SHAFAQNA- IRNA: In an interview with IRNA, Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror” said that the UK sanctions on Iran in 1953 over Iranian bid to nationalize oil and the latest US maximum pressure sanctions, are attempts to punish Iran for independence.
The US journalist said that the UK actions, “at least, had an economic justification”. Iran had cut the hands of the United Kingdom from its oil reserves.
Kinzer, who has extensively written on Washington’s meddling with the affairs in the Middle East and Latin America, believes that US Iranophobia policy is rooted in ideology and US political elites.
Kinzer said that Abadan Refinery was “the richest, the most productive, the most valuable” British asset in the entire world; “for 30 years, the entire UK economy had been based around oil from Iran, every truck … every bus every car was running on Iranian oil.”
He added, “Every factory in the UK was running on Iranian oil”; even the Royal Navy was totally dependent on Iranian oil, but today there are no economic motivations for the US to be too hostiles to Iran.
He said that the US has similar policies about the countries that are “not obeying the US” like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, and have their own ideas about the directions in about the world politics.
“Anyone that threatens the idea that Washington should be able to dictate the ways the world run becomes an enemy.”
“This is Iran’s great sin: Iran has its own policies and many of its policies conflicts with what Washington wants; and the US cannot stand it.”
Kinzer said that the US believes it should have so much power that it could easily ignore what other countries think, which is very dangerous in long run; he quoted the US ambassador to Russia as saying that “this is 200 tons of diplomacy right here,” when he was standing on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean a few days ago.
Regarding the false idea many US people have about Iran, he said, “For many people in Washington, Iran is not really a country, not a group of people or place on the map…; Iran is the latest incarnation of the force of barbarism that threatens civilization.”
For them, Iran is the same threat that once communism and terrorism were; “it is a code phrase for everything that is bad and hateful,” he added that the “pernicious qualities” have “absolutely nothing to do with the actual country [Iran].”
Answering a question about if such ideas are generally accepted in the US or belong to a special group, he said that people like “Hook and his friends in the administration” want the existing “struggle” between the US and Iran to change into a war, while the geopolitical interests of Iran and the US are in line with each other.
Contrary to the “so-called allies” of the US in the Middle East, Iran wants “to crush the jihadist al-Qaeda and ISIS ideology even more than the US because those people want to kill every Shia Muslim.”
“So Iran also has interest in civility in the Middle East, which should be one of our interests, as well.”
The anti-Iran fanaticism originates “in the United States wish to lash out” at the enemies; the US sees itself surrounded by enemies, he said.
The anti-Iran bias in Washington “goes far beyond anything that Iran has ever actually done to merit it,” he said.
“It has more to with the US desire to punish every country that does not submit itself to dictates from Washington.”
Regarding the things that may happen if Trump is defeated in 2020 elections, he said that many people in Washington believe that the US should return to Iran nuclear deal and if a democrat is elected in 2020, there will be “a change in US policy toward Iran.”.
Answering a question recent assertions of US Special Representative on Iran Brian Hook as saying that the US role in 1953 coup has been insignificant and internal Iranian forces have organized the coup, the former New York Times journalist said that that there are two area to discuss; one, the motivating for doing this, Hook is lobbying for “the most bitterly anti-Iran group in Washington”, which see it “necessary to exculpate” the US for the its roles in the 1973 coup in Iran that led to toppling the most democratically-elected prime minister of Iran before the Islamic Republic’s era.
Opposing Hook’s ideas, he said that anyone can have their own ideas about historical facts, but they shouldn’t “try to rewrite history in order to justify opinions of f today.”
That they think that the US should sanction and threaten Iran is one thing but twisting the facts about the 1953 coup in Iran is another, he said.
The second area is the substance of what he had to say; there are some people who believe that aliens have kidnapped them, that the earth is round, or that Shakespeare have actually not written what is being published under his name. “In that context, you can believe anything.”
He added that about the coup, it’s not the matter of debating evidence. Everything is laid out; the CIA has acknowledged their role and historian have examined the record and they are all in agreement.
There was only one article published a couple of years ago to give a different idea, but there are hundreds of articles to counteract that and report the facts, he said.
“Anybody, who has serious studied the episode, [or] even in superficial way, could doubt the reality that the United States played a decisive role in that coup.”
Kinzer also contributes columns to The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe. He is a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
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