To The People Of Iran : About The West

Please understand the ironical and sarcastic style that I have used here to highlight painful truth.

I

     In the Great Patriotic War of the 1940s, Great Britain and the Soviet Union -- "allies" at the time -- mutually invaded your country and argued and fought over whose sphere of influence you belonged in.  Your young Shah hardly knew how to choose.  Neither of the "Great Powers" ever left:  when their armies left, their cadres of undercover operatives and revolutionaries remained.  This is, of course, all your fault.

     In the 1950s,  Mohammad Mossadegh became your prime minister.  Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA decided you had chosen poorly, and regime-changed you.   For certain considerations (your oil sold off very cheaply) you were granted a modern air force, a long term relationship with the West in the "fight against communism," and a vicious security apparatus to prosecute that fight within your borders.  This was, of course, in your best interests.

     In the 1960s, you signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which you were allowed and encouraged to develop a nuclear program for peaceful purposes (including large-scale power plants; including radiation-based medical technology), and the West would provide you with technical assistance.  (This was the whole point of the treaty.  Remember Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace"?)  You believed that this was a good idea.  You believed that treaties with the West would be honored in good faith.  It was your fault that your government believed our government.  You should have checked with the ghosts of the Sioux Indians who signed the Fort Laramie treaty in 1868; they could have told you otherwise.  That would be your fault, wouldn't it?

     In the early 1970s, your Shah decided he wanted a better deal on his oil give-away to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.  This was unacceptable to the Western Money Powers.  His days were numbered.  This is your fault.

     In the 1970s, Ayatollah Khomeini, some of your clerics, and many others, revolted against the police state of the Shah.  There was a great deal of disorder and death.  Many innocent people (and, no doubt, some guilty people) were killed as various factions grabbed at power.  This is your fault.

     In the early 1980s, you were invaded by Saddam Hussein -- a client of the Good West, armed and resupplied by them (us) with conventional and chemical weapons to prosecute an eight-year war against you.  Many hundreds of thousands of your young men died.  After Saddam had prevailed against you, he then took his weaponry that was intended to be used upon you, and used it on his own people instead.  This is also your fault, since you were supposed to keep absorbing casualties.  (Gassing Iranians: good -- gassing Kurds: bad.  Same gas; different human beings.)

     In the late 1980s, your unarmed civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, a giant Airbus containing 290 passengers and crew, was "accidentally" shot down by the crew of the USS Vincennes as it flew in your own Iranian air space near the Persian Gulf, because it was "mistakenly identified" as a tiny F-14 Tomcat, a high-performance fighter aircraft that has a crew of two, different size, different flight performance, different silhouette, different radar signature.  All lives aboard your airliner were lost.  Not our fault, of course -- it was an "honest mistake."

     In a supposed retaliation for this, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland -- allegedly proven to have been done by Libyan agents at the instigation of Muammar Ghaddafi, although the official story is murky.  Very murky.  But somehow, whether or not Ghaddafi did it, this was also your fault.  Ghaddafi was evil; but you are the axis of evil.

     In the early 1990s, after winning the eight-year Iran-Iraq war which it started, Iraq was defeated by the West, its former patron, in G.H.W. Bush's Gulf War.  This upset the balance of power in your favor, if you chose to use it.  Therefore, you needed to be kept in check with serious, credible threats. No matter that you had suffered over half-a-million casualties at the hands of our client, Saddam Hussein, over the previous ten years.

     In the late 1990s, the Neo-conservatives in the West decided it was time to advance their control over seven Muslim governments in five years (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran).  You were not targeted first, for strategic reasons.  But it was bandied about in the Pentagon that while an early target would be Baghdad, "real men go to Tehran." You knew that you were in the cross-hairs.  Look what has happened to the other six; it's your turn.  It has taken over twelve years to accomplish this little neo-Trotsky-ite five year plan, which is clearly your fault. You were supposed to have built that nuke seven years ago.  Or fifteen years ago, according to the up-and-coming politician, Benjamin Netanyahu, who said so in 1992.  What has taken you so long?

     When the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, you offered the Americans your support, since you had your own reasons for distrusting the Taliban.  But it wasn't really about the Taliban, of course.  (Or even Bin Laden.)  It was about putting a forward American airbase right up against your border.  So your assistance was refused. This was your fault.

     In 2002, George W. Bush identified you as part of an "axis of evil,"  alongside Iraq and North Korea.  You can understand why he did this:  you were all alike, weren't you?
     (1)  North Korea actually had a nuclear program;
     (2)  the Neo-conservatives assured us that Iraq had a nuclear program, complete with yellow-cake uranium from Niger, plus chemical and biological weapons ("we know where they are, secret agents have told us") -- except that, oops, we/they/somebody lied about that -- and no apologies to you, Iraq, about destroying your country under false pretenses  -- America doesn't apologize;
     (3)  and the same Neo-conservatives assure us that you, Iran, have a secret nuclear weapons program.
     You quite freely admit that you are building a nuclear power plant (under the frequent inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as provided by the Non Proliferation Treaty, signed by you and the US);
     And we admit, most rarely and reluctantly, that this power plant project -- which is quite ordinary, well understood, and has been successfully undertaken in many other countries -- absolutely requires mildly enriched uranium to run;
     But you could use your facilities to begin to develop super-enriched uranium and then nuclear weapons, eventually, could you not?
     So this makes you logically and politically equivalent to those two other nations, according to the Neo-conservatives and their controlled media.  It is, as usual, your own fault.

     In 2005, your people elected Mahmood Amadinejad as your president.  Against the will of the West, your people (primarily the poor) re-elected him in 2009, and thwarted one of our "color revolutions."  We Westerners don't like poor people running things, because they can't be trusted like rich folks can.  They get uppity.  They steal the silverware.  You should have known that.  (We much prefer billionaires as rulers.  They know where they got their money, and they know how they can lose it.  Ask the ghost of Ghaddafi.)

     When Ahmadinejad was openly critical of the government in Israel and its constant threats (and acts) of war, and our Western media deliberately mistranslated his remarks to make them more incendiary, and our politicians knowingly repeated this deception a thousand times in order to inflame our people -- that was your fault, too. After all, you re-elected him over our preferred candidate.

     Since 2005 or earlier, religious zealots in America and Israel, always notified by "reliable highly placed officials who can only speak on condition of anonymity" in their own governments (who do not lie, who have never, never lied), have known "for a fact" that you are within 6-12 months of a nuclear bomb.  If you were within 6 months of a bomb seven years ago, how much more are you within 6 months of a bomb today?  What are you waiting for?

     When a 2007 CIA national intelligence estimate showed that there was no evidence that you were developing nuclear weapons, (and hadn't been for at least the previous four years, if ever), the media and the lobbyists and the Congress and the people ignored that and kept on howling -- that it was still your fault.

II

     Okay:  Why no honest diplomacy, no real negotiations from the West?

     America refuses to normalize relations with you, because of the hostage crisis of 33 years ago.  Even though your fifty-something-year-old leaders of today were only high-school or university students in 1979 -- nevertheless, they, and you, are held responsible for the acts of your uncles and grandfathers.  (Not unlike the 70-year-old Cubans who were teenagers when Fidel Castro took over in 1959, but they and their great-grandchildren must still be "sanctioned.")

     Britain hates you because you nationalized their oil company on your land.  It is your own fault if you want to own your own company.  You are supposed to respect your betters.  Have you learned nothing in the four centuries since the British East India Company moved in on you in 1616?  (That would be about 40 years before they moved in on Manhattan.)

     The governments of the Gulf States hate you because you are Persian, not Arab, and because you are Shia, not Sunni, Muslims.  This is the fault of your ancestors about 1300 years ago, and you need to fix it.

     The Saudi royal family hates you because you are not Wahhabi, and because they can't own you.

     You are an "existential threat" to Israel, because they think you might use a nuke. (If you had one.  If you were planning to make one.  If you wanted one.)  On the other hand, the fact that Israel, and the Congress of the United States, have been sanctioning you for years, and attacking your laboratories with Stuxnet worms, and murdering your scientists, and threatening you with Israel's "secret" nukes, is simply. . . well, that's the way we run the Empire of the West. You should have figured this out by now, and submitted to us.

     In the minds of our Great Western Elite -- our centuries-old multi-national corporations, our military, our governments, and the financial wizards and press-lords and old money and old families  who rule them all, it is apparently all your fault.  For all being terrorists.  For sitting on natural resources that we covet.  For being Persians.  For existing.

     It must be true that you hate us for our freedoms. George W. Bush told us so; and George W. Bush is an honorable man.  So are they all; all honorable men.

III

     Please understand that among the ordinary people in the west, including Christians, Jews, your fellow Muslims --  and even agnostics and atheists, and little children who don't even know what they believe yet -- there are people who respect you, respect the truth, desire peaceful resolution of conflict, and are concerned for the well-being of the people of Iran.  But only the noisy, the rabble-rousers, the planted agents, and official government spokespersons are permitted to appear in our tightly controlled national media.

     We in the West do not own our own media: they own us.

     We in the West don't influence our politicians: they are picked and owned by the powerful.

     We in the West don't even own our own liberties:  we have surrendered them to our government and they license them back to us for a price.

     Know this, people of Iran: some of us in the West know, as you know, that the ordinary people of any country -- workers, farmers, tradesmen, scholars, religious, old people, families, children -- do not, deep down, want war.   You don't; we don't.

     And those who do want war?  It is a fever.  Either they will get over it, or it will kill them.  And perhaps, us.

*       *       *

Copyright retained by Robert Heid. 2012.

       If someone quotes or translates a part of this for any purpose: please draw attention to the fact that I have used an ironic and sarcastic style.  It would be terrible to distort the meaning and intention of this post.  It is a call for honesty, respect, understanding, forgiveness, and peace.  May God keep us all from harm, and from doing harm.

     Please also see my previous post: To The People Of America : About Iran.