Iran abolishes morality police
hindustantimes.com
hindustantimes.com
I didn't realize they were formed that recently; I thought it would have been created at the start of the regime.
Yashar Ali (@yashar) on Twitter has been covering these protests extensively. I'm waiting for him to comment on this, but it doesn't appear he's awake yet.
I don't believe this represents any real change.
(edit -- One group or another has been violently enforcing dress codes in Iran since the revolution itself, the disbanding of any particular instance of this seems of little consequence, I have Iranian family and I have heard stories dating back to that time.)
I doubt they will ever be dissolved by public or foreign pressure, especially since they consider the protests illegitimate.
[in Persian:] https://www.entekhab.ir/fa/news/701903/%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%DB...
There was no hijab law for the first 5yrs of the regime. The normal police officers were to enforce the hijab law afterwards. It wasn't effective enough so they came up with the idea of having "hijab patrols" by the so-called morality police.
BBC this morning: Iran has had various forms of "morality police" since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the latest version - known formally as the Gasht-e Ershad - is currently the main agency tasked enforcing Iran's Islamic code of conduct.
Im sure there is a part of the population that is vested with the current system but that is generally a smaller part that is working in that system and which is somewhat propped up by manipulted rural masses who may also have had enough of this too.
[removed: a reference to The Troubles] A minority of people can feel very, very strongly about something without the majority of people feeling that way.
> [the] part of the population [that supports the Iranian regime] is generally a smaller part
Happy to believe that, but where’s the data? That some people are clearly very angry at the monstrous and evil regime there doesn’t imply that it’s the majority or even close to.
Sorry, I am teasing but I want to highlight that the problem with pre-selected candidates is a widespread problem undermining democracy in many places. Same applies to Hong Kong were China heavily influenced candidate selection.
In most elections, the candidates were ones the rich elites wanted there. But there have been exceptions.
Utter nonsense. Clinton beat the next candidate by a double digit vote percentage in the primaries. That's a landslide. Sanders won a bunch of party caucuses, and it's caucuses that ignore the will of the people and only consider the preferences of party insiders. The only reason you believe the will of the people was subverted was that you were hoodwinked by a coordinated social media campaign whose purpose was to destabilize the democracy.
This sort of muddled thinking is exactly what the disinformation campaign was aiming for. No such campaign happened in 2008, or you might even be crying about how the nomination was stolen from Clinton, who lost the primary vote by a percentage point margin two orders of magnitude less than Sanders.
Get over yourselves and give us space to talk about other countries too. This conversation is not about you.
Main difference being that one system is run by religious group, and the other by the influence of the super-party-donors (aka capitalists).
Either way reform does not happen. Political prisoners (Assange in the west) still rotting in jail. Change is a word reserved manly for election rally banners, once elected they seem to change as little of the status quo as they can get away with.
This “all imperfect systems are equally imperfect” is utterly detached from reality.
> This “all imperfect systems are equally imperfect” is utterly detached from reality.
I wanted to say they are similar in resisting reform. Sorry if that was not clear.
"There is a concept of law and punishment" is where the similarity ends. To observe that a system resists reform is the same observation as "there is a system." That is what they do. All the systems that have no resistance to reform aren't systems. They don't exist!
Assange is far from an isolated instance, but it takes only one to prove the case. Assange is perhaps not the best choice, since he illustrates UK's failings more than US's, even if US is the one driving. We might take Manning as a local example, with their heavy use of isolation as torture.
But we have very many more than one, though it is hard to keep more than a few in the public mind.
An edge case in one system having some vague similarities to the base case in another system indicates that they are dramatically different, not similar.
This distinction all seemed pretty academic to me too until I actually went to one of these theocratic countries - one way more liberal than Iran - and asked a local for their thoughts on [local authority figure]. The reaction was absolutely chilling. They didn't go into a rant about all the horrible abuses of power and how evil this leader is, how another country has it better, etc. They instead clammed up, looked around, and ended the conversation immediately.
No, "convicted leaker of state secrets got treated poorly" does not in any way substantiate "we see the same sort of railroading."
Years of torture by solitary confinement demonstrate something else.
Compared to Canada, the US is like India: huge difference between poor and rich, gated communities everywhere...
Just my take.
This isn’t news!
The idea that all flawed systems are equally flawed is a really weak argument and one that is used by oppressive forces to further their purposes.
Foreign agent would describe his actions much better.
Ps. In other countries you can go to jail for holding up a blank paper. Where would you want to live?
The reason why any geopolitical player would not want their opponents to have this is because it makes it very hard to take out decentralised structures, its not easy to do a coup, and even if you manage to do a color revolution, you can at best remove the head of government- Which is the president and his cabinet(who are nothing more than managers) which really doesn't change much given the next team will have to live with the same decentralised structure, and they too will have powers no more than being managers.
Iranians and Chinese are a tough nut to crack for this reason. The head of governments, really aren't all that powerful. Protests don't change much.
Therefore I do not believe this news.
But I don’t believe this news either, but simply because I haven’t seen any reporting that independently verifies the claim being made.
Is there a chance that the people in power (at any level of government) get voted out?
Still, there are glimmers of hope now and again. Like Ross Pero running as independent or the Bull Moose party.
It’s a dumb argument for sure, but now (i.e. post-Brexit referendum) I can’t help but think it’s a valid dumb argument…
Here you get two votes (one for the candidate of your district and one for the party. The second vote determines the number of seats while the first one makes sure a local guy gets one if them).
This is much more difficult than just listing candidates in the order you like them and "make sure you include anyone you can somewhat stomach".
Yet I've not heard if anyone being "confused (in the sende that they don't know what to choose) by the German system.
Some people might not fully grasp the system but that's ok (after all most will be intellectually able to understand it).
The thing is those things either don't work (as in those examples) or they do and just replace one of the major parties in whay becomes a new, generally stable 2-party alignment.
To get out of that, you need to weaken the electoral system elements reinforcing duopoly, the most direct way being to adopt some form of proportional representation (e.g., STV), at least for most (e.g., all state and the federal House of Reps) legislative elections.
Even the commonly offered proposal of ranked ballots methods in single-member districts doesn’t really address the problem (PR, whether by STV or other mechanisms, also destroys the ability to significantly distort by gerrymandering.)
Was Xi Jingping an open rival to Hu Jintao? Given Xi Jingping has purged his rivals from the levers of power, do you see any possibility that he'll peacefully stand down in 5 years to someone who is ideologically opposed to his government?
I don't think Xi Jingping was really an open rival to Hu Jintao, but the nature of these sort of authoritarian governments is the rivalry is not really made open until the point at which the power transition happens, even if it obvious to those behind the scenes. A rival usually careful cultivates political support while openly declaring support for the leader until he has enough support to gain power. Certainly the way Xi Jingping has behaved toward the Hu Jintao/Jiang Zemin faction and the policies he has pushed indicate he is rivals with them.
But really, the main point of my comment was rejecting the assertion that it is impossible for peaceful transitions of power to occur in countries like China. As long as a country has a norm that removal from leadership does not lead to physical harm, peaceful transitions of power are possible. I'm not trying to create a false equivalency between these governments and liberal democracies.
In reality of course this means nothing, given they are all required to be part of the "United Front" led by the CCP.
Al Jazeera too: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/iran-prosecutor-gen...
RTE: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2022/1204/1339880-iran-moralit...
and plenty more besides.
I have no idea if it's a sincere declaration (like, maybe they'll still enforce these laws but using regular police instead of the morality police, for example) but "Iran claim to be suspending the morality police" is a statement that appears to be true.
This is a strategic move by the Islamic Republic and they timed it carefully because there are calls for another round of protests just in a few days. The government hopes to mitigate public unrest by giving them false hope.
I'm Iranian and have witnessed the government killing and imprisoning children (e.g., a 9 year old boy who was in a car with his father, not even protesting). There's a reason the UN is now investigating human right violations by the regime. To this regime, people are just statistics—just a couple years ago, the government massacred more than 1500 people on the streets and didn't blink an eye. In fact, right after that, they continued the JCPOA negotiations with the West.
Many Iranians wish our country didn't have oil and gas so that other countries would leave us alone. The free and abundant resources of money only make the regime corruption worse. At least in a dictatorship that struggles with income, some attention would be paid to construction and manufacturing. But the (non)Iranian regime has just been stealing the nation's wealth for over 4 decades, essentially funneling it to Swiss banks. Maybe that's why the Switzerland refused to sanction the Islamic Republic just like Germany and Britain.
> There are five elements that create an unstable social equilibrium: economic or fiscal strain, alienation and opposition among the elites, widespread popular anger at injustice, a persuasive shared narrative of resistance, and favorable international relations.
With those in mind, Iran doesn't seem that close to a revolution, yet.
I don't believe that all five conditions have to be met in order to see a revolution. In plenty of places like Portugal in 1974 or South Korea in the 1980s, situation was much less dire than in Iran today.
Iran economic conditions are created mostly by the west imposing sanctions.
Popular anger is a minority yet, we see it a lot because it benefits the western propaganda, I'm quite sure it's not as widespread in Iran, not because of censorship alone, but because the majority still believe that the real enemy is the western corruption.
We've seen it in Afghanistan, a war created by the US without a real motivation that Obama transformed into a liberation of the afghan people which in the end turned into bringing some woman from Kabul with their kids to the west to live like western women, leaving behind their traditions and husbands while the majority of the people lived in small rural villages and hoped for the Talibans to return and bring back their way of life. And it finally happened, for two reasons
- it costed too much, despite the people always saying that freedom has no price, it obviously has one and it's not very high
- American soldiers were dying for the cause and there was nothing of economic value on the table to die for
We should stop meddling with other people's revolutions, if Iran will revolt it should be because Iranian people have done it.
and then reflect back on the BLM protests...
This is also a reform that doesn't change the laws, it's just facade, as many had predicted.
I am not naive enough to think this is the case here, but say theoretically at some point someone with power in such a government has a human moment and actually wants to give some concessions, say because they have a daughter and can empathize or whatever.
Shouldn't we in the collective West be making it so that it is a no-brainer for this person to give this concession, without having to think about how Western governments are going to capitalize on the move to show 'weakness of the regime' etc.?
I do not believe overthrowing governments works, if simply because there will always be a feeling then among some parts of the population that it is a puppet, subservient government to whomever helped it win and that they deserve a 'native' government. This fuels a cycle of overthrow and counter-overthrow and does not actually help the people up their standard of living. Sanctions are in the same vein, only making the people suffer.
As such, I believe the only reasonable course of action is to make such governments give concessions over time and encourage them to do so via positive reinforcement. They need to arrive at democracy just like the West had time to do.
Like most Arab elite, the Persian elite are preoccupied with the Anglosphere
If you believe that there's no opportunistic involvement of the various Western governments here, (to the determent of the actual Iranians protesting btw), I have a bridge to sell you.
I am a citizen of the West and as such I am somewhat indirectly responsible for its actions, so I feel its important to call it out, since its my money also financing its actions.
One thing to consider is that the grand theft of state monies by the IRGC largely goes to Western banks.
Can you point to any? Knowing the expat Persian community where I live in Germany, the movement against the regime is very much coming from Iranians. It's Iranians on the streets in Tehran without headscarves, Iranians being shot and killed, Iranians marching and organizing demonstrations.
I don't know why people always assume only one thing can ever be true in a given situation. I never suggested it's not an organic movement or that it's not Iranians protesting. That does not mean the West doesn't take advantage of all it can for its own regime change goals. You get articles by U.S. officials saying they want to overthrow Iran fairly openly, say John Bolton, you get U.S. officials speaking at events organized by anti current Iranian regime organizations that themselves are of questionable morals, this is not hard. The main thing is amplification. There are protests in China that are genuine, but overall relatively small, yet they get amplified in the West to seem much bigger.
Why do you think that is? The neocons have certainly desired regime change.
I am going to repeat myself but I am not a fan of the current Iranian government by any means, yet I do not believe overthrowing governments works, if simply because there will always be a feeling then among some parts of the population that it is a puppet, subservient government to whomever helped it win and that they deserve a 'native' government. This fuels a cycle of overthrow and counter-overthrow and does not actually help the people up their standard of living.
We should either support the rights of women globally, including among our Gulf allies and act out of moral principle, rather than some geopolitical chess play - or if we're unwilling to challenge KSA, Egypt, UAE etc. then just shut up about the issue.
Hum... I suggest you take a deeper look at this.
Modern liberalism is an obvious progression of the ancient variety, and it's really ironic that we are talking about Iran.
The motivation may be unrelated to how it is seen in the West. We might just be overestimating our own role and importance in Iranian affairs.
Also, certain regimes will always portray its domestic opponents as puppets of foreign interests, regardless of what anyone says or does.
My stance is the exact opposite, it's that they do have agency but that the constant articles in the West celebrating a chance for some sort of regime change actually gives the Iranian government the ammunition it needs to make them appear sponsored/non-organic.
It makes it worse that the West does in fact have a history of regime change in Iran, (that had, as its ultimate consequence, helped to install the current gov. there).
If we appeared a lot more indifferent towards changing the regime as such, while supporting the rights of women on moral grounds everywhere, incl our allies such as the Gulf states, we'd have a lot more credibility and removing agency from the protesters by the Iranian authorities would become a lot harder than it is now.
But still after your clarification, I see nothing wrong with west cheering the revolution. a) It is our side b) It is impossible to enforce 'not cheering', one slip is enough to be used against you, see Musk and Russian propaganda.
And regarding the Gulf states, I also do not like this. But one has to pick his battles and better (for us) getting our oil from them than from Russia.
Hmm...could you clarify? The human rights situation in the Gulf is much, much worse in the Gulf. Would this be because they're easier to get in line?
The reason we're no longer on OK terms with Russia is because of Ukraine, yet we're actively helping the likes of KSA and the UAE to do much the same in places like Yemen.
I don't know how we can claim to want to not buy oil/gas from Russia based on moral grounds, yet continue our trade with the Gulf and yet still claim some sort of moral high ground.
I also only give to charity when I'm not broke. Not everyone is Mother Theresa all the time and that should be OK. It's not 0 or 1.
It barely matters. Diplomats do try spin things that way, but the government's problem is that they can't stop the protests inside despite having already killed hundreds of protesters, foreign media is pretty far down their list of concerns. In Tehran women are walking around without headscarves in blatant defiance of morality rules and the government is growing desperate.
Recent talk of maybe relaxing morality rules are a desperate attempt to placate the protests, not put on a show for the West.
Have you followed in the past few days the "debate" about stay-at-home orders in the Middle Empire? "Last legs" there?
That's a step towards sidelining the ayatollahs. I guess we will see if it will evolve toward a military dictatorship (as I predict), a democracy, or the existing religious regime will manage to keep the power.
Isn't it the Revolutionary Guard who wields the real power of the sword? From what I have heard, the regular army is kept somewhat underinvested precisely because the young recruits cannot be trusted, while the RG consists of utterly dedicated individuals supporting the regime at any cost.
The Revolutionary Guard outside the professional core isn't that dangerous.
I believe this split between Revolutionary Guard and the Army is what will one-day allow Iran to turn democratic.
Perhaps Lebanon as well but the country has been non-functional for a long time. Every other country including every western ally is a de-facto dictatorship of some form or the other.
The right is (was) led by Netanyahu, the center by Ganz, a retired military general, former ministry of defense. Not exactly two champions of progressivism.
I don't recall a victory of the left or the Arab parties in Israel, maybe it's because, like in Iran, the situation in the area forces them to act in a certain way, to not disappear.
I don't condone what's happening in Iran, but I think I understand why there isn't a democracy of the same kind we like to pride ourselves in the west.
I think OP meant to say that Iran is to be considered more democratic than its neighbouring countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Emirates (and so on). Some of them (we all know who they are) are close friends of the west or some western countries, one in particular (we all know which one is it), and I honestly believe they are more dangerous than Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-sixth_government_of_Isr...
The Islamist party I mentioned was United Arab List and the leftist ones I mentioned were Labor and Meretz.
True, but that was what in Germany call "Große Koalition" the only thing the coalition had in common was that the did not like Netanyahu
It only lasted one year.
Ra'am (United Arab List) took only 3% of the votes, Labour 6% and they were among other center-right and full right wing parties.
From 2019 we had 5 elections:
- 2 elections with no winner and no coalition forming
- 1 election that brought constitutional changes and a government of center-right (towards Palestinians), center-left (economically) mixed religious-secular
- 1 election that was also center-right (Palestinians) but included an Arab party too, mixed bag (economically) more secular than religious
- the last election that appears to be full right (Palestinians), mixed right/left (economically), substantially pro-religion
I can agree that the policy towards the Palestinians is somewhat fixed on the center-right but there are very clear reasons for that. Neither ignoring the Palestinian problem, as attempted in the '70s and '80s nor appeasing them, as was done in the '90s and '00s, proved to be less than disastrous solutions.
But economically you will find a lot of leftist ideas even in "rightist" parties, out in the open or somewhat overt (allowances for the religious) and the secular/religious split is becoming a strong force of polarization too
Yes and that's what my original answer meant.
We can say the same thing about Iran, but we don't because it's easier to make the enemy look 2D, 100% evil, no complexity, only sins, mistakes and violence. We also say stpid shit like: democracy will fix everything, knowing very well it won't it would simply allow us to negotiate a way into their "market".
Rethotical propagandistic tactic don't work anymore in 2022 and I believe we should be honest to ourselves if we wanna talk about complex socio political topics.
Us 100% good vs Them 100% bad is not the way, IMO.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Principlists
https://www.niacouncil.org/news/disqualifications-clear-path...
We had fake elections in Communist Czechoslovakia as well. Guess what, the United National Front Candidate List always won with tremendous majority.
How so?
If the protests subside, there will be Totally Not The Old Morality Police 2.0 established in no time.
You are right as far as the "there is always a worse alternative out there" observation goes. (Though I must note that this idea is rather trivial.)
But the alternative of tolerating the current regime on and on is pretty ghastly. If Iranians are ready to be shot dead in order to protest, the situation must be grim indeed.
I am not surprised the least that Russia and Iran now cooperate militarily. Birds of a feather flock together, and so do criminal regimes that waste lives of their own people.
This really does not make much sense when you think about the relationship between most Western Countries and SA, other Gulf States, Turkey, Azerbaijan etc..
Both Iran and Russia are politically and economically isolated this is more than enough to explain their closer cooperation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/iran-prosecutor-gen...
Generally speaking for this to have any meaning and takes any effect, being the morality police must become punishable by law. Aka, harassing people for their clothing should become an offence that a judge should rule about.
I read about the government structure and all the parallel forces exist in Iran and I doubt officially abolishing the morality police is going to abolish systematic harassment of people in the street by Basij or other organised/semi organised forces.
It’s vital for people around the world to stop spreading these propaganda and understand that this is not what the people want. People are taking it to the street to take down a corrupt regime that has threatened its people and taken away their freedom and will away from them.
Abolishing the Morality Police is not going to change their ideology.
.. and now, can we?
I'm a bit tired off all the bull crap that is no longer allowed to be said, as if self-policing oneself and being unable to honestly state one's opinion, is the way to become more authentic. As if repressing oneself and suppressing others could ever lead to a better society.
If pedophiles, people with violent urges etc are able to suppress their urges for example, don't you think that's a good thing?
Should everyone just be acting out their id's desires unchecked?
Human sacrifice used to be a common cultural practice in many parts of the world.
In Europe, old men used to marry prebuscent teenagers.
We suppressed those things through vocal cultural shifts.
The OP is complaining about censorship.
Few things are more cringeworthy than people in free Western countries pretending they're living in the Soviet Union. I say my honest opinion all the time. When people say this stuff, can we get a concrete example for something you "just can't say" ? I bet you five bucks I can guess the nature of that statement.
Anyway, to the theoretical point: if you have a wave of some phenomenon (e.g. "mobbing" - not in the present typical use, but in the present context) that expresses in different ways owing to the specifics of the hosting environment, the change in its expression is relatively accidental. If you had drunkenness in the lab and in the pub, what is more cringeworthy one could say that is to find it in the lab.
If other countries think their behavior is so repugnant, they should open their doors to unlimited refugees. If their atrocities are so great, build support and fight a war.
In general is the Hindustan times pretty trustworthy? I mostly know about SE Asia, China and North Korean news sources outside the typical English language EU stuff, but sometimes I see things like this and am not sure if I should trust them and wait a bit and my usual source for anything adjacent to the Middle East or India (Al Jazeera) often lags on things I'd expect them to report much quicker if they actually support democracy and free expression and not just whataboutism.
"Iran abolishes morality police" is a bad way to describe what really happened it seems:
>So amazing how many news outlets are going with the "Iran abolishes morality police" line based on a convoluted quote from one official. In reality morality police have been inactive since protests started, but there is no substantive news on their future.
>Update: Iran state television is reporting that the morality police has definitely NOT been removed.
I posted an #elongate comment on Mastodon. Next time I opened the bird app (a couple days later) I'd been flagged for "suspicious activity" and cannot proceed without providing a phone number they pinky swear not to misuse.
I'm confident this is completely random and not correlated at all.
// I was already blue check.
I expect women and others the morality police targeted & abused won't be much safer, if at all, as a result of this change.
I’m in no way supporting Iran’s religious extremism or current government, but they are monsters that we created.
The coup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat?...
Edit: it has been pointed out that the pendulum metaphor isn’t quite right, and that makes sense to me, but I’ll leave it since people have responded to it.
Which reminds me of this great ADF song
Iran has never had an effective justice system (religous reasons / kings' economic monopolies). Without one, nothing like a democracy is possible. It was democratic just on the paper.
Iran was certainly on a more democratic path then.
As Daron Acemolgu stated beautifully, in a country with an absolute economic power (a family, a corporation, a foreign country, etc) which controls the Army at the same time, there is no hope for a real change. Even a gradual one. It all starts from the moment when a king or a government starts to 'need' their people and give them some real power in return.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/jrobinson/publications/economic-...
So I'm not sure it was so much the pendulum swinging the other way, as an organised group who were poised to take over when chaos ruled.
But my understanding is limited, so perhaps my view is poorly informed.
https://cdn.mises.org/Road%20to%20serfdom.pdf
https://cdn.mises.org/Road%20to%20Serfdom%20in%20Cartoons.pd...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayatollah
The most well known of the Ayatollahs is Ali Al Sistani who doesn’t even live in Iran and has no direct affiliation with the Iranian government.
Yeah..."Mr Death To America" Himself is a moderate... I see why you used a throwaway.
Intelligence has confirmed that Khamenei has been aware of terrorist plots before they were carried out, such as the Mykonos restaurant assassination.
So yes, keep telling us all what a moderate he is.
(Unrelated, but interesting to consider he was only in power for about 10 years, and has been dead for more than 30.)
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini
[1]: http://en.imam-khomeini.ir/en/n3733/Imam/Who_is_Imam_khomein...
This simply wasn't the case. I discuss this in a post below, but by the time Mossadegh was removed he had used a fraudulent plebiscite (claimed a 99.94% victory) to dissolve the parliament he had been feuding with and rule entirely by fiat. The Shah also wasn't installed by the U.S., he had been in power since Russia and the U.K. removed his father during WWII.
Here's an interesting letter written by the naval attache to Iran about the internal situation[1], written three months before the Shah's removal. It highlights the complexity of the situation - Mossadegh trying to use the Shah's political powers against parliament, the British interested in curtailing the power of the Shah in favor of the office of the prime minister with the hope that a pro-British prime minister will arise, U.S. opposition to this because they feel the Shah is the only thing thing holding the country together politically. And excerpt:
> Ardeshir is aware that Mossadegh is planning to try to force the Shah to sign a Firman to close the Majlis and is fearful that by some means he might come close to success in this. However, in the meantime, intense campaigning revealing Mossadegh’s plan is now being planned and will be evident in a day or two in the newspapers and in the Majlis. If Mossadegh ever attempts to close the Majlis without a Firman from the Shah, Ardeshir feels that this would be Mossadegh’s greatest mistake and with the present strength of the opposition would be almost, literally, fatal to him.
> He also mentioned that in the voting for “Speaker” of the Majlis the opposition papers are encouraging the present internal quarrelling within the National Front. At present a bitter struggle is being carried on between Shayegan, Moazami and Razavi to be the National Front candidate for Speaker; this could weaken the National Front considerably.
> Ardeshir stated that it is evident to most Iranian observers that the British aim in Iran is as follows: To officially agree that Mossadegh should go, but not to actively, covertly, work to this end, feeling that the strength of the opposition itself will work this out and that there remains a possibility that by a weak change in government the British might be able to control the next government. The number one aim of the British, however, is to weaken the Shah’s powers to intervene in time of crises to the point that at some time in the future when a pro-British Prime Minister appears the most can be made of it. He feels that in spite of the weak character of the Shah such a curtailment of powers would be disastrous to the country and would place the country at the mercy of whatever adventurers might temporarily be in position of political power, and that the country is not yet ready for this. In addition, the only symbol which holds the diverse elements of Iran together is the Shah himself.
The actual history of the period is fascinating. It's a shame that it keeps getting reduced to a sound bit that has little connection to reality.
[1] https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951-54Ira...
please correct if I got anything wrong here.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150820164417/https://www.forei...
Basically, when the U.S. saw opposition to Mossadegh growing they tried to organize and fund the opposition forces against him, while also lobbying the Shah to have him dismissed. The Shah was reluctant at first, but finally agreed as Mossadegh's efforts to gain political control progressed. The strategy the CIA envisioned failed, however (Mossadegh refused to step down when the Shah dismissed him and began arresting opposition). At this point the United States thought that Mossadegh would remain in power, but opposition groups inside Iran reorganized and removed Mossadegh.
It's Disingenuous to frame it this way! He wasn't, but his father was installed and removed when needed so the son could take his place.
For the readers of this thread, if you are interested in how this went down, you can read this article [1] from "The National Security Archive" of GW University. There are references to the actual CIA documents that were declassified under "Freedom of Information Act".
This letter is from the people in charge of the coup. The same people wanted this information to remain hidden until they were forced to release it by law.
Also, this letter conveniently leaves out the part about the methods used by US-backed actors to 'persuade' those votes against Mossadegh in Majlis (Congress). The votes might not have been very "organic," as this declassified document [2] suggests.
[1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
[2] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/docs/Doc%206%20-...
edit: formatting
I think we should be careful using wording like that. The Iranians have agency and can do things on their own. Just because the west meddled in things doesn't give us the right to claim the results as ours, be they good or bad.
We've done it a number of times in South America as well. I'd say there's enough data points to believe that we punted them into the downwards spiral that they're struggling in now.
The royalist regime installed by the CIA in ‘53 replaced a popularly elected social democratic government. I won’t say the shah was ever popular, but there was not massive opposition at first. In part due to repression, and in part due to increased liberalization (e.g. rights for women), industrialization, and increased wealth (which I believe would have happened with the prior regime as well).
But those other factors don’t increase linearly or automatically and soon repression was the only way the Shah’s regime stayed in power.
To many people the Revolution seemed at first like a breath of fresh air. After all it overthrew the hated regime. This is the classic difficulty for all movements (from free software to regicide): different paths intersect and then diverge. Khomeini was indeed quite popular (though far from universally) but his followers were the largest (practically only iirc) organized opposition and so, like the Bolsheviks/Mensheviks (despite the name, the Bolsheviks were in the minority), they pushed the guys at the top of the hill off, and maintained their own balance up there.
Compare that to the French Revolution where there was no faction large enough to do this: they pushed out the Ancien Régime but then muddled around aimlessly and violently until someone was able to secure the high ground.
So Khomeini was “popular” in the sense that lots of people were favorable to his movement in the moment, but not “popular” in that the movement had a widespread base of support. Like the prior regime, after a short honeymoon they could not rule without repression.
Unfortunately there is no external opposition that could come in and restore democracy. So a complete overthrow of the current regime is quite unlikely.
Of course Iranians have agency as individuals; but it's very clear at this point in history that most of the 20th century has been dominated by US strategic decisions, and that "the US and UK supported a coup" is factually true.
I am Italian, I believe Italians have agency, too, and yet some of our past governments were inches away from being "guided" in a different direction by the CIA or other US agencies [0].
[0]: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/all-feasible-means
Which country?
From the mid- to late 19th century, Guatemala suffered chronic instability and civil strife. Beginning in the early 20th century, it was ruled by a series of dictators backed by the United Fruit Company and the United States government. In 1944, the authoritarian leader Jorge Ubico was overthrown by a pro-democratic military coup, initiating a decade-long revolution that led to sweeping social and economic reforms. A U.S.-backed military coup in 1954 ended the revolution and installed a dictatorship.[10]
From 1960 to 1996, Guatemala endured a bloody civil war fought between the US-backed government and leftist rebels, including genocidal massacres of the Maya population perpetrated by the military.
A revolution is not about agency. You make a mockery of the whole idea. Agency implies what the majority wants. That is what they had with democracy which the US ruined. They took away Iranian agency. The revolution later happening is not a good example of agency. A revolution rarely express the popular will. Instead it gives power to those people most capable of using violence.
Democratically inclined and freedom loving humanitarians will frequently lose in a civil war as they lack the violent behavior to win.
So surely that means it's actually all Italy's fault by your logic. These countries didn't have their own agency.
There's nothing good to say about the 1953 coup - but in no sense was the 1979 revolution a "swing back the other way", let alone a hard swing. If anything it was a swing sideways, to a different (and in the view of many people I know from that beautiful country, substantially worse) form of dictatorship.
There were already riots in the streets over his rule. He was going to be ousted CIA involvement or not.
Plus it’s a bit odd to blame the US for a ruling body who ousted the US backed one.
That’s like blaming the US for the Vietnamese Communist party today.
Careful with that "«we»", Eugene. I am certainly not responsible for the actions of the empowered.
Considered by whom? They must be insane, if they think that the presence of severely imperfect systems of election of candidates makes individuals in a population responsible. Only the use of a non intellectual organ can come to that conclusion.
You have just proven, through stating the pervasiveness of lunacy, that the responsibility of the sane can only be limited.
(I don't mind if someone's a sincere fan of a service, there's places I've plugged, for lack of better phrasing, if I've found value from them, but I'm trying to cut back on uncompensated endorsements since folks abused the spirit of trying to respect good work.)
But maybe it was a bad idea to post it, if we want to stay on topic.
They just banned abortion in several states and not a peep from anyone. Where is the outrage for American women?