Carla Kaplan and the Student Cam documentary "Operation Ajax" examine the 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Iran, where the Eisenhower administration ousted democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh to secure oil profits. The CIA's six-part plan installed the Shah, sparking a dictatorship that led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and four decades of Mullah rule. This intervention established a dangerous precedent for American interference in Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, Honduras, and Guatemala, proving that prioritizing national interests over local democratic will undermines U.S. credibility as a beacon of human rights. [Automatically generated summary]
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Iran's Lost Democratic Path00:08:59
Legible words she could hear, and she was listening to Debo, and she was trying to reassure her sister as best she could, even though her words were not fully legible.
So, staying connected to her sisters, not to Diana, but to her sisters, was very important to her, even if they were sometimes quite snied about her behind her back, and sometimes very nasty about the choice of a second husband, the choice to marry a man who was Jewish.
You write in Troublemaker, Carla Kaplan, that Decca Mitford always disdained radicals who mellowed with age.
And we're going to leave it there.
The book is called Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.
Our guest is the author, Carla Kaplan of Northeastern University.
Thank you, ma'am, for being with us.
Thank you so much.
All QA programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our C-SPAN Now app.
This year, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, C-SPAN's Student Cam documentary competition invited students to create short films exploring themes from American history, the rights and freedoms rooted in this founding document, and pressing issues of today, from the economy and immigration to criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. took part in this year's competition.
Throughout this month, we're proud to showcase our top 21 winners.
This year's second prize middle school winner is Vis Amir Shahi, an eighth grader from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Germantown, Maryland, where our local partner is Carcass.
Her winning documentary is titled Operation Ajax: Defending Democracy by Undermining the Will of the People, about the 1953 U.S. coup in Iran, its contrast with American democratic ideals, and its effect on global affairs.
After World War II, the United States was seen as a beacon of hope and the protector of democracy all over the world.
However, that soon would change.
In 1951, the geopolitically crucial country of Iran democratically elected its first prime minister, Mohamed Mossadik, a devoted nationalist politician.
Mossadegh was a very eminent Iranian politician as he was evolving as a politician.
He was during a period that Iran was under enormous amount of foreign pressure.
Iran finally was on its way towards democracy and it had a government that was democratically elected.
Therefore, that government had to respond to the overwhelming national challenge, which was we're sitting on an ocean of oil, but we're very poor and all the money from the oil is going to Britain.
And so Mossadegh was one of the very, very first politicians in what we now call the developing world that stood up for national rights and demanded that the British give Iran a better share.
And when the British refused, he insisted that, okay, give back all of our oil industry.
We want to nationalize it.
The British originally wanted actually to carry out military strikes against Iran to get them to put an end to their nationalization project for Iranian oil.
But they could not get the Truman administration to go along.
Truman thought that he could work something out with Mohamed Mossadegh.
When Eisenhower came into office, that all changed.
British decided that although the reason we want to get rid of Mossadegh is because we want our oil company back, that would not be a good enough reason to persuade the Americans to get involved.
But recognizing this climate in Washington, where they were in a panic about communism, they sold it as an anti-communist operation, trying to frame Mossadegh as a person who might leave Iran open to communism.
So the United States saw things in black and white.
You know, there was no middle.
There was no position for you to say, I'm opposed to Western companies abusing my country, but I'm also opposed to communism.
The U.S. would not accept that position.
Very quickly, the CIA was, of course, the agency that was called on to take part in the planning.
There is a CIA document written by one of the planners of the coup, Donald Wilber, and it talks about a six-part plan that involved all kinds of things from sort of creating an environment of chaos and opposition to Mossadegh,
engaging in propaganda activities to undermine his position, working with the military, working with tribes, working with other forces inside society, working with the Shah himself to create conditions whereby Mossadegh's position would be rendered illegal.
On August 19th, 1953, the coup, codenamed Operation Ajax, was carried out by British and American agents.
Mossad Birk was thrown out of office and replaced by a military figurehead.
This was an earth-shattering event.
It's having effects right up to today.
It produced 25 years of royal dictatorship that ultimately produced the revolution of the late 1970s, which we call the Islamic Revolution.
That's led to this 40 years of rule by the Mullahs, which has been a regime that has worked to undermine American interests all over the world.
It taught a whole generation of rising leaders in the Middle East what they should do in order to have sympathy and a security umbrella from the United States.
And that was, do not take the root of democracy.
The Americas will tolerate that.
You're not going to have, you're going to have a lot of trouble if you go the democracy route.
This idea that the U.S. could come in to a foreign country and under wraps, covertly, influence events to such an extent that they could change a government.
This was a very appealing, tempting idea because it was low cost.
It didn't involve U.S. troops.
It wasn't going to start a war.
It was something that they could deny.
So there were lots of reasons why this caught the imagination of people like Mike Dulles and Eisenhower and presidents following Eisenhower.
Because then the United States, after 1953, would go down this path of interfering in domestic politics of countries that had nationalist leaders in Indonesia, in Vietnam, in Chile, in Honduras, in Guatemala, in varieties of countries following the same model that they had done in Iran.
What should be the lesson learned by the United States and how do these coups contrast with the state of ideals in the Declaration of Independence?
When there have been acts of direct intervention in another country's affairs, for whatever purpose, noble or ignoble, there has to be a recognition that local populations are not going to necessarily see it the way that you would like them to.
So the lesson is before you act decisively to intervene in the affairs of another country, think through what the long-term effects might be.
We promote democracy, right?
We always said that we're the beacon of democracy, right?
That we want to support democratic governments.
But whenever an outside country interferes in the affairs of another country without being invited in by the people of that country to do that, it basically by nature is undemocratic.
You're doing it without any respect for the will of the people.
You're doing it based on criteria that you think impacts you, and therefore you should go all the way around the world and change a government in order to protect your own interests.
Now, you could say governments can always do that, but not if at the same time they're talking about human rights and democratic values, because this is a clear violation of the right of the people to choose their own destiny.
Be sure to watch all of the winning entries on our website at studentcam.org.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
Today, remarks from Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins.
He's expected to discuss U.S. financial policy at the third annual International Monetary Fund and International Organization of Securities Commissions Conference.
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