Ahmadinejad "wins" Iran presidential election

[Masada]

... I'm sorry but a part of this thread has strayed into tinfoil hat territory and is close to attaining "Jewish-Bolshevik" levels of paranoia.

 

[woody60707]

Close?

There is no point with talking to truthers other then hearing them talk... extremist are like that.

 

[GoodGame]

... I'm sorry but a part of this thread has strayed into tinfoil hat territory and is close to attaining "Jewish-Bolshevik" levels of paranoia.

I think we should play bingo by the posts in this thread.

 

[luiz]

So you're saying the CIA had no part in overthrowing Mossadeq?

And also zenspiderz:

If you actually bothered to read my posts, you'd see that I don't deny for a second the existence of Operation Ajax. It's just that in reality it was very limited, and most of the reasons for the downfall of Mossadeq can be found within Iran. It's pretty much the same case with Allende in Chile, really. There was american support, but it was not the decisive point. Both regimes were highly unstable and doomed. I am not justifying american interference in any case, (au contraire, I think they were wrong in both cases, and I salute Obama for taking a very cautious approach to this present crisis) just stopping the blatant and dishonest re-writing of history that always go on in threads like this. I hate it when people ignore facts to make points. Want to talk about Operation Ajax? Great, but lets talk about what actually happened, not what CounterPunch and SovietEmpire and Ahmadinejad say.

 

[Formaldehyde]

The one person who was key to the downfall of Mossadegh was Mossadegh; nationalizing firms outright with no compensation, dissolving parliament, holding flimsy referendums, declaring martial law... I believe those had more to do with it than the 0.07% of GNP ($1m out of Iran's $5,200m) the U.S. offered to subvert the Iranian regime.

As usual, you cherry pick the actual facts to create your own revisionist history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mosaddeq

Most of Iran's oil reserves were in the Persian Gulf area and had been developed by the British Anglo-Iranian Oil company and exported to Britain. For a number of reasons — a growing consciousness of how little Iran was getting from the Anglo-Iranian Oil company for its oil; refusal of AIOC to offer of a ‘50–50% profit sharing deal' to Iran as Aramco had to Saudi Arabia; anger over Iran's defeat and occupation by the Allied powers — nationalization of oil was an important and popular issue with "a broad cross-section of the Iranian people."[9]

General Haj-Ali Razmara, the Shah's choice, was approved as prime minister June 1950. On 3 March 1951 he appeared before the Majlis in an attempt to persuade the deputies against "full nationalization on the grounds that Iran could not override its international obligations and lacked the capacity to run the oil industry on its own." He was assassinated four days later by Khalil Tahmasebi, a member of the militant fundamentalist group Fadayan-e Islam.[10] This order of events, while appearing in many mainstream historical accounts, confronts countervailing evidence. Firstly, "[US]embassy staffers early on speculated that Razmara might either be assassinated or become involved in a power struggle with the Shah."[11] These two concerns appear to converge according to Steven Kinzer, who notes that:

“[e]vidence emerged to suggest that the fatal shot had been fired not by Tahmasibi but by a soldier acting on behalf of the Shah or members of his inner circle, and that Assahollah Alam had knowingly driven him to his fatal rendezvous. Years later a retired Iranian colonel wrote in his memoir that the fatal shot had come from a Colt revolver, available only to soldiers. “An army sergeant, in civilian clothes, was chosen for the deed”, he asserted. “He had been told to shoot and kill Razmara with a Colt, the moment Tahmasibi began to shoot… Those who had examined the wounds in Razmara’s body were in no doubt that he had been killed by a Colt bullet, not by the bullet of a weak gun”.[12]

While this account is corroborated by several other studies[13], it remains a point of contention among historians. After negotiations for higher oil royalties failed, on 15 March and 20 March 1951, the Iranian Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize the British-owned and operated AIOC, taking control of Iran's oil industry.

Another force for nationalization was the Tudeh or Communist party. In early April 1951 the party unleashed nationwide strikes and riots in protest against delays in nationalization of the oil industry along with low wages and bad housing in oil industry. This display of strength, along with public celebration at the assassination of General Razmara made an impact on the deputies of the Majlis.[14]


[edit] Election as prime minister

On 28 April 1951, the Majlis named Mosaddeq as new prime minister by a vote of 79–12. Aware of Mosaddeq's rising popularity and political power, the young Shah appointed Mosaddeq to the Premiership. On 1 May, Mosaddeq nationalized the AIOC, cancelling its oil concession due to expire in 1993 and expropriating its assets. The next month a committee of five majlis deputies was sent to Khuzistan to enforce the nationalization.[15]

On 16 July 1952, during the royal approval of his new cabinet, Mosaddeq insisted on the constitutional prerogative of the prime minister to name a Minister of War and the Chief of Staff, something the Shah had done hitherto. The Shah refused, and Mosaddeq announced his resignation appealing directly to the public for support, pronouncing that "in the present situation, the struggle started by the Iranian people cannot be brought to a victorious conclusion".[21]

Veteran politician Ahmad Qavam (also known as Ghavam os-Saltaneh) was appointed as Iran's new prime minister. On the day of his appointment, he announced his intention to resume negotiations with the British to end the oil dispute, a reversal of Mosaddeq's policy. The National Front — along with various Nationalist, Islamist, and socialist parties and groups[22] — including Tudeh — responded by calling for protests, strikes and mass demonstrations in favor of Mossadeq. Major strikes broke out in all of Iran's major towns, with the Bazaar closing down in Tehran. Over 250 demonstrators in Tehran, Hamadan, Ahvaz, Isfahan, and Kermanshah were killed or suffered serious injuries.[23]

After five days of mass demonstrations on Siyeh-i Tir (the 30th of Tir on the Iranian calendar), military commanders, ordered their troops back to barracks, fearful of overstraining the enlisted men's loyalty and left Tehran in the hands of the protesters.[24] Frightened by the unrest, Shah dismissed Qavam and re-appointed Mosaddeq, granting him the full control of the military he had previously demanded.

With further rise of his popularity, a greatly strengthened Mosaddeq convinced the parliament to grant him emergency powers for six months "to decree any law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms".[25] Mosaddeq appointed Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani as house speaker. Kashani's Islamic scholars, as well as the Tudeh Party, proved to be two of Mosaddeq's key political allies, although both relationships were often strained.

With his emergency powers, Mosaddeq tried to strengthen the democratically-elected political institutions by limiting the monarchy's unconstitutional powers,[26] cutting Shah's personal budget, forbidding him to communicate directly with foreign diplomats, transferring royal lands back to the state, expelling his politically active sister Ashraf Pahlavi.[24]

In January 1953 Mosaddeq successfully pressed Parliament to extend "emergency powers for another 12 months". With these powers, he decreed a land reform law that establishes village councils and increases in peasants shares of production.[27] This weakened the landed aristocracy, abolishing Iran's centuries-old feudal agriculture sector. Although Mosaddeq had previously been opposed to these policies when implemented unilaterally by the Shah[citation needed], he saw it as a means of checking the power of the Tudeh Party, which had been agitating for general land reform among the peasants.[citation needed]

However during this time Iranians were "becoming poorer and unhappier by the day" thanks to the British boycott. Mossadeq's political coalition began to fray, his enemies increasing in number.[28]

Partly through the efforts of Iranians working as British agents, several former members of Mossadeq's coalition turned against him. They included Muzzaffar Bazaui, head of the worker-based Toilers party; Hussein Makki, who had helped lead the takeover of the Abadan refinery and was at one point considered Mossadeq's heir apparent; and most outspokenly Ayatollah Kashani, who damned Mossadeq with the "vitriol he had once reserved for the British".[29]

The government of the United Kingdom had grown increasingly distressed over Mosaddeq's policies and were especially bitter over the loss of their control of the Iranian oil industry. Repeated attempts to reach a settlement had failed.

Unable to resolve the issue single handedly due to its post-World War II problems, Britain looked towards the United States to settle the issue. Initially America had opposed British policies. After American mediation had failed several times to bring about a settlement, American Secretary of State Dean Acheson concluded that the British were "destructive and determined on a rule or ruin policy in Iran."[30] By early 1953, however, there was a new Republican party presidential administration in the United States.

Despite Mosaddeq's open disgust with socialism, Winston Churchill told the United States that Mosaddeq was "increasingly turning towards communism" and was moving Iran towards the Soviet sphere at a time of high Cold War fears.[31][32][33][34]

Acting on the opposition to Mosaddeq by the British government and fears that he was, or would become, dependent on the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party at a time of expanding Soviet influence,[35] the United States and Britain began to publicly denounce Mosaddeq's policies for Iran as harmful to the country.

In the mean time the already precarious alliance between Mosaddeq and Kashani was severed in January 1953, when Kashani opposed Mosaddeq's demand that his increased powers be extended for a period of one year.


[edit] Operation Ajax

In October 1952, Mosaddeq declared Britain an enemy[citation needed], and cut all diplomatic relations. In November and December 1952, British intelligence officials suggested to American intelligence that the prime minister should be ousted. The new US administration under Dwight D. Eisenhower and the British government under Winston Churchill agreed to work together toward Mosaddeq's removal. In March 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was headed by his younger brother Allen Dulles, to draft plans to overthrow Mosaddeq.[36]

On 4 April 1953, CIA director Dulles approved US$1 million to be used "in any way that would bring about the fall of Mosaddeq". Soon the CIA's Tehran station started to launch a propaganda campaign against Mosaddeq. Finally, according to The New York Times, in early June, American and British intelligence officials met again, this time in Beirut, and put the finishing touches on the strategy. Soon afterward, according to his later published accounts, the chief of the CIA's Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran to direct it.[37] In 2000, The New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953. This document describes the point-by-point planning of the coup by agent Donald Wilbur, and execution conducted by the American and British governments. The New York Times published this critical document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than machine-readable text. This document was eventually published properly – in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document is now web published. The word ‘blowback' appeared for the very first time in this document.

The plot, known as Operation Ajax, centered on convincing Iran's monarch to issue a decree to dismiss Mosaddeq from office, as he had attempted some months earlier. But the Shah was terrified to attempt such a dangerously unpopular and legally questionable move, and it would take much persuasion and many U.S. funded meetings, which included bribing his sister Ashraf with a mink coat and money, to successfully change his mind.

Mosaddeq became aware of the plots against him and grew increasingly wary of conspirators acting within his government. Soon Pro-Mosaddeq supporters, who were actually paid plants of the U.S. operation, threatened Muslim leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed Mosaddeq", giving the impression that Mosaddeq was cracking down on dissent, and stirring anti-Mosaddeq sentiments within the religious community. Mosaddeq then moved to dissolve the heavily-bribed parliament,under his emergency powers. After taking the additional step of abolishing the Constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot, Mosaddeq's victory in the national plebiscite was assured. The electorate was forced into a non-secret ballot and Mosaddeq won 99.93% of the vote. The tactics employed by Mosaddeq to remain in power were dictatorial in their result, playing into the propaganda efforts of those who favoured his removal.[citation needed] Parliament was suspended indefinitely, and Mosaddeq's emergency powers were extended.

If Nixon hates communists, explain this pic...

Can you really be so naive as to suggest that simply because the leader of a particular country meets with a person he dislikes that he no longer does so?

What is with this "teabagging" obession ?

Because the similarities are obvious?

 

[amadeus]

Everything you seem to post only confirms what I said.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm quite sure you think it does. The lightbulb has to want to change.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

I'm quite sure you think it does. The lightbulb has to want to change.

I'm quite sure you think he thinks it does. The lightbulb has to want to change.

 

[amadeus]

I'm quite sure you think it does. The lightbulb has to want to change.

I want to, it's just that neoconservative reactionaries have used their military-industrial complex to waterboard my brain into FOX News-levels of submission.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Try rereading the wiki article. It basically disputes every single reason you listed which led you to this false conclusion:

The one person who was key to the downfall of Mossadegh was Mossadegh...

The CIA and the MI6 overthrew the legitimate sovereign government of Iran. AFAIK, no reputable historian now tries to dispute this. None.

 

[Esckey]

Are people actually supporting Ahmedi?

 

[Flying Pig]

Only outside Iran

 

[luiz]

Are people actually supporting Ahmedi?

Some people in this forum would support Charles Manson if somehow he was an enemy of "US imperialism".

 

[Ulyaoth]

Only outside Iran

Occam's razor. Ahmedinejad won, people can't accept election results they don't like in other countries so they come up with ridiculous stories of election fraud.

 

[Flying Pig]

Would be great except for the fact that all the iranians seem to hate him

 

[Ulyaoth]

Really? 100% of Iranians are out there protesting?

 

[Flying Pig]

Even after Bush beat Gore, there wasn't that level of we-hate-the-government-ism

 

[zenspiderz]

Even after Bush beat Gore, there wasn't that level of we-hate-the-government-ism

The democrats could accept that result even if it was rigged because none of them was in danger of being prosecuted for corruption afterwards. Mousavis situation is different.

 

[Flying Pig]

It's possible, but I don't think it's likely.

 

[Ulyaoth]

You brought out occam's razor while going against it. Reasonableness says most likely Ahmadinejad won, and 33% is still a plenty large enough portion that if they're all angry enough they'll cause a huge riot like has happened.