By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – July 12, 2009
So the Republican Scream Machine, this time both in Congress
and on the airwaves, have been indeed screaming that President Obama should
"do something about Iran,” or by now possibly “should have done something
in Iran.”
He should be going (or should have gone) hammer and tongs on
the issue of the obviously stolen election there. Of course if President Obama had done that foolish thing and
proclaimed long and loud about what is happening inside Iran, the Republicans
would be yelling at him for doing that, claiming among other things that he is
“just all talk and not action.” But that reality just reflects what the GOP is
all about: “Just Saying ‘No’ to everything the President says ‘Yes’ to.” And
yelling about it too. But you
can't really blame them, can you? After all, they have nothing positive to
offer.
So let's analyze what previous U.S. meddlings in Iranian
affairs have produced, all but one of them the product of Republicans in office
and, in all cases the product of Republican policies. Of course one does wonder why the GOPers are so upset with
the present Iranian government. After all, I said in a BuzzFlash commentary some time ago, George
Bush and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad have a lot in common.
For example: Both think they have a direct connection with
God. They both fit under Columbia University
President Lee Bollinger’s characterization of Iran’s President Ahmedinejad as "a
petty and cruel dictator." President
Ahmedinejad is clearly the nominal head of state of a country that is actually
a theocracy. Who is actually in
charge in that country has been made plain for the world to see in the last
three weeks. A theocracy is just
what the hard core of GOP support wants to establish in the U.S. Ahmedinejad and the GOP both view women
as second-class citizens. Bush and
Ahmedinejad both had/have the power to lock up anyone they want to without
charges, without any demonstrable evidence, and without any rights either to
counsel or trial, and with the power to torture when, as, and if. Finally, homophobia is central to the
policies of both Ahmedinejad and the GOP.
Despite this concordance of policy, Ahmedinejad has been on the GOP enemies
list since his election. Just
think, if McCain had been elected President (yes, my friends on the Left who
are SOOO dissatisfied with President Obama, just think about that one a bit),
the bombast would be coming out of Washington thick and fast. This is especially so since a
McCain/Palin Administration (how about them apples?) would have had so many
negative happenings occurring on its watch that they would be desperate to
distract the country's attention from. So, within the limits of actually not
being able to do anything like “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” because of a) the sorry
state of the military they would have inherited and b) the sorry state of the
relationships with allies they would have inherited, they would have meddling
away to beat the band. In that
light, let's see just what GOP governmental meddling in Iranian affairs has
brought about in the past. What a
track record, but that wouldn’t stop the imaginary McCain/Palin Admin. from
doing it or the real McCain from screaming for it.
The GOP overthrow of the moderate government of Prime
Minister Mossadegh in 1953, mediated by Teddy Roosevelt's grandson Kermit Jr.,
is so well documented and so much considered a negative that even President
Obama has referred to it as what not to do, several times. Once the Shah took
back power, using increasingly violent repression over time to make sure he
stayed in place, the CIA took an active role in training his terror-secret
police, the SAVAK. One of these fellows' instruments of torture was to tie
their victims to a set of red-hot bedsprings. (Might have been ordered for
Gitmo by Cheney and approved by Bybee/Yoo as not-torture for all we know, just
as long as the victims didn’t die from the event.) So for a variety of reasons (oil, “containment” of the
Soviet Union) that support continued unabated under both Republican and
Democratic administration for 25 years.
As for a variety of reasons over time resistance to the
Shah’s rule became more widespread, he became evermore repressive. In January 1979, with the military
standing aside and the SAVAK presumably neutralized, he was eventually
overthrown. His government was replaced by a moderate, bourgeois-democratic
pro-Western one, lead by Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. The Shah went into
exile.
President Jimmy Carter was warned by the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran not to include the U.S. on the Shah's visiting list. The embassy predicted that if that were
to occur anti-U.S. violent protests would break out, threatening both U.S.
interests there and the still shaky civil government. Carter listened not to his embassy but
to Republicans such as Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, and his own
National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (an avid Polish refugee Cold
Warrior) and let the Shah in. U.S., GOP-lead, meddling, again. We all know what
happened then. A budding, pro-Western moderate government was replaced by the
repressive theocracy that has ruled Iran down to the present time.
Then, during the 1980 U.S. election it may well have been
that the Reagan campaign negotiated directly with the newly-installed Muslim
theocracy to get them not to make any deal for release of the hostages. This
act, treason if it did actually occur, likely prolonged the captivity of
Americans for GOP political gain and also helped the Khomeini regime to cement
its place in power (by, in part, taking over the originally CIA-trained SAVAK
pretty much unchanged). The next meddling was the secret sale of arms in the
early 1980s to a now supposed U.S. enemy, theocratic Iran. This was the “Iran-Contra” affair. The proceeds supplied the money for the
illegal support provided by the Reagan Administration to the right-wing rebels
in Nicaragua. The GOP openly supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War that
was going on at the time, but that secret arms deal actually was supporting
both sides at the same time. This meddling
was designed to achieve certain non-Middle Eastern foreign policy objectives
that they otherwise could not have because US law at the time banned aid to the
Nicaraguan Rightists. (Let’s hear
for law and order, shall we?)
In our own time, under Bush-Cheney, the U.S. has apparently
been supporting armed guerilla forces recruited from certain Iranian ethnic
minorities fighting against the present government. They apparently use methods that if used against the U.S.
would be labeled as "terrorism." This is direct meddling, of course,
again with a political goal. In fact, since, if Seymour Hersh's reporting on
this is correct, this effort was under Cheney's direct control, outside of the
Pentagon's chain of command. (Who knows, if it is still going on, maybe he is
still running it.) There is no way that such small scale efforts could lead to
an overthrow of the existing government, but they sure can strengthen its
resolve not to deal with the United States on anything. Thus this meddling totally
served the domestic political interests of the Bush/Cheney regime, if nothing
else: that is to keep the pot boiling overseas in as many places as possible.
So, no U.S./GOP efforts at meddling since 1953 have produced
anything positive for the U.S., Iran, or the world, although some have had
positive outcomes in terms of GOP domestic politics and policies. No wonder
that they are once again screaming "meddle." Good on President Obama
for turning a deaf ear to them.
There are a few prominent GOPers, like Sen. Richard Lugar
and (mirabile dictu) John Bolton. (Bolton was, ironically, was one of the
leaders of the assault threatened by GOP thugs on the Dade County election
board in December, 2000, that prevented their recount from moving forward, an
event that directly enabled the selection of Bush by the GOPers on the Supreme
Court.) They have been saying
quite properly that Pres. Obama is doing the proper thing. The reasoning is that should Ahmedinejad
retain the Presidency (now all but certain), he is the person with whom Obama
is going to have to negotiate over such issues as the Iranian nuclear
development program. But the GOP is
split over this and their non-Congressional leadership is going at it hammer
and tongs. And so we must ask why?
Well, let’s see. Having any influence on the outcome of the stolen election, like having
a recount or even a do-over, can’t be it. Even President Obama’s measured tones brought forth screams from the
Iranian side (so much do they have in common with the GOP) about how it is he
who has been entirely responsible for the demonstrations and the violence
there. (How remarkably like GOP
reasoning that sounds, doesn’t it? There could not possibly be any legitimate grievances among the Iranian
electorate now, could there?) But
what is the primary goal of the current GOP, as announced right after the
election of President Obama? They
want him to fail. And it has
become everso apparent that they not only want him to fail, but that they will
do what ever they can to assure that outcome.
A peaceful settlement of the Iranian situation, with Iran
returning to the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursing the
peaceful use of nuclear energy under the watchful eyes of the International
Atomic Energy Agency would be a major foreign policy triumph for Obama. Furthermore it would de-power to some
extent the Israeli Right. This is
that last thing that the GOP would want. So this is why they are once again meddling in Iran as hard as they
can. And even before they could possibly be negatively influencing
any Obama attempts at achieving a diplomatic settlement, they at least could be
achieving a certain level of deligitimization of him here at home: “he’s just
weak, weak, weak, like we always said he was.” So. Meddling in
Iran they go and has almost always been the case since the original meddling
for oil in 1953, it is done, everso cynically, for domestic political purposes. 
This column is based in part on one of the same name that appeared
on BuzzFlash on June 19, 2009.