Loved his music, never realized he had that much else going on.

“Guys, 70 years have gone by! The current regime of Iran was not chosen by the CIA. It’s what happened when the Iranians chose their system of governance. For right or wrong, it’s theirs.”

Really? The current regime in Iran and the fate of that country was a direct consequence of exactly what came before that. And that throughout the Middle East.

That line of thinking is, honestly, either dumb or simply ignorant. But I guess not as stated:

“My father’s view was that democracy was like two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner,” says Stewart, “and indeed in the Arab world it’s very much like that. My father wasn’t in the business of exporting democracy. He was in the business of getting the oil to the west by hook or by crook.”

The Shah was ousted by Iranians and the new regime was put into place by Iranians. The revolution was expressly anti-American from the beginning. I don't deny foreign influence in the upheaval process, but certainly the US did not choose to replace the Shah with Khomeini.

So, I don't understand your objection.

It seems like a "butterfly effect" argument, where you are saying that anything done by one group of political actors is the cause of all subsequent events in that political sphere. I disagree with this; if we say that all subsequent events were caused by all preceding events, that may be true in some sense I suppose, but it needlessly blurs the definition of "causality" to the point where the word becomes altogether useless.

On the other hand, there's a little bit of a "dream deferred" tone to what you're saying -- as though delaying the downfall of the monarchy only led to a more reactionary, less goal-oriented revolution later down the road. Maybe so, as not all of the revolutionary groups belonged to the same political ideology as Khomeini...but the new government was definitely chosen by the Iranian people.

Iran remains under embargo by the US to this day. It significantly impacts everything that goes on in that country.

US policy continues to be a huge factor shaping Iran. That isn't "history."

Acting like that's "history" is kind of like acting like the issues that Black Americans have currently has nothing at all to do with the fact that their ancestors came to this country as slaves and we continue to have racist policies in place, many of which were intentionally and consciously racist at the time that they were created. And we keep failing to really overturn them.

(For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24059608)

This is a complete non-sequitur.

It really isn't. In both cases there is the identical desire to define some arbitrary point in time, before which all that transpired is mere "history", having no meaningful bearing on anything after.

Which makes no sense, of course. You might just as well answer a "you break it, you buy it" sign in a shop with the claim that whatever breakage may or may not have happened, it's well in the past now, and there's no point trying on that basis to ascribe any kind of responsibility for the current situation to anyone except the shopkeeper, who clearly sees no problem with trying to sell broken merchandise.

That doesn't strike me as an argument that would, or should, get anyone very far.

It isn't. You implied 2 things:

It seems like a "butterfly effect" argument

The butterfly effect describes how a minor change in the current state of a system might lead to a huge change in a future state. But here we're talking about huge changes to begin with. Why do you expect that changes with such massive impact would have anything but visible and long lasting effects on every aspect of that system, including future choices?

The Shah was ousted by Iranians and the new regime was put into place by Iranians. The revolution was expressly anti-American

This is how manipulation works. Someone appears to make a choice because they're manipulated into making it but they do it without understanding the full consequences and implications of their choice, that they were manipulated into making it, or by whom. And when you're dealing with such outside interference all bets are off. Even if the decision was taken by the individual citizens, they are in general ill-equipped to deal with such planned large scale manipulation. And it's exactly what the manipulators are counting on. Look at the Russian interference in US elections.

If a witness provides false testimony and evidence against you to a jury, who subsequently finds you guilty, who is to blame? The jury? The witness? You? And if your imprisonment has visible and long lasting effects on your life would you consider that point a pivotal one that forever influenced your future and future choices, or one that needlessly blurs the definition of "causality"?

The problem with determining causality through a "butterfly effect" lens is that the criterion is too sensitive.

The question of "what is a cause" loses all meaning when every past event is treated as the cause of every future event. That's what I mean by "blurring the definition of 'causality.'" Please don't intentionally misinterpret what I'm saying (see your last sentence).

People are responsible for the outcomes of their decisions, manipulated or not. Even today, the Iranian government manipulates the superstitions and fears of the Iranian people. Still, the actors who put that government in power were millions of Iranians -- not just Western government actors.

here we're talking about huge changes to begin with.

In the article, some historians are mentioned as advancing the idea that Western powers are to blame for everything that happened in the timeline of Iran's government, and that's simply not true. There are clear differences between the removal of Mosaddegh and the removal of Mohammad Reza Shah. The removal of Mohammad Reza Shah was, as you say, huge. It's hard to justify the blaming of such a huge action on a few Westerners, but that's precisely the stance ascribed to historians in the article.

If a witness provides false testimony and evidence against you to a jury, who subsequently finds you guilty, who is to blame? The jury? The witness? You?

I'm not sure I understand what your point is here. Whether you blame the Iranian people or a group of cleric manipulators, the fact remains that millions of Iranians removed the Shah in a drawn-out upheaval process that was remarkably different than what happened in 1953. That's one of the points of contention mentioned in the article.

if your imprisonment has visible and long lasting effects on your life

This kind of emotionally charged approach to evaluating history is not useful because it clouds our ability to examine what actually happened. Essentially you are saying, "the long-term outcome of the Revolution should affect our analysis of the lead-up to the Revolution." However, in the 1970s the Iranian people did not know what the future held. They only knew what they had (the Shah) and what they wanted (not the Shah).

blaming of such a huge action on a few Westerners

You're looking at this as if it was a literal tug-of-war game where "a few" can't beat the many due to the laws of physics. Yet the reality we live in thoroughly contradicts you at every step. If the "few" can apply pressure at precise points and in precise ways then a lot can be achieved.

Look no further than lobbying where "a few" people have far more power than a country's worth of citizens. For example they may de-prioritize education because a population with close to total zero understanding of the world is far easier to steer whichever way the "few" want.

This kind of emotionally charged approach

You're free to make it as emotional as you want. I gave it as an objective example that destroyed the foundation of your line of argumentation. So call it what you may but you still haven't come up with anything that can stand up to even cursory scrutiny. Personal opinions and interpretations are not that.

but the new government was definitely chosen by the Iranian people

The 79 coup was part of a revolution led by a minority group of religious radicals, with support from some leftist groups (which they later regretted, obviously). They were certainly not chosen by "the Iranian people".

Led by a minority group

Whom did they lead? That's the question here. You're conveniently forgetting millions of protestors and several years of political conflict.

There is no parallel between the removal of Mosaddegh in 53 and the revolution in 79, because the former was orchestrated by Western powers while the latter was pressed by a groundswell of support within the nation, especially among students.

The fact that the leaders turned out to be bad has nothing to do with the way that they came to power in the first place.

First, I never claimed there was a parallel between 53 and 79. I agree the two were very different.

But regarding your other claim: if some random group had seized power during the Green movement and its massive protests, that would have been the decision of the Iranian people?

Don't get me wrong, I supported the Green movement, but I would never claim - if some random coup had happened during that time - that it was a democratic process.

That won't happen until free and fair elections.

It’s clearly not a democratic process, but it doesn’t sound that different than US presidential elections. We say “chosen by the American people”, but that doesn’t assume 100% of people voted for him/her.

but it doesn’t sound that different than US presidential elections

Huh? It was a coup, not an election.

People do these kind of big political actions because they want to radically change the course of history. That is the point. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes not so well. But there should be responsibility either way. And it is for history to judge the outcome.

Out of curiosity, when did it went well?

As to specific US interventions, post-CIA foundation, looking at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Covert_United_States_...

Indonesia has turned out the best of the bunch?

Indonesia has turned out the best of the bunch?

I've got a hunch the up to 1 million dead might say differently.

the US did not choose to replace the Shah with Khomeini.

The US (and UK) replaced Mosaddegh with the Shah. Then the Shah and SAVAK (with CIA help) launched a decades long attack on the secular, parliamentary oriented forces in the country. Initially the Shah supported the ayatollahs, and in turn was himself tacitly (sometimes openly) supported by them. Eventually they turned against the dictator under the spell of a foreign power.

Also, Iran had a large communist movement, and it is obvious in 1978 and early 1979 that the US, UK and France saw the communists as the enemy, Khomeini as someone to disempower but not destroy, and the Shah as who to support as long as they could. So that stance helped Khomeini on some level. France would not have allowed communists to sit in France and work successfully to undermine a friendly power (even Indochina, although that stance loosened in the 1950s).

It is simply dumb. The CIA certainly didn't want Khomeini in power, but him being elected is certainly a direct consequence of the CIA toppling their democracy.

As it did with Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on and on. Ironically, this has pushed the world away from the U.S. towards Russia. Good job trying to further the interests of the U.S. by driving everyone away from it with chaos, and now a president drives the U.S. allies away from it. It didn't take long before Germany started getting closer to Russia.

"Conclusive evidence", whether for Iraq or China, leads to a U.S. official dangling a vial of dried bat semen in front of the UN Security Council.

It's exacerbated with reactions to events. The most recent of which is the "bounty" issue. Officials and journalists are outraged that Russian intelligence services allegedly gave money to Taliban to target U.S. troops. Anyone with half a brain would think: isn't this the same thing the CIA did by training Taliban on U.S. soil, with Special Forces, giving them RPGs, weapons and money to kill Soviet troops? I mean, the US/Taliban/Russia is almost a Vicky Cristina Barcelona triangle.

The mere fact of these former intelligence officers and government officials being outraged is insulting.

More on relations:

Notice how Putin's speeches and interview differ from the usual U.S. diplomats and officials. U.S. officials and diplomats' speeches would piss off anyone with a functioning brain, it is the usual silly patriotism with wavy flags, exporting freedom and democracy, stars and stripes, and demagogy. No one can get away with that because the counter-examples are too many. This is bad salesmanship.

In contrast, Putin takes the approach to explain the lay of the land, underplays his role, and takes the position of the underdog: "my job is to look for the Russian people, we're not as powerful as the U.S., look at what they did with all that power", and when people look, they agree. It's a very effective selling/recruiting strategy.

I would hesitate to call anything concerning human actions a direct consequence if there is 25 years between the cause and its result.

on edit: instead of repeating the same thing in each response berating me for not accepting that it was a consequence I will put the additional response here

I didn't say it wasn't a consequence, but a direct consequence is generally understood as "an effect that is an immediate result of an event, incident, or occurrence."

https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Direct_consequence

https://www.iadclexicon.org/direct-consequence/

although it is often used for rhetorical effect in cases where the consequence is obviously not direct, I just avoid the usage unless I believe it is direct.

Why? Did anything change? Did the US hunger for oil and ‘exporting democracy’ mitigate in any sense?

Of course it is all a consequence of these actions but we pretend we don’t see it.

I'm on board with your logic, but disagree with your conclusion.

The Anglo-American legal tradition has two notions of causation: "but-for" and "proximate". The latter asks whether a consequence was foreseeable, and in practice amounts to a judgement about moral culpability for the consequence.

The establishment of an autocratic state was a foreseeable consequence of CIA intervention, and it doesn't seem fair to fault Iranians for failing to subdue their autocrats in a single generation. Such things take time.

I don't know enough on the Middle East to comment but I can comment on Africa, my continent. Some countries have been free of colonialists since the 1960s but you get politicians being elected because they "vow to continue fighting colonialism". Said politicians will paint themselves as revolutionaries. This works so for example politician will say we are free but the economy does not belong to us so I will continue our fight.

IMHO this rhetoric muddies waters and to an extent absolves polititians of governance failures. It isn't clear if an issue is because of am alleged CIA sponsored coup or due to corruption and incompetence. Either way you likely to have very vocal and passionate people supporting both positions.

Are China / the global central banks not colonialist?

Absolutely. Chinese definitely taking over the part of the world I am from. I suppose the difference is Chinese "seem" to stay out of any governance matters. You see them on the ground opening mines and businesses but you rarely see them stating that the African government is corrupt. From the new "revolutionary" politicians the banks are controlled by the former colonial governments. It's the new form of colonialism. Those are not my opinions but widely held views this end of the world.

I have a friend, who knows African politics--esp old French colonies pretty well. He also says same thing about West African CFA francs. I know enough monetary economics to see what is going on.

Yes, West African CFA is pegged to Euro, now. Earlier, it was pegged to French francs. One disadvantage: countries don't have economic freedom/flexibility to finance public debt. If a country issues its own currency (not pegged to any Western currency), it has flexibility to issue/print money to finance public projects the way the Federal reserve in the USA is doing right now, by buying corporate bonds and treasury notes, etc. The flexibility that the US Federal reserve, the ECB, the Bank of Japan have, can't be exported to African central banks by the mere fact of having own currency; there should be demand for such currency. Today, every Chinese, every African, every Indian, every Latin American (almost 75% of the world population) wants to hold assets in USD, EUR, etc, but not in Kwachas (Zambian currency), not in Turkish Lira.

If a currency is not hard pegged, if a currency is issued by a local sovereign central bank, then you can see run away inflation as you can witness in many African countries. This inflation is also bad, and that forces moneyed-locals to keep foreign currencies instead of local currency.

The solution: good governance with local currency, not hard pegged to any Western currency. Without good governance, local currency will lead to bad outcomes.

Agreed. So the order in which these things should happen is you start with good governance even if pegged to the Euro. Then once the market has gained confidence with you, you can print your own money. That's the theory in my head anyway. I suppose there all sorts of nuances I don't understand.

Is is possible that corrupted politicians have much better chance to win the election than those honest politician who are able to working towards good governance? So theoretically the solution is expecting a good leader but pragmatically there's little probability for those kind of leader to win?

What if there's some good reasons deep underneath the surface of what happened in so many countries but because of political correctness the researches of the reasons are impossible to start so the real solutions if exists are not available in near future?

By this logic, everything is a direct consequence of what came before. Let’s just blame all of our problems on the Roman Empire.

Even if that’s true on some scientific level, human institutions, human social practice, and the human mind itself, all rely on the idea of agency and responsibility. If you’re going to talk about whose “fault” it is, then you need to speak in those terms, not the mere chains of causation that science can talk about.

You obviously need an education on the Middle East, I suggest you read this book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman, and watch the movie "Persepolis". The Roman Empire existed thousands of years back, the Iranian evolution happened in 78-79, and the after affects are still in play.

“You obviously need an education” :eyeroll: Pretty fresh coming from someone who “obviously” missed the entire point of my post.

No one claims that present wasn’t caused by the past. The question is who bears moral responsibility today for a regime that Iranians placed in power, that Iranians (a large enough chunk at least) continue to support, etc. Iranians are not uniquely automatons. They own their regime at least as much as anyone else, especially at this point. That US actions set a chain of events in motion does not absolve Iranians of everything they decided to do since.

You are confusing causation and fault/responsibility. The US interventions, the Shah’s personal decisions, the ayatollahs’ decisions, the rise of Islam, the Persian Empire, the first humans who left Africa, are all causes of the current situation. But to determine who is at fault, who is responsible, is a very different question. Proximity in time is only a vague heuristic.

It’s common in every day parlance to mix these concepts up. Legal systems have been confused about the distinction for thousands of years. But the distinction is very important to speaking sensibly about things.

One thing to bear in mind in this discussion is that the U.S. did not simply exit stage left after the revolution in Iran. We've continued to isolate Iran both economically and militarily, especially with lavish support to Israel and even to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. It's impossible to say what kind of government Iran would have without American interventionism because it's never been free of American interventionism.

It's sort of trivially true that responsibility for every facet of the Islamic Revolution in Iran can't be laid directly at the feet of the U.S. But, when you screw around with another country explicitly to steal their resources and exploit their people, it's silly to expect whatever violent resistance springs up to be rational and measured in every respect. They may even find it useful to heighten certain differences with the colonizing power to gain support from the people.

Are you going to blame the the Nazi regime and the Holocaust on the WWI victors who refused to make a reasonable deal with a defeated Germany? It’s hard to imagine WW2 without the horrid WW1 peace terms.

But we rightly lay the blame squarely at the feet of the Nazis and their supporters.

It is an extremely blinkered view of history to look at each event as a totally isolated occurrence of individual actors divorced from any wider social context or developments. There's more than just a little self-exculpation at work when the Western Allied powers -- who initially financed Hitler's war machine, hoped he'd be a useful tool against the Red Menace, and even served as a source of inspiration to his eugenicist ideology -- downplay and ignore their own role as a handmaiden to Nazism.

Incidentally, in 1953 when the CIA carried out its coup in Iran it was basically run and controlled by people who had made a great deal of money financing the Nazi war effort and then imported a bunch of Nazi war criminals to work for Western intelligence and the space program.

Not only CIA but US/European governments also have the same problem. Two examples are Iraq war and bombing of Libya.

The big difference is that the Iraq/Libya cases were partially intended to do good things which could get some support from certain voters. That's worse than CIA coups with strategical goals but turned out to have unintended consequences which will be correctly evaluated later to avoid the future mistakes.

The actions with good intentions however are more deceptive because good intentions are often disguised self spiritual satisfactions so the real ground facts were less checked correctly. That's an theory that after tens of thousands deaths of Iraq war , the bombing of Libya could happen AGAIN with little objections because voters are fine with good intention of overthrowing evils, and with values (i.e. quasi religion) people are not likely to measure the magnitude of consequences.

In terms of disaster, next version of Hitler is a human rights promoter.(Tony Blair?) Good intention is a way to circumvent "fool me once/twice" alert because politicians cheated in a such a good way not only themselves are cheated to enhance the deception but talking is so spiritually attractive that even non-religious people don't think about the history of ground truth associated with those beautiful words.

The good intention of overthrowing evils is something sold by Goebbels:

" The West is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not.

The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation and complete anarchy. ... Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. ... We could see our venerable part of the world collapse, and bury in its ruins the ancient inheritance of the West. That is the danger we face today.

My second thesis: Only the German Reich and its allies are in the position to resist this danger. ... Bolshevism set ideological as well as military boundaries, which poses a danger to every nation. The world no longer has the choice between falling back into its old fragmentation or accepting a new order for Europe under Axis leadership. The only choice now is between living under Axis protection or in a Bolshevist Europe."

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36...

the fate of that country was a direct consequence of exactly what came before that.

So then why don't we lay this at the feet of the British? The CIA was more or less trying to clean up a British mess when they installed the Shah. The middle east is turtles all the way down.

Because US coup'ed the empire (as Orwell had predicted with "Airstrip One") in the mid 1950's[1]. The UK has certainly left many frozen conflicts still littered about the globe, but they get to tell the yanks "zabashcha" now.

[1] Head of State: John Dulles. Head of CIA: Allen Dulles. As for Eleanor Dulles, she pretty much focused on european affairs, but had previously served in a wartime capacity on the "Board of Economic Warfare." (If that sounds insufficiently euphemised, recall that DoD was, in those pre-Orwellian times, simply the "War Department.")

====

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United... it appears that the US refused to share nukes with the UK after the war, pulled Suez as the UK was attempting to independently develop megatonnage, but then relaunched the "special relationship" after Sputnik gave everyone a new appreciation for boffins.

Thanks for mentioning "Airstrip One" (1). It's indeed always worth to mentally compare the parts of his Oceania with Five Eyes (2). The "airstrip" is, I believe, a reference to the island's role in the bombing operations of WW II (3) which would have been a direct association to the reader reading the novel in 1948. Also thanks for mentioning Eleanor Dulles (4) I haven't read about her before.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Fou...

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World...

4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Lansing_Dulles

On strategic bombing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23572030

I've read R.V. Jones' book about it from the said "Airstrip One" location, and much more, I really recommend it. It's really interesting. Regarding

"someone must've been doing similar analyses to pick allied bombing targets"

there is somewhat about that, regarding Japan, in the book by Leslie Groves.

Edit: Spoiler: they simply bombed every city that they didn't explicitly decide to spare for the bomb, in Japan. The bombs weren't too precise anyway. Most destruction was intentionally causing the fires.

Edit 2: also absolutely required read: "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" also about how "precise" the bombing actually was.

Ta! Will be busy tracking these down for a while.

Jones gives an early intimation of Snowden during a CIA symposium (1993):

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

"A point to be made at the outset is the enormous difference between the scale on which you operate today and our own efforts in World War II..."

(As Jones is fond of Kipling, I offer one of the latter's less jingoistic moments:

    Children of the yoke and goad,
    Pack and harness, pad and load.
    ...
    While the men that walk beside,
    Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed,
    Cannot tell why we or they
    March and suffer day by day.)

Things that make you go hmmmm: Groves could publish a memoir the Manhattan Project in 1962 (<20 years after the war), yet the JFK cancellation files have still not yet been fully released.

What I was able to glean from the preview: Groves wanted to bomb 京都, less because he knew exactly what military targets there were there, and more because it would have been "large enough in area for us to gain complete knowledge of the effects of an atomic bomb." I wonder how much this calibration wish factored into his rationalisation (p.266) for not demonstrating the bomb before dropping it on civilians?

Good guys: Stimson (p. 275) and Patterson (p. 265)

https://archive.org/details/nowitcanbetolds00grov/page/274/m...

The CIA was more or less trying to clean up a British mess when they installed the Shah.

The CIA didn't install the Shah; he already was the ruler of the country. Nor did the CIA overthrow his insubordinate minister Mossadegh; the Shah's government did that.

Tangentially related, but for an Iranian story of this generation, Persepolis[0] is a fantastic movie.

[0]: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/persepolis

He’s definitely not ignorant but when he’s talking about the results of his father’s actions I think rather than dumb I’d say self-serving.

There's no rational reason to expect a drummer to have anything interesting or insightful to say about realpolitik.

Really? The current regime in Iran and the fate of that country was a direct consequence of exactly what came before that. And that throughout the Middle East.

And your opinion is a direct consequence of your experience and education. You still have agency, right?

You are equating books and guns. They are not the same.

Remember the rules on YC. You appear to either project or push ad-hominems. Thanks

You are confusing causation and fault/responsibility. They are only tangentially related concepts.

After committing a coup and installing the Shah, the subsequent revolutionary forces found widespread support and success, but were split into factions. The two most concerning to the US and UK governments, and what they believed to be the most powerful and likely to assume power, were the theocrats and the leftists / communists. They decided to actively support the theocrats and undermine the leftists.

Anyone suggesting that all of this was organic or purely democratic is at best naive, at worst cynically manipulative.

I think the caveat here is that communism was culturally incompatible with Iran. It was a country without a large domestically-owned industrial base, where the Shah and his father represented the strongest force toward modernization of the economy, with a multi-millenial history of monarchy and tribal fragmentation.

This is not the same as, say, Latin America during the Cold War. There, the non-Western cultural antecedents came from indigenous cultures that were naturally collectivistic. Communism was a better cultural fit.

It was perhaps hip to be involved with communism as a young student in Iran. Still....how do you turn a fragmented, tribal, and superstitious country, whose population is made up of several different ethnic demographics, into a communist nation?

That was never a plausible outcome, so I doubt your theory that the US allowed the theocrats to win because it wanted to box out the communists. The US desired to maintain Iran's role as a security base and an investment hub. Neither the communists nor the followers of Khomeini would have allowed either of those two things to continue.

Even today, despite years and years of aligning with China, Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and other "leftist" regimes, Iran is not a communist nation. It is a resource-rich dictatorship with a resistance economy.

I think you are over-extending your speculation by saying that Khomeini was the US's horse in the race when it became clear that the Shah would lose power. This is evidenced by the fact that the US assisted Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War shortly after the Revolution.

Interesting that he said everything his father taught him was confirmed by history books. Well, there’s history books and history books.