We Need American Troops

"The US also talked the Shah into signing the NPT, and no, they are not asking for a dismantling of Iran's nuclear program, they are asking for an end to uranium enrichment. Any reason you choose to misrepresent things that way? Also I wonder how a nuclear program which by 1979 consisted of two unfinished reactors being built by German firms was a "US developed" nuclear program. Maybe it just sounds better that way? Also, the best hardware the Shah got from the US was F-14s. During the war the US refused to sell Iran spare parts and by the end of the war practically none of them were serviceable, unlike the French and Soviet aircraft."

Why didn't the U.S. talk the Shah into leaving? Again, you're thinking in the box. The Shah was intalled by the U.S. Eventually, they did take him out on the helicopter, after a few million protestors were on the streets of Tehran.

The U.S. has put up roadblocks to the Iran's nuclear program since the early 80s. They managed to get Europe to not sell nuclear components to Iran and have done so quite successfully through negotiations and incentives with other countries that would have otherwise supplied them with parts. There's no question that the U.S. doesn't want their nuclear programming continuing. It's much more than a uranium enrichment issue, although enrichment is an important issue. There's also issues about reactors for electricity being used as breeders.

And yes, U.S. firms were involved in the building of the nuclear program in Iran back in the 70s before things went sour between the U.S. and Iran. MIT and Stanford were also involved in the planning. Germany and other countries were involved in the 70s and later.

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The fact that Iran signed the NPT gives it the right to produce and enrich for peaceful purposes. The U.S. has to come up with a valid reason for stopping their nuclear program. Up to this point, the U.S. has accused Iran of being guilty of something and demanded it prove itself innocent. It did much the same thing with Saddam and Iraq. Iran would have to be in violation of some aspect of NPT for the U.S. to have a valid reason to stop their program.

I don't think we want to get into a situation with Iran similar to Iraq where the U.S. govt claims Iran has something (enriched uranium being diverted for another purpose) but that can't be found, therefore the U.S. has to invade them because Iran couldn't prove itself innocent. I hope it doesn't come to that.

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If "gotcha" means getting my facts right, then yes I'm good at that game. Maybe you want to pretend that the difference between vetos and no votes is meaningless, and whether the US armed Iraq or someone else did is meaningless. But these are not meaningless distinctions. Until you can get basic facts like these right, you are in no position to tell other people to go study the history.

My point is that the "antiwar" version of history is a history of US guilt. Thus you find that a US no vote for a meaningless statement which went ahead anyway is somehow of historical significance, but tens of billions in arms sales are not historically significant. No other countries are discussed because it is a starting assumption that the US is guilty, we only need to find out how and why.

The US never had political control of Iran, but we sure had better relations with them. On the other hand, while the US had a long history with Iraq, to pretend that we steered or were even a primary actor in that history is false. Some people just prefer to study the history of US involvement, ignore everything and everyone else, and then assume a causal relationship between US actions and any outcomes. It is not real history, it is agenda driven history.

But why do you deal with this complication by ignoring everyone except the US, and then applaud yourself as a teller of truth?

We never controlled Iran. And repressive countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were heavily influenced by and closely allied with the US, developed into peaceful democracies which have good relations with the US. Obviously there is more to it than that, although you seem to prefer the simple version. Saying "They hate us because we're guilty" doesn't address much either. The Iranian revolution was 25 years ago, and like I said before, plenty of countries have gotten over historical gripes. It is a fundamental principle of your kind of history to assume that people in foreign countries don't have much free will, they only react to our actions. Thus to assess Iran's actions, we dont' even need to look at an aspects of Iran's political system, we only need to look at the US which is historically guilty and therefore responsible for all of Iran's actions from 1979 onwards.

Dunno.

We did not support Saddam prior to his invasion of Iran. We didn't even have diplomatic relations and had him on a list of nations sponsoring terrorism. And I assume you only ask "what if Saddam had never invaded Iran" under the assumption that the US is guilty for him doing so.

After the war we withdrew what little support we had. Remember, 99% of his weapons were from other countries. His financing was from rich Gulf states. When you say "we went overboard" you're really not being reality based.

Yes but we do not regularly chant "Death to Iran" (or death to our former colonial masters Britain, or former enemies Japan and Germany) in Congress or at public gatherings. And we don't hang 40 foot banners from the State Department reading "Iran must burn". Sadly the reverse is not true. Yet looking at a sign like that you probably conclude that shows just how guilty the US is. My suggestion is that you could try assuming Iranians have free will (after all, most of them probably weren't even alive when the Shah was around given the demographics) and then ask yourself what perpetuates such obsessive hatred. Everybody's got historical gripes, why do some countries (governments, ruling classes, ideologic groups, etc...) try to make it part of the national identity?

You could have just tried answering the question. It doesn't follow that if we supported Stalin we should have supported Saddam, but you won't answer either question. What if he had let Iran win? Can you see that the consequences of letting Iran win looked worse than the consequences of supporting Saddam? All the other Gulf states saw it that way, that's why they financed him to the tune of tens of billions, even though they thought he was a monster. And they were the ones that were going to have to live with him as neighbors afterwards.

Iran was better off under the Shah than the Ayatollahs, but it would probably have been better had he not been installed.

Again, its USA, USA, USA. The only time you bring up Europe is to say "the US got them not to do...". Yet Europeans oppose uranium enrichment by Iran too, and as far as I can see they do so out of their own free will. The US should be trying to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear program. Every country should. But as far as coercion goes, the US has been operating through the framework provided by the NPT.

Again, no context. You probably think I'm denying US involvement (and I'm traumatised by your inconvenient facts). But I'm not. To you, the Iranian nuclear program was a "US developed" nuclear program, because the US was involved. But lots of countries were involved, and in the end it was foreign countries which were building the two reactors that were contracted. Yet in your version of history, list the US involvement, ignore everyone and everything else, blame the US, and then case closed.

The NPT is a weak treaty. We have every reason to be suspicious about compliance. And Iran has already been forced to admit they lied on numerous occasions about what they are up to. Apparently you're either unaware or uninterested.

And so it happens that the International Atomic Energy Agency, not the US, brought the matter to the UN Security Council just recently. They found that Iran's "many failures and breaches" of its nuclear (NPT) Safeguards Agreement "constitute non-compliance" with the pact.
It added there was an "absence of confidence" that Iran's atomic program was exclusively peaceful and this gave rise to questions "within the competence of the Security Council".

So here we have international organisation, working within the bounds of international law and treaty obligations trying diplomatically to prevent and Iranian nuclear bomb. But of course the antiwar conclusion is still the tried and true blame USA.

 

You and I have different ways of looking at a situation. You tend to look at treating symptoms (we had to support Saddam to stop Iran) whereas I tend to question the root causes of the symptoms (why was Iran upset to begin with? Why did Saddam invade Iran?). I've said before that Saddam was the one who invaded Iran. Why should we think Iran would have taken over the oil fields in Kuwait before Saddam had even invaded Iran?

It's hard for anyone to not see the irony of the politics. Saddam was backed by the U.S. to supposedly protect the oil fields of Kuwait and yet he's the one who ended up invading Kuwait. It's almost silly.

If Iran did end up on its own invading Kuwait (which is speculative to begin with) then the U.S. would have had to send its own troops in eventually if it wanted to protect it's interests in the oil fields of Kuwait.

But look what ended up happening. We had to send in our troops anyway to Iraq because of this problem with Saddam (twice). So what use was it for the U.S. to be supporting someone like Saddam in the first place?

Of course this is all hindsight. But you have to admit some bad decisions were made in the 80s regarding how to deal with the situation between Iran and Iraq.

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Some notes on the building of Iran's nuclear program. There was something on the order of $6 of govt money made available to U.S. firms. It's also interesting to note that Cheney and Rumsfeld were also involved in the building of this program back in the 70s during the Ford administration. Again, it's ironic how the politics play out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran's_nuclear_program

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Wikepedia article. The U.S. and the Shah had close collaboration no matter we look at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.-Iran_relations

Excerpts:

"In 1953, Iran's nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh began a period of rapid power consolidation, which eventually led to his exiling of Iran's constitutional monarch, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The United States and Britain, through a now-admitted covert operation of the CIA called Operation Ajax, helped organize protests to overthrow Moussadeq and return the Shah to Iran. After his return, Iran's fledgling attempts at democracy quickly descended into dictatorship as the Shah dismantled the constitutional limitations on his office and began to rule as an absolute monarch.

During his reign, the Shah received significant American support, frequently making state visits to the White House and earning praise from numerous American Presidents. The Shah's close ties to Washington and his bold agenda of rapidly Westernizing of Iran soon began to infuriate certain segments of the Iranian population, especially the hardline Islamic conservatives.

In 1979 Iranians revolted and the Shah was ousted for a second time. The violently anti-American Ayatollah Khomeni became Iran's new leader, and soon began issuing vicious rhetoric against the United States, describing the country as the "Great Satan" and a 'nation of infidels.'"

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Who is the American troops? Bolivian troops? Brazilian troops?