Kamala Harris recently called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East. The appropriate context for understanding this remark is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.
by Seraj Assi
Part 4 - After the Revolution
Two weeks after the shah fled, Khomeini returned to Iran for the first time after fifteen years in exile, promising to establish an Islamic Republic and vowing to cleanse the country of all remaining influence of “the Great Satan.” Khomeini and his supporters beat down the left-wing forces that had aided in overthrowing the shah and soon created their own authoritarian state, albeit one that garnered popular support for its opposition to US imperialism.
Yet the United States continued to wallow in denialism. US elites rarely bothered to understand Islamist political movements, or Khomeini’s particular brand of Shi’ism. They never acknowledged that festering anti-American sentiments in Iran were not religious or cultural in origin, or the product of a “clash of civilization” or some other ahistorical nonsense but had roots in the United States’ long history of meddling in the country and its support of the shah’s dictatorship.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1980, Iran had been locked in an increasingly bloody war with Iraq, which lasted for eight years and claimed half a million lives, most of them Iranians. Eager to settle old scores with Iran, the Reagan administration sided with Iraq, providing Saddam Hussein with weapons and aircraft, military intelligence, and billions of dollars of credit. This did not prevent Reagan from illegally approving an “arms for hostages” deal with the Khomeini government in the scandal widely known as the Iran-Contra affair.
The Iran-Iraq war ended in a stalemate. Emboldened by his US partnership, Hussein invaded Kuwait three years later, and the United States was soon fighting its former ally and new pariah in Iraq.
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