Jon Schwarz writing for The Intercept:
Not only have the U.S. and our allies done horrendous things to Iran, we’re not even polite enough to remember it.
- The founder of Reuters purchased Iran in 1872 — Lord Curzon called it “the most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has probably ever been dreamed of.”
- The BBC lent a hand to the CIA’s 1953 overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh — Soon enough the U.S. was training the regime’s secret police in how to interrogate Iranians with methods a CIA analyst said were “based on German torture techniques from World War II.”
- We had extensive plans to use nuclear weapons in Iran — If the Soviets began massing their troops, we would use small nuclear weapons to destroy the mountain passes in northern Iran the Soviets needed to move their troops into the country.
- We were cool with Saudi Arabia giving Saddam $5 billion to build nukes during the Iran-Iraq war — …and the Reagan administration knew all about it and didn’t care.
- U.S. leaders have repeatedly threatened to outright destroy Iran — “Bomb bomb bomb Iran.”
- We shot down a civilian Iranian airliner — killing 290 people, including 66 children — Two years later the U.S. Navy gave the Vincennes’s commander the highly prestigious Legion of Merit commendation.
- We worry about Iranian nukes because they would deter our own military strikes — This perspective — that we must prevent other countries from being able to deter us from waging war — is a bedrock belief of the U.S. establishment, and in fact was touted as a major reason to invade Iraq.
Seven Things You Didn’t Know the U.S. and Its Allies Did to Iran
