Transcription
What is Operation Ajax?
Okay, I'm going to set the stage for this one a little bit. So, I'm going to go to 9/11. So, after 9/11, Osama bin Laden published an open letter to America because everyone's like, "Why do they, why are they attacking us? Why did they?" And what did George W. Bush say? Well, "They attack us because we're free. They hate us." We the most cockamamey of answers you could like, it's totally untrue. And yet, that is the official narrative. They hate us because of our capitalism, because of our freedom. Therefore, we need to go stand for capitalism and freedom and go fight these infidel terrorists.
"And they tried to kill my dad."
Sure. Right. So,
"I think he literally said that."
Oh. Oh, Bush said that about his own dad. Okay. I thought you meant more generically that people felt that.
Well, he was saying about Saddam Hussein, you know.
So, so here like a year after the attack, Osama bin Laden publishes an open letter to the American people, which the American media completely suppressed. You had to read like the BBC and foreign sources to actually read this letter. It's online. You can go find it. And he spells out, he's like, "Here's why we did what we did. Here's why we're involved. It's because you've been occupying our holy lands. It's because you've been bombing our people. It's because you've been k." And I'm not going to excuse anything that Osama and his buddies did. But they're also to some extent rational creatures that have what they perceive to be justifications for their actions. Much like the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence listed their grievances in support of their decision to commit treason against the biggest superpower in the world. I think they were more righteous and moral actors than Osama was in his case. And yet he listed out some grievances and he said, "Here's what's motivating us." So when we pause to say, "Why did this happen? This this spontaneous act. Oh my gosh, this attack came out of nowhere." We can actually try and understand if we want to what the actual motivating reasons were why these actors did what they did.
Okay, with that backdrop in place, we rewind a few decades and we go to Iran 1979. Jimmy Carter is president. We have the hostage crisis. I think it was like 44 people were taken hostage for over a year. He sent in a helicopter of like eight people to, you know, they died. It was a just like Bay of Pigs. It was just this big, you know, disaster. And uh and so the Iranians are holding these people hostage for years, forever. Everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, these evil Iranians, how dare they take."
"Well, the Khomenei, who's really the birth of the maybe it's not fair to say he's the birth of sort of a of kind of like radical fundamentalist Islam at the state level, but he certainly is a huge force behind what happens over the next 30 years."
For sure.
And and so the Americans were never told uh why Americans were taken hostage. They were just led to believe that these are just evil, horrible people. We need to go fight them and we need to, you know, attack them and embargo and and all the rest. Well, the real reason is that two and a half decades prior, the CIA in conjunction with the British government launched what you're asking about, Operation Ajax. They literally created a coup against Muhammad Mossadegh in Iran. He was the duly elected leader of their government. Elected not by the broader people, but their their system was like parliament or whatever would elect the prime minister. And so he was elected. He was chosen. And the issue was the government that he inherited and that he soon led was in the process of nationalizing the Iranian oil. At the time there was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, I think is what it was called.
"It's now BP."
Right? And uh and so at the time the British owned this and so they got the CIA involved and said, "Hey, we need to stop this because they're trying to nationalize the oil. We need to maintain access to the oil."
Was there a Cold War backdrop like he's a commie, he's going to be he leans towards the Soviets and we got to?
Yeah. So even even so, you know, this is in the '50s, so Eisenhower when he's involved in the early days, he's being convinced that this is all kind of the the early communist plot that there are these influences. So that was absolutely an element.
"Well, and he's funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan going back to Eisenhower that starts."
And and so and this is why history is so important. We know this quote, "Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it." If we don't try and understand why these people attacked on 9/11 or why all these hostages were taken uh uh in in Iran in 1979, we're just going to allow to repeat these these same uh types of things. So they they depose this guy. They they they instigate this coup. They're bribing uh local politicians. They're fomenting all these kind of um rabble-rousers to to literally overthrow the uh the elected. I think it was his title was prime minister, but Muhammad Mossadegh is the guy.
"And my understanding is he was a relatively secular."
Yes.
"Leader."
Yes.
"And when you go back and look at pictures of Iran in like the '40s and."
" '50s, suits there. Yeah."
"There's like women in bikinis. It's like there's pictures that look like is that like there's pictures I've seen pictures because I've been looking at this recently. It looks like is that uh, you know, Sophia Loren walking down the street with guys looking. It's like, no, that's walking down the street in Tehran."
Right, exactly.
"So, okay."
And uh and so they deposed this guy and they installed. They meaning the CIA and their buddies, they installed the Shah, which is just a king, but he was a brutal dictator and he was a puppet. He was a total puppet for the US and British governments and he stopped the nationalization of the oil. The oil kept flowing to the West. And for two and a half decades, he was this repressive leader that brutally killed and and incarcerated a ton of people, uh, reduced their freedoms and gave rise to this kind of religious fanatical militancy that we have today. Well, they the people finally rise up over two decades later and they get rid of the Shah.
"And put in crazy people."
Yeah. Well,
"But yeah, but still."
The dominoes keep falling, but they they get rid of this guy and uh and the Shah comes to the West. He comes to America for I think like a medical treatment of some kind. And so America was going to give him asylum. And the Iranians get ticked off that we're giving shelter to this guy that they just deposed, especially because of the involvement 20 years ago about getting all this started. So in response, all these students and crazy folks decide they're going to take Americans hostage. And so that that is.
"I didn't realize that. So that so the hostage taking was actually a direct response to I think it was New York that was like taking."
"The Shah."
I don't know which city. Maybe it wasn't New York. I'm not sure. I feel like I heard it wasn't.
But the US government was involved. They were giving shelter to this guy. Of course, he was their puppet. So they, you know, were were going to help out the guy that helped them out.
"Just send him to Argentina with all the other Nazis."
Exactly. And so they uh this is why the 1970s. This is what's called blowback. In fact, it was in the after-action report. The the guy you need to read on this book is Chalmers Johnson. He wrote a book uh called Blowback. In fact, he's interviewed in "Why We Fight," the Eugene Jarecki film that we talked about earlier. He's since passed away, Chalmers Johnson. But his book Blowback uh is a fascinating uh look into all this history. And he talks about in that book how this term, this term blowback comes from the after-action report for the CIA where they say, "Oh, we just launched this coup and and we installed our guys, so the oil is going to keep flowing." But there may in the future be some blowback for these actions. And this is in the '50s. So it was two decades later that we finally see kind of the the chain of custody or this this sequence of events where these Americans were taken hostage because of what had happened previously.
So I I say today like our actions are going to be so much wiser. Our our our opinions and and decisions are going to be so much more accurate and well-informed if we understand the history. If we understand the things that predated this, the the motivation for these different actors. There's evil on all. There's horrible things happening. It's not to excuse anything, but I feel like that the challenge is if we don't pause to understand how we got here, we're going to put that ladder against the wrong building and take steps in a direction that ends up being unproductive or potentially immoral and and wrong.
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