus in Western Europe and North America to develop complex legal apparatuses, doctrines, and rules to protect the alien property of North American and European investors and firms. The postwar wave of decolonisation only intensified this urge, as newly decolonised states staked claims to their usurped national properties. In many instances, their attempts at changing the terms of existing contracts ran into ‘stabilisation clauses’ written in after Mexico’s nationalisation of oil. Stabilisation clauses froze ‘the provisions of a national system of law chosen as the law of the contract as of the date of the contract’ to prevent future alterations – in other words, nationalisation. Another condition was the settling of disputes not in the decolonising countries, but in international tribunals. After Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Iran insisted that any disputes with the Company would have to be settled in Iranian courts, since international arbitration would be ‘humiliating and incompatible with the concept of state sovereignty’; Mossadegh had nevertheless found himself facing the Company in the Hague.

International arbitration protected the property of investors, made the contract sacrosanct, and guaranteed confidentiality and secrecy to corporate litigants that did not want their practices exposed to court transparency. [International Court of Justice president Stephen] Schwebel declared triumphantly that international investment law and its tribunals ‘dethroned the State from its status as the sole object of international law’ at exactly the moment former colonies were becoming sovereign states. This was no coincidence.

Laleh Khalili, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2021), pp. 92–3.

[liberty1776]

Three days ago — June 10 — was the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University. Reading or listening to the speech today, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. national-security establishment deemed Kennedy to be a grave threat to national security, just as it did with certain foreign leaders, such as Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and, later, President Salvador Allende of Chile.  For some 150 years, the federal government had been a limited-government republic. After World War II, however, the federal government was converted to a national-security … Continue reading →

[traincoded]

let's go iran it's revenge for what they did to mossadegh

[menalez]

inqilabi has literally said the same about Masih Alinejad and she's not a white dude lol. And just because a white dude says something doesn't mean it's wrong. Respectfully but the other day you literally tagged something about Mossadegh with "I didnt know this" so maybe sit this one out sis.

"you didnt know everything about mossadegh? then shut up and let white western men talk about how women protesting in iran are actually US propaganda and how people outside of iran need to stop talking about the protests bc its islamophobic and racist otherwise"

respectfully... no im not gonna be quiet about women being oppressed in the country neighbouring mine