Two Books on Iran before the Advent on the Ayatollah

Two Books on Iran before the Advent on the Ayatollah

Christopher De Bellaigue is a journalist and author who has spent time in Iran and knows the country and its complexities. His book Patriot of Persia is a good read for those interested in learning about Mossadegh, the man who had great ambition to modernise Iran. Jack Straw is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010. His book, The English job provides insight into why Iran distrusts the West. Years ago, I came across Christopher De Bellaigue’s lecture online where he narrated an anecdote on Tony Blair. Apparently, the then Prime minister of Britain went through years not knowing that there once was a man called Muhammad Mossadegh! When I learned of this, I thought to myself , How on earth can Iran ever make peace if Tony Blair ( a man of the Left, or at least he was supposed to be ) had simply no historic memory of Mossadegh and the ‘theft’ of Iran’s oil by the British under the conservative government Patriot of Persia is a fascinating biography of Muhammad Mossadegh, the towering leader of Iran who was overthrown in a Churchill ordered and M16 & CIA orchestrated coup. In 2000, Madeleine Albright herself admitted that the US role in the overthrow of the popular leader was a setback for Iran’s political development. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5HYUtYa3wI] Mossadegh’s mother was a prominent Qajar princess and his father -whom he lost in childhood- was a senior Mandarin (a high ranking bureaucrat). Mossadegh was educated in France and Switzerland, but he had remained true to uplifting the poor and modernising his country. His brand of politics had to be socialism because the vast majority of Iran was deprived of modernity. For that he needed oil revenues to be in the hands of his nation. Back then, the AIOC (Anglo-Iranian oil company, now British Petroleum) gave merely 16 % of the profits to the royals of Iran (most of them were despots) The lion’s share of the oil went to the British. Churchill -then 78- endorsed Operation Ajax with the help of MI6 & CIA to get rid of Mossadegh -then 73-. Why? Because Mossadegh, the then Iranian Prime minister had made clear his intentions to nationalise oil. Back then, over 80 % of Iranians lived in the countryside and there was no sign of modernity, and getting control of their key resource was one way to bring about much-needed change. Churchill, having lost the Indian empire, wanted Iranian oil to remain in the hands of Britain or at least the West. And so began the corporate racketeering of Iranian oil. But it was not just oil, it also was the Iranian banks, railways, resources like tobacco, telegram and more ! The coup is a reminder of the cold war era meddling when the US lost the capacity to tell the difference between the Left and Communists. It also is a good place to start to understand why Iran remains deeply mistrusting of Western powers. Explore these books and learn more about the Bazaaris , the concept of Bast, the Basij and the Betrayals. Factoid: Iran got its first constitution in 1906-1907. It was modelled after the 1831 Belgium constitution. Food for thought: Churchill may be perceived as a gatekeeper of democracy in the West, but his penchant to overthrow democratically elected leaders in the East paints an entirely different picture of the man. Next up: The Islamic revolution in 1979 and the treacherous alliances between Israel, the US and Iran.

Munich 1938 should have served as an impetus for a real European Defence community

If all roads lead to Munich 1938, then our foreign policy options are restricted to belligerence or betrayal. In the absence of American muscle power, shouldn’t the EU, explore the fine art of diplomacy? Neo-Conservatism is an ideology that adheres firmly to the view that military might-not diplomacy or negotiations must achieve foreign policy goals. But is Neo-conservatism, allied with Neo-Liberalism today, in foreign policy prudent for the EU that has virtually no military might apart from NATO which is heavily if not entirely dependant on the US?

Victims can morph into perpetrators: The Tutsi dominated M23 are proof of it.

Zone into Africa and you will notice that Rwanda’s neighbours are Burundi (slightly larger than Rwanda) Uganda (9 times bigger than Rwanda), Tanzania (35 times bigger than Rwanda), and Congo (89 times bigger than Rwanda). Rwanda is the smallest in size, but over the years because of military backing from the West, ( mainly the US) Rwanda has managed to bully all its neighbours, including the largest of them; the DRC or Congo. When my wife heard that she threw her hands up in exasperation and quipped, “ That’s like if Luxembourg were to bully Germany”. As baffling as it is, I am going to get into why and how Rwanda is doing this, but first I would like to give you some context. One must bear in mind that African borders were drawn in the most senseless and crude manner by western colonisers who invaded Africa ( a continent 3 times the size of Europe ) and merged 10,000 polities (political entities) into just 40 colonies. The new territories were artificial territories that paid no attention the diversity of the people, their monarchies, their chiefdoms, their ethnicities. People who shared no common language, history and even religion inherited what the west thought was a modern Africa. Most colonisers practised the divide and rule policy which basically meant privileging one minority ethnicity over the majority. When the Western colonisers left, it was evident that powerful ethnicities would try to subjugate weaker ethnicities and today certain conflicts quite often has led to ethnic pogroms and genocide.

The European Quagmire: The US under Trump is increasingly unilateral, and does not want to get entangled in military overreach.

The Special envoy for Ukraine, retired lieutenant General Kellogg has laid out America's shift in foreign policy; it draws inspiration from Prof. Paul Kennedy's book,The rise and fall of Great powers. Trump unlike his predecessor does not want war with Russia because his administration believe that great powers historically fail when they get entangled in strategic overreach or military overreach. Prof. Kennedy refereed to this as Imperial overreach. I should add just because they cite Prof. Kennedy, it does not mean that the renowned Prof. is the mastermind behind their thoughts, it just means, they are aware of his work and are drawing conclusions from it. As of now, the sum total of the United States’ global interests and global obligations far larger than the country’s power to defend them simultaneously especially if China and Russia consolidate their forces. Israel needs US’s attention and trouble is brewing in Taiwan. Ukraine, under these circumstances will not be on the US defence list. In addition, The Trump administration’s stance on making a business deal before they deliver or promise any security guarantees, has shocked many people, but a closer reading of US history of invasions and interventions gives one whole picture of how almost every US administration (irrespective of democrats or Republicans) quickly orders an exit strategy with a profitable deal to take away on their drive out when things work against their interests. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ukraine was not all that much about freedom, democracy and sovereignty, but largely about a security conflict involving NATO and snapping up Ukrainian resources. Some of us had our suspicions when the Rand Corporation, an influential think tank closest to the Pentagon, published their ideas through a research paper readily available on their website. [https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html]It was titled , Extending Russia: Competing from advantageous ground. The report gives solicited advice on how to exploit the vulnerabilities of Russia. The Rand cooperation is funded by the US government and big arms manufacturers too [https://www.rand.org/about.html#:~:text=How%20We're%20Funded,other%20nonprofit%20organizations%3B%20and%20industry.]. Again, these details are available on their website in their About Us section. The idea was to stretch Russia thin by exploiting her anxieties, but the think tank did explicitly state that Russia could well escalate matters. Oddly, a lot of how the invasion played out can be matched to the paper published back in 2019. Now the ugly truth is that the greatest experts of the Cold war had repeatedly warned the West against NATO expansion especially to Ukraine. George Kennan, that most astute of Russia observers, described NATO [https://www.ft.com/content/48ea2b2e-c46a-457d-8e83-a84e6ba572ed] expansion as “the most fateful error of American [https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html] policy in the entire post-cold war era”. William Burns, US ambassador (and CIA director until January 2025 ) advised Washington that Ukrainian inclusion in NATO was “the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite. [https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2019/03/a-brief-history-of-us-russian-missteps/584542/] But Russia isn’t even a peer competitor when it comes to the US. It’s a distant third if we were to rate it. But Can the EU face Russia without the US? Is Strategic overreach something the EU can afford? For the text version please visit alivreouvert.substack.com [alivreouvert.substack.com]

Why the Democrats lost and remain lost

The Democrats have betrayed themselves for decades to the point that they synchronised the vicious circle with the Republicans that gave Trump his triumphant victory. The current American political scene should serve as a wake up call for the rest of the West. Up until now it made sense for the collective West to rally behind the US and look up to their leadership in terms of freedom and democracy. Russia’s values were so starkly different, so outdated, and so distorted that the quasi-totalité of the ex-USSR bloc signed up for US leadership. But with Elon Musk poised to play a pivotal role in the US administration, how different is the American model now from the much- despised Russian oligarchy that rose from the Soviet rubble in the 90’s?