Mesopotamia Burning, Part II

U.S. involvement in the Middle East didn’t just start with the first two Gulf Wars against Iraq but stretches back by more than half-a-century when the CIA and British SIS were involved in a coup to overthrow the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. The roots of this coup stretch back all the way to 1901 when exclusive rights to drill in Iran’s southern provinces was giving to William Knox D’Arcy, who in 1908 struck oil during a time when the mighty British navy was starting to convert all of its ships from steam power to oil. Just before the outbreak of World War I the British Parliament voted in favor for allowing the British government to invest £2.2 million in order to by up 51% of the shares of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (latter the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, or AIOC). This essentially gave Britain the right to exploit the oil resources of Iran any way it wanted since it had the majority of the company’s stock, consequently Britain only gave 16% of its oil revenue to the government of Iran until 1932 when Iran and Britain renegotiated its contracts, yet Britain still came out on top and Iran was still being exploited. (1)

The dispute between the British and Iran began in late 1948 when the Iranian government wanted to renegotiate its contract with the AIOC, which was not an unusual act to do and wouldn’t have been a large concern for the AIOC or the British government. Through these negotiations the Shah (the monarch of Iran) and Britain came up with a supplemental oil agreement on July 17, 1949.(2) But, on July 19, 1949 the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) took the unprecedented action in refusing to ratify the supplemental oil agreement which would have given some concessions to Iran but would still put Britain in control over the oil reserves in Iran,(3) and hence, control over what to do with the vast majority of the wealth accrued by those oil reserves. In March of 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh, then a member of the Majlis, submitted a bill to nationalize the AIOC and to pass control of Iran’s oil reserves from Britain to Iran. The bill was quickly passed and in late April Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister by the Majlis and his election was confirmed by being appointed to Prime Minister by the Shah.(4) Even though Iran wasn’t a top priority for the Truman administration the nationalizing of the oil industry in Iran caught the attention of the U.S. which was worried that the actions taken by the Majlis and the objections of Britain and the AIOC would “jeopardize Western access to oil.”(5) The effort to nationalize the oil industry in Iran was met with extreme hostility by the British government who threatened military action in order to protect their regional interests.(6) The Truman administration (and latter the Eisenhower administration) became concerned over how the British were handling the situation and accused the British of being reckless in their attempts to quell Iranian resistance to nationalizing the oil industry. Yet even with these criticisms the Truman administration began to consider a policy of overthrow in Iran in order to protect its “vital interests” in the region by planning “for the specific military, economic, diplomatic, and psychological measures which should be taken to support a non-communist Iranian government or to prevent all or part of Iran or adjacent areas from falling under communist domination...” and “Politico military discussion with the British government...”(7) The situation continued to deteriorate with Britain blockading Iran and Mossadegh ordering the expulsion of all British AIOC employees and claiming that nationalization of the oil industry was Iran’s sovereign right. Along with American plans to overthrow Mossadegh Britain was also planning an overthrow with the help of pro-British politicians, business interests, military officials, and powerful elites in Iran.(8) Along with British business interests, such as the AIOC trying to protect its monopoly in the region, American business interests were interested in Iran as well. U.S. oil companies within the Middle Eastern region tended to stay away from Iran due to the fact that, [1] the AIOC controlled most of the oil in the region and [2] because of the intense nationalism building up in the country against Western influence and business (i.e., neo-colonialism) many American oil CEOs saw the region as to volatile to do business and make a profit (business ties within the U.S. government were so strong that the CIA man in charge of the coup operation later became vice-president of Gulf Oil(9)). Yet with nationalist influence out of the way (such as Mossadegh and the Iranian National Front) this could pave the way for further oil exploration and exploitation in Iran by U.S. companies. In fact, after the coup, an agreement had been announced to give U.S. corporations a 40% share in Iran’s oil output.(10) On August 10, 1953, after much planning between the British and the U.S. the Shah agreed to talk to Iranian General Zahedi and a few other army officers involved in the coup plot, three days after that meeting the Shah signed a decree to support the CIA and SIS backed coup against Mossadegh.(11)

The coup began on August 15 but was met with disastrous results at first, with the Shah fleeing Iran to Baghdad. Immediately after the failed coup Mossadegh arrested key military leaders of the coup and in a fatal mistake decided to dissolved the Majlis. Yet on August 19 the tide started to turn with pro-Shah crowds building up in the streets in Tehran. Immediately the British and Americans began to exploit the situation(12) by using agents on the ground to actively participate these crowds and to lead and direct their anger against Mossadegh.(13) Eventually Mossadegh and his supporters were captured by the pro-Shah and General Zahedi forces and Mossadegh was put on trial and tried for treason and sentenced to three years of solitary confinement. After the fall of Mossadegh the Shah and the new Prime Minister Zahedi took absolute control over Iran and put in place a repressive and authoritarian regime that banned all forms of dissent and opposition against the government and allowed the AIOC to keep control of its oil and began to allow American corporations to drill for oil as well. With the destruction of democracy in Iran by the American and British governments (all though Mossadegh did take some authoritarian actions himself as well(14)) and the repressive policies of the Shah opposition began to, again, grow against the Shah, but instead of nationalist secular opposition that was more inclined to democracy this new opposition was more Islamic centered with rigid theocratic reactionist figures such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.(15) Instead of a country that was steeped in democracy, by 1979 Iran had been ruled over by an iron fisted dictator for a little over a quarter of a century. This stunting of the political process in 1953 due to the coup eventually led to the overthrow of the Shah and the Iranian Islamic revolution in where Iran, instead of being ruled by a secular monarch, or a democratic parliamentary government, was now ruled by a Shia Islamic theocracy. In was in direct consequence of the 1953 coup that the Iranian clerics rose to power in a country were political discussion was outlawed and the only alternative was hardened fundamentalist religious dissent.(16)

Shortly after the Iranian revolution in 1979 Saddam Hussein, who had just recently took power in Iraq after a Ba’ath party “purging” on July 22, 1979,(17) and who was also a secular dictator, began to worry about the events in Shia Iran (despite an earlier positive response) and his own hold of power as a Sunni secular dictator in a country that was predominantly Shia. After many hostile exchanges between the two countries Ayatollah Khomeini called upon Iraqi Shia’s to rise up against “Saddam’s government” on June 9, 1980. Boarder clashes between the two countries, which had been going on since April of that year, started to escalate into full blown battles involving heavy weapons such as artillery, air power, and tanks.(18) Because of the rhetoric coming from the Iranian leadership, and Hussein’s own personal goals, the Iraqi leadership decided to go forward and invade Iran. On September 22, 1980 Iraq invaded the western boarder region of Iran, the Khuzestan province. Some of the reasons for the war was that Hussein wanted to gain control over the oil producing region of Iran’s Khuzestan province, he also wanted to reassert Iraq’s sovereignty on both banks of the Shatt al-Arab river (a border region which was a demarcation line between the two countries after a 1975 agreement but earlier had been territory of Iraq which Iran disregarded as Iraqi territory despite a border agreement between the two countries in 1937(19)), and, of course, Hussein’s concern over attempts by the Islamic Shia government in Iran to incite rebellion within the Shia population in Iraq against their secular Sunni leader.(20) Early on in the war Iraq took the advantage when it took over the Khuzestan province and severed Iranian control from the entire region of the Shatt al-Arab river. At first, the initial strategy of the war for Iraq, as Efraim Karsh, a professor at King’s College, University of London, puts it, “focused almost exclusively on counter-force targets, taking care to avoid targets of value. It was only after Iran had started to strike strategic non-military targets in the Iraqi hinterland that Iraq responded in kind.”(21) Yet soon after these Iraqi gains the Iranian army counter-attacked and in May of 1982 Iran recaptured much of its territory causing an Iraqi retreat across the border. Soon after, both army’s fought bloody battles, but it was clear that a stalemate had developed between both sides.(22)

After the overthrow of the Shah, who was Washington’s biggest ally in the region, the United States started to become nervous over the prospect of the Islamic revolution in Iran sweeping to other allied countries in the Middle East (including all the way to Pakistan).(23) With Iran emerging as a threat to the region against U.S. client states (such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) and Iraq in the loose orbit of the Soviet Union (as the Soviet Union supplied arms to Iraq) a conflict between the two countries served U.S. interests since two powerful countries were concentrating on battling each other, thus creating an opportunity for the U.S. to setup a new foothold in the region.(24) Shortly after the start of the war the U.S. decided not to sell weapons to Iran and convinced Israel to not sell weapons to Iran either (Israel viewed Iraq as a greater threat) as long as Americans were still held hostage in the embassy in Tehran.(25) Despite Iraq’s ties with the Soviet Union Hussein decided to seek help from the U.S. after the Soviet Union cut off all arms exports to Iraq and Iran, which provided an opportunity for the U.S. to influence policy in Iraq and in turn help further influence the oil producing Middle Eastern region to a greater extent. Right before the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Morris Draper’s visit to Baghdad, despite no official diplomatic ties between the two countries, in April of 1981, William L. Eagleton wrote to the Department of State, “The atmosphere here is excellent following our decision not to sell arms to Iran. The increased Iraqi commerce and contacts with the U.S.,- mutual upgrading of diplomatic staffs and, most recently, HHE go ahead of five Boeing aircraft for Iraq...we now have a greater convergence of interests with Iraq than at any time since the revolution of 1958.”(26) (Referring to the overthrow of the conservative Hashemite monarchy in Iraq which originally had been set up by the British). With Iraq increasingly on the defensive due to Iranian “human-wave” tactics and the underestimating of Iranian strength the U.S. looked to put the balance of power back into Hussein’s hands, one way to do that was to remove Iraq from the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism” in 1982 (the Reagan administration further fought efforts from Congress to put Iraq back on the list in 1985).(27) Iraq also began using chemical weapons against Iran from Western corporations and U.S. subsidiaries, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, with the explicit knowledge of the U.S. government. Yet despite what the government said about Iraq having “acquired a CW [chemical weapons] production capability” and “Iraq’s almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]”(28) the United States decided to send Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq as a presidential envoy to meet with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and President Saddam Hussein in order to restore full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the U.S., which happened in 1984.(29) At the same time that Iraq was being given weapons from U.S. subsidiaries and other corporations from France and Britain the National Security Council, through Israel, was selling antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran to use against Iraq in order to use the money from those sales to aid the Contras in their fight against the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua which caused an uproar in November of 1986 and undermined Reagan’s image of being “tough against terrorism.”(30)


Despite this debacle and revelations from the media and activists during the mid-1980s the United States, along with Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Western nations and allies, continued to support Iraq in its war against the Shia Islamic government in Iran and turned a blind eye to Iraq’s continued use of chemical weapons relentlessly against Iranian troops, and, latter, the Iraqi Kurds in the north. With the support and with very little condemnation of its abhorrent tactics by the Western nations (the United States in 1986 voted against a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn Iraq for it’s use of mustard gas(31)) Hussein started initiating a massive build-up of chemical and biological weapons, as well as reviving its nuclear program (which was set back due to an Israeli air strike in 1981), which by the time of the gulf war was on the verge of creating a nuclear explosive.(32) To further Iraq’s cause in the war the U.S. arranged large sums of money in the form of loans to help keep Iraq afloat due to its massive war expenditures by using its “client states” such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as venues in where Iraq could receive the money;(33) the U.S. also allowed “crop-spraying” helicopters to be sold to Iraq (which would be used against the Kurds in 1988),(34) let Dow Chemicals ship its chemicals to Iraq, and sent in air force personal to work with the Iraqi air force, “and approved technological exports to Iraq’s missile procurement agency to extend the” range of Iraq’s missiles. On top of this logistical support it also provided Iraq with military satellite data on Iranian troop movements and also helped Iraq form battle plans, despite its recent gassing of the Kurdish population. And in late 1987 to early 1988 U.S. forces participated in attacks against Iranian ships and oil rigs.(35)

The Iran-Iraq war finally officially ended in 1990 (after a 1988 ceasefire) with an estimated one to two million Iraqis and Iranians killed during the near 10 year war and around 100,000 Kurdish dead due to Hussein’s military and gas attacks.(36) With impressive economic growth during the 1970s due to rising oil costs around the world Iraq’s economy entered the close of the Iran-Iraq War in tatters with high unemployment, rising inflation, and massive amounts of foreign debt due to the inpouring of money during the war from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The oil revenues generated in 1980 to 1988 fell from $26 billion to $11 billion and concluded with a massive 9% drop in GDP from 1988 to 1989 (which already was at low levels to begin with). With the Iraqi state in crisis and owing billions of dollars to multiple foreign countries, including a substantial amount to Kuwait Hussein looked towards outside sources to help keep his state going, one country in particular, with large deposits of oil looked like a viable solution, Kuwait. (37)

Notes

1. Zahrani, Mostafa T. “The Coup That Changed the Middle East: Mossadeq v. The CIA in
Retrospect.” World Policy Journal 19, no. 2 (Summer 2002), 93-94.
2. Marsh, Steve. “The United States, Iran and Operation ‘Ajax’: Inverting Interpretative
Orthodoxy.” Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 3 (July 2003), 2.
3. Zahrani, “The Coup That Changed the Middle East,” 94.
4. Koch, Scott A. “‘Zendebad, Shah!’: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Fall of Iranian
Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, August 1953.” Top Secrete Draft History, History Staff,
Central Intelligence Agency. June 1998. Available from The National Security Archive
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran980600.pdf (accessed August 26, 2006), 11.
5. Ibid., 9.
6. Marsh, “The United States, Iran and Operation ‘Ajax,’”
7. “United States Policy Regarding the Present Situation in Iran.” A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary. Nov. 20, 1952.
8. Zahrani, “The Coup That Changed the Middle East,” 94-95.
9. Monthly Research Unit for Political Economy. “Behind the War On Iraq.” Monthly Review 55, no. 1 (May 2003), 25.
10. Ibid., 96.
11. Risen, James. “Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran.” New York Times on the Web, 2000.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-chapter2.html (accessed August 29, 2006).
12. Ibid., http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-chapter4.html (Accessed August 29, 2006).
13. Wilber, Donald. “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953.” CIA Clandestine Service History, 70.
14. Koch, “ “‘Zendebad, Shah,” 6.
15. Zahrani, “The Coup That Changed the Middle East,” 97.
16. Ibid., 97-99.
17. “Saddam Hussein.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein.
18. Karsh, Efraim. “Military Power and Foreign Policy Goals: The Iran-Iraq War Revisted.”
International Affairs 64, no. 1 (Winter 1987/1988), 88.
19. Ibid., 85-86.
20. “Iran-Iraq War.” Encyclopedia Britannica (2006). Available from Encyclopedia Britannica
Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9042742 (accessed August 29, 2006); Karsh, “Military Power and Foreign Policy Goals,” 87.
21. Karsh, “Military Power and Foreign Policy Goals,” 92.
22. Rundle, Christopher. “The Iran/Iraq Conflict.” Asian Affairs 17, no. 2 (June 1986), 130.
23. Monthly Review Research Unit for Political Economy. “Behind the War On Iraq.” Monthly
Review 55, no. 1 (May 2003), 29; Falk, Richard. “America’s Pro-Iraqi Neutrality.” The Nation
231, no. 13 (Oct. 25, 1980), 398.
24. Monthly Review, “Behind the War On Iraq,” 29-30.
25. “Conversations with (censored).” United States Embassy in Israel Cable from Samuel W. Lewis
to Department of State. Dec. 12, 1980.
26. “Prospects for DAS Draper’s Visit to Baghdad.” United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable
from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. April 4, 1981, 2.
27. Monthly Review, “Behind the War On Iraq,” 30.
28. “Iraq Use of Chemical Weapons.” Department of State, Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs
Information Memorandum from Jonathan T. Howe to George P. Shultz. Nov. 1, 1983.
29. “Rumsfeld Visit to Iraq.” Department of State Cable from Kenneth W. Dam to the United States Interests Section in Iraq. Dec. 7, 1983; “Talking Points for Amb. Rumsfeld’s Meeting with Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein.” United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the United States Embassy in Jordan. Dec. 14, 1983; “Rumssfeld’s Larger Meetin with Iraqi Deputy PM and FM [Tariq] Aziz.” Dec. 19, 1983; “Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.” United States Embassy in United Kingdom Cable from Charles H. Price II to Department of State. Dec. 21, 1983.
30. “Iran Contra Affair.” Encyclopedia Britannica (2006). Available from Encyclopedia
Britannica Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9042741 (accessed September 1, 2006).
31. Monthly Review, “Behind the War On Iraq,” 30.
32. Bahgat, Gawdat. “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Iraq and Iran.” Journal of
Social, Political & Economic Studies 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003), 428.
33. Monthly Review, “Behind the War On Iraq,” 30.
34. “Bell Discussed Possible Helicopter Sale to Iraq.” United States Interests Section. Iraq Cable
from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. April 12, 1984.
35. Monthly Review, “Behind the War On Iraq,” 30-31.
36. “Iran-Iraq War.” Encyclopedia Britannica (2006). Available from Encyclopedia Britannica
Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9042742 (accessed August 29, 2006)
37. Alnasrawi, Abbas. “Oil, Sanctions, Debt and the Future.” Arab Studies Quarterly 23, no. 4
(Fall 2001), 6.