Chaos and nonsense

Upon his return from Helsinki, Mr. Trump flip-flopped (remember when that pejorative was used freely by conservative pundits to deride Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton?  I wonder what happened....) his press conference comments  to the point I'm not certain he knows what he meant.  So rather than learn a lesson, he immediately went back into attack  mode on the NFL.

Meanwhile, nothing has changed in regards to North Korea which still possesses nuclear weapons.  NATO which still is spending the same amount of their GDP as before.  The EU has kissed American trade good-bye and won't be coming back.  We are still dropping tons of bombs on Syria with no end in sight.  But just in case you're not tired of winning,  Mr. Trump and his lackey John Bolton have decided to dust off the old chestnut of a "the danger of a nuclear armed Iran".

Since the inception of the Bush "Axis of Evil" and continuing through the Clinton era at the State Department, the scare tactic has been to pronounce Iran as a Middle Eastern (read Muslim) nation hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons specifically to attack the US and Israel.  John Bolton continues this nonsense with his hawkish assessments of Iran.  Why do I say nonsense?  If we stop threatening Iran, they just might go about their business and forget that whole Shah of Iran stuff.

Oh wait, you mean when they took over our embassy in Tehran for 444 days?  Well yeah but in order to understand something that happened nearly 40 years ago, we have to go even further back in time.  All the way in fact to 1908 ad the founding of a company called the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.  A British millionaire assumed exclusive rights to prospect for oil for 60 years in Iran (Persia).  In exchange, the Shah received the equivalent of $2 million. 

The need for the Royal Navy to modernize from coal powered steamships and use oil instead meant that people such as Winston Churchill wanted to control their own oil supply and sever the British reliance on Royal Dutch Shell (this sounds awfully familiar for some reason?).  The Iranians wanted to have control of their own profits which of course were at odds with British national security interests. 

Lots of broken promises on both sides leads us to around 1941 when both the British and Soviets (yes Virginia, the Soviets were our Allies in WWII) invading and occupying Iran in order to secure oilfields and open a secure route to the USSR.  This resulted in Reza Shah being forced to abdicate in favor of his more western friendly son.  Naturally all of these shenanigans lead to a huge increase in Iranian nationalism.  Mohammed Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister and was a staunch champion of the Iranian nationalist movement. 

In a strange twist, Mossadegh was invited to the US in 1951 a brokered a deal that was very favorable for both the US and Iran.  However, the deal was dependent on the UK which believed Mossadegh was a lame duck.  Mossadegh was even more popular with the Iranian citizens than ever before, however by the British boycotting Iranian oil it meant that Iranians were poorer than ever. 

This was all portrayed by the US and UK as being very dangerous to their respective national security thus was hatched a plan lead by the CIA to oust the much more popular and democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and replace him with Shah Pavlavi (Reza Shah's son).

By 1954, with the pro-Western Shah Pavlavi in place, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum or what most of us know today as BP.  In order to appease those that put him power, Shah Pavlavi created the SAVAK or Iranian secret police which committed all manner of torture, kidnappings and assassinations in their attempt to put out the Iranian nationalist movement.

Of course this only further incited the Iranian people who wanted the Shah out and led to the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran.  The Shah was exiled in disgrace and Ayatollah Khomeini taking over as leader. 

That much abridged history lesson of US involvement in Iran is why I stated earlier, Mr. Trump and John Bolton need to just ignore Iran.  The history of the US in this region makes our motives appear disingenuous at best and a chance to rehash the past at worst.  Oh and we really don't need Iran's oil for our national security.  If you Google top 10 oil-producing countries the number 1 spot is held by the US at 15,599,000 barrel per day!  Iran in comparison produces only around 4,6669,000 bpd which is even less than those unruly Canadians at 4,984,000 bpd.