BY EROL MANISALI
CUMHURIYET- Columnist Erol Manisali writes about US plans for and recent developments in the Middle East. A summary of his column is as follows:
Thanks to the giant international oil companies, Iran’s populist Prime Minister Mossadeq, who had hopeful aspirations for the nationalization of his country’s oil resources, was overthrown in 1953 by a ‘secret’ joint Anglo-American operation code-named ‘Operation Ajax.’ Once the Mossadeq administration was toppled, these oil companies grabbed the reins of Iran’s shah figurehead monarchy. For many years Shah Reza Pahlavi served as the number one upholder of US and British interests in both Iran and the region. Then in 1979 came the Islamic uprising headed by former exile Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious leader who had long been harbored by a vigorous anti-US France. This Islamic ‘revolution,’ just like Osama bin Laden, was the result of longstanding oppressive US and British imperialist policies.
In spite of US pressure, France and Germany, then the Soviet Union, China and Japan established good relations with Tehran and breached Washington’s embargo on the country. From time to time, Turkey, too, has tried to forge close relations with Iran.
Once the Cold War was over, a unidimensional order, more precisely a US-dominated order, emerged. A doomsday scenario was now underway, and we have witnessed the 1991 Iraq crisis, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and civil wars in the Caucasus… Moreover, the internal dynamics of the US and capitalist order have desperately needed a Bush administration to carry through this scenario. Washington named terrorism its new top enemy, a foe which replaced the communist threat.
The US and Britain thus began targeting terrorism which they themselves created with their own hands. Under what I call the ‘sustainable superiorities’ theory, the US (and the West) has to define an enemy to attack in order to maintain capitalist order and its strongholds, the giant economic enterprises. The US fell prey to the 9/11 attacks carried out by terrorist Osama bin Laden, which provided the Bush administration with the rationale for a military campaign in Afghanistan. Now that the eastern wing of the US invasion in the region was now secured, preparations for an intervention in Iraq could begin. The United Nations, international rules, and global public opinion were all brushed aside, and the US and Britain attacked the number one ally of the terrorists, Saddam Hussein. While the Iraq invasion was still in progress, Washington declared Syria and Iran as its next two targets. The foundations of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq have already been laid, threatening both Turkey and Iran. And now we see students taking to the streets of Tehran, fiercely protesting the country’s regime. Those who remember the events of 1953 in Iran can easily see that today the same scenario is once more being put into practice. A typical US (and British) masterpiece!
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION