[Mb-civic] VERY, VERY INTERESTING ABOUT THE SHAH

[Michael Butler]

Reza sent me this. It should be read with great interest. It will give
background on my concern of our abysmal record of another debacle in the
Middle East where I spent so much time.
Michael

 Subject: What Really Happed to the Shah of Iran (MustRead)

 
What Really Happed to the Shah of Iran
By Ernst Schroeder <mailto:eschrod60 at hotmail.com>
http://www.payvand.com/news/06/mar/1090.html
<http://www.payvand.com/news/06/mar/1090.html>  My name is Ernst Schroeder,
and since I have some Iranian friends from school and review your online
magazine occasionally, I thought I'd pass on the following three page quote
from a book I read a few months ago entitled, "A Century Of War :
Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/074532309X/netnative> ", which was
written by William Engdahl, a German historianm .  This is a book about how
oil and politics have been intertwined for the past 100 years. I submit the
below passage for direct publishing on your website, as I think the quote
will prove to be significant for anyone of Persian descent.
  

order from amazon 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/074532309X/netnative>  "In November
1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another
member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task
force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski.  Ball recommended
that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the
fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini.  Robert Bowie
from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup
against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.
Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic
fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis,
then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States.  Lewis's
scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria,
endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order
to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and
religious lines.  Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous
groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts,
Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth.  The chaos would spread in what he termed
an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet
Union.  The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was
run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American,
Brzezinski, taking public 'credit' for getting rid of the 'corrupt' Shah,
while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.
During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and
British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement.  By
October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded
exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee
purchase of the oil.  With their dependence on British-controlled export
apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil
sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in
Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere.  In its lead editorial that September,
Iran's Kayhan International stated: In retrospect, the 25-year partnership
with the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with
British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for
Iran ? Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should
plan to handle all operations by itself. London was blackmailing and putting
enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian
oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed
minimum of 5 million barrels per day.  This imposed dramatic revenue
pressures on Iran, which provided the context in which religious discontent
against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British
and U.S.intelligence.  In addition, strikes among oil workers at this
critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production. As Iran's domestic
economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak
secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a
manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.  At the same
time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human
rights' under the Shah. British Petroleum reportedly began to organize
capital flight out of Iran, through its strong influence in Iran's financial
and banking community.  The British Broadcasting Corporation's
Persian-language broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC
'correspondents' sent into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria
against the Shah.  The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda
platform inside Iran during this time.  The British government-owned
broadcasting organization refused to give the Shah's government an equal
chance to reply.  Repeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded
no result.  Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling the Shah.
The Shah fled in January, and by February 1979, Khomeini had been flown into
Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his repressive theocratic state to
replace the Shah's government.  Reflecting on his downfall months later,
shortly before his death, the Shah noted from exile, I did not know it then
? perhaps I did not want to know ? but it is clear to me now that the
Americans wanted me out.  Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in
the State Department wanted ? What was I to make of the Administration's
sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the
White House as an adviser on Iran? ? Ball was among those Americans who
wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.[1] <#_ftn1> [1][1] With the
fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical Khomeini adherents
in Iran, chaos was unleashed.  By May 1979, the new Khomeini regime had
singled out the country's nuclear power development plans and announced
cancellation of the entire program for French and German nuclear reactor
construction. Iran's oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3
million barrels per day.  Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the
critical days of January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per
day.  To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum
declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply.  Prices
on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and Royal Cutch Shell
as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as a result.  The second
oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way. Indications are that the actual
planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks
of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely
ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives.  The ensuing energy
crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's
defeat a year later. There was never a real shortage in the world supply of
petroleum.  Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any
time have met the 5-6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a U.S.
congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office months later
confirmed. Unusually low reserve stocks of oil held by the Seven Sisters oil
multinationals contributed to creating a devastating world oil price shock,
with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in
1978 towards the astronomical heights of $40 per barrel for some grades of
crude on the spot market.  Long gasoline lines across America contributed to
a general sense of panic, and Carter energy secretary and former CIA
director, James R. Schlesinger, did not help calm matters when he told
Congress and the media in February 1979 that the Iranian oil shortfall was
'prospectively more serious' than the 1973 Arab oil embargo.[2] <#_ftn2>
[2][2] The Carter administration's Trilateral Commission foreign policy
further ensured that any European effort from Germany and France to develop
more cooperative trade, economic and diplomatic relations with their Soviet
neighbor, under the umbrella of d鴥nte and various Soviet-west European
energy agreements, was also thrown into disarray. Carter's security adviser,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, and secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, implemented their
'Arc of Crisis' policy, spreading the instability of the Iranian revolution
throughout the perimeter around the Soviet Union.  Throughout the Islamic
perimeter from Pakistan to Iran,U.S. initiatives created instability or
worse." -- William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics
and the New World Order, ? 1992, 2004.  Pluto Press Ltd. Pages 171-174.
 

 

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