At a time when pressures to punish Iran with more sanctions or perhaps even war (I still consider the latter unlikely), it might pay to try to understand things from the Iranian point view. Attached below is an excellent essay in the London Review of Books analyzing Iran's recent history. It puts the CIA/MI6 overthrow of the popularly elected Muhammad Mossadegh (1953) in a historical context of the preceding 75 years as well its ramifications for the present crisis. Note how the author, Pankaj Mishra, also shows how the poisonous roles played by the Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal in the heinous warmongering against Iraq is part of much longer tradition of yellow journalism in this part of the world.
Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books, 20 July 2012
Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Very British Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue
Bodley Head, 310 pp, £20.00, February, ISBN 978 1 84792 108 6
Phi Beta Iota: Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York) has it exactly right… When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it. The U.S. Government in particular, all Western governments generally (including the Nordics) have been so busy lying to their publics that they have not been able to connect to the truth. As Robert Steele likes to say, “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.”
See Also:
Phi Beta Iota About (Other Quotations)
2012 PREPRINT AS SUBMITTED: The Craft of Intelligence
