Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The figure of Mohammad Mosaddeq, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, is an uncomfortable one for both sides of the US-Iran rivalry. For the US, Mosaddeq is a constant reminder that the dictatorial reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after 1953 came into being with a US intervention to overthrow the constitutionally elected Mosaddeq. The US would provide strong support for the Shah in the coming decades. Mosaddeq is someone who challenged Western powers to defend Iranian national interests. This alone should, a priori, afford him a place of honor in the Islamic Republic established by Ruhollah Khomeini after his return from exile in 1979. However, Mosaddeq’s nationalism was grounded on democratic secularist convictions that are at odds with the ideology of the Islamic Republic, which in recent years has shut down its already limited avenues of democratic participation within the system.

In their book “The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954”, David S. Painter and Gregory Brew revisit Mosaddeq’s nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, the ensuing tensions with the US and the UK, and the Western powers’ final decision to remove Mosaddeq. As the title of the book already suggests, the oil dispute was the obvious point of contention but the early 1950s events in Iran would not have unfolded as they did absent the weight of much larger conflicts.

Among them was the desire of many Third World nations to manage their natural resources. In the age of decolonization, newly independent countries found themselves in a paradoxical situation. For the first time, they enjoyed political sovereignty but were tied to their former metropoles by long-term contracts to exploit their natural resources. Iran was never formally colonized. Still, the original oil concession Britain obtained in 1901, with very disadvantageous terms for the Persian state, had much to do with Persia’s internal weakness at the time. This fragility had been exacerbated by imperial competition between Russia and Britain for influence over Persia.

The oil dispute in Iran in the early 1950s took place against the background of an increasingly intense Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. In a time of strong ideological polarization, there was little place for a leader such as Mohammad Mosaddeq, who followed a policy he called “negative equilibrium” as he did not want to align Iran with either of the two blocs.

Mosaddeq became prime minister in 1951 after the Majles (the Iranian parliament) decided not to ratify the so-called Supplemental Agreement negotiated by the Iranian government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). The British company, founded in 1909, had been exploiting Iran’s oil for four decades. The Supplemental Agreement fell short of what most Iranians demanded. The Majles appointed Mosaddeq as prime minister after his proposal to nationalize the Iranian oil industry was unanimously approved by the parliament.

When nationalization was implemented, British leaders became convinced that Mosaddeq would have to go for the oil dispute to be settled in terms favorable to London. In October 1951, after Iranian troops took over the Abadan oil refinery in southern Iran, the last AIOC personnel departed the country. Mossadegh had Iran’s oil infrastructure in his hands but faced the major challenge of keeping the oil industry running without foreign technicians. Finding export markets for the oil products was even more complicated as Britain imposed an oil boycott and sanctions on Iran.

Diverging from the British position at this point, Washington “sought a solution that would restart the oil industry and preserve Iran from communist control while not endangering U.S. interests in the region”, write Painter and Brew.[1] At the same time, the Shah did not dare make a move against Mosaddeq since both his political figure and the cause of nationalization were widely popular in Iran. US officials acted as mediators between Mosaddeq on the one hand, and the AIOC and Britain on the other. There was no common ground to be found, however. Mosaddeq argued that Iranian oil belonged to the country after nationalization. Consequently, he wanted international companies to buy Iranian oil at a price higher than that offered to other developing countries where Western companies controlled the oil industry.

David S. Painter and Gregory Brew, The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954. Click here to buy.

Mosaddeq was open to international companies returning to Iran to help operate the oil infrastructure as long as it was under Iranian control. British diplomats in Tehran sought to destabilize the Mosaddeq government and have it replaced with a new one that would be more amenable to British interests. The crisis escalated in October 1952, when Mosaddeq ordered the British embassy to close and its citizens to leave the country.

By the end of 1952, the US presented to Mosaddeq the so-called ‘package proposal’, which would have recognized Iran’s ownership of the oil industry but still envisaged Iran selling most of its oil to a consortium of international oil companies. The thorniest issue was compensation payments to the AIOC for Iran’s oil nationalization. As the authors note, the US and the UK insisted that “payment could not be limited to physical assets but also had to cover lost future profits.”[2] Mosaddeq rejected the ‘package proposal’. The reason was not that the Iranian prime minister failed to understand the specifics of the oil trade, as it has often been suggested. Rather, Painter and Brew argue, Mosaddeq understood very well the risks of being trapped in continuous compensation payments to AIOC if it agreed to the terms of the deal. Iran would have been in nominal control of its oil industry but, in truth, once again dependent on the British company’s compensation wishes.

Painter and Brew situate the US decision to consider the forceful removal of Mosaddeq around April 1953. With the British forced out of the country, the US operatives in Iran stepped in to mobilize the Iranian clerical and political groups that opposed Mosaddeq as well as the military. Bribes were a common means to achieve the desired result. Although there was no love lost between the Shah and Mosaddeq, the monarch had to be talked into the coup by his Western backers as he feared a failed move against Mosaddeq could backfire. The Shah finally signed two firmans (royal decrees): one dismissing Mosaddeq and the other one appointing General Fazlollah Zahedi as the new prime minister. While street mobilizations headed by bribed local gang leaders took place in Tehran, significant sectors of the army carried out an operation against Mosaddeq on August 16, 1953.

The prime minister had been alerted of the impending coup and loyalist troops defended his residence and the army headquarters. After the failed coup attempt and the Shah’s departure from Iran, the Tudeh Party took to the streets and used the opportunity to call for a republic. The US ambassador to Iran convinced Mosaddeq to order the police and the army to repress the Tudeh protests. As Painter and Brew remark, “ironically, Mosaddeq’s decision to crack down on the Tudeh, which illustrated his anti-communism and his desire for U.S. support, helped seal his fate.”[3] On August 19, 1953, with the streets empty of Tudeh demonstrators, the army moved once again to overthrow Mosaddeq, who was not prepared for a second coup attempt. Soldiers took the ministerial offices and Radio Tehran, while Mosaddeq was finally captured. The former prime minister was later sentenced to three years of prison and would die under house arrest in 1967.

Although the Shah returned from his short exile and General Zahedi was installed as prime minister, the removal of Mosaddeq did not immediately solve the oil dispute. Nationalization was a popular cause in Iran, and Mosaddeq’s forced departure from the scene did not change this. Negotiations dragged on until late 1954 when the Iranian government agreed to pay limited compensations and retain a largely symbolic control of its oil industry. The US sweetened the deal with a military and economic aid package of $120 million.

“The Struggle for Iran” partly draws on documents about the US role in the coup first released in 2017 and is particularly strong in covering the economic dimension of the conflict. Painter and Brew’s work helps debunk some of the most common myths about the coup. Although anti-communism and opposition to nationalization were strongly connected, the authors explain Washington viewed nationalization as the biggest threat. Successful nationalization in Iran could have resulted in other Third World nations following the same path.

Painter and Brew also note that it is unfair to portray Mosaddeq as an irrational and stubborn leader who was unwilling to compromise. Orientalist tropes were rife in contemporary assessments of Mosaddeq by British and American leaders. Mosaddeq was described as “incapable of rational thought”, “dominated by emotions and prejudices,” or a “reckless fanatic”, among many other condescending and offensive remarks.

Painter and Brew argue that the British were never interested in finding a negotiated solution to the conflict and “used talks as a stalling tactic to buy time”[4] for Iran to experience the negative economic impact of Britain’s oil boycott and allow covert actions against Mosaddeq to run their course. In “The Struggle for Iran”, Painter and Brew importantly reflect how the tragedy of the coup was not only that the US and Britain removed a constitutional leader in a foreign country, but also that the intervention “halted the progress Iran had been making toward representative government. Autocracy was the outcome.”[5]

[1] David S. Painter and Gregory Brew, “The Struggle for Iran: Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951–1954,” (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2023), p. 64.

[2] Ibid., p. 129.

[3] Ibid., p. 170.

[4] Ibid., p. 208.

[5] Ibid, p. 212.

But, in history, we cannot reach satisfactory conclusions based on ‘ifs‘. We have to consider only the facts and the events that took place.

Ray Takeyh, who keeps harping on the ill-founded notion that Dr. Mossadegh was not democratically elected– most recently in a column in the arch-conservative Commentary — continues to reiterate that statement based on incorrect assumptions and lacking any documents. In fact, in his recent article, filled with much disinformation and misinformation, every other line can be questioned. His goal, in pushing this view, is to show that Mossadegh’s government was not democratic or democratically elected and thus, when foreign powers acted against it, they were right to do so.

First, when we talk about ‘democratically elected’ what do we mean? How does a parliamentary system work? Is the PM elected by the Parliament like in Great Britain? The answer is YES.

Which country do we have in recent modern history whose government was totally democratically elected? Not many. Even if we look at the U.S. we have doubts as many of our citizens are prevented from voting. In Iran of 1950’s, half of the population, that is women, were not even allowed to vote until much later (although Mossadegh was preparing a bill for their enfranchisement).

On this subject, Maziar Behrooz, associate professor at San Francisco University, who has researched and written both about the Tudeh Party and the Coup, says, “If one reads and understands Iran’s 1906-1907 constitution, it becomes clear that under Iran’s parliamentary system, members of the Majles (parliament) were elected by popular vote (in 1951, by male suffrage). The Majles would then vote for one of its members as Prime Minister and the person thus elected would be rubber-stamped by the Shah (issuing a royal decree). This latter act would be a ceremonial act under normal constitutional procedures. Hence, to say that Dr. Mosaddegh was not elected democratically is incorrect and shows the author’s lack of knowledge of constitutional procedures during that period.”

Mossadegh was elected by the majority of the Majles, the parliament of Iran, which was comprised of his supporters as well as those who were opposed to him. Some of its members were corrupt and had received British financial support. As professor Mark Gasiorowski, a scholar of this period and author of an important book on the topic, says:

“Takeyh’s argument is that Dr. Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, rather than elected.”

Dr. Ali Gheissari, in his well-documented piece, The U.S. Coup of 1953 in Iran, Sixty Years On, published in the journal of The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review, dated September 2013, writes, “Technically the Shah no longer had the constitucional power to dismiss the premier without the approval or the request of the parliament (the Majles). Mosaddeq, on the other hand, had already obtained considerable emergency powers from the parliament in the previous year in order to strengthen his position. He could bypass the parliament and legislate by decree, and he could limit the powers of the Shah.”

Mossadegh was elected repeatedly in his district, always gaining the highest number of votes, which Takeyh fails to mention.

The elections for parliament in this era generally were not very democratic, with wealthy landowners, the Royal Court and other powerful entities and figures, as well as the British embassy and perhaps the Soviets, using various means – presumably very extensively -to get their preferred candidates elected. Also, women (50% of the population) were not allowed to vote. All of this certainly occurred in the 1952 parliamentary election — the only one that occurred when Mossadegh was in power.

Dr Abrahamian, distinguished professor of Iranian history and the author of many important books says: “I have spelled this issue out in my new book (Oil Crisis in Iran) on US documents and on the Mossadeq period. The chapter on parliamentary politics tries to spell out the shah’s limited powers in the constitution and that it was the prerogative of the majles to elect the Prime Minister–the shah’s authority was supposed to be purely a formality. So Mossadeq was legally elected premier. Takeyh, I suspect, is accepting Reza Shah’s interpretation of the constitution–but then Reza Shah could choose his prime minister because he could dictate to the majles on who to elect. The fundamental laws of 1906 are quite clear: all the ministers are elected by the majles and responsible only to the majles.”

Despite many interferences, Iran in the Mossadegh era, experienced some of its most democratic years: the press was free, though manipulated by the above-mentioned forces as well as the CIA (in a televised interview, the CIA operative Richard Cottam stated, “I would write a piece in the evening and the next day it would be printed (translated) in one of the Teheran papers that we controlled”).

Not only the press, but political parties (except for the Tudeh) and civil society groups were very free; demonstrations and rallies occurred frequently, with little obstruction; and there was little or no repression or unlawful activity by the government. Mossadegh, who was against violence by any means even to save his government, never suppressed dissent as Mr. Takieh wrongly states.

“Despite Iran not being fully democratic, yet it was considerably more democratic than most other countries in the region at the time, and much more democratic than it ever was either before or after Mossadegh’s premiership.” (Gasiorowski).

Continuing with Gasiorowski, let’s not forget that black Americans were largely prevented from voting at this time and severely harassed in various other ways, including lynching, so the US could hardly be called fully democratic.

Dr. Mossadegh was elected despite it all — with the support of many Iranians and despite the objections and interference of monarchists, the Tudeh party, the clerics, and the rest.

“The CIA begrudgingly con-ceded that despite increasing parliamentary opposition, Mossadeq had continued to receive votes of confidence mainly because of his apt handling of the oil crisis.” Memorandum from John Waller (CIA) to Roosevelt, FRUS, in the book, The Oil Crisis: From Nationalism to the Coup d’Etat, Ervand Abrahamian, Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Dr. Mossadegh’s government lasted less than twenty-eight months. Financial and political pressure from within and without was placed on his government. He was portrayed as being pro-Soviet, a convenient lie that was instilled by the British and later the Americans. Although George McGhee later wrote: “I do not believe that Mossadeq formed an alliance of his own with the Soviet Union. Mossadeq was in my view, first and foremost a loyal Iranian.”

Mossadegh was a nationalist who saw that the saviour of his nation would be the nationalization of its oil industry. However, the British considered this act to be endangering their interests, political and financial. The British would not even accept the 50/50 proposal, as had been offered by the Americans to Saudi Arabia.

On this issue, George McGhee, the then representative of Harry Truman in the oil negotiations, writes that with great disappointment he went to the Shoreham Hotel to give the bad news to Dr. Mossadegh. “You’ve come here to send me home” said Mossadegh. “Yes,” I said. “I am sorry to have to tell you that we can’t bridge the gap between you and the British. It’s a great disappointment to us as it must be to you. It was a moment I will never forget. He accepted the result quietly, with no recriminations.” McGhee also writes that Eden had persuaded the Administration not to continue the talks with the Iranian delegation and to send Mossadegh back to Iran. (Envoy to the Middle World, George McGhee)

It was the Cold War and the Americans finally went along with the British meme that if Iran nationalized its oil, and if Mossadegh’s government stayed on, the Soviets would take over. The British were scared that Iran’s example would lead to other countries in their quest for the control of their sources of natural wealth. Egypt was a clear example. Mossadegh was eulogized in Cairo when he set foot there. He had become the hero of the region. The British saw signs they did not like.

Later, President Nasser, talking about the Suez nationalization, would say: “I went to pull the tail of the British lion. When I got there, I saw that Dr. Mossadegh had already cut it off.”

The United States, a close ally, finally succumbed to the British demands, promoting the bogey of the fear of communism, but with its self-interest in mind. In addition, unlike the democratic administration of Truman which had tried to find a solution to the oil question, Eisenhower was persuaded by the Dulles brothers to go along with the British plans for a coup d’état. In fact, when Mossadegh’s government was under immense financial pressure due to British sanctions, he had asked the American government for help. Truman had been in favor but then a Republican administration came to power in Washington.

The British foreign office advised the Americans not to assist Mossadegh’s government economically. An orchestrated effort was in place to bring his government down. Only a few days after the Coup did the foreign office send a communique to the State Department that now they could give the Zahedi government full-fledged help, and money flowed to Iran, personally enriching some of the coup perpetrators.

Mr. Takeyh wishes to rewrite history. He has done so in a number of articles written on this very subject. But there is never new information on his part. It is a repeat of the old, revisionist conjectures. If there has been libel, as charged by Takeyh, it is Mr. Takeyh himself who has libelled Iran. Mr. Takeyh should not try to distort history as we cannot deny facts. The British MI6 and the American CIA toppled the democratic government of Dr. Mossadegh for financial and political reasons. Through the years, the facts have been given to us in black on white, through government publications, and various archives, although the British have attempted to withhold much on their part. But the work of major scholars, Iranians, and Americans, testify to this truth.

The truth is Mr. Takeyh, even with his latest revisionist article, cannot escape real history.

—

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CNN: “CIA involvement in 1953 Iranian coup”

In the long history of U.S.-backed “regime changes” in countries around the world, rarely have a people and a country so firmly and democratically repudiated U.S. efforts to dictate how they will be governed. Post-coup interim president Jeanine Añez has reportedly requested 350 U.S. visas for herself and others who may face prosecution in Bolivia for their roles in the coup.

The narrative of a rigged election in 2019 that the U.S. and the OAS peddled to support the coup in Bolivia has been thoroughly debunked. MAS’s support is mainly from indigenous Bolivians in the countryside, so it takes longer for their ballots to be collected and counted than those of the better-off city dwellers who support MAS’s right-wing, neoliberal opponents. As the votes come in from rural areas, there is a swing to MAS in the vote count. By pretending that this predictable and normal pattern in Bolivia’s election results was evidence of election fraud in 2019, the OAS bears responsibility for unleashing a wave of violence against indigenous MAS supporters that, in the end, has only delegitimized the OAS itself.

It is instructive that the failed U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia has led to a more democratic outcome than U.S. regime change operations that succeeded in removing a government from power. Domestic debates over U.S. foreign policy routinely presume that the U.S. has the right, or even an obligation, to deploy an arsenal of military, economic and political weapons to force political change in countries that resist its imperial dictates.

In practice, this means either full-scale war (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), a coup d’etat (as in Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2014), covert and proxy wars (as in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen) or punitive economic sanctions (as against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela) – all of which violate the sovereignty of the targeted countries and are therefore illegal under international law.

No matter which instrument of regime change the U.S. has deployed, these U.S. interventions have not made life better for the people of any of those countries, nor countless others in the past. William Blum’s brilliant 1995 book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, catalogues 55 U.S. regime change operations in 50 years between 1945 and 1995. As Blum’s detailed accounts make clear, most of these operations involved U.S. efforts to remove popularly elected governments from power, as in Bolivia, and often replaced them with U.S.-backed dictatorships: like the Shah of Iran; Mobutu in the Congo; Suharto in Indonesia; and General Pinochet in Chile.

Even when the targeted government is a violent, repressive one, U.S. intervention usually leads to even greater violence. Nineteen years after removing the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the United States has dropped 80,000 bombs and missiles on Afghan fighters and civilians, conducted tens of thousands of “kill or capture” night raids, and the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans.

In December 2019, the Washington Post published a trove of Pentagon documents revealing that none of this violence is based on a real strategy to bring peace or stability to Afghanistan – it’s all just a brutal kind of “muddling along,” as U.S. General McChrystal put it. Now the U.S.-backed Afghan government is finally in peace talks with the Taliban on a political power-sharing plan to bring an end to this “endless” war, because only a political solution can provide Afghanistan and its people with the viable, peaceful future that decades of war have denied them.

In Libya, it has been nine years since the U.S. and its NATO and Arab monarchist allies launched a proxy war backed by a covert invasion and NATO bombing campaign that led to the horrific sodomy and assassination of Libya’s long time anti-colonial leader, Muammar Gaddafi. That plunged Libya into chaos and civil war between the various proxy forces that the U.S. and its allies armed, trained and worked with to overthrow Gaddafi.

A parliamentary inquiry in the U.K. found that, “a limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change by military means,” which led to “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.”

The various Libyan warring factions are now engaged in peace talks aimed at a permanent ceasefire and, according to the UN envoy “holding national elections in the shortest possible timeframe to restore Libya’s sovereignty”—the very sovereignty that the NATO intervention destroyed.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matthew Duss has called for the next U.S. administration to conduct a comprehensive review of the post-9/11 “War on Terror,” so that we can finally turn the page on this bloody chapter in our history.

Duss wants an independent commission to judge these two decades of war based on “the standards of international humanitarian law that the United States helped to establish after World War II,” which are spelled out in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. He hopes that this review will “stimulate vigorous public debate about the conditions and legal authorities under which the United States uses military violence.”

Such a review is overdue and badly needed, but it must confront the reality that, from its very beginning, the “War on Terror” was designed to provide cover for a massive escalation of U.S. “regime change” operations against a diverse range of countries, most of which were governed by secular governments that had nothing to do with the rise of Al Qaeda or the crimes of September 11th.

Notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone from a meeting in the still damaged and smoking Pentagon on the afternoon of September 11, 2001 summarized Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s orders to get “…best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time – not only UBL [Osama Bin Laden]… Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

At the cost of horrific military violence and mass casualties, the resulting global reign of terror has installed quasi-governments in countries around the world that have proved more corrupt, less legitimate and less able to protect their territory and their people than the governments that U.S. actions removed. Instead of consolidating and expanding U.S. imperial power as intended, these illegal and destructive uses of military, diplomatic and financial coercion have had the opposite effect, leaving the U.S. ever more isolated and impotent in an evolving multipolar world.

Today, the U.S., China and the European Union are roughly equal in the size of their economies and international trade, but even their combined activity accounts for less than half of global economic activity and external trade. No single imperial power economically dominates today’s world as overconfident American leaders hoped to do at the end of the Cold War, nor is it divided by a binary struggle between rival empires as during the Cold War. This is the multipolar world we are already living in, not one that may emerge at some point in the future.

This multipolar world has been moving forward, forging new agreements on our most critical common problems, from nuclear and conventional weapons to the climate crisis to the rights of women and children. The United States’ systematic violations of international law and rejection of multilateral treaties have made it an outlier and a problem, certainly not a leader, as American politicians claim.

Joe Biden talks about restoring American international leadership if he is elected, but that will be easier said than done. The American empire rose to international leadership by harnessing its economic and military power to a rules-based international order in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the post-World War II rules of international law. But the United States has gradually deteriorated through the Cold War and post-Cold War triumphalism to a flailing, decadent empire that now threatens the world with a doctrine of “might makes right” and “my way or the highway.”

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, much of the world still saw Bush, Cheney and the “War on Terror” as exceptional, rather than a new normal in American policy. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize based on a few speeches and the world’s desperate hopes for a “peace president.” But eight years of Obama, Biden, Terror Tuesdays and Kill Lists followed by four years of Trump, Pence, children in cages and the New Cold War with China have confirmed the world’s worst fears that the dark side of American imperialism seen under Bush and Cheney was no aberration.

Amid America’s botched regime changes and lost wars, the most concrete evidence of its seemingly unshakeable commitment to aggression and militarism is that the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex is still outspending the ten next largest military powers in the world combined, clearly out of all proportion to America’s legitimate defense needs.

So the concrete things we must do if we want peace are to stop bombing and sanctioning our neighbors and trying to overthrow their governments; to withdraw most American troops and close military bases around the world; and to reduce our armed forces and our military budget to what we really need to defend our country, not to wage illegal wars of aggression half-way round the world.

For the sake of people around the world who are building mass movements to overthrow repressive regimes and struggling to construct new models of governing that are not replications of failed neoliberal regimes, we must stop our government–no matter who is in the White House–from trying to impose its will.

Bolivia’s triumph over U.S.-backed regime change is an affirmation of the emerging people-power of our new multipolar world, and the struggle to move the U.S. to a post-imperial future is in the interest of the American people as well. As the late Venezuela leader Hugo Chavez once told a visiting U.S. delegation, “If we work together with oppressed people inside the United States to overcome the empire, we will not only be liberating ourselves, but also the people of Martin Luther King.”

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection and Inside Iran: the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

—

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Aljazeera English: “Luis Arce promises to ‘rebuild’ Bolivia after huge election win”

The British- and American-backed plot to overthrow Iran’s prime minister in 1953 laid the groundwork for the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and decades of hostility with the U.S. A documentary about the plot released on Aug. 19 offers new details of what happened.

I believe it is worth recalling the time before the events chronicled in “Coup 53,” when the two countries had a distinctly different relationship.

In the 1800s, American missionaries journeyed to what was then called Persia.

The missionaries helped build important institutions – schools, colleges, hospitals and medical schools – in Persia, many of which still exist.

Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, an American physician fluent in Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Assyrian, founded a hospital in Urmia in 1879, as well as Iran’s first medical school. When Cochran died at Urmia in northwestern Iran in 1905, over 10,000 people attended his funeral.

This image clashes with most American stereotypes of Iran and its people, and is at odds with decades of anti-Iranian sentiment emanating from Washington.

Iran and the United States, in fact, have a deep history of mutual respect and friendship.

From 1834, when the first Protestant American mission was established in Urmia, until 1953, when the CIA’s involvement in Iran’s internal affairs set the United States on the road to conflict with Tehran, Americans were the good guys.

Imperial bad guys

My interest in the history of Iranian-American relations stems from 45 years as an archaeologist specializing in Iran, and from research on Iranian history in the context of changes undergone by Iran’s nomadic population through time.

For years, Americans have seen images of Iranians shouting “Death to America.” Now it’s the country’s lawmakers doing it. President Trump returns the sentiment, recently threatening Iran with death and destruction.

But before all that happened, when Americans were the good guys, there were other countries who were instead reviled by Iran.

The bad guys, at whose hands Iran suffered most, were Russia and Great Britain. Those two nations – often at the invitation of Iran’s leaders – economically exploited Persia to further their own imperial ambitions, using sustained diplomatic, military and economic pressure.

After two ill-judged wars fought against Russia – the First (1804-1813) and Second Russo-Persian Wars (1826-1828) – Persia (the name Iran was officially adopted in 1935) lost large amounts of territory to the czar.

Much later, Russia found another means of exerting control over the Persian crown, loaning millions of rubles to its rulers, like Mozaffar ed-Din Shah, who reigned from 1896-1902 and needed capital to fund his lavish lifestyle.

With the exception of the Anglo-Persian War (1856-1857), Persian relations with Great Britain were less openly hostile. But what they lacked in martial vigor was more than compensated for by economic exploitation.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the shah granted exclusive concessions to the British for everything from telegraph lines to tobacco. Rights to Iran’s oil were given to the Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Company.

So assured were Britain and Russia in their control of Persia that, in 1907, they signed the infamous Anglo-Russian Convention. That agreement divided the country – unbeknownst to its Parliament, let alone its inhabitants – into Russian, British and “neutral” spheres of influence. After it became public it provoked the outrage of ordinary Persians and the international community at large.

America the good

Iran’s relations with the United States were completely different.

The 19th- and early 20th-century history of British and Russian imperial ambitions and involvement in Iran put Iran in a dependent, exploited position at the hands of the governments of these two countries.

But the presence in Iran of American missionaries and, later, invited government technocrats was of an entirely different quality. These were Americans offering aid, with no expectation of advantage to be gained officially for the United States government.

American Presbyterian missionary efforts in Iran began in 1834 and focused on education, with 117 schools established around Urmia by 1895. Efforts were also directed at medical and social welfare. These were nongovernmental missions. The U.S. government was conspicuous by its absence in Iran and Iranian affairs.

By the late 19th century, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions had opened new stations in cities across northern Iran, from Tehran to Mashhad. American diplomatic relations with Persia were established in 1883. A decade later the American Presbyterian Hospital was founded in Tehran by John G. Wishard.

After the First World War, Presbyterian schools for both boys and girls proliferated, the most famous of which were the American College of Tehran for boys, established in 1925, and Iran Bethel School for girls.

In 1910, the Persian Parliament, aware that their country’s finances were in disarray, invited the U.S. to identify a “disinterested American expert as Treasurer-general to reorganise and conduct collection and disbursement of revenue.”

Despite Russian attempts to block the initiative, W. Morgan Shuster, a distinguished career civil servant, was appointed by Persia in February 1911. He arrived in Tehran in May, bringing with him four other Americans. The mission was a failure, lasting only eight months, and, unsurprisingly, was adroitly sabotaged by the combined efforts of British and Russian diplomats in Tehran.

The country’s financial situation after the First World War was still precarious. With none of the colonialist baggage associated with the two European superpowers, America was turned to, almost as a last resort, to fix what ailed Iran. Riza Shah (father of the last shah) appointed an American, Arthur C. Millspaugh, as the administrator-general of the finances of Persia.

When Millspaugh arrived in Tehran in 1922, a newspaper editorial addressed him with these words: “You are the last doctor called to the death-bed of a sick person. If you fail, the patient will die. If you succeed, the patient will live.”

Despite his often testy relations with foreigners, Riza Shah acknowledged Millspaugh’s American Financial Mission was “the last hope of Persia.” The fact that the mission was far from an unqualified success does not detract from its importance. Nor did it diminish America’s image as an honest broker in Iranian eyes, in contrast to that of Russia and Great Britain.

Of course, not every Iranian-American interaction during this period was positive. Robert Imbrie, the American consul in Tehran, was brutally murdered in 1924, allegedly because a fanatical religious leader accused him of being a Baha’i and poisoning a well.
Riza Shah used the episode to crack down on dissidents and impose strict controls on public gatherings.

America the bad

America’s benign image in Iran was forever shattered in 1953 when the CIA, working with Great Britain, engineered a coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister, who had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Even though the overthrow of Mossadegh damaged Iranian trust in America, the years just prior to Iranian revolution in 1979 saw the number of Iranian students in the United States steadily rise.

Over one-third of the approximately 100,000 Iranian students pursuing university degrees abroad in 1977 were in the U.S. By the time of the Islamic revolution two years later, that number had climbed to 51,310, making Iran by far the biggest single source of foreign students in America, with 17% of the total foreign student population. The next-largest contributor of foreign students, Nigeria, accounted for only 6%.

“Iranian students have been here for nearly a century … there are deep and abiding connections that reveal themselves when you look at the historical record,” researcher Steven Ditto, who wrote a report on Iranian students in the U.S., told The Washington Post in 2017.

Even today, some Iranians still manage to overcome the hurdles they face in studying in America. Two of my current Ph.D. students in Near Eastern archaeology come from Iran. In 2019, there were over 12,000 Iranian students in the U.S.

The legacy of American goodwill, personal friendship and doing the right thing by Iran has not been completely lost, although scenes of anti-American demonstrations against the Great Satan on the streets of Tehran – some organized by the government – may make it seem as though America’s good relationship with Iran has been lost irretrievably.

Deep friendships dating back well over a century can withstand a great deal. A reservoir of goodwill and affection may lie dormant while political storms rage. Iran and America were good friends in the past, and for good reason. I believe that Americans would do well to remember that.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 31, 2018.

Daniel Thomas Potts, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History, New York University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “Coup 53: The untold story of the CIA and MI6-led plot against Iran’s prime minister”

( Tomdispatch.com ) – There’s a meme that appears now and then on Facebook and other social media: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.”

That’s funny. What’s not is that the Trump administration and its coterie of China-bashers, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and aided by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, have recently been dusting off the fake-intelligence playbook Vice President Dick Cheney used in 2002 and 2003 to justify war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At that time, the administration of President George W. Bush put enormous pressure on the U.S. intelligence community to ratify spurious allegations that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda and that his regime had assembled an arsenal of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Fantasy claims they may have been, but they did help to convince many skeptical conservatives and spooked liberals that a unilateral, illegal invasion of Iraq was urgently needed.

This time around, it’s the Trump administration’s reckless charge that Covid-19 — maybe manmade, maybe not, advocates of this conspiracy theory argue — was released perhaps deliberately, perhaps by accident from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the city that was the epicenter of the outbreak late last year. It’s a story that has ricocheted around the echo chambers of the far right, from conspiracy-oriented Internet kooks like Infowars’ Alex Jones to semi-respectable media tribunes and radio talk-show hosts to the very highest reaches of the administration itself, including President Trump.

Unlike with Iraq in 2003, the U.S. isn’t planning on going to war with China, at least not yet. But the Trump administration’s zeal in shifting attention from its own bungling of the Covid-19 crisis to China’s alleged culpability in creating a global pandemic only raises tensions precipitously between the planet’s two great powers at a terrible moment. In the process, it essentially ensures that the two countries will be far less likely to cooperate in managing the long-term pandemic or collaboratively working on vaccines and cures. That makes it, as in 2002-2003, a matter of life and death.

Iraq Redux?

Back in 2002, the Bush administration launched an unending campaign of pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to falsify, distort, and cherry-pick intelligence factoids that could be collated into a package linking al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad. At the Pentagon, neoconservatives like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up an ad hoc team that eventually took on the name of Office of Special Plans. It was dedicated to fabricating intelligence on Iraq.

Just in case the message didn’t get across, Vice President Cheney made repeated visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to badger analysts to come up with something useful. In 2003, in “The Lie Factory,” which I co-authored with Jason Vest for Mother Jones, we reported on how Wolfowitz, Feith, allied Defense Department officials like Harold Rhode, and neoconservative apparatchiks like David Wurmser, then a senior adviser to Iraq-war-touting State Department Undersecretary John Bolton (and now an unofficial advisor to Donald Trump on Iran), actively worked to purge Pentagon and CIA officials who resisted the push to shape or exaggerate intelligence. A year later, veteran spy-watcher James Bamford described the whole episode in excruciating detail in his 2004 book, A Pretext for War.

In 2020, however, President Trump is not just pressuring the intelligence community, or IC. He’s at war with it and has been busy installing unprofessional know-nothings and sycophants in top positions there. His bitter antipathy began even before he was sworn into office, when he repeatedly refused to believe a sober analysis from the IC, including the CIA and FBI, that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had aided and abetted his election. Since then, he’s continually railed and tweeted against what he calls “the deep state.” And he’s assigned his authoritarian attorney general, Bill Barr, to conduct a scorched-earth offensive against the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI, and the Justice Department itself, most recently by dropping charges against admitted liar Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s first national security advisor.

To make sure that the IC doesn’t challenge his wishes and does his bidding, Trump has moved to put his own political operatives in charge at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, created as part of an intelligence reorganization scheme after 9/11. The effort began in February when Trump named U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as acting DNI. A highly partisan, sharp-elbowed politico and spokesman for former National Security Advisor John Bolton, he harbors far-right views and is a Trump loyalist, as well as an acolyte of former Trump aide Steve Bannon. On arriving in Bonn as ambassador, Grenell soon endorsed the rise of Europe’s anti-establishment ultra-right in an interview with Bannon’s Breitbart News.

To bolster Grenell, the administration has called on another ultra-right crusader, Kash Patel. He has served as Republican Congressman Devin Nunes’s aide in the campaign to discredit the Russia investigation and reportedly acted as a White House backchannel to Ukraine during the effort to stir up an inquiry in Kiev aimed at tarring former Vice President Joe Biden.

Following that, the president re-named Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas, one of the president’s most enthusiastic defenders during the debate over impeachment, to serve as Grenell’s permanent replacement at ODNI. In 2019, Trump first floated Ratcliffe’s name for the post, but it was shot down days later, thanks to opposition from even Republican members of Congress, not to speak of intelligence professionals and various pundits. Now, he’s back, awaiting likely confirmation.

It remains to be seen whether the Grenell-Ratcliffe tag-team, combined with Trump’s three-year campaign to disparage the intelligence community and intimidate its functionaries, has softened them up enough for the administration’s push to finger China and its labs for creating and spreading Covid-19.

The Wuhan Lab Lies

As is often the case, that campaign began rather quietly and unobtrusively in conservative and right-wing media outlets.

On January 24th, the right-wing Washington Times ran a story entitled “Coronavirus may have originated in a lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” It, in turn, was playing off of a piece that had appeared in London’s Daily Mail the previous day. Written like a science-fiction thriller, that story drew nearly all its (unverified) information from a single source, an Israeli military intelligence China specialist. Soon, it moved from the Washington Times to other American right-wing outlets. Steve Bannon picked it up the next day on his podcast, “War Room: Pandemic,” calling the piece “amazing.” A few days later, the unreliable, gossipy website ZeroHedge ran a (later much-debunked) piece saying that a Chinese scientist bioengineered the virus, purporting even to name the scientist.

A couple of weeks later, Fox News weighed in, laughably citing a Dean Koontz novel, The Eyes of Darkness, about “a Chinese military lab that creates a new virus to potentially use as a biological weapon during wartime.” The day after that, Senator Tom Cotton — appearing on Fox, of course — agreed that China might indeed have created the virus. Then the idea began to go… well, viral. (Soon Cotton was even tweeting that Beijing might possibly have deliberately released the virus.) By late February, the right’s loudest voice, Rush Limbaugh, was on the case, claiming that the virus “is probably a ChiCom laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized.” (A vivid account of how this conspiracy theory spread can be found at the Global Disinformation Index.)

Starting in March, even as they were dismissing the seriousness of Covid-19, both Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeatedly insisted on referring to it as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus,” ignoring criticism that terminology like that was both racist and inflammatory. In late March, Pompeo even managed to scuttle a communiqué from America’s allies in the Group of Seven, or G7, by demanding that they agree to use the term “Wuhan virus.” It didn’t take the president long to start threatening retaliatory action against China for its alleged role in spreading Covid-19, while he began comparing the pandemic to the 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

And all of that was but a prelude to the White House ramping up of pressure on the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community to prove that the virus had indeed emerged, whether by design or accident, from either the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, a branch of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An April 30th article in the New York Times broke the story that administration officials “have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak,” and that Grenell had made it a “priority.”

Both Trump and Pompeo would, in the meantime, repeatedly assert that they had seen actual “evidence” that the virus had indeed come from a Chinese lab, though Trump pretended that the information was so secret he couldn’t say anything more about it. “I can’t tell you that,” he said. “I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Asked during an appearance on ABC’s This Week if the virus had popped out of a lab in Wuhan, Pompeo answered: “There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began.”

On April 30th, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a terse statement, saying that so far it had concluded Covid-19 is “not manmade or genetically modified,” but that they were looking into whether or not it was “the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” There is, however, no evidence of such an accident, nor did the ODNI cite any.

A Finger on the Scale

The run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003 should be on all our minds today. Then, top officials simply repeated again and again that they believed both Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent ties to al-Qaeda and his nonexistent active nuclear, chemical, and bioweapon programs were realities and assigned intelligence community collectors and analysts to look into them (while paying no attention to their conclusions). Now, Trump and his people are similarly putting their fat fingers on the scale of reality, while making it clear to hopefully intimidated intelligence professionals just what conclusions they want to hear.

Because those professionals know that their careers, salaries, and pensions depend on the continued favor of the politicians who pay them, there is, of course, a tremendous incentive to go along with such demands, shade what IC officials call the “estimate” in the direction the White House wants, or at least keep their mouths shut. That is exactly what happened in 2002 and, given that Grenell, Patel, and Ratcliffe are essentially Trump toadies, the IC officials lower on the totem pole have to be grimly aware of what their latest bosses expect from them.

There was near-instant pushback from scientists, intelligence officials, and China experts about the Trump-Pompeo campaign to finger the Wuhan lab. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the preeminent American scientist and Covid-19 expert, promptly shot it down, saying that the virus had “evolved in nature and then jumped species.” That’s because actual scientists, who study the genome of the virus and its mutations, unanimously agree that it was not generated in a lab.

Among America’s allies — Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand — in what’s called the Five Eyes group, there was an unambiguous conclusion that the virus had been a “naturally occurring” one and had mutated in the course of “human and animal interaction.” Australia, in particular, rejected what appeared to be a fake-intelligence dossier about the Wuhan lab, while German officials in an internal document ridiculed the lab rumors as “a calculated attempt to distract” attention from the Trump administration’s own inept handling of the virus.

Finally, according to Bloomberg News, those studying the issue inside the intelligence community now say that suspicions it emerged from a lab are “largely circumstantial since the U.S. has very little information from the ground to back up the lab-escape theory or any other.” In the end, however, that doesn’t mean top IC officials beholden to the White House won’t tailor their conclusions to fit the Trump-Pompeo narrative.

John McLaughlin, who served as deputy director and then acting director of the CIA during the Bush administration, believes that we are indeed seeing a replay of what happened in Iraq nearly two decades ago. “What it reminds me of is the dispute between the CIA and parts of the Bush administration over whether there was an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda,” he said. “They kept asking the CIA, and we kept coming back and saying, ‘You know, it’s just not there.’”

Whether the tug-of-war between Trump, Pompeo, and the IC is just another passing battle in a more than three-year-old war between the president and the “Deep State” or whether it’s something that could lead to a serious crisis between Washington and Beijing remains to be seen. Ironically enough, in January and February of this year, the IC provided President Trump with more than a dozen clear warnings about the dangers to the United States and national security posed by the coronavirus, following clarion calls from China and the World Health Organization that what was happening in Wuhan could spread worldwide — warnings that Trump either failed to notice, disregarded, or downplayed through March.

Were Donald Trump not so predisposed to see the intelligence community as his enemy, he might have paid more attention back then. Had he done so, there would undoubtedly be many less dead Americans right now and he wouldn’t have had to spend his time in his own lab concocting what might be thought of as batshit excuses for his dereliction of duty.

By the time this affair is over, the invasion of Iraq could look like the good old days.

Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist and TomDispatch regular, is a contributing editor at the Nation and has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Copyright 2020 Bob Dreyfuss

Via Tomdispatch.com

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Trump suggests cutting ties with China over Covid-19 crisis”

President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, is reported to have overseen a U.S. site in Thailand where torture of a suspected terrorist took place. Later she allegedly helped destroy evidence of torture.

Her nomination, pending congressional approval, is viewed by many as further evidence of this administration’s support of torture and an undoing of Obama-era efforts to end it. Her work was allegedly part of a program the CIA launched after 9/11 called Rendition, Detention and Interrogation. From 2002 to at least 2006, the CIA orchestrated disappearances, torture and indefinite detention without charge of suspected terrorists.

What can a small group of committed citizens who oppose these practices do to push back? A commission against torture in North Carolina may serve as a model for how citizen-led initiatives can create transparency and accountability for abuses of power in government.

North Carolina’s involvement in CIA torture

In 2005, The New York Times reported that two planes used in the CIA torture program were operated by a contractor based in North Carolina. Forty-nine of the known 119 CIA prisoners were flown from two rural North Carolina airfields to secret prisons or nations with lax policies on torture for violent interrogation. Haspel allegedly oversaw the so-called “black site” in Thailand, starting in 2002 where two of those suspects were held for interrogation.

The revelation about the CIA program angered a number of North Carolinians. They condemned the use of tax dollars to fund an aviation facility that was involved in what they believed was illegal and immoral activity. They wanted to end the state’s participation in torture and hold accountable those who were responsible.

A grassroots movement began. Over more than a decade, it has evolved into a forceful voice against the use of torture. In 2017, organizers created the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry of Torture, an independent and nonpartisan group dedicated to transparency and accountability for the state’s role in the CIA program.

The commission compiled extensive research and appointed 11 commissioners to review the evidence. In November 2017, the commission held public hearings to investigate North Carolina’s role in the CIA’s program. My research explores the importance of understanding torture’s wide-ranging implications for survivors, communities and human rights workers. I also volunteered as a note taker during the hearings.

The commission currently invites public input for its recommendations and will publish its report in fall 2018. With it, the commission will seek to determine North Carolina’s responsibility and liability for its participation in the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program.

Neighbor-to-neighbor activism

The nongovernmental, nonpartisan commission builds on the extensive work of North Carolina Stop Torture Now, a coalition of anti-torture citizens across the state. It started with a core group of 10, that expanded to protests of up to 250 people. The organization has partnered with as many as 75 organizations on various public actions. Over more than a decade, the group has staged public and legislative campaigns and educational conferences. The campaigns, described as “neighbor-to-neighbor activism,” have sought to focus public attention on state and citizen complicity with torture.

With other civic organizations, NC Stop Torture Now put pressure on state and county officials, as well as Aero Contractors – the company that owned the planes and hangar used to transport suspects. Activists publicized the CIA’s actions and drew attention to laws against torture, enforced disappearance and indefinite detention without charge.

In 2007, Aero Contractors decided to sell its hangar at the Kinston, North Carolina air facility. That year, NC Stop Torture Now also helped generate bipartisan support in the state legislature for a bill that would have criminalized participation in CIA-sponsored disappearances and torture. However, the bill stalled the following year and never passed. To date, state officials have avoided any official or lasting response. The Johnston County commissioners have at times gone on record to defend Aero Contractors.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has attempted to shield itself from liability for its torture program. In three federal court cases, the government argued for immunity and for the protection of state secrets. A fourth lawsuit, Salim v. Mitchell, targeted the psychologists who designed the CIA’s interrogation program. The case was settled in 2017 for an undisclosed sum.

Public hearings

In November 2017, the commission convened public and private stakeholders, survivors of disappearance and torture, former interrogators, legal and medical experts and citizens. Altogether, 20 witnesses gave testimony during the public hearings. Together with the research the commission has amassed, these efforts provide the fullest picture to date of the local dimensions of the CIA program. Representatives of Aero Contractors did not respond to an invitation to participate.

Testimony began with Professor Sam Raphael, co-director of the United Kingdom’s Rendition Project. Synthesizing material from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the program, analysis of flight plans, corporate records and personal testimony, the Rendition Project has compiled extensive documentation of the CIA-sponsored flights.

Raphael detailed the Rendition Project’s research on the scope of Aero Contractors’ participation. According to their analysis, Aero Contractors used publicly funded aviation facilities to launch abductions of suspected terrorists from around the world. They were taken to CIA secret prisons, or “black sites,” or to foreign sites where torture was the norm rather than the exception.

The researcher offered detailed testimony about abduction protocols, including abductors’ silence, failure to identify themselves and lack of arrest warrants. For the captives, Raphael testified, rendition flights involved removal of clothing, diapering, hooding, restraining, and the forced use of suppositories, which prisoners often experienced as sexual assault. Captives often had no knowledge of why they were being taken, where they were being transported, or how long they would be held, Rafael said.

Former counterintelligence, investigators and interrogators Steve Kleinman, Mark Fallon and Glenn Carle also testified. They spoke of the pressure they experienced either from their superiors in their agencies or from the Department of Defense to support the use of torture on captives.

All three witnesses drew on extensive research and their own experience to argue that coercive interrogation techniques do not yield valuable intelligence. Instead, according to the witnesses, coercive techniques impeded accurate recall, triggered resistance and produced false information aimed at ending the pain. All three also testified to the usefulness of rapport-building techniques in gathering “actionable intelligence.”

A survivor’s wife detailed her husband’s lasting emotional and psychological damage after his rendition and 10 years of detention:

“He is 44 years old. His hair and beard are graying; his gestures, his look betray the state of anxiety and pressure in which he has existed for many years. How will we live? We both ask, each on our own. I look at him, but I do not recognize him. … We struggle to understand each other. Day after day I realize that this condition will no longer leave us.”

Another powerful statement came from Allyson Caison, a founding member of NC Stop Torture Now. She explained the difficulty of activism in a small community, in which Aero executives are prominent members.

She said, “As a mother, I like to think if somehow my boys were kidnapped and tortured that there would be another mother out there where my boys were like me, trying to end an injustice that begins in my neighborhood.”

Legal scholars Deborah Weissman and Jayne Huckerby, summarizing extensive research, concluded North Carolina has a duty to adhere to state, federal and international laws that prohibit kidnapping, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial detention, and torture or cruel and degrading treatment. The scholars believe North Carolina is liable for participation in those crimes.

Alberto J. Mora, the former chief legal officer of the U.S. Navy and Marines, detailed the costs of the program to national security.

From stealth torture to democracy

The CIA’s rendition and torture program was notable for its use of what Darius Rejali, a scholar of international torture, has called “stealth torture.” These techniques, including waterboarding, stress positions and environmental extremes, are designed to inflict extreme physical pain and suffering without leaving visible traces.

Despite the challenge this presents to government transparency and accountability, the commission hearings have created a forum in which the scope of the CIA program can be disclosed and the public can debate the infrastructures that make torture possible.

Alexandra Moore, Professor of Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

——

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Democracy Now! “Will Senate Dems Block Confirmation of Climate-Denying, Torture-Backing State Dept Pick Mike Pompeo?”

Former colleagues say the next national security adviser — whose job is to marshal information and present it to the president fairly — resists input that doesn’t fit his biases and retaliates against people he disagrees with.

In early 2002, as the Bush administration hunted for Osama bin Laden, pressed its war in Afghanistan and set its sights on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, John Bolton saw another looming threat: that Cuba was secretly developing biological weapons.

Bolton, who was then the State Department’s undersecretary for arms control issues, included a warning about the Cuban threat in a draft of a speech and sent it around the department for the necessary clearance. A biological warfare analyst wrote back that Bolton’s proposed comments overstated what U.S. intelligence agencies really knew about the matter, and, as routinely happens, suggested some small changes.

The analyst was summoned to Bolton’s office. “He got very red in the face, and shaking his finger at me, and explained to me that I was acting way beyond my position,” the analyst, Christian Westermann, recalled later during a Senate inquiry. Bolton then demanded that Westermann’s supervisor remove him permanently from the biological weapons portfolio, thundering that “he wasn’t going to be told what he could say by a mid-level munchkin.”

Last week, President Donald Trump named Bolton to be his new national security adviser, a job that would arguably make him the government’s most important arbiter of competing views on foreign policy and a key judge of what intelligence information reaches the president on the most serious threats to national security.

The nomination — which does not require Senate confirmation — has drawn attention mainly for Bolton’s combative bureaucratic style and the hawkish views he has espoused in three Republican administrations and as a Fox News analyst. Among other ideas, Bolton has advocated overthrowing the Islamic government of Iran, bombing that country’s nuclear facilities, and (just last month) taking preemptive military action against North Korea.

But many foreign policy experts, including some who worked closely with him, argue that the more significant issue for Bolton’s new role may be his history as a consumer of intelligence that does not conform to his views, and the lengths to which he has sometimes gone to try to suppress analyses that he sees as wrong or misinformed.

An examination of Bolton’s record, based on interviews with some of his former colleagues and the Senate hearings on his nomination in 2005 to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reveal a tendency to aggressively embrace intelligence that supported his positions, while discounting information that undercut those views. The confrontations that arose from that approach have often been ascribed to partisanship or sharp elbows, but even some conservative veterans of the Bush administration accused Bolton of exaggerating, minimizing or cherry-picking intelligence information to bolster his policy positions, and of retaliating to try to silence intelligence professionals with whom he disagreed.

“Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser,” said Robert Hutchings, who dealt extensively with Bolton as head of the National Intelligence Council, a high-level agency that synthesizes analysis from across the intelligence community to produce strategic assessments for policymakers. “He’s impervious to information that goes against his preconceived ideological views.”

Bolton declined to comment for this article, but he has dismissed such allegations in the past. During the contentious hearings on his nomination as Washington’s U.N. envoy in 2005, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that his disputes with analysts were based on legitimate questions about the quality of information they produced, and what Bolton asserted were the analysts’ failures to adhere to proper procedures, rather than his ideological views.

“When you lose trust and confidence in somebody in a professional environment, it’s a problem, especially when it’s in the intelligence area,” Bolton testified. “I didn’t seek to have these people fired, I didn’t seek to have discipline imposed on them, I said, ‘I’ve lost trust in them, and are there other portfolios they could follow.’”

Bolton’s allies acknowledge that his bellicose personality can rub people the wrong way. But they said he is often more thoughtful and disciplined in private than in public, and they praised his formidable bureaucratic skills as essential to the White House post.

“You cannot say he is not an able government actor,” said Stewart Baker, who was general counsel of the Bush National Security Agency and of a commission that reviewed intelligence issues relating to the Iraq War. “He knows how government works and knows how to make it work toward new goals. Part of the problem he has faced is just how sharp he is at debate, at finding problems and articulating them in short, pithy phrases and delivering a message the foreign policy establishment doesn’t like.”

Since the creation of the National Security Council in 1947, the role of the national security adviser has reflected the differing power centers and policy views of successive administrations. The job consists of two sets of duties, said Richard Haass, a former head of policy planning for the State Department. The first is to identify issues requiring the council’s attention, assemble intelligence and analysis, lay out policy options and move the government’s security apparatus to necessary decisions. The second role is to serve as a private adviser to the president, one who presents a range of views from across the government, and counsel on the best course. “The trick is not to let your personal preference and advocacy get in your way,” said Haass, who is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Not a lot of people can do that.”

Haass, who worked under Brent Scowcroft on the National Security Council staff of George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, cited Scowcroft as “the gold standard” for skill, discipline and restraint in the job. “He was scrupulous in being an honest broker,” said Haass. “So much so that people in the Cabinet were willing to let him convey their positions to the president.”

Although Haass described Bolton as an intelligent and forceful advocate, he said there are questions about his judgment and temperament, especially since he will be counseling a president with no previous government or foreign policy experience.

Baker, the former NSA lawyer, predicted Bolton will be effective at pushing the ensemble of government agencies to implement policy decisions. “I expect him to be quite good at that,” Baker said. “He has a good understanding of government behavior. And he’s smart and tough and committed to effective action.”

Bolton’s approach has generated scrutiny over the years. After he was nominated for the United Nations job in March of 2005, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee interviewed 35 witnesses and reviewed 800 pages of documents and communications from the State Department, the CIA and the Agency for International Development. In examining Bolton’s tenure as the department’s undersecretary for arms control and international security, skeptical Democrats noted that he had been a vocal proponent of invading Iraq in 2003 — and of the faulty intelligence that the Bush administration produced about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Among the more stinging voices raised against Bolton was that of Hutchings, a veteran diplomat who headed the National Intelligence Council from 2003 to 2005. Hutchings told the Senate committee that the intelligence community had raised strong objections to congressional testimony that Bolton was preparing in the summer of 2003 about the U.S. assessment of Syria’s nascent nuclear program. The intelligence community thought Bolton exaggerated the threat of Syrian weapons development, according to Hutchings and Senate documents.

Bolton took “isolated facts and made much more of them to build a case than I thought the intelligence warranted,” Hutchings said, according to the Senate committee report. “It was, sort of, cherry-picking of little factoids, and little isolated bits were drawn out to present the starkest possible case.”

In response, Bolton described the conflict that arose over the Syria issue as part of the standard back-and-forth between intelligence agencies and policymakers. Interviewed this week, Hutchings, now a professor of national security studies at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said his opinion about Bolton has not changed. He called Trump’s choice of Bolton “dangerous, not just unfortunate,” and warned that it would increase the risk of an ill-advised war with North Korea and other adversaries.

The 2005 Senate inquiry also delved into complaints that Bolton pressured and mistreated subordinates who differed with him on various intelligence and policy issues. Officials testified that Bolton tried to block the promotion of a young official in in the State Department’s non-proliferation bureau who had received glowing reviews from his superiors. The official, Rexon Ryu, was said to have played a role in removing some of the most controversial allegations about Iraq’s weapons programs from a much-criticized speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell gave at the U.N. Security Council on the eve of the war.

Bolton’s clash with the biological weapons analyst Westermann in 2002 became State Department lore. The argument had its origins in Bolton’s view that the U.S. intelligence community had gravely underestimated the Cuban threat, in part because of the influence of a senior Pentagon intelligence analyst, Ana Belen Montes, who was arrested in 2001 on charges of spying for Cuba.

The speech that Bolton submitted for State Department clearance in February of 2002 warned of the potential “dual use” of Cuba’s advanced biotechnology industry, according to testimony and interviews. Bolton wanted to assert that the U.S. believed Fidel Castro’s government “has a developmental offensive biological warfare program and is providing assistance to other rogue state programs,” according to the Senate report.

That language triggered an objection from Westermann, a decorated Navy combat veteran and former arms inspector who handled the chemical and biological weapons account in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. After Westermann raised his concern, the passage was toned down to say that the U.S. “believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort. Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states. We’re concerned that such technology could support BW programs in those states.”

After dressing down Westermann, Bolton pressed Westermann’s supervisor to remove him from his subject matter portfolio — a move that officials described as tantamount to dismissal.

“People stay on their accounts a long time,” a former State Department intelligence colleague of Westermann said in an interview. “If you remove him from the account, that means he basically loses his job. Bolton went out of his way to bully him. It was beyond the pale.”

Other, more senior State Department officials described Bolton’s behavior as unprecedented. “Asking me to fire an intelligence analyst is a singular event in my career,” former Assistant Secretary Carl Ford, who oversaw the intelligence bureau at the time, said in an interview. “Threatening to have someone fired for not altering intelligence judgments to suit them, that is uniquely Bolton. I have worked in both intelligence and policy positions. Even the most opinionated people with reputations of being difficult never even suggested they were thinking about doing something so outrageous.”

Bolton and his defenders said he was angry because the analyst had communicated with others about the matter without telling him. They pointed out that Westermann kept his job in the end. Nonetheless, news of the harangue spread like wildfire in a culture that prides itself on encouraging analysts to provide rigorous, unvarnished assessments to policymakers, regardless of their power or politics.

Secretary of State Powell, who was known to criticize Bolton privately, later visited the intelligence bureau to show support for Westermann and the other analysts, according to interviews and testimony. Westermann’s star rose further after it became known that he had been a rare voice of skepticism about allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The Cuba dossier triggered another clash only months after the Westermann incident. This time, Bolton’s target was a senior CIA analyst, Fulton Armstrong, who was serving as the intelligence community’s National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. Although Armstrong focused on the Havana regime’s political motivations, he and other CIA officers also challenged Bolton’s public statements about possible Cuban efforts to develop biological weapons.

“We all agreed that what Bolton wanted to say was exaggerating to the point of cooking the intelligence,” Armstrong recalled in an interview. “No one ever stated that Bolton did not have the right to put out any judgment he wanted. Our position was you can say whatever you want, but don’t use us to validate it.”

Bolton and one of his bureaucratic allies Otto Reich, then the assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, assailed Armstrong, according to testimony and interviews. In July 2002, Bolton drove out to the CIA’s Virginia headquarters and demanded that a senior official remove Armstrong from his post.

This time, it was the agency’s deputy director, John McLaughlin, who told Bolton, “No.”

“It’s perfectly all right for a policymaker to express disagreement,” McLaughlin said during the later Senate inquiry. “But I think it’s different to then request, because of the disagreement, that the person be transferred. And — unless there is malfeasance involved here — and, in this case, I had high regard for the individual’s work; therefore, I had a strong negative reaction to the suggestion about moving him.”

Bolton said he had “one conversation” at the CIA about Armstrong, then did not revisit the issue. But interviews and the Senate report indicate that the campaign against the Latin America specialist lasted months, if not years. One senator described it as “a vendetta.” Armstrong said the retaliation also had a wider, chilling effect, because the national intelligence officer speaks for the combined work of 15 agencies.

As for Bolton himself, the Republican-dominated committee voted 10-8 in favor of his nomination. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the committee chairman, said the cases cited by Bolton’s opponents were overstated. Whatever disputes may have arisen, Bolton “always accepted the final judgment of the intelligence community,” Lugar said. In the face of heated opposition to the nomination in the full Senate, President Bush gave Bolton a recess appointment.

Bolton and other Bush administration policy officials continued to insist on the validity of their view that Cuba was pursuing a bioweapon research and development program. However, by 2005, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that “it is unclear whether Cuba has an active offensive biological warfare effort now, or even had one in the past.”

By 2010, under the Obama administration, an annual State Department report on the issue dropped any references to a bioweapons threat from Cuba. The “available information did not indicate,” the report said, that Cuba was involved in any weapons activities prohibited by international agreement.

Sebastian Rotella is a senior reporter at ProPublica. An award-winning foreign correspondent and investigative reporter, Sebastian’s coverage includes terrorism, intelligence and organized crime.

Via ProPublica

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Guardian: “US defence secretary welcomes ‘devil incarnate’ John Bolton to Pentagon”