Nothing inherently evil about Iran

Jim Morgan
Posted 4/9/15

I would like to respond to Richard Walsh’s letter appearing in the Beacon of March 19 concerning Iran.

Iran is a country of 80 million mostly good people. The USA is a country of 320 …

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Nothing inherently evil about Iran

Posted

I would like to respond to Richard Walsh’s letter appearing in the Beacon of March 19 concerning Iran.

Iran is a country of 80 million mostly good people. The USA is a country of 320 million mostly good people, so from where does the hate and misunderstanding originate? The Ministry of Propaganda, otherwise known as the Main Stream Media is where is all begins. When we talk about the Evil Devil, Iran and the Great Satan, the USA, then theres a piece missing: truth.

There is nothing inherently evil about Iran any more than any other sovereign nation on the planet. The perception that Iran is somehow to be maligned for its hard line towards the U.S. and by association, Israel, is based on a lack of historical perspective. There is good reason for Iran to feel extraordinary enmity for the U.S.; for the U.S. and the British had been meddling in Iranian internal affairs since 1953, the year in whichDr. Mossadegh, the well-liked, elected, prime minister, was overthrown. It must be mentioned here that many Middle Eastern countries at the time were very westernized. They enjoyed secular governments, women had rights, education and dressed in western styles. But, Dr. Mossadegh, as many before him and since, made the fatal mistake of nationalizing the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, something the British would not suffer. They knew that Dr. Mossadegh had to be removed, but this was something the British could not do alone. Enter the CIA under Kermit Roosevelt. The plan, authored by then Secretary of State, John Forster Dulles, was as simple as it was devious: overthrow the prime minister and replace him with the Shah.

Yes, the Shah, the King of Kings. At last the U.S. had the puppet she had always wanted. Unfortunately, the Shah was murderous and hated, but needed the backing of the ayatollahs and mullahs to remain in power and sympathetic to oil interests. The CIA then offered the Iranian clergy money, lots of it. Beginning in 1953, one estimate was $400 million a year for viewing the Shah and his family favorably. In 1977, President Carter, touting human rights abuses, shut down further payments and we all remember what happened in November 1979: the seizing of the American Embassy in Tehran. The Shah was no longer protected by the ayatollahs who were secretly contemptuous of his secularism, and the Islamic Revolution began.

So, can we not see how a sovereign nation of proud Iranian Shia could view the relentless, insidious, destructive machinations of foreign powers in their rapacious appetite for their natural resources? This current pas-de-deux between ancient Persia and the U.S. is simply geo-political theater.

And let it be said that Iran has no designs on any other nation, but it can also be said that Israel is not held in high regard, partly because it is an apartheid state where Palestinians, an oppressed and occupied people, must suffer daily abuse. Though the Iranians are not Sunni Arabs, they are fellow Muslims. Perhaps we should sanction Israel for its treatment of Palestinians instead of Iran. Sanctions and embargoes do work though. Before the invasion of Iraq, over 500,000 million children under the age of three died do to lack of clean water and medicine.

It is also most certain that the Iranians have no pretensions to nuclear armament. In 1968 Iran was a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Israel, who was not a signatory to that treaty, has in excess of 300 nuclear warheads. Does anyone not see a problem with this?

So, we have seen why Iran would have no love for the U.S. and Israel specifically and distrustful of the west in general, so why would one even question the reasoning behind Iran’s return to fundamentalist Islam in light of its modern history of international interference in its socio-economic well-being?

Perhaps, even those whose primary source of information is (sadly) television, will recall that is it absolutely necessary to demonize a country and her people before destroying it. Have we learned nothing from the obliteration of that once great flower of the Arab world, Iraq who we demonized as having weapons of mass destruction.

We cannot go on like this.

A Warwick native, Jim Morgan is a graduate of Bishop Hendricken and attended the New England Conservancy in Boston. He has taught both in this country and England. His career includes being a member of the RI National Guard, a flight instructor at Green Airport and a substitute Warwick teacher. Now retired, he’s a voracious reader.

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  • bendover

    "Nothing inherently evil about Iran." Tell that to the families of 241 dead Marines, 9 who had RI connections killed in Beirut by Hezbollah, the Iranian backed terrorists. The hundreds of civilians killed along with US service members in Iraq and all over the globe. You talk of "demonizing" Iraq regarding WMD's but fail to mention Saddam using Sarin gas to kill 5,000 mostly woman and children, Kurds, in Halabja in 1988...No WMD's? Where did the Sarin come from? I could go on, but what is the point. You are entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts.

    Thursday, April 9, 2015 Report this