But if you listen to the “neocon” agenda ... it is Iran that is the aggressor.
Early history: British control
1913: Britain provides funding for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later British Petroleum Company), and becomes the de facto controller of the company. Iran receives only 16 percent of the company’s net profits.
World War I: Britain and Russia attack Ottoman forces in Persia. The Persian people suffers from being used as a battleground.
1917: Britain uses Persia as a stepping stone for an attack on Bolshevik forces in Russia. The Soviet Union responds by invading northern Persian provinces.
1919, August: Britain more or less forces Persia to accept the Anglo-Persian Agreement, through which Britain is guaranteed access to Persian oil fields. The agreement is internationally condemned as hegemonic, particularly by the United States which also has oil interests in Persia. It is never ratified by the Majlis, the Persian parliament.
1921: The Majlis formally rejects the Anglo-Persian Agreement.
1925: Reza Shah Pahlavi, formerly an officer in the Persian Cossack Brigade, comes to power in a coup against the earlier Shah.
1928-1932: Widespread Iranian opposition to continued British control of the oil fields. Attempts by the Iranian government to negotiate a better agreement, arguing that the earlier agreement was unconstitutional. Iran asks for 25 percent of APOC’s total shares. Britain stalls the negotiations and ultimately refuses to change the agreement.
1932: The monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi dictates a letter cancelling the agreement. The matter is brought to the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague. Reza Shah now suddenly gives in to British demands. A new agreement is written and ratified by the Iranian National Consultative Assembly in 1933. The new agreement gives APOC control of the best 100,000 square miles of oil lands, exempts its operations from import and customs duties, and forbids Iran from cancelling the agreement.
1939: Rezah Shah Pahlavi refuses to expel German engineers and technicians from the country, now called Iran.
1941: Britain and the Soviet Union invade Iran, using the refusal to expel German nationals as a pretext. The Shah is arrested and sent into exile. The Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is permitted to ascend to the throne as a puppet emperor. Troops are withdrawn in 1942. The Soviet Union refuses to give up the provinces East and West Azerbaijan, and funds the Tudeh Party of Iran, a communist party.
1945: The Soviet-backed Tudeh Party controls northern Iran.
1949: The Tudeh Party attempts to assassinate the Shah but fails. The party is banned.
1951: The Iranian people demands an end to AIOC (former APOC) control of the country’s oil. Iranian workers at the company receive only 50 cent per day, with no vacations, no sick leave, no disability compensation. They live without running water or electricity in a shanty town called Kaghazad, Paper City, where life is unbearable during the hot summers. British promises from 1933 to build schools, hospitals, roads and a phone system have proven false. Iran is effectively a British colony.
Operation Ajax
1951: The Majlis votes to nationalize AIOC, and elects the widely popular Mohammed Mossadegh as prime minister. Mossadegh promises an end to foreign control and nationalizes the oil fields. AIOC leaves Iran, and under British pressure other nations refuse to accept Iranian oil. This is called the Abadan Crisis. On top of the economic isolation, Britain contemplates an invasion of Iran. U.S. President Harry Truman opposes a British invasion but needs British support for the Korean War, and will not put too much pressure behind his words.
1952: The Shah attempts to replace Mossadegh. Riots erupt across the country, and Mossadegh returns to his post as prime minister. He is voted Man of The Year by TIMES, and his popularity in Iran is enormous. Iran suffers from extreme poverty due to the British-led oil blockade. The Shah flees the country.
1953: The CIA stages a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh. The coup is called Operation Ajax. Together with the Shah’s agents mosques are bombed, a terrorist act blamed on Mossadegh - it is said that Mossadegh is secretly an anti-Islamic communist. Politicians, officers and newspapers are bribed by the CIA. The British consulate supplies the CIA with intelligence and advice. The Shah returns to Iran, and Mossadegh is arrested. 25 years of iron-fisted tyranny begins, where the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, is everywhere and arrests thousands of political dissenters. The country is once again a de-facto colony of Britain and now also the United States.
1978-1979: Widespread riots against the Shah’s regime and foreign control. Because all public gatherings are forbidden except in mosques, the revolution is planned in mosques and relies on religious inspiration. After 25 years, the Shah is finally overthrown. Ruhollah Ayatollah Khomeini becomes the highest religious leader in Iran and leader of the government; he is demonized by the United States as an America-hater.
1979-onward: The United States imposes sanctions against Iran, seeking to ruin the country financially.
1980-1988: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invades Iran to secure oil and water supplies. The war cripples the Iranian economy and leads to two million deaths. The invasion is sponsored and backed by the United States, but is ultimately unsuccessful. Iraq uses mustard gas against Iranian troops and against Iranian and Kurdish civilians, an act that is never directly condemned by the UN. Iran never receives reparations for the war or an apology, either from Iraq or the United States.
The Neocon Era
1991: Germany donates two nuclear submarines to U.S.-backed Israel, equipped to carry nuclear missiles. Israel has a large supply of illegal nuclear weapons and has declared its intention to use force against Iran when it deems force necessary. Iran has backed the Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organization that fought Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in 1978. Germany also delivers a third nuclear submarine where the cost is split with the Israeli government.
2000: 200 members of the U.S. Congress sign a statement endorsing the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), a communist group internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. The PMOI is behind bombings and assassinations seeking to destabilize the Iranian government. Ruhollah Ayatollah Khomenei’s left arm is withered from such a bomb attack. The U.S. had recognized the group as a terrorist organization in 1997, as a way to support newly elected Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.
2001: The United States invades Iran’s neighbor to the east, Afghanistan. Iran offers to assist in deposing the Taliban government in Afghanistan, through the use of its contacts among the tribes in western Afghanistan; the offer is rejected and Iran is instead painted as being in league with the Taliban as “Islamofascists.”
2002: In a speech by U.S. president George Bush, Iran is said to be in an “axis of evil” together with North Korea and Iran’s arch-enemy Iraq.
2003: The United States invades Iran’s neighbor to the west, Iraq. Iran is now surrounded by U.S.-supported nations: the nuclear-armed Israel to the west, nuclear-armed Pakistan and India to the east, Georgia, and the U.S.-installed governments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2005: U.S. media start a campaign against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, based on a speech where he allegedly said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” This is a false translation, first published in the New York Times. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the regime in Tel Aviv, like the regime in the Soviet Union, will eventually “vanish from the pages of history.” The false translation is used by Israel-loyal media for many years.
2006: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his approval to a Holocaust conference in Teheran, where stories surrounding the “Holocaust” in WWII are scrutinized. For the first time, critics to the official stories are heard. Ahmadinejad takes no sides in the discussions, but is demonized as a Nazi and “Holocaust denier” by U.S. media. Many Westerners who attend the conference lose their jobs and have their careers ruined following systematic media pressure.
2007: CNN reveals that the U.S. military continues to fund and protect the communist terror group PMOI. The PMOI is backed in Washington by prominent Republicans such as Senator Tom Tancredo, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. Human Rights Watch has reported that the PMOI runs prison and torture camps inside Iraq, and that it severely attacks former PMOI members.
2007: ABC News reveals that the United States has been backing the Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah, “the Army of God,” in what ABC calls a secret war against Iran. Jundullah claims responsibility for several deadly attacks near the southeastern part of Iran that borders Pakistan.
2007: U.S. media and the U.S. military start a campaign to blame Iran for supplying anti-Iranian rebels in Iraq with weapons to use against the pro-Iranian Iraqi government. Iran denies the accusations. In one of the most egregious examples of media campaigning, the Washington Post heavily edits a Reuters report on roadside bombs in Iraq; Reuters describes U.S. soldiers discovering an Iraqi factory where the bombs are produced, but after a brief online publication of the report, the Washington Post erases the news about the factory.
2008: In the U.S. presidential elections, many presidential candidates in the Left and Right threaten Iran with nuclear attacks. The code for this is to “keep all options on the table.” Israel-loyal media increasingly call for attacks on Iran, claiming that Iran has plans to obtain nuclear weapons, which would be an excuse for war. Iran has said it does not have such plans. UN inspectors, who have full access to Iranian nuclear facilities, have confirmed that no such plans exist, and that it would take at least nine years for Iran to produce a nuclear missile.
2009: Germany delivers two more nuclear submarines to Israel.
2009: The EU removes the PMOI from its terror list with U.S. approval.
2009: Pakistani intelligence sources put CIA’s recent spending on “black operations” to subvert Iran’s government at $400 million.
2009: Iranian elections are held, with voter turnout at a massive 84 percent, higher than in most Western nations. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is re-elected as president by 60 percent of the votes, just as predicted in pre-election polls. U.S. media claim the elections were rigged, citing the swift vote count as proof. However, the usual pattern when elections are rigged is a delay in the counting, for bribes to be paid to counting officials and deals to be negotiated with opponents; with Iran’s high number of vote counters, a swift count is more than likely.
2009: Western intelligence agencies and media play a key role in sustaining student riots in Iran’s capital Teheran, following the presidential election. Radio propaganda, internet websites, the funding of “youth” organizations and a control of the international view of the riots are methods developed in earlier U.S.-backed revolts, such as a coup in Georgia, demonstrations to overturn an election in Ukraine, youth groups spreading propaganda in Serbia and storming the president’s mansion. The Iranian government deplores the use of this strategy to “manipulate democracy” but is not heard.
2009: U.S. media “reveal” an Iranian nuclear installation in Qom; the installation is condemned as a site for making nuclear weapons, and members of the U.S. Congress repeat their calls for military action against Iran. However, the Qom installation had been reported to the UN by the Iranian government, a fact that is hidden by U.S. media. The UN Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran (but not U.S.-backed Israel) is a voluntary member, calls for the reporting of nuclear installations a certain number of days before their activation, not when construction begins. Iran had abided by this rule.
2010: The Sunday Times reports that Israel deploys three German-made nuclear submarines outside the Iranian coast. The submarines are able to attack Iranian cities with nuclear missiles at short notice. An Israeli military official says the submarines will be used for spying operations and possibly to land Mossad agents inside Iran.
