Guardian UK: Obama's America Opens Up

[marmar]

When will Obama deliver the change?
His Iran move, like other foreign policy shifts, carries big political risks and will be judged by results, not intentions

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 19.36 GMT


It takes time to unpick eight years of mistakes, misanthropy and mutual malice. But Barack Obama's tentative first moves down a path that could eventually lead to the normalisation of US relations with Iran carry a historic significance stretching far beyond the barren era of finger-pointing presided over by George Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Almost 30 years to the day when Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, and American client, was overthrown in February 1979, Obama's initiative has potential to end one of the most unnecessary, dangerous enmities of recent times. Ask Iranians if they want to be friends with the US and the answer is usually "yes". Their invariable, puzzled question in return is: why does America hate us?

Obama plainly aims to show them and others round the world that hate has no place in his plans. But his Iran move, like other foreign policy shifts, carries considerable political risks and will be judged by results, not intentions.

At present he can draw on an unusual degree of political capital. Polls suggest there is wide popular support for change, for making a break with the past. But even Obama has only so long to deliver. Honeymoons always end. If things go wrong in Afghanistan or Lebanon or North Korea, he may quickly be left looking more like dupe than visionary. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/28/barack-obama-foreign-policy

[Peace Patriot]

1. "why does America hate us?" Ans.: You have oil that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld

wanted.

Some might answer--your leaders' (anyway) hostility to Israel. But that is NOT what was really going on, in Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld rhetoric of hate? They couldn't give a fuck about Israel, and would sacrifice Israel in a cold minute, if there was profit in it. In fact, that's essentially what they were doing--putting Israel in danger by scaring the bejeebers out of Iran's leaders, and driving them to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from the behemoth that had just landed on their border, in Iraq, killing a million innocent people without a thought, without a care, not even bothering to count the bodies--in order to get control of their oil.

The very best thing Obama or anyone could do, for Israel's safety, is rapprochement and friendly or at least civil relations with Iran, including maybe an apology for destroying their democracy in 1954, and inflicting them with 25 years of torture and oppression under the Shah of Iran.

OIL! That is the answer. The greed of our leaders and our corporate rulers. That is the answer, and that is our shame.

[struggle4progress]

2. Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran (Risen in NYT)

... Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist.

The document shows that: ...

The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5 million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed.

Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government ...

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

Now several years old, this is an interesting collection of webpages