After
a week of geopolitical turmoil in Iran and its middle east neighbour Iraq,
triggered - but not started - by the assassination authorised by President
Trump of the second most senior political figure in Iran, it is worth looking
at some of the background to this event. A very insightful starting-point is an
article in the current special issue on ‘Trump’s Middle East’ of the international
journal, Foreign Affairs, by Martin Indyk, a
former US Ambassador to Israel.
Under a section of his
article headlined ‘Trump Administration understands little about how the Middle
East works’, Indyk writes:
“The Trump administration
likes to see itself as clear-eyed and tough-minded, a confronter of the hard
truths others refuse to acknowledge. In fact, it understands so little about
how the Middle East actually works that its bungling efforts have been a
failure across the board. As so often in the past, the cynical locals are
manipulating a clueless outsider, advancing their personal agendas at the naive
Americans’ expense.
The Trump administration’s
Middle East policies cannot possibly create a new, more stable regional order.
But they will certainly do a good job of continuing the destruction of the old
one, and risking all that it had gained. And this will fit neatly into Trump’s
overall campaign to do away with the liberal international order in favor of
the law of the jungle.
(“Disaster in the Desert: Why Trump’s Middle East
Plan Can’t Work,” Foreign Affairs, November/December
2019; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2019-10-15/disaster-desert
Ambassador Indyk also pointed out that in February
of this year, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “attempted to
organize an anti-Iran conference in Poland. Netanyahu tweeted that it was ‘an
open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting
down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of combating
Iran.’”
The Ambassador continued “Just
like its blundering on other fronts, the Trump administration’s efforts on Iran
have produced few positive results. It seemed for a while that the “maximum
pressure” campaign was reducing Iran’s funding of its proxies abroad. Yet those
operations have always been run on the cheap, and with some belt-tightening,
they have continued apace…. in April of this year, Trump dialed up the pressure
even further by designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a
terrorist organization… With its economy crashing and the Europeans failing to
provide adequate sanctions relief, Tehran decided enough was enough.
Up to that point, the
Iranians had been exercising what they termed “strategic patience”—waiting for
the 2020 U.S. presidential election, toughing things out in the meantime, and
keeping the Europeans onboard by sticking to the nuclear agreement. Now, Iran
decided to retaliate….. First, it reduced its compliance with the JCPOA by
expanding its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. Then, it resumed higher levels
of enrichment. And in September, it restarted centrifuge development,
shortening the breakout time for nuclear weapons production. Since Trump was
the first to walk away from the accord, ripping up the painstakingly developed
international legal consensus that prevented Iran’s acquisition of nuclear
weapons, the United States was in no position to say or do anything to stop it.
Iran’s moves are putting
Trump in an increasingly tight corner. If he does not persuade the Iranians to
reverse course, he will come under pressure from his hawkish advisers and
Netanyahu to bomb their nuclear program, a dangerous adventure.”
The Ambassador concluded “if the United
States continues to follow Trump’s folly instead, it should not be surprised to
find itself alone in the desert, chasing a mirage.”
A chilling
report in USA Today on 9 January of a
campaign rally in Ohio held by President Trump bragged that US was "ready
to go" if Iran's rocket attack [in response to the drone execution of
Iran’s second highest Governmental official] inflicted additional damage or
resulted in the death of US soldiers stationed on the two Iraqi bases that were
targeted. Trump said Iran "hit us
with 16 missiles" but that he decided to stand down after he saw the
relatively minor impact, which he attributed to a "pretty good warning
system " adding “So we didn't do anything...Not that I wanted to, but
we were ready…You have no idea. Lot of people got very lucky."
It also
recorded him boasting his decision to order a "bold and decisive
action" to "deliver American justice" against the "sadistic
mass murderer" Qasem Soleimani via
a U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport, the main airport of the capital city of a sovereign
state, Iraq.
Trump claimed,
without providing any evidence, that General Soleimani “was looking very
seriously at our embassies," adding "We stopped him quickly and we
stopped him cold."
(“'We were ready.' Trump signals at Ohio rally
that Soleimani strike will be 2020 issue,”
USA TODAY, 9 January 2020; https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/01/09/trump-rally-ohio-after-iran-crisis-ahead-impeachment-trial/2831749001
Trump
speaks without any apparent knowledge of the historical Iranian blood on the
hands of earlier belligerent US administrations.
On 22
September 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran, using high-tech
weaponry provided by, inter alia, the
US, UK and France. Eight years later, on 22 July 1988, Iran finally agreed fought to a ceasefire, shortly
after the US cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iranian civilian airliner flying
from , 3 July 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew on
board, claiming it thought it was a fighter plane. The US government claimed that Vincennes
was in international waters at the time (which was later proven to be untrue),
that the Airbus A300 had been mistaken for an Iranian F-14
Tomcat and that Vincennes feared that she was under attack. The Iranians
maintain that Vincennes was in their own waters, and that the passenger
jet was turning away and increasing altitude after take-off. [US Admiral William J.
Crowe later admitted on the Nightline TV show that Vincennes was in Iranian
territorial waters when it launched the missiles. At the time of the attack,
Admiral Crowe claimed that the Iranian plane did not identify itself and sent
no response to warning signals he had sent. In 1996, the United States
expressed their regret for the event and the civilian deaths it caused]
Over a
million Iranian soldiers died in the war. More than 144,000 Iranian children were orphaned as a consequence of these
deaths (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4260420.stm)
There
has a been a sophisticated civilization in the territory of what is modern day
Iran for over 6,000 years, beginning with the formation
of the Elamite kingdoms in
the fourth millennium BC, so
events barely 70 years ago are practically as if yesterday in the collective
Iran mind. Thus virtually all Iranians are fully aware of the time in 1953 when
the US and UK orchestrated a coup - led
by the CIA, backed by Britain’s MI6 - to depose their elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, to secure control over and access to Iran’s
oil wealth; and replace him with their
own authoritarian puppet leader, The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, backed up from 1956 by a terrifying internal security police
apparatus, called Savak (Sazeman-e Ettela'at va
Amniyat-e Keshvar literally National Organization for Security and Intelligence) trained by the US military
The extraordinary US National
Security Archive - based at George
Washington University in the US capital
- posted on line on 19 August 2013 some thirty five detailed, original
and hitherto highly classified secret
documents obtained via Freedom of Information requests to the Obama
Administration, exposing the background,
basis, course and consequence of the coup .( https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/)
Links to each document are provided
below.
Here is the front page of the first document confirming the CIA’s
intimate role.
CAMPAIGN TO- INSTALL PRO-WESTERN GOVERNMENT IN IRAN
AUTHORlTY r..
TARGET
Prime Minister Mossadeq and his government
OBJECTIVES . ' • . ... ; .. :. •• ·.~ i'. ~).~~·;. ;:: • Through
legal, or quasi-legal. methods to effect the fall of the Mossadeq
::"(:1.f:~~i;;:: ~;;~ . ·. . . . \ . . . .:.:~:.:~;:·\}.~~:~);;,
government; and · .·. · ·. '•·'~·.:::·.:-.i·~-~= ~t~~·· . ·.-- . .. ~..,~ :;~~-~~ '··{~ ~ ~~ i~fof:i~Jl .. To
replace it with a pro-Western government "under the Shah's
le~erst1i};;"}f:~:X:.~~1~ ~ti; ~~edi7;.,; i.~ ':Prl,.; Miniat8r . · .. • .
· ..•.. • · · · ···, Zt·\~!.~\-~!:.~ .. ,. ..· . CIA ACTION . ... ·.
Plan of aetion was implemented in four phases:
"1. . . · to strengthen the Shah's will to exercise his constitutional
power and to sign
.. those decrees necessary to effect the legal removal or Mossadeq
as Prime
Minister~
2. Welded together and coordinated the efforts or those political
fac- . ~~~~~=!!~;~~~~ i fully influential clergy,- to "gain their support
and bacldrig or any·tegal ac~on .· ; '· ..
taken by the Shah to accomplish Mossadeq’s removal;
disenchant the Iranian population with the myth of Mossadeq's
patriotism., by exposing his collaboration with the Communists and his
manipulation of constitutional authority to serve his own · · · ', : ·· ·
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 21-Jun-2011
And
here is the digest, using key highlights, of the UK Labour government in 1978
trying to Convince the US Administration
to censor details of UK involvement in the official US Archives.
Document 23:
FCO, Minute, B.L. Crowe to R.S. Gorham, "Anglo-American Planning Talks:
Iran," October 12, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This
memo recounts Precht's dramatic presentation on Iran two days earlier (see
previous document). "His was essentially a policy of despair," the
author writes. When the British follow up with the Americans about Precht's
outlook of gloom, they find that State Department and National Security Council
(NSC) staff were just as bewildered by his remarks. One NSC staff member calls
them "bullshit." Policy Planning Director Lake laments the various
"indiscreet and sensitive things" the Americans said at the meeting,
and asks the British to "be very careful" how they handle them.
"On
a completely different subject," the minute continues, "Precht let
out … that he was having to go through the records of the 1952/53 Mossadeq
period with a view to their release under the Freedom of Information Act [sic].
He said that if released, there would be some very embarrassing things about
the British in them." (Much of this passage is underlined for emphasis.)
The note goes on: "I made a strong pitch that we should be
consulted," but the author adds, "I imagine that it is American
documents about the British rather than documents on which HMG have any lien
which are involved." (This is a point that may still be at issue today
since the question of discussing American documents with foreign governments is
very different from negotiating over the use of foreign government records.)
It
is perhaps not surprising millions of ordinary Iranians took to the streets
across the nation this week, mourning the assassination of the head of their military forces and calling
for ‘Death to the USA’. Well before Trump, the US had bad form in destabilzising Iran.
Backstory Annex
CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran
Coup
Documents Provide New Details on Mosaddeq Overthrow and
Its Aftermath
National Security Archive Calls for Release of
Remaining Classified Record
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No.
435
Posted
– August 19, 2013
Edited
by Malcolm Byrne
|
|||||||||||||
Related Links  Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran By Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Syracuse University Press, May 1, 2004
Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup
in Iran
June 22, 2004
The Secret CIA History of the Iran
Coup, 1953
November 29, 2000
CIA Secrecy Claims Are
"Facially Incredible," Says Lawsuit
August 2, 2000
The 1953 Coup 60 Years On: A
Symposium
July 24, 2013
|
Have the British Been Meddling with the FRUS Retrospective
Volume on 1953?
Foreign Office Worried over Very Embarrassing
Revelations, Documents Show
The United Kingdom
sought to expunge "very embarrassing" information about its role in
the 1953 coup in Iran from the official U.S. history of the period, British
documents confirm. The Foreign Office feared that a planned State Department
publication would undermine U.K. standing in Iran, according to declassified
records posted on the National Security Archive's Web site today.
The British censorship
attempt happened in 1978, but London's concerns may play a role even today in
holding up the State Department's long-awaited history - even though U.S. law
required its publication years ago.
The declassified
documents, from the Foreign Office (Foreign and Commonwealth Office since
1968), shed light on a protracted controversy over crucial gaps in the State
Department's authoritative Foreign Relations of the
United States (FRUS) series. The blank spots on Iran involve the
CIA- and MI6-backed plot to overthrow the country's prime minister, Mohammad
Mosaddeq. Six decades after his ouster, some signs point to the CIA as the
culprit for refusing to allow basic details about the event to be
incorporated into the FRUS compilation.[1]
Recently, the CIA has
declassified a number of records relating to the 1953 coup, including a
version of an internal history that specifically states the agency planned
and helped implement the coup. (The National Security Archive obtained the
documents through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.) This suggests that
ongoing CIA inflexibility over the FRUS volume is not so much a function of
the agency's worries about its own role being exposed as a function of its
desire to protect lingering British sensitivities about 1953 - especially
regarding the activities of U.K. intelligence services. There is also
evidence that State Department officials have been just as anxious to shield
British interests over the years.
Regardless of the
reasons for this continued secrecy, an unfortunate consequence of withholding
these materials is to guarantee that American (and world) public
understanding of this pivotal episode will remain distorted. Another effect
is to keep the issue alive in the political arena, where it is regularly
exploited by circles in Iran opposed to constructive ties with the United
States.
Background on FRUS and the
Mosaddeq Period
By statute, the FRUS
series is required to present "a thorough, accurate, and reliable
documentary record" of American foreign policy.[2]
That law came about partly as a consequence of the failure of the original
volume covering the Mosaddeq period (published in 1989) to mention the U.S.
role in his overthrow. The reaction of the scholarly community and interested
public was outrage. Prominent historian Bruce Kuniholm, a former member of
State's Policy Planning Staff, called the volume "a fraud."[3]
The full story of the
scandal has been detailed elsewhere,[4]
but most observers blamed the omission on the intelligence community (IC) for
refusing to open its relevant files. In fact, the IC was not alone. Senior
Department officials joined in opposing requests for access to particular
classified records by the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC), the group of
independent scholars charged with advising the Department's own Office of the
Historian.[5]
The head of the HAC, Warren Cohen, resigned in protest in 1990 citing his
inability to ensure the integrity of the FRUS series. Congress became
involved and, in a display of bipartisanship that would be stunning today
(Democratic Senator Daniel P. Moynihan getting Republican Jesse Helms to
collaborate), lawmakers passed a bill to prevent similar historical
distortions. As Cohen and others pointed out, while Moscow was disgorging its
scandalous Cold War secrets, Washington was taking a distinctly Soviet
approach to its own history.[6]
By 1998, State's
historians and the HAC had decided to produce a "retrospective"
volume on the Iran coup that would help to correct the record. They planned
other volumes to cover additional previously airbrushed covert activities (in
Guatemala, the Congo, etc.). It was a promising step, yet 15 years later,
while a couple of publications have materialized, several others have not -
including the Iran volume.[7]
Institutional Delays
A review of the
available minutes of HAC meetings
makes it apparent that over the past decade multiple policy, bureaucratic,
and logistical hurdles have interfered with progress. Some of these are
routine, even inevitable - from the complications of multi-agency
coordination to frequent personnel changes. Others are more specific to the
realm of intelligence, notably a deep-seated uneasiness in parts of the CIA
over the notion of unveiling putative secrets.
In the Fall of 2001, an
ominous development for the HO gave a sense of where much of the power lay in
its relationship with the CIA. According to notes of a public HAC meeting in
October 2001, the CIA, on instructions from the Director of Central
Intelligence, decided unilaterally "that there could be no new
business" regarding FRUS until the two sides signed an MOU. Agency
officials said the document would address legitimate IC concerns; HAC members
worried it would mainly boost CIA control over the series. The agency
specifically held up action on four volumes to make its point, while HAC
historians countered that the volumes were being "held hostage" and
the HO was being forced to work "under the threat of 'blackmail'."[8]
The CIA held firm and
an agreement emerged in May 2002 that, at least from available information,
appears to bend over backwards to give the IC extraordinary safeguards
without offering much reassurance about key HO interests. For instance, the
MOU states that the CIA must "meet HO's statutory requirement" -
hardly something that seems necessary to spell out. At the same time, it
allows the CIA to review materials not once, but again even after a
manuscript has passed through formal declassification, and once more after it
is otherwise in final form and ready for printing. In the context of the disputed
Iran volume, HAC members worried about the "random" nature of these
provisions which gave the agency "a second bite at the apple."[9]
The implication is that the CIA will feel little obligation to help meet the
HO's legal requirement if it believes its own "equities" are at
stake. (This of course may still affect the Iran volume, currently scheduled
for 2014 publication.)
Is It the British?
As mentioned, the CIA
has begun to release documentation in recent years making explicit its
connection to the Mosaddeq overthrow. Even earlier, by 2002, the State
Department and CIA jointly began compiling an Iran retrospective volume.
These are not signs of a fundamental institutional unwillingness to publish
American materials on the coup (although parts of the CIA continued to resist
the notion). The HO even tried at least twice previously to organize a joint
project with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Iran, but the idea
evidently went nowhere.[10]
In 2004, two years
later, the State Department's designated historian finished compiling the
volume. According to that historian, he included a number of records obtained
from research at the then-Public Record Office in London. Among his findings
was "material that documents the British role." He added that he
had also located State Department records "that illustrate the British role."[11]
By no later than June 2006, the Iran volume had entered the declassification
queue. At the June 2006 HAC session, CIA representatives said "they
believed the committee would be satisfied with the [declassification]
reviews."
Up to that point, the
agency's signals seemed generally positive about the prospects of making
public previously closed materials. But in the six years since, no Iran
volume has emerged. Even State's committee of historians apparently has never
gotten a satisfactory explanation as to why.[12]
When the IC withholds
records, "sources and methods" are often the excuse. The CIA is
loath to release anything it believes would reveal how the agency conducts
its activities. (For many years, the CIA kept secret the fact that it used
balloons to drop leaflets over Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and would
not confirm or deny whether it compiled biographical sketches of Communist
leaders.) On the other hand, clandestine operations have been named in more
than 20 other FRUS publications.[13]
One of these was the retrospective volume on PBSUCCESS, the controversial
overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Furthermore, the agency has
released troubling materials such as assassination manuals that demonstrate
how to murder political opponents using anything from "edge
weapons" to "bare hands." In 2007, in response to a
15-year-old National Security Archive FOIA request, the CIA finally released
its file of "family jewels" detailing an assortment of infamous
activities. from planning to poison foreign leaders to conducting illegal
surveillance on American journalists.
If the agency felt it
could part with such high-profile sources and methods information, along with
deeply embarrassing revelations about itself, why not in the Iran case?
Perhaps the British are just saying no, and their American counterparts are
quietly going along.
State Department Early
Warning - 1978
The FCO documents in
this posting (Documents 22-35)
strongly support this conclusion. Theytell a fascinating story of
transatlantic cooperation and diplomatic concern at a turbulent time. It was
a State Department official who first alerted the FCO to plans by the
Department's historians to publish an official account of the 1953 coup
period. The Department's Iran expert warned that the records could have
"possibly damaging consequences" not only for London but for the
Shah of Iran, who was fighting for survival as he had 25 years earlier (Document 22).
Two days later, FCO officials began to pass the message up the line that
"very embarrassing things about the British" were likely to be in
the upcoming FRUS compilation (Document 23).
FCO officials reported that officers on both the Iran and Britain desks at
State were prepared to help keep those materials out of the public domain, at
least for the time being (Document 33).
Almost 35 years later, those records are still inaccessible.
The British
government's apparent unwillingness to acknowledge what the world already
knows is difficult for most outsiders to understand. It becomes positively
baffling when senior public figures who are fully aware of the history have
already acknowledged London's role. In 2009, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
publicly remarked on Britain's part in toppling Mosaddeq, which he
categorized as one of many outside "interferences" in Iranian
affairs in the last century.[14]
Yet, present indications are that the U.K. government is not prepared to
release either its own files or evidently to approve the opening of American
records that might help bring some degree of closure to this protracted
historic - and historiographical - episode.
NOTES
[1] A recent article
drawing attention to the controversy is Stephen R. Weissman, "Why is
U.S. Withholding Old Documents on Covert Ops in Congo, Iran?" The Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 2011. ( http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0325/Why-is-US-withholding-old-documents-on-covert-ops-in-Congo-Iran
)
[3] Bruce Kuniholm,
"Foreign Relations, Public Relations, Accountability, and
Understanding," American Historical Association, Perspectives, May-June 1990.
[4] In addition to the
Kuniholm and Weissman items cited above, see also Stephen R. Weissman,
"Censoring American Diplomatic History," American Historical
Association, Perspectives on History,
September 2011.
[5] Joshua Botts, Office
of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "'A Burden for the
Department'?: To The 1991 FRUS
Statute," February 6, 2012, http://history.state.gov/frus150/research/to-the-1991-frus-statute.
[7] Retrospective
compilations on Guatemala (2003) and the intelligence community (2007) during
the 1950s have appeared; collections on the Congo and Chile are among those
that have not.
[9] HAC minutes, July
22-23, 2002, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2002; and
December 14-15, 2009, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/december-2009.
[12] See HAC minutes for
July 12-13, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2004;
September 20-21, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2004;
September 8-9, 2008, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2008; for
example.
[13] Comments of then-FRUS
series editor Edward Keefer at the February 26-27, 2007, HAC meeting, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/february-2007.
[14] Quoted in Souren Melikian,
"Show Ignores Essential Questions about Iranian King's Role," The International Herald Tribune, February 21, 2009.
Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 –
Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister
Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently
declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial
operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long
been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be
the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and
execute the coup.
The explicit reference to the CIA's role
appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran,
dating from the mid-1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of
the account in 1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all
references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those
references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA materials posted
today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA officer on
the ground in Iran during the coup. They provide new specifics as well as
insights into the intelligence agency's actions before and after the
operation.
The 1953 coup remains a topic of global
interest because so much about it is still under intense debate. Even
fundamental questions
— who hatched the plot, who ultimately
carried it out, who supported it inside Iran, and how did it succeed — are in
dispute.[1]
The issue is more than academic. Political
partisans on all sides, including the Iranian government, regularly invoke
the coup to argue whether Iran or foreign powers are primarily responsible
for the country's historical trajectory, whether the United States can be
trusted to respect Iran's sovereignty, or whether Washington needs to
apologize for its prior interference before better relations can occur.
Also, the public release of these materials
is noteworthy because CIA documents about 1953 are rare. First of all, agency
officials have stated that most of the records on the coup were either lost
or destroyed in the early 1960s, allegedly because the record-holders'
"safes were too full."[2]
Regarding public access to any remaining
files (reportedly about one cubic foot of material), the intelligence
community's standard procedure for decades has been to assert a blanket
denial. This is in spite of commitments made two decades ago by three
separate CIA directors. Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch
each vowed to open up agency historical files on a number of Cold War-era
covert operations, including Iran, as a sign of the CIA's purported new
policy of openness after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.[3]
A clear sign that their pledge would not be
honored in practice came after the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit in
1999 for a well-known internal CIA narrative about the coup. One of the
operation's planners, Donald N. Wilber, prepared the account less than a year
later. The CIA agreed to release just a single sentence out of the 200-page
report.
Despite the appearance of countless
published accounts about the operation over the years - including Kermit
Roosevelt's own detailed memoir, and the subsequent leak to The New York Times of the 200-page CIA narrative
history[4]
— intelligence agencies typically refused to budge. They have insisted on
making a distinction between publicly available information on U.S.
activities from non-government sources and official acknowledgement of those
activities, even several decades after the fact.
While the National Security Archive applauds
the CIA's decision to make these materials available, today's posting shows
clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years
ago without risk of damage to the national security. (See sidebar, "Why
is the Coup Still a Secret?")
Archive Deputy Director Malcolm Byrne called
for the U.S. intelligence community to make fully available the remaining
records on the coup period. "There is no longer good reason to keep
secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are
widely known to every school child in Iran. Suppressing the details only
distorts the history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides."
To supplement the recent CIA release, the
National Security Archive is including two other, previously available
internal accounts of the coup. One is the narrative referred to above: a 1954
Clandestine Services History prepared by Donald N. Wilber, one of the
operation's chief architects, which The New York Times
obtained by a leak and first posted on its site in April 2000.
The other item is a heavily excised 1998
piece — "Zendebad, Shah!" — by an
in-house CIA historian. (The Archive has asked the CIA to re-review the
document's excessive deletions for future release.)
The posting also features an earlier
declassification of The Battle for Iran for purposes
of comparison with the latest release. The earlier version includes portions
that were withheld in the later release. As often happens, government
classification officials had quite different — sometimes seemingly arbitrary
— views about what could and could not be safely made public.
Read together, the three histories offer
fascinating variations in perspective — from an agency operative to two
in-house historians (the last being the most dispassionate). Unfortunately,
they still leave wide gaps in the history, including on some fundamental
questions which may never be satisfactorily answered — such as how to
apportion responsibility for planning and carrying out the coup among all the
Iranian and outside actors involved.
But all 21 of the CIA items posted today (in
addition to 14 previously unpublished British documents — see Sidebar),
reinforce the conclusion that the United States, and the CIA in particular,
devoted extensive resources and high-level policy attention toward bringing
about Mosaddeq's overthrow, and smoothing over the aftermath.
|
||||||||||||
DOCUMENTS
CIA
Records
CIA Internal Histories
Document 1 (Cover Sheet, Summary, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, Appendix D, Appendix E):
CIA, Clandestine Services History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran:
November 1952 - August 1953, Dr. Donald N. Wilber, March 1954
Source: The New York Times
Donald Wilber was a principal planner of the initial joint
U.S.-U.K. coup attempt of August 1953. This 200-page account is one of the most
valuable remaining records describing the event because Wilber wrote it within
months of the overthrow and provided a great deal of detail. Like any
historical document, it must be read with care, taking into account the
author's personal perspective, purpose in writing it, and audience. The CIA
routinely prepared histories of important operations for use by future
operatives. They were not intended to be made public.
Document 2:
CIA, Summary, "Campaign to Install a Pro-Western Government in Iran,"
draft of internal history of the coup, undated
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This heavily excised summary was almost certainly prepared in
connection with Donald Wilber's Clandestine Services History (Document 1). By
all indications written not long after the coup (1953-54), it includes several
of the phrases Wilber used — "quasi-legal," and "war of
nerves," for example. The text clearly gives the impression that the
author attributes the coup's eventual success to a combination of external and
internal developments. Beginning by listing a number of specific steps taken by
the U.S. under the heading "CIA ACTION," the document notes at the
end (in a handwritten edit): "These actions resulted in literal revolt of
the population, [1+ lines excised]. The military and security forces joined the
populace, Radio Tehran was taken over, and Mossadeq was forced to flee on 17
[sic] Aug 53."
Document 3A
& Document 3B:
CIA, History, The Battle for Iran, author's name excised, undated (c.
mid-1970s) - (Two versions - declassified in 1981 and 2011)
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This posting provides two separate releases of the same
document, declassified 30 years apart (1981 and 2011). Each version contains
portions excised in the other. Though no date is given, judging from citations
in the footnotes The Battle for Iran was written in
or after 1974. It is marked "Administrative - Working Paper" and
contains a number of handwritten edits. The author was a member of the CIA's
History Staff who acknowledges "the enthusiastic cooperation" of the
agency's Directorate of Operations. The author provides confirmation that most
of the relevant files were destroyed in 1962; therefore the account relies on
the relatively few remaining records as well as on public sources. The vast
majority of the covert action portion (Section III) remains classified,
although the most recent declassification of the document leaves in some brief,
but important, passages. An unexpected feature of the document (Appendix C) is
the inclusion of a series of lengthy excerpts of published accounts of the
overthrow designed, apparently, to underscore how poorly the public understood
the episode at the time.
Document 4:
CIA, History, "Zendebad, Shah!": The Central Intelligence Agency
and the Fall of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, August 1953, Scott
A. Koch, June 1998
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
The most recent known internal history of the coup,
"Zendebad, Shah!" was written by an in-house agency historian in
1998. It is heavily excised (but currently undergoing re-review by the CIA),
with virtually all paragraphs marked Confidential or higher omitted from the
public version. Still, it is a useful account written by someone without a
stake in the events and drawing on an array of U.S. government and published
sources not available to the earlier CIA authors.
CIA Records Immediately Before and After the
Coup
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Kermit Roosevelt conveys information about rapidly unfolding
events in Tehran, including Mosaddeq's idea for a referendum on his remaining
in office, the prospect of his closing the Majles, and most importantly the
impact President Eisenhower's recent letter has had in turning society against
the prime minister. The U.S. government publicized Eisenhower's undiplomatic
letter turning down Mosaddeq's request for financial aid. The move was one of
the ways Washington hoped to weaken his political standing.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Responding to the resignation of Mosaddeq supporters from the
Majles, Kermit Roosevelt fires off a plan to ensure that other Majles members
keep the parliament functioning, the eventual goal being to engineer a
no-confidence in Mosaddeq. The memo provides an interesting clue on the subject
of whether CIA operatives ever bought votes in the Majles, about which other
CIA sources are vague. Roosevelt urges that as many deputies as possible be "persuaded"
to take bast in the parliament. "Recognize will be
necessary expend money this purpose and determine precisely who does
what." At the conclusion of the document he appears to tie this scheme
into the previously elaborated — but clearly evolving — coup plan.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Roosevelt reports on developing plans involving Fazlollah
Zahedi, the man who has been chosen to replace Mosaddeq. CIA sources, including
the Wilber history, indicate that the military aspects of the plan were to be
largely Zahedi's responsibility. This memo supports that (even though many
details are excised), but also provides some insight into the differences in
expectations between the Americans and Zahedi. With some skepticism
("Zahedi claims ..."), Roosevelt spells out a series of events Zahedi
envisions that presumably would bring him to the premiership, albeit in a very
round-about way. His thinking is clearly prompted by his declared unwillingness
to commit "'political suicide' by extra-legal move."
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
The CIA's Tehran station reports on the recent resignations of
independent and opposition Majles members. The idea, an opposition deputy tells
the station, was to avert Mosaddeq's planned public referendum. The memo gives
a bit of insight into the fluidity and uncertainty of developments with each
faction undoubtedly elaborating their own strategies and tactics to a certain
degree.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This brief note conveys much about both U.S. planning and hopes
for Mosaddeq's overthrow. It is a request from Kermit Roosevelt to John Waller
and Donald Wilber to make sure that a formal U.S. statement is ready in advance
of "a 'successful' coup." (See Document 10)
Document 10:
CIA, note forwarding proposed text of State Department release for after the
coup, August 5, 1953
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This draft text from the State Department appears to be a result
of Roosevelt's request (Document 9) to have an official statement available for
use after completion of the operation. The draft predates Mosaddeq's ouster by
two weeks, but its language — crediting "the Iranian people, under the
leadership of their Shah," for the coup — tracks precisely with the neutral
wording used by both the State Department and Foreign Office in their official
paperwork after the fact.
Document 11:
CIA, Memo, "Proposed Commendation for Communications Personnel who have
serviced the TPAJAX Operation," Frank G. Wisner to The Acting Director of
Central Intelligence, August 20, 1953
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Wisner recommends a special commendation for the work performed
by the communications specialists who kept CIA headquarters in contact with
operatives in Iran throughout the coup period. "I am sure that you are
aware of the exceptionally heavy volume of traffic which this operation has
necessitated," Wisner writes — an unintentionally poignant remark given
how little of that documentation has survived.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Wisner also requests a commendation for John Waller, the coup
overseer at CIA headquarters, "for his work in TPAJAX." Waller's conduct
"in no small measure, contributed to the successful result."
Document 13:
CIA, "Letter of Commendation [Excised]," author and recipient names
excised, August 26, 1953
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Evidently after reflection, Frank Wisner concludes that there
are troubling "security implications" involved in providing a letter
of commendation for a covert operation.
Document 14:
CIA, Memo, "Anti-Tudeh Activities of Zahedi Government," author's
name excised, September 10, 1953
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
A priority of the Zahedi government after the coup was to go
after the Tudeh Party, which had been a mainstay of support for Mosaddeq, even
if the relationship was mostly one of mutual convenience. This is one of
several memos reporting details on numbers of arrests, names of suspected
Central Committee members, and planned fate of arrestees. The report claims
with high specificity on Soviet assistance being provided to the Tudeh,
including printing party newspapers at the embassy. Signs are reportedly mixed
as to whether the party and pro-Mosaddeq elements will try to combine forces
again.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Roosevelt reports on an intense period of political maneuvering
at high levels in the Zahedi government. Intrigues, patronage (including a
report that the government has been giving financial support to Ayatollah
Behbehani, and that the latter's son is angling for a Cabinet post), and
corruption are all dealt with in this memo.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
A restless Zahedi is reported to be active on a number of fronts
including trying to get a military tribunal to execute Mosaddeq and urging the
Shah to fire several senior military officers including Chief of Staff
Batmangelich. The Shah reportedly has not responded to Zahedi's previous five
messages.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
According to this account, the Shah remained deeply worried
about Mosaddeq's influence, even while incarcerated. Roosevelt reports the Shah
is prepared to execute Mosaddeq (after a guilty verdict that is a foregone
conclusion) if his followers and the Tudeh take any threatening action.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Iranian politics did not calm down entirely after the coup, as
this memo indicates, reporting on "violent disagreements" between
Zahedi and his own supporter, Hoseyn Makki, whom Zahedi threatened to shoot if
he accosted any senators trying to attend a Senate session. Roosevelt also
notes two recent payments from Zahedi to Ayatollah Behbehani. The source for
these provocative reports is unknown, but presumably is named in the excised
portion at the top of the memo.
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
Roosevelt notes a meeting between the new prime minister,
Zahedi, and Ayatollah Kashani, a politically active cleric and once one of
Mosaddeq's chief supporters. Kashani reportedly carps about some of his former
National Front allies. Roosevelt concludes Zahedi wants "split" the
front "by wooing Kashani away."
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This appears to be an example of CIA propaganda aimed at
undermining Mosaddeq's public standing, presumably prepared during Summer 1953.
Like other examples in this posting, the CIA provided no description when it
released the document. It certainly fits the pattern of what Donald Wilber and
others after him have described about the nature of the CIA's efforts to plant
damaging innuendo in local Iranian media. In this case, the authors extol the
virtues of the Iranian character, particularly as admired by the outside world,
then decry the descent into "hateful," "rough" and
"rude" behavior Iranians have begun to exhibit "ever since the
alliance between the dictator Mossadeq and the Tudeh Party."
Source: CIA Freedom of Information Act release
This propaganda piece accuses the prime minister of pretending
to be "the savior of Iran" and alleges that he has instead built up a
vast spying apparatus which he has trained on virtually every sector of
society, from the army to newspapers to political and religious leaders.
Stirring up images of his purported alliance with "murderous Qashqai
Khans" and the Bolsheviks, the authors charge: "Is this the way you
save Iran, Mossadeq? We know what you want to save. You want to save Mossadeq's
dictatorship in Iran!"
British
Records
Document 22 :
FCO, Summary Record, "British-American Planning Talks, Washington,"
October 10-11, 1978
Source: The National Archives of the UK (TNA):
Public Record Office (PRO) FCO 8/3216, File No. P 333/2, Folder, "Iran:
Release of Confidential Records," 1 Jan - 31 Dec 1978 (hereafter: TNA: PRO
FCO 8/3216)
In October 1978, a delegation of British FCO officials traveled
to Washington for two days of discussions and comparing of notes on the world
situation with their State Department counterparts. The director of the
Department's Policy Planning Staff, Anthony Lake (later to serve as President
Bill Clinton's national security advisor), led the American side. Other
participants were experts from various geographical and functional bureaus,
including Henry Precht, the head of the Iran Desk.
Beginning in paragraph 22, Precht gives a dour summary of events
in Iran: "the worst foreign policy disaster to hit the West for many
years." In a fascinating back-and-forth about the Shah, Precht warns it is
"difficult to see how the Shah could survive." The British politely
disagree, voicing confidence that the monarchy will survive. Even his State
Department colleagues "showed surprise at the depth of Mr. Precht's
gloom."
In the course of his presentation (paragraph 23), Precht notes
almost in passing that the State Department is reviewing its records from
1952-1954 for eventual release. A British representative immediately comments
that "if that were the case, he hoped HMG [Her Majesty's Government] would
be consulted."
Document 23:
FCO, Minute, B.L. Crowe to R.S. Gorham, "Anglo-American Planning Talks:
Iran," October 12, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This memo recounts Precht's dramatic presentation on Iran two
days earlier (see previous document). "His was essentially a policy of
despair," the author writes. When the British follow up with the Americans
about Precht's outlook of gloom, they find that State Department and National
Security Council (NSC) staff were just as bewildered by his remarks. One NSC
staff member calls them "bullshit." Policy Planning Director Lake
laments the various "indiscreet and sensitive things" the Americans
said at the meeting, and asks the British to "be very careful" how
they handle them.
"On a completely different subject," the minute
continues, "Precht let out … that he was having to go through the records
of the 1952/53 Mossadeq period with a view to their release under the Freedom
of Information Act [sic]. He said that if released, there would be some very
embarrassing things about the British in them." (Much of this passage is
underlined for emphasis.) The note goes on: "I made a strong pitch that we
should be consulted," but the author adds, "I imagine that it is
American documents about the British rather than documents on which HMG have
any lien which are involved." (This is a point that may still be at issue
today since the question of discussing American documents with foreign
governments is very different from negotiating over the use of foreign
government records.)
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
An FCO official reports that Precht recently approached another
British diplomat to say that "he hoped we had not been too shocked"
by his recent presentation. He says Precht acknowledged being
"over-pessimistic" and that in any event he had not been offering
anyone's view but his own.[5]
According to the British, NSC staff members put more stock in the assessments
of the U.K. ambassador to Tehran, Sir Anthony Parsons, than in Precht's. The
writer adds that U.S. Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan also shares Parsons'
judgment, and concludes, without indicating a source, that even "Henry
Precht has now accepted Sullivan's view!"
Document 25:
FCO, Letter, R.S. Gorham to Mr. Cullimore, "Iran: The Ghotbi Pamphlet and
the Mussadeq Period," October 17, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This cover note (to Document 24) refers to Precht's revelation
about the impending American publication of documents on the Mosaddeq period.
The author suggests giving some consideration to the implications of this for
"our own record of the time."
Document 26:
FCO, Letter, B.L. Crowe to Sir A. Duff, "Anglo-American Planning
Talks," October 19, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
FCO official Brian Crowe summarizes the October 10-11 joint
U.S.-U.K. talks. The document is included here mainly for the sake of
comprehensiveness, since it is part of the FCO folder on the FRUS matter. The
writer repeats the remark from State's Anthony Lake that "some of the
comments" from the U.S. side on Iran (among other topics) were
"highly sensitive" and should not be disclosed - even to other
American officials.
Document 27:
FCO, Letter, J.O. Kerr to B.L. Crowe, "Talks with the US Planners:
Iran," October 24, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This brief note shows that word is moving up the line in the FCO
about the forthcoming FRUS volume on Iran. The writer conveys a request to have
the U.K. embassy in Washington check the risks involved in the potential
release of U.S. documents, and "when the State Department propose to raise
them formally with us."
Document 28:
FCO, letter, G.G.H. Walden to B.L. Crowe, "Anglo-American Planning Talks:
Iran," November 10, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
Still more interest in the possible State Department release is
reflected in this short note, now a month after the joint U.S.-U.K. talks. Here
and elsewhere, the British notes erroneously report that the release will come
under the Freedom of Information Act (or the Public Information Act, as given
here); they are actually slated for inclusion in the Foreign
Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.
Document 29:
FCO, R.S. Gorham cover note to Streams, "Iran: Release of Confidential
Records," attaching draft letter to Washington, November 14, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This note and draft are included primarily because they are part
of the FCO file on this topic. However, the draft letter does contain some
different wording from the final version (Document 31).
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
Three years before Precht's revelation to his British
counterparts, the U.K. sought general guidance from the State Department about
how the U.S. would handle "classified information received from Her
Majesty's Government." The month before, robust amendments to the U.S.
Freedom of Information Act had gone into effect. This letter from the number
two official in London at the time, Ronald Spiers, offers a detailed response.
Britain's awareness of the new amendments and anxiousness about their
implications (including the fairly abstruse question of how secret documents
would be handled in court cases) show how sensitive an issue the British
considered protection of their information to be. The U.S. Chargé is equally
anxious to provide the necessary reassurances. (More than a decade later,
Spiers would sharply oppose efforts by the State Department's Historical
Advisory Committee to gain access to restricted documentation for the FRUS
series.[6])
Document 31:
FCO, Letter, R.S. Gorham to R.J.S. Muir, "Iran: Release of Confidential
Records," November 16, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
The British embassy in Washington is alerted to the possibility
of documents being released on the 1952-54 period. The FCO clearly expects
that, as apparently has been the case in the past, "there should be no
difficulty for the Americans in first removing … copies of any telegrams etc
from us and US documents which record our views, even in the case of papers
which are not strictly speaking 'official information furnished by a foreign
government.'" (This raises important questions about how far U.S.
officials typically go to accommodate allied sensibilities, including to the
point of censoring U.S. documents.) "What is not clear," the letter
continues, "is whether they could withhold American documents which
referred to joint Anglo/US views about, say, the removal of Musaddiq in
1953."
Document 32:
British Embassy in Washington, Letter, R.J.S. Muir to R.S. Gorham,
"Iran" Release of Confidential Records," December 14, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
This follow-up to Gorham's earlier request (Document 31) is
another reflection of U.K. skittishness about the pending document release. The
embassy officer reports that he has spoken to Henry Precht "several
times" about it, and that the British Desk at the State Department is also
looking into the matter on London's behalf. The objective is to persuade the
Department to agree to withhold not only British documents but American ones,
too.
Document 33:
British Embassy in Washington, Letter, R.J.S. Muir to R.S. Gorham, "Iran:
Release of Confidential Records," December 22, 1978
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
The embassy updates the FCO on the status of the Iran records.
Precht informs the embassy that he is prepared to "sit on the papers"
to help postpone their publication. Precht's priority is the potential impact
on current U.S. and U.K. policy toward Iran. Conversely, a historian at the
State Department makes it clear that his office feels no obligation even to
consult with the British about any non-U.K. documents being considered. The
historian goes on to say "that he had in the past resisted requests from
other governments for joint consultation and would resist very strongly any
such request from us." But the same historian admits that the embassy
might "be successful" if it approached the policy side of the
Department directly.
The embassy letter ends with a "footnote" noting that
State Department historians "have read the 1952-54 papers and find them a
'marvelous compilation.'"
Interestingly, a handwritten comment on the letter from another
FCO official gives a different view about the likely consequences of the
upcoming document publication: "As the revolution [in Iran] is upon us,
the problem is no longer Anglo-American: the first revelations will be from the
Iranian side." In other words, the revolution will bring its own damaging
results, and the revolutionaries will not need any further ammunition from the
West.
Source: TNA: PRO FCO 8/3216
In a handwritten remark at the bottom of this cover note, an
unidentified FCO official voices much less anxiety than some of his colleagues
about the possible repercussions of the disclosure of documents on Iran.
Referring to a passage in paragraph 3 of the attached letter (see previous
document), the writer asks: "why should we be concerned about 'any other
documents'?" The writer agrees with the cover note author's suggestion to
"let this matter rest for a while," then continues: "I think we
ought positively to seek the agreement of others interested to Y."
("Y" identifies the relevant passage on the cover note.)
Source : British National Archives, FCO
8/3351, File No. NB P 011/1 (Part A), Title "Internal Political Situation
in Iran"
British Foreign Secretary David Owen chairs this FCO meeting on
the unfolding crisis in Iran. It offers a window into London's assessment of
the revolution and British concerns for the future (including giving "highest
priority to getting paid for our major outstanding debts"). The document
also shows that not everyone at the FCO believed significant harm would
necessarily come to British interests from the FRUS revelations. Although he is
speaking about events in 1978, I.T.M. Lucas' comment could apply just as
forcefully to the impact of disclosing London's actions in 1953: "[I]t was
commonly known in [the Iranian] Government who the British were talking to, and
there was nothing we could do to disabuse public opinion of its notions about
the British role in Iran." (p. 2)
NOTES
[1]
Just in the last several years, books in English, French and Persian by Ervand
Abrahamian, Gholam-Reza Afkhami, Mohammad Amini, Christopher de Bellaigue,
Darioush Bayandor, Mark Gasiorowski (and this author), Stephen Kinzer, Abbas
Milani, Ali Rahnema, and others have focused on, or at least dealt in depth
with, Mosaddeq and the coup. They contain sometimes wide differences of view
about who was behind planning for the overthrow and how it finally played out.
More accounts are on the way (including an important English-language volume on
Iranian domestic politics by Ali Rahnema of the American University of Paris).
[2]
Tim Weiner, "C.I.A. Destroyed Files on 1953 Iran Coup," The New York Times, May 29, 1997.
[3]
Tim Weiner, "C.I.A.'s Openness Derided as a 'Snow Job'," The New York Times, May 20, 1997; Tim Weiner, op. cit., May 29, 1997.
(See also the link to the Archive's lawsuit, above.)
[4]
Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of
Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979); The New York Times, April 16, 2000.
[5]
Precht recalls that he was originally not slated to be at the meetings, which
usually deputy assistant secretaries and above attended. But the Near East
division representative for State was unavailable. "I was drafted,"
Precht said. Being forced to "sit through interminable and pointless
talk" about extraneous topics "when my plate was already
overflowing" on Iran contributed to a "sour mood," he
remembered. (Henry Precht e-mail to author, June 2, 2011.)
[6] Joshua
Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "'A Burden for
the Department'?: To The 1991 FRUS Statute,"
February 6, 2012, http://history.state.gov/frus150/research/to-the-1991-frus-statute.
Did
Trump Do the Right Thing with Iran?
How people across the political spectrum
are taking stock of his latest shock to the world order.
By Spencer Bokat-Lindell
Mr.
Bokat-Lindell is a writer in The New York Times Opinion section.
·
NY Times, Jan. 9, 2020
Credit...Illustration by The New York Times;
photographs by Arash Khamooshi and Al Drago for The New York Times, Mehdi
Ghasemi/ISNA, Via Associated Press
This article is part of the Debatable
newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Nothing unites Washington like war. But then
nothing divides it, and scrambles it, quite like Donald Trump.
A Republican senator called the
administration’s defense of the president’s decision to kill Iran’s most
powerful commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, with a drone strike on Iraqi
soil “absolutely insane.” A Democratic senator, evoking
the rhetorical stylings of George W. Bush, called Iran a nation “full of malevolent
evildoers.” People are still trying to make sense of what happened and what
it will mean: Was it justified ethically? Was it wise strategically?
I’ve read more than 30 articles on the debate.
Here are the points worth paying attention to.
‘Trump
won the first round’
General Suleimani’s death deals a huge blow to
Iran’s plans for regional domination, writes Hassan Hassan, the director of the
nonstate actors program at the Center for Global Policy.
·
“His work took a long time to bear fruit in Iraq and Lebanon,
but he had not yet had the same time nor secured the same connections in such
places as Syria and Yemen,” he says.
·
“His death does not mark the end of Iran’s hegemonic project,
but it does serve a heavy blow to the regime’s ability to expand its influence
and deal with erupting crises.”
General Suleimani’s assassination could also
open the door to diplomacy, says Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and the president of
Eurasia Group. Mr. Bremmer notes that Mr. Trump took a similar tack of
escalation when he threatened Mexico with tariffs if it didn’t tighten its
border, which it eventually
vowed to do. He tweeted:
The strike was necessary because the United
States’ deterrence strategy with Iran wasn’t working, Marc A. Thiessen, a
former speechwriter for George W. Bush, writes in The
Washington Post.
·
“Iran had been carrying out increasingly bold attacks —
attacking Japanese and Norwegian oil tankers, then an unmanned U.S.
drone and then Saudi oil facilities,” he writes. “Our lack of serious response
emboldened Iran to escalate further.”
·
General Suleimani’s killing shows that “Trump
is serious about enforcing his red line” against killing Americans and “creating a
measure of deterrence,” writes Max Boot in The Washington Post.
“Other international actors, including North Korea, will now be more wary of
provoking Trump.”
This apparent victory seems to have been won
at a reasonable cost, argue the editors of
National Review, since Iran’s retaliation, at least for now, was limited and
caused no American casualties.
‘An
egregious violation’
The assassination of General Suleimani was wrong, writes Greg Shupak in Jacobin. “The United
States has no right to bomb other countries, to try to overthrow governments,
or to assassinate other states’ officials, though it has been doing so for so
long that these practices have come to be widely accepted as natural,” he
writes, noting how the United States
orchestrated the coup in 1953 that overthrew Iran’s democracy.
·
The assassination was also illegal, argues Karen Greenberg in The Times. “In employing the euphemism
‘targeted killing’ for a member of a sovereign state,” she writes, “the Trump
administration has exposed the faulty assumptions and dangerous legacy posed by
the war on terror’s targeted killing policy.” (Gerald Ford banned assassination in 1976, but succeeding
presidents have simply narrowed the definition of assassination.)
·
The policy has unacceptable implications, writes Ryan Cooper: “If it’s fine to kill Iranian statesmen
while they are traveling to a peace conference, in public and undefended, then
it’s fine for Iran (or some other power) to blow up, say, Vice President Pence
when he is on a diplomatic trip to Ireland or somewhere.”
Both parties are to blame for executive
overreach, writes Andrew Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and
the president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, calling
Congress “pusillanimous and supine” for having long since forfeited its
constitutional authority to make and unmake war.
·
The Democrats complaining “deserve not a respectful hearing but
contempt,” he writes, for “their behavior over the past decade and more in
giving presidents a free hand to wage war however they see fit cannot be
described as anything but cowardly.”
·
"It was, after all, President Obama who pioneered the role
of assassin-in-chief to which Trump has now laid claim.”
‘No
coherent strategy’
The real question to ask about the
assassination was not whether it was justified, but whether it was wise, writes The Times editorial board. General Suleimani was
“indisputably an enemy of the American people,” they write, but the
administration has offered no specific evidence of the “imminent threat”
it said General Suleimani posed to the United States or how his death
supposedly resolved it.
Instead, Trump has only produced a more
dangerous Iran, Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at Johns Hopkins University, told The Times’s Michelle Goldberg.
·
“Already,” Ms. Goldberg writes, “NATO has suspended its mission training Iraqi forces
to fight ISIS. Iraq’s Parliament has voted to expel American troops — a
longtime Iranian objective.”
·
A country that was recently fractured by protests and a brutal crackdown
will now unify behind the regime, which has already named General Suleimani’s
successor, says Narges Bajoghli in The Times.
There is no hope now to revive the Iran
nuclear deal, writes Susan Rice, the national security adviser to Barack
Obama. Iran announced that it would stop observing the deal’s restrictions
on its nuclear fuel production.
·
“We must expect Iran will accelerate its efforts to revive its
nuclear program without constraint,” she writes.
·
“Iran has cast off nuclear curbs so that it is
now potentially within five months of having enough fuel for a nuclear warhead, down from almost 15
years when Trump took office,” says The Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
The biggest losers will be the Iranian people, writes Barbara Slavin. “The Iranian regime
will not fall but will be more ruthless than ever, seeing American plots
against it around every corner,” she predicts. “The regime will outlast
President Trump, and so, unfortunately, will the devastation caused by his
actions.
‘We
don’t know yet’
There was reason on Wednesday for relief that
the United States and Iran had avoided a plunge into full-scale war, writes The Washington
Post’s editorial board. “But Mr. Trump’s manifest lack of clear
goals or strategy in the Middle East, combined with his readiness to launch
strikes or order troop movements on impulse, is cause for continued alarm,”
they write.
The United States should still be worried, Ilan Goldenberg, a senior
fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New
American Security, told Jen Kirby at Vox. Iran could still launch
cyberattacks or terrorist attacks, target American embassies or assassinate
American officials, he says. “I think all those things are entirely on the
table for potentially years, frankly, in retaliation.”
Do you have a point of view we missed? Email
us at debatable@nytimes.com. Please note your name,
age and location in your response, which may be included in the next
newsletter.
FOR
MORE CONTEXT
When is killing an assassination? [The New York Times]
Can Trump make foreign policy a Democratic campaign issue? [The New York Times]
letters
An
Attack by Iran, Then an Easing of Tensions
Writers discuss the attack on American air
bases and the speech by President Trump.
NY Times, Jan. 8, 2020
President
Trump spoke about Iran Wednesday at the White House.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
To the Editor:
Iran could have reacted two ways to the
assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. It could have bombed
the hell out of us, killing hundreds of Americans. That would have forced
America to respond in kind, and the end result would have been the feared war
that nobody wanted. Or the Iranians could phone in a warning and then lob a
bunch of low-rent missiles into an unoccupied part of two Iraqi bases.
Obviously, that’s the option it chose.
The president killed General Suleimani for two reasons: because President Barack
Obama wouldn’t, and because he knew it would take the emphasis off his
impeachment trial and bolster his ratings with his followers. The schoolyard
bully poked and prodded a hostile enemy until it responded, then made up a
story about pending terrorist attacks and his awesome response to the threat.
As a former military member, I cried when I
heard about the attacks on our bases. I thought of all those young American men
and women who were going to die in the name of Donald Trump’s maniacal bravado. Then I realized that Iran
didn’t target the Americans; it targeted Mr. Trump’s ego. And in the process
both sides got what they wanted.
Iran won’t get an ill-fated U.S. attack on its
critical infrastructure. Mr. Trump hopes this boosts his chances of getting
re-elected by followers who honestly think he saved us from Iranian terrorism.
Jeffery Donaldson
Las Vegas
Las Vegas
To the Editor:
I am thankful that at least for now, President
Trump seems to be backing off from engaging in further provocation of our
implacable foe, Iran. Obviously, some reasonable individual has gotten through
to him that to continue the dangerous game of tit for tat could be ruinous to
our country and our allies.
Mr. Trump’s incompetence and impetuousness
brought about the assassination of one of the most revered and powerful
individuals in Iran. The world has been ridden of an evil and bloodthirsty man,
but at what cost? It would be reasonable to expect that Iran and its network of
proxies would respond with vengeance, and we have seen the outrage of millions
of its people in the streets since the killing.
If we are able to emerge from this with no
loss of life or limb by our soldiers and civilians, which seems to be the case
as I write this, we should consider ourselves lucky. Let us hope that this is
not simply the calm before the storm.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township, Pa.
Peters Township, Pa.
To the Editor:
“Long Before President’s Drone Strike, Iran Hawks Pushed
for the Killing of a General” (news article, Jan. 7) is spot on. The
assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was utterly brilliant, in
conception and in execution. General Suleimani had the blood of numerous
victims on his hands.
I’m appalled that the Democrats can’t see that
the swing voters whom they need in order to beat President Trump won’t respond
well to criticism of the assassination. They are so full of disdain for Mr.
Trump that they are helping him to be re-elected rather than agree with
anything he does.
Those of us who really dislike Mr. Trump
should check if we are forming our opinion of General Suleimani’s killing
because of our antipathy for the president. If Barack Obama had authorized the
killing of General Suleimani, as he did for Osama bin Laden, what would we say?
Gilad Stern
Cape Town
Cape Town
To the Editor:
I thank Ms. Moaveni for her thoughtful
perspective and insights. I’m of the generation that had the privilege to
attend an American university during the 1960s along with quite a few Iranian
students, and to work weekends at a restaurant with several of them who, like
me, needed a bit of income to keep body and soul together.
They were wonderful young people, and that
very positive experience is a vivid memory. It stimulated a lifelong interest
in Iran and its peoples. Now, in my declining years, and with these recent
events, I am saddened to realize that I am unlikely to ever be able to visit
their country and learn more about their culture.
Could our two countries do what is needed to
heal our differences and return to a state of mutual respect and appreciation?
I sincerely hope so.
John R. Martin
Sarasota, Fla.
Sarasota, Fla.
'We were
ready.' Trump signals at Ohio rally that Soleimani strike will be 2020 issue
John Fritze and David Jackson USA TODAY
Published 9:10 PM
EST Jan 9, 2020
WASHINGTON – President
Donald Trump touted his decision to order the killing of Qasem Soleimani at a
campaign rally in Ohio on Thursday, describing the Iranian general as a
"sadistic mass murderer" and signaling the confrontation will play
into his reelection campaign.
Days after a
crisis with Iran threatened to upend his presidency and drag the U.S. into
another Middle East war, Trump spoke at length about what he described as
"bold and decisive action" to "deliver American justice"
via a U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport that
killed Soleimani last week.
"He was
looking very seriously at our embassies," Trump said. "We stopped him
quickly and we stopped him cold."
The rally –
Trump's first of 2020 – provided the president a venue to explain the latest
developments in the Middle East and the perilous relationship between the U.S.
and Iran to his supporters. Trump's extensive remarks on Iran suggested he will
use the strike on Soleimani to laud his
foreign policy to voters in this
year's election.
Trump touched on
the Iranian response to Soleimani's death, saying the U.S. was "ready
to go" if Iran's rocket attack inflicted additional damage or resulted in
the death of U.S. soldiers stationed on the two Iraqi bases that were targeted. Trump said Iran "hit us with 16
missiles" but that he decided to stand down after he saw the relatively
minor impact, which he attributed to a "pretty good warning
system."
"So we didn't do anything...Not that I wanted to,
but we were ready" he said. "You have no idea. Lot of people got very
lucky."
War powers: House votes to limit Trump's ability to wage
war with Iran after Soleimani
The crowd roared as Trump discussed the strike and
blasted Democrats for attempting to curb his ability to launch strikes against
Iran. Trump's rally came hours after the Democratic-led House passed a
resolution aimed at limiting his war powers. Democrats have criticized
Trump for not consulting Congress on the Soleimani strike and have
accused him of recklessness.
"We got a call. We heard where he was," Trump
said. "And we had to make a decision. We didn't have time to call up Nancy
[Pelosi], who is not operating with a full deck."
In the aftermath of the strike against Soleimani
Republicans embraced the move and praised Trump for taking action against a
country that has been widely perceived as a bad actor in the Middle
East. But the president can't necessarily count on the issue unifying
American voters ahead of the election.
Americans by more than 2-1 said the killing of
Soleimani has made the United States less safe, a nationwide USA TODAY/Ipsos
Poll found Thursday. A majority of those surveyed, by 52%-34%, called
Trump's behavior with Iran "reckless."
More: Americans say Soleimani's killing made US less
safe, Trump 'reckless' on Iran
Americans were divided on the wisdom of the drone strike
at the Baghdad airport that killed Soleimani and others: 42% supported it,
33% opposed it; 25% said they didn't know what to think. Republicans were much
more supportive than Democrats; independents were almost evenly split.
President
Donald Trump points as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally, Thursday, Jan.
9, 2020, in Toledo, Ohio. (AP Photo/ Jacquelyn Martin) ORG XMIT: OHJM107
Jacquelyn
Martin, AP
"We seek friends, not enemies," Trump told the
rally audience.
But, he added, "if you dare to threaten our
citizens, you do so at your own grave peril."
Minutes after Trump took the stage his remarks were
interrupted by protesters holding a banner that read: "NO
WAR."
The Toledo rally is one of three Trump has scheduled this
month. The others are set for Wisconsin, a critical state for his reelection
effort, and New Jersey. It was his first major political event since the
confrontation with Iran escalated.
Trump has raised Iran at virtually every political rally
he has hosted since entering the White House in 2017. His remarks on one of
Washington's most challenging foes in the Middle East have generally focused on
the 2015 multi-national nuclear agreement that offered sanctions relief
in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear program.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement in 2018,
arguing it did not do enough to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions.
President
Donald Trump
Ralph Freso
Iran and the U.S. both moved Wednesday to deescalate
the confrontation. Trump largely avoided saber-rattling during a nine-minute
address to the nation and even suggested the possibility of a diplomatic
resolution to the crisis. Iranian leaders, including foreign
minister Javad Zarif described the attack as "self-defense."
Iran crash: Trump says he thinks 'something very terrible
happened' to Ukraine jet
Trump address: Trump, Tehran step back from war footing
after Iran's attack in Iraq
Trump faced a similar test in 2017 as his rhetoric over
North Korea began to boil. Trump held an Arizona rally at the end of August
just weeks after he threatened to rain "fire and fury" on North
Korea. Trump raised the issue at that rally, though his remarks were
overshadowed by his comments about the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
"What I said, that's not strong enough," Trump
said, referring to his "fire and fury" tweet. "Some people said
it's too strong; it's not strong enough. But Kim Jong Un, I respect the fact
that I believe he is starting to respect us. I respect that fact very
much."
The rally in Ohio also comes as House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi is poised to send impeachment articles to the Senate, which will
determine whether to remove Trump from office. Pelosi said Thursday that she
would transmit those articles "soon." The Republican-led Senate is
expected to acquit Trump on the charges of abusing his power and
obstructing the congressional probe into his interactions with Ukraine.
Protesters hold
signs as President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, on
January 9, 2020.
SAUL LOEB, AFP
via Getty Images
Trump slammed Pelosi and other Democrats for
pursuing the impeachment, arguing that the House speaker is
"not playing with a full deck."
More: Pelosi says she'll send Senate articles of
impeachment against Trump 'soon'
More: Trump says environmental policy change would fix
'regulatory nightmare'
Trump carried Ohio in the 2016 election with nearly 52%
of the vote. By rallying in Toledo he can also draw from supporters in nearby
Michigan, which he won narrowly.
Contributing: Susan Page, Nicholas Wu,
Christal Hayes
Published 9:10 PM EST Jan 9, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment