the Iranian revo
[someone just sent me this offlist]
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html
[…]
From: lnp3@panix.com
Subject: FYI
Date: August 17, 2006 1:44:59 PM EDT
To: dhenwood@PANIX.COM
TWO TRACKS TO TEHERAN
U.S. policy with respect to Iran was more complicated, because it
followed two tracks at once. On the one hand, U.S. officials saw “a
great potential” for a covert program to undermine the government in
Teheran;<58> on the other hand, Washington tried to build ties to
that same government.
U.S. actions in pursuit of the first track showed quite clearly that
Washington’s opposition to the Khomeini regime had nothing to do with
its lack of democracy, for the groups that the U.S. backed against
Khomeini were often supporters of the previous dictator, the Shah.
Starting in 1982 the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in
Paris called the Front for the Liberation of Iran, headed by Ali
Amini, who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign
control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953.<59> The U.S. also provided
support to two Iranian paramilitary groups based in Turkey, one of
them headed by General Bahram Aryana, the Shah’s army chief, who had
close ties to Shahpur Bakhtiar, the Shah’s last prime minister.<60>
In 1980, under the Carter administration, the United States began
clandestine radio broadcasts into Iran from Egypt, at a cost of some
$20-30,000 per month. The broadcasts called for Khomeini’s overthrow
and urged support for Bakhtiar.<61> Other broadcasts contained anti-
Soviet material.<62> In 1986, the CIA pirated Iran’s national
television network frequency to transmit an eleven minute address by
the Shah’s son over Iranian TV. “I will return,” Reza Pahlavi vowed.<63>
Simultaneous with these activities, the U.S. pursued its second
track: trying to establish ties with the Iranian mullahs based on the
interest they shared with Washington in combating the left. The U.S.
purpose, Reagan announced in November 1986, after the Iran-Contra
scandal blew open, was “to find an avenue to get Iran back where it
once was and that is in the family of democratic nations” — a good
trick, as Mansour Farhang has commented, since pre-1979 Iran was
hardly democratic.<64>
According to the Tower Commission, “In 1983, the United States helped
bring to the attention of Teheran the threat inherent in the
extensive infiltration of the government by the communist Tudeh Party
and Soviet or pro-Soviet cadres in the country. Using this
information, the Khomeini government took measures, including mass
executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure
in Iran.”<65> These massacres elicited the expected level of concern
from U.S. officials. “The leftists there seem to be getting their
heads cut off,” remarked an undersecretary of state from the Carter
administration.<66> The U.S. also passed to the Iranians “real and
deceptive intelligence” about the Soviet threat on Iran’s borders.<67>
Reagan administration officials claimed that their efforts in Iran
were designed to build ties to moderates. In fact, however, they were
aware that they were dealing with the clerical fanatics. Oliver North
told Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter in December 1985 that the
anti-tank weapons the U.S. was secretly providing to Iran would
probably go to the Revolutionary Guards, the shock troops of the
mullahs.<68> In August 1986, the special assistant to the Israeli
prime minister briefed George “Out-of-the-Loop” Bush, telling him,
“we are dealing with the most radical elements….This is good
because we’ve learned that they can deliver and the moderates
can’t.”<69>
The idea of building a strategic connection to Iran had wide support
in the U.S. government, though the policy of using arms transfers to
achieve it did not. The Tower Commission, for example, stated that
while it disagrees with the arms transfers, “a strategic opening to
Iran may have been in the national interest.”<70> And it should be
made clear that a strategic opening does not simply mean beginning a
dialogue with or acting civilly toward an former adversary; rather,
it was part of a policy to prevent any comparable access for the
Soviet Union. Thus, a CIA position paper in 1985 noted that whichever
superpower got to Iran first would be “in a strong position to work
towards the exclusion of the other.”<71> Another CIA official wanted
to achieve “a securing of Iran” so that it would again “have a
relationship with the U.S.” and be “denied to the Soviets.”<72> And
McFarlane cabled to Poindexter after a secret meeting in Teheran in
May 1986: “we are on the way to something that can become a truly
strategic gain for us at the expense of the Soviets.”<73>
[…]