The Iran War Psychosis

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Psychosis - a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

          The reality is western governments has been obsessed with Iran for decades, we know that, but why?  To be sure, Iran's obtuse theocracy just doesn't jive with our ideals of freedom and popular sovereignty.  To be controlled by a bearded unelected elite that professes to have its citizens secular, let alone spiritual interests truly at heart seems at face value, patently absurd.

          The idea, therefore, that bearded men whom claim to be the conduit through which God rules the Earth (or Land of the Aryans) can and will secure weapons of mass destruction makes us understandably - nervous.  However, before we move forward and obliterate Persia or turn the "Middle East into a Parking Lot" (ideas below) prudence demands we invoke a little historical perspective.

These fans of "creative destruction" claim bombs make friends, years later of course.

          At the beginning of the 20th century Iran was the home of the first Asian constitutional revolution, its future was bright.  Within the gardens of the British embassy 20,000 men engaged in a "vast open-air school of political science" and by December of 1906 forced the Shah of Iran, Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar to confirm, as his last act as supreme ruler and five days before his death, the monarchy's subordination to popular sovereignty. 

          It seemed an incredibly appropriate event, the nation of the Magna Carta offering itself as soil and safe haven for a democratic and constitutional revolution.  Relations would never again be as warm. The very next year the Anglo-Russian agreement divided the country into spheres of influence, a northern zone intended for Russia and a southern zone for Britain.  The United Kingdom at this point abandonded their support of the fledgling constitution and its parliament, the Majli and backed monarchical authority purportedly after rumors of an oil discovery.

          In 1908 entrepreneur William Knox D'Arcy and eventually Glasgow based Burmah Oil Company subsidiary Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) discovered the oil they had been searching for for the better part of a decade.  In what was described as nothing less than the harshest environment on Earth, devoid of running water with temperatures soaring above 122 degrees and in a land "ruled by bandits and warlords" the British had found black gold. 

          The result of his discovery was captured in the poignant words of Elwell Sutton, it was the beginning of an "industry which would see Great Britain through two world wars and cause Persia more trouble than all the political maneuverings of the great powers put together."  To be sure, having already secured rights to Iranian oil from the Shah in 1901 for 60 years in exchange for 16% of the profits and a nominal down payment, Iran and Great Britain would be, for the medium term, married for better or worse.     

          By World War I substantial volume was being recovered from Iran and prepared through the world's largest oil refinery in Abadan, 33 miles from the Persian gulf.  The British government under the guidance of then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in an effort to free Britain from U.S. Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell companies, injected massive capital into APOC.  In a wildly ironic foreshadowing it was Britian who first nationalized Iranian oil, well before the upheaval of 1951.  After 1913 the British government if not merely holding a controlling interest was for all intents and purposes, Anglo-Persian Oil Company.  

          Because of the industrial revolution's dependence on oil, access to Iran's titanic store of hydrocarbons has been regarded as essential to major military and commercial campaigns world wide.  Over 70 years ago, long before Iran posed "an existential threat to Israel" or to the US for that matter the Soviet Union and Great Britain forced neutral Iran into actively supporting the war effort.  The first militant adventure in Persia began with the Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941 in order to secure supply lines and resources in WWII against the Axis Powers.  It was on the basis of this material support, albeit forced, which allowed Iran to enter the United Nations.

          As a result of invasion then Shah of Iran, Rezah Shah, appealed to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for help.  The shah was rebuffed, but assured that "the British and Soviet Governments [claim] that they have no designs on the independence or territorial integrity of Iran."  This proved to be untrue as the Soviets managed to inject massive communist political influence and carved out two vassal states for themselves in Azerbaijan and in the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.  To understand how it might have effected the internal politics of Iran imagine if the U.S. lost an equivalent land area, say the state of Indiana, to a "Communist Canada."  You think our politics are vitriolic now!
     

            The Anglo-Soviet invasion wasn't the first punch in the stomach of sovereignty.  Because much of Iran's development was predicated on oil revenue the legitimate, albeit unequal, distribution agreed upon in 1901 and renegotiated in 1933 fomented national resentment.  In 1951 calls for nationalization of APOC assets reached a fevered pitch and resulted in the Majlis voting in favor of the action and subsequently electing the popular statesman and Times Man of the Year, Mohammed Mossadegh.

          By 1953 Britain had convinced the U.S. that Iran could very well become anther Soviet satellite under the leftist Mossadegh and with it Iranian resources which would undoubtedly be funneled into Soviet tanks and missiles.  Because the U.S. needed British support in the Korean War and on condition American companies could wet their beak in Iranian oil Allen Dulles and the CIA via Operation Ajax agreed to forcefully remove the democratically elected leader.  In 2000 the history of these actions were finally exposed, here.  It is in this document of 1954 that the term "blowback" was first used.  Undeniably the blowback manifested itself in the fundamentalist Iranian Revolution, which ushered in the anti west theocracy known as the Islamic Republic of Iran.  

          Iran's sea of oil has proven to be somewhat of a double edged sword for this ancient nation.  On one hand, energy independence has enabled it to continue to develop relatively on its own since nationalization and remain a regional player through OPEC and a modern military, however, on the other, it's this independence and preeminence that has resulted in its reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace the New World Order, an order focused on international governance and commensurate diminution of national sovereignty.  After what Iran has gone through national sovereignty is a premium and evidently regardless of political stripe.

          It is the West's prior misconduct and new supranational emphasis, which has undoubtedly lead Iran to see its Islamic neighbors, although often dissimilar in not only ethnicity, but in religious sectionalism, as brothers in arms against foreign aggression and as a de facto buffer zone.  The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq can therefore be seen as a prelude to the current "crisis" - you could say Iran is now "stuck between a Iraq and a hard place."  I wonder if that informs their decision making process.  More to the point, might it inform us a little more about why there was no exit strategy in either Iraq or Afghanistan?

Source: TeamofMonkeys.com

          Iran's refusal to cede control and cooperation willingly has drawn the ire of internationalists who see world governance as a necessary and inevitable evolution.  Iran, including its energy reserves and its publicly owned central bank (opposed to control by the world wide network of private central banks), is one of the last pieces of the new world collage.   

          While this globalist dialectic of global governance seems inevitable.  While international cooperation is obviously desirable especially as we become more interconnected under advances in communication and the world seemingly smaller through advances in mobility those countries whom wish to reject a binding and bizarre unitary model find themselves politically speaking, out in the cold.

         Under this view it is not hard to realize Iranians fundamentally might not be as nutty as they seem, but in reality the sordid product of the insesant pressure to enter into the latest version of world order.  The Islamic Republic of Iran therefore is an amalgam of blowback and resistance to foreign intervention.

          While it may be easy and even compelling to allow our thoughts and emotions to be lost in the infinite minutia of downed drones, wild claims of holocaust denial, staged elections, stuxnet viruses, threats of evisceration, sabotage, human rights abuses, funding of "terrorism", and legions of maniacal mullahs wielding nuclear weapons; to allow these fears to impair our reason is to lose contact with the historically established and very real reality Iranians see foreign governments, including our own, in a similar light.  Hence, the Iran War Psychosis.

Updated 12/12/11