Iran-US Grievences: Who Started The Animosity?

Charlie Harris / November 29th, 2024 / grievences, warship, attack, bomb, Iran, Sanctions, US Congress

Perpetual Demonization of Iran Hurts American Interests

Demonization of Iran or may be better stated, "Dehumanization of Iran", is a propaganda technique which promotes an idea about Iran being a threatening evil aggressor with only destructive objectives.

Demonization is the oldest propaganda technique aimed to inspire hatred towards a nation or even a race of people (e.g. demonization of the black people of Africa by Europeans in 16th century) necessary to hurt them more easily, to preserve and mobilize allies and get support from American people towards such U.S. national objective.

But may be demonization of Iran is justified. Isn't Iran a threatening evil aggressor with only destructive objectives?

Or can we ask the question of ourselves ... are we lying about Iran to demonize them factitiously for our own malevolent agenda?

Or is asking ourselves such a question forbidden, or should we be labelled as unpatriotic to ask our government of their agenda if we suspect nefarious, vicious, malicious intent based on complete absence of Iran's evil destructive intentions?

Looking at facts only, demands a critical mind. In an age of partisanship, this is often very hard to find or accomplish.

Here are a few facts about Iran which I would say that just about everyone in the world would agree to:

a) Iran has not attacked another country in more than 300 years. This makes it one of the very few countries that can make such a claim. One can easily go further and say that the war Iran started more than 300 years ago was a defensive role against an aggressive neighbor that had attacked and occupied many other neighbors and was preparing to attack Iran. Iran is not a war mongering nation and has never been one, nor viewed as one.

b) Iran has virtually no Air Force today (other than a few old technology aircrafts that are 50 years or older), has no real mechanized army (the few hundred tanks they have are again more than 50 years old), and it has about 50-60 small boats and can easily be regarded as the weakest navy in the world. Iran does have some old technology long range missiles. These can only be regarded as a deterent measure since the accuracy of these missiles is hardly anything to worry about.

c) Iran had never devoted a major part of their economy to building up a military. For about 200 years prior to the end of the Second World War, Iran had no real military. In fact, during both first and second world wars, Iran did not have a military, did not build up an army, and did not devote any attention to having an army. It resolved its international disputes through international mediations. In fact, to see things from their point of view, the Allies attacked, invaded, and occupied Iran in both first and second world wars.

We often forget that here in the West, deliberately.

Iran only started building up a military with the support of United States when the Shah of Iran (a U.S. installed puppet government) was directed so by United States to enable U.S. to have an ally stand against a Soviet aggression and a dozen F-5 aircrafts were imported into Iran, with U.S. pilots, to conduct spy flights against the Soviets from Iranian territory endandering the lives of Iranian people on behalf of American interests..

d) Iran has a 7,000 year history of moderation and in fact an impeccable reputation, prior to the 1979 Islamic Revelotion. The Persian Empire was the only empire in history of our planet that did not grow through wars with its neighbors, but instead grew through cooperation with its neighbors. During the reign of the Persian Empire it was attacked first by the Roman Empire (as part of their expansion through Asia) and then followed by attacks by Greece. This is the only civilization that can claim to have had a nation with more than 2,500 years history against slavery and injustice, in fact they fought and protected Jewish people on 3 separate occasions to protect them from annihilation. This is hardly a country that is evil.

e) Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 and 14 Arab nations helps Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. During this 8 year war, United States, Britain, Russia, and France supported Saddam Hussein and lending it billions of Dollars to fight Iran and provided it with both financial support and International support to design, build, and use weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological) against Iran. United Nations never condemned this sinster act against Iran.

These are facts and they cannot be disputed. There are countless number of records both within United States and Internationally that support and verify the above facts. The evidence is undisputable. Iran is relatively a peaceful nation.

United States knows all the above facts and knows that it is impossible to disprove any of the above. So it was decided in late 1990s to demonize Iran's civilian nuclear electicity production and label it a "nuclear weapons program".

In fact, to be accurate, for decades the United States has been involved in subverting these facts about its self-made archenemy by attacking its motives, policies, infrastructure and economy, using both a propaganda media campaigns at home and clandestine black operations abroad, through the use of CIA and Mossad of Israel, and the British MI5/MI6. Iranian scientists have been assassinated, repeatedly, their civilian airliners targeted with sanctions to hurt Iranian people and push them to overthrow their government, and attacked their peaceful civilian nuclear electricity generation with Stuxnet virus.

How does Iran see United States?

Well, obviously they see United States through the actions and aims of our government to subvert and conduct both propaganda and clandestine operations against them and their people. In fact they have the facts on their side. These facts are non-disputable and have been admitted by United States. These include:

1) US ousts Iran’s democratic leader Dr. Mossadegh in a CIA orchestrated coup in 1953

The 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeqh — who was TIME Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951— changed the trajectory of US foreign policy forever, in particular towards Iran. Although not completely believing Winston Churchill's claim that Iran was swept up in the rising tide of communism, the United States decided to take Iran into its own sphere of influence and take that country's oil rights while still letting the British continue stealing their oil as they had been doing for decades. The U.S. government instigated, planned, funded, and executed a coup to undermine the Middle East’s first credible attempt at democracy. The plan would later become the blueprint for generations of future CIA regime changes throughout central and south America and in Africa and ironically, including the current effort in the new Iran to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran and bring in a U.S. puppet to that country once again. For Iranians, the overthrow of Mossadeqh is still the basis for most anti-American sentiment, and if we were fair Americans, we would think, rightfully so.

“If this operation had not been launched, we might have had a large democratic country in the heart of the Muslim Middle East all these 60 years,” said Stephen Kinzer, a columnist and author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” “I can hardly wrap my mind around what that would have meant and how different the region might look today." Americans however have been subjected to so much demonization of Iran that, majority of whom, no longer consider that Iran has the right to be angry with U.S. This is the result of dehuminization of a country to avoid acknowledging our own actions against others.

2) US Navy warship USS Vincennes entered Iranian waters in 1988 and shoots down a civilian jetliner in Iran

In one of the worst heartbreaking tragedies in history, US warship shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people on board (65 of them children). Initially, the commanding officer of the warship claims that a) the warship was not inside Iranian territorial waters, b) the aircraft was descending towards the warship, c) the warship communicated with the aircraft repeatedly to avoid such an accident, and d) the aircraft was not on a commercial civilian path.

According to the Formal Investigation into the Circumstance Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655, under Secretary of Defense, all of the claims above by the commanding officer of the USS Vincennes, were found to be inaccurate. Every single one.

According to the same U.S. government Formal Investigation, the ship's own Aegis Combat System recorded the flight plan of the Iranian airliner as climbing (not descending as in an attack run) at the time of the incident, as had been claimed by the commanding officer.

Again, according to the same report, Vincennes tried unsuccessfully to contact the approaching aircraft, seven times on the military emergency frequency and three times on the civilian emergency frequency, but never on air traffic control frequencies. The civilian aircraft that era were not often equipped to pick up military frequencies and the messages on the civilian emergency channel could have been directed at any aircraft. Subsequent to this tragedy, all U.S. warships were required to carry a UHF antenna to be able to communicate with airliners. But the commanding officer was found to have provided inaccurate information, yet again.

The data from USS Vincennes tapes, information from USS Sides and reliable intelligence information, corroborate the fact that Iran Air Flight 655 was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile, in the assigned airway, on a continuous ascent in altitude from take-off at Bandar Abbas to shoot-down. The data also proved that the warship was actually inside the Iranian territorial waters.

Therefore, a) the warship was inside Iranian territorial waters, as opposed to what was claimed initially, also b) the aircraft was ascending (go up to it flight level) rather than descending as had been claimed initially (on a attack path towards the warship), also c) the warship never communicated with the aircraft as the aircraft was a commercial and not a military aircraft, and finally, d) the aircraft was on a normal commercial air flight plan profile.

When questioned in a 2000 BBC documentary, the U.S. government stated in a written answer that they believed the incident may have been caused by a simultaneous psychological condition amongst the 18 bridge crew of Vincennes called 'scenario fulfillment', which is said to occur when persons are under pressure. In such a situation, the men will carry out a training scenario, believing it to be reality while ignoring sensory information that contradicts the scenario. In the case of this incident, the scenario was an attack by a lone military aircraft.

Later, to antagonize Iranians even further, U.S. government instigated unmatched economic sanctions on Iran, unlike any other in history against any other country ever, that prevented the country from purchasing replacement airplane parts for its aging commercial fleet. More than 1,000 people have died in at least 20 crashes in recent years because the planes, by most standards, were unfit to fly and Iranian airliners could not get parts because of U.S. sanctions.

Additionally, there are countless number of bills introduced by members of U.S. Congress which prohibit any possible exemptions to the sanctions to allow the shipment of airplane parts to Iran. These bills are being submitted by members of U.S. congress who have expressed deep hateful comments towards Iran and in many cases there are questions of being supported and/or funded by Israeli lobbists that want to keep pressue on Iranian people to overthrow the Iranian government. .

3) Adolf Hitler use to say, "The bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it". Wiping Israel off the map, claimed to have been said by Dr. Ahmadinejad was one of the biggest lies ever

US officials and the news media that support them or is funed by Israeli lobbiests regularly cite the statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that “Israel must be wiped off the map” as an example of the danger Iran presents. Well this is one of the biggest lies ever.

During a 2005 speech, which was, in all fairness, made during a conference called “World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad — referring to the late founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini — said: “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem will vanish from the page of time.”. This was based on a 2,500 year proverb that says countries come and go, and regimes do not last as long as they want to. This is in context of a region like the Middle East as opposed to North America. U.S. and Canada have been around for a few hundred years. But Iran, as a country, has been around more than 2,500 years. During this time many new governments, regimes, and countries have come and gone. This is a very acceptable comment to make based on the history of the region and it has nothing to do with destroying another country.

Every international linguist (not associated to Israeli lobbiests) and those thoroughly familiar with the Persian language such as University Professors of Persian Language, claimed the the translation was deliberately misleading and intentionally used to sell junk news to people that were readily willing to see Iran in a demonized fashion. But although the people outside Iran could be fooled by mistranslation, but Iranian people cannot be fooled as they speak Persian and understand precisely what Ahmadinejad said. The comment was deliberately taken out of context and inaccurately translated, That is undeniable.

4) The Stuxnet worm was launched to attack Iranian legal civilian nuclear electricity producing program

Stuxnet is a malicious computer virus (also called worm), first identified in 2010, that targeted industrial computer systems and was responsible for causing substantial damage to Iran's civilian nuclear program. The software was designed to erase itself in 2012 thus limiting the scope of its effects. The particular attack is believed by many experts to be a jointly built American-Israeli cyberweapon, although no organization or state has officially admitted responsibility. Anonymous US officials speaking to The Washington Post claimed the worm was developed during the Bush administration to sabotage Iran's civilian nuclear program with what would seem like a long series of unfortunate accidents.

In addition to the Stuxnet, Iranian scientists were targeted and assassinated by Israel and United States.

Just as the coup against Dr. Mossadegh in 1953 was a new era of clandestine CIA operations to overthrow governments, the Stuxnet is a computer virus to attack industrial infrastructure with potency never seen before and its sophistication points to a new era of warfare. Iran seems to be the first country to receive the wrath of U.S. clandestine strikes.

5) Women's rights is claimed by U.S. to be most abusive in Iran

This is one of the most false claims in U.S. and many Iranian women in Iran consider this to be an insult against Iranian women. Firstly, Iranian women did not need to abide by Islamic dress code immediately after the Iranian revolution. It was millions of Iranian women who took part in countless number of street protests demanding that the new Islamic government of Iran in 1979 to enforce a "hejab", or an Islamic Dress Code. For us here to claim that women in Iran don't have rights is seen as a hypocricy by Iranian women.

There is no doubt that Iran’s constitution provides fewer rights and legal protections for its female citizens than it does for its males. But women also have many rights that they enjoy that men do not have, such as limitless pension payments of parents given to women, as well as other range of economical and financial rights. But while the situation for women in Iran is far from ideal, it bears little resemblance to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan — which are both American allies — where women are hardly even seen in public life.

Iranian women, by comparison, have made great strides in education and in the workplace. More than 30% of small businesses are owned by women in Iran. More than 60 percent of Iranian university students are women and offices are increasingly staffed entirely by females. Iranian women do indeed achieve the highest levels of education in ALL of Middle East. They are have no barriers or obstacles to owning assets, properties, homes, land, or businesses.

To demonize Iran for its women's rights abuses and hardly mention the horrible abuses in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan is indeed a hypocricy on our side. In Saudi Arabia women have to ask permission from their 8 year old boy to leave the house for shopping or any other purpose, and even worse, the women in Saudi Arabia don't even have a birth certificate, and hence can't get a passport to travel.

6) Again, I am reminded of Adolf Hitler's famous comment, "The bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it". Iran has 'threatened' to nuke the US, is such a bull $#!?. What next? Iran started Second World War?

As Fox news keeps repeating and repeating, based on a comment that was made by a disturbingly deranged presidential candidate Michelle Bachman and her rhetoric, repeated an often heard lie in an interview with Christiane Amanpour: “Iran has also stated they would be willing to use a nuclear weapon against the United States of America. I think if there’s anything that we have learned over the course of history, it is that when a madman speaks, we should listen. And I think in the case of Iran, that is certainly true,” Bachman said.

The truth: Iran’s leaders, however, have never threatened such an attack and have always said that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and that they don’t intend to develop, acquire or use them. The fact is that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons. All legitimate U.S. sources of Intelligence agree that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. So this lie is a particularly directed for demonization and dehumanization purposes.

7) False claim: Iran is in bed with Al Qaeda and the Taliban

Well prior to 9-11 Taliban and Al Qaeda were killing Iranian diplomats and journalists. In fact, they call Iran the Snake's Head. Both of these organizations utterly hate Iran and Iran has no love for them either. In fact, in mid 1990s, when Al Qaeda was killing Iranian diplomats and other Iranians in Afghanistan, the U.S. State Department were high fiving each other. Still - that does not seem to stop countless US officials, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have said that Iran and Al Qaeda are working together to promote international terrorism. Totally wrong of course.

8) Another false claim: Iran is a dictatorship

Iran and her leaders are often compared to Adolf Hitler and facts are being distorted to demonize that country. Iran is accused of supporting dictatorships such as Asad in Syria. The facts of the case could not be more different than represented by these false claims. About 75% of Iranians vote in their Presidential elections, which is about twice as much as U.S. and if one wants to equate their elections to dictatorship, then you have to say that United Kingdom is also a dictatorship, even worse than Iran, since people of Britain do not elect their Prime Minister, they vote for a local council member who then go on to the British parliament to elect majority leader. Is Iran not at the least as democratic as Britain?

9) Sanctions by U.S. and U.K. target Iranian people, e.g. economic sanctions against medical industry, oil industry, shipping industry, and transportation industry

American Presidents often claim that those who use power to force their way on others, fail to see the irony of the American policies that intend to force other countries to submit to the will of United States through aggressive sanctions aim at pressuring the governments of other countries. Iranian economy was on decline for year with embargoes against Persian rugs, Iranian food products, pistachios, and medical supplies and Iran was barred from access to the International financial market, all to put financial stress on Iranian people.

10) Orchestrated Propaganda campaigns against Iran through both Western media and Hollywood

Not a day goes by that some far-fetched, made-up fake news about Iran is not published online or talked about in the media. All part of a well planned and orchestrated propaganda campaign against Iran. Even Hollywood has Iran on its focus of demonization for both financial gain and dehumanization of Iran and her people. Iranians are put through a false stereotype of 'bad people' for decades in movies and TV series, such as “Not Without My Daughter,” and “300” and “The Wrestler” - all to demonize Iran and her cluture without a balanced two-sided, fact-based representation. And if you ask the question of why this is so? You get the answer, so what? Why you care? Why not? You support the murdering Mullahs? No, but if our government does exactly the same as they do, then where is the credibility on our part? If we support Taliban in 1980s and call them 'freedom fighters', to kill 1 million Russian boys, or when they kill Iranian diplomats, journalists, and tourists - and then call the same Taliban 'terrorist', only when they attack us?

Terrorism definition: (noun) the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims, or the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion (by Merriam Webster Dictionary).

Does United States 1953 CIA Coup meet the above definition of terrorism against Iran? Does the coersive dehumanization and demonization of Iran through the media to pressure Iran into submission to the will of United States meet the definition of terrorism? Does spending $75 milllion Dollars of taxpayers money each year since 1979 to overthrow the government of Iran through espionage activities or meddling into the internal affairs of Iran, meet the definition of the word terrorism? Does shooting down their airliner, killing 290 civilians, or designing and releasing Stuxnet virus to destroy their civilian nuclear electricity generation, or assassinating their scientists, or any such acts of provocation to manipulate and bully Iran, count as terrorism towards Iran and her people?

For now, American people just love to hate Iran and Iranian people. Until they are told otherwise by those that control the media, or the self-serving members of U.S. Congress that have their eyes on Jewish money funnelled from AIPAC to their re-election campaign buget. And this is apparently called, "freedom of speech"? Or, FREE to demonize others that can't defend themselves in the American media or because they don't have a lobby group in Washington like Saudi Arabia or Israel or Pakistan. This is no different than how American Food Corporation bribed reporters and journalists to publish articles against Guatemala in 1950's to overthrow their government and take over their farms to make billions in imports, while blaming the spread of Communism as the main reason for the coup. More than 300,000 civilians died after the CIA planned and instigated Coup.

We have become a society of false news and demonization, and the hatred growing inside the people of this country metastasized into a debilitating destroying our country so that a hand full of people can make lots of money from their investments in the U.S. defense industry.

Are we really hurting Iran by bullying them and demonizing or provoking them or are we really destroying ourselves little by little, each day, by creating an American society of adversarial, anger-tantrum, biased and ignorant citizens who just LOVE to see the people of other countries in pain and agony for our own egotistical pleasure and sense of self-superiority? Are most Americans so unhappy with their lives that the only pleasure for us is to see others bombed so we feel that at least something in our lives is not a total fucking failure? Well, U.S. military is happy to oblige as long as they get our tax Dolalrs!