Trump, 2016: We should have taken Iraq's oil.
Trump, 2026: We took Venezuela's oil.
Trump, 2026: We should take Iran's oil.
The USA has a long history of interfering with other countries domestic politics for the purpose of securing resources. Sometimes bananas. Sometimes pineapples. For the last hundred years, oil.
We say we are in it for the "democracy." That is the excuse and cover story. We want the resource.
Jack Mullen attended Medford, Oregon, schools, then the U. of Oregon. He worked beside me in local orchards during high school, and we worked together in the congressional office of Jim Weaver (D) in the 1970s. As a student he read history and still does. Jack is retired and lives in Washington, D.C. where he and his wife recently examined the reflecting pools.
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| Mullen |
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| Mullen, at the reflecting pool this week |
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
Significant presidential decisions
Ken Burns views the American Revolution as the most significant event in world history since the birth of Christ. The Revolution established a radical experiment in democracy. Strong headwinds plague 250 years of this radical experiment in self-governance.
The Industrial Revolution, with the rise of the modern petroleum industry, became a stress test for the viability of certain democracies. Mexico survived the stress test petroleum played in confronting its democracy. Iran did not.
The role the United States government played in Mexico and Iran's efforts to control their own natural resources is telling.
FDR and Mexico
A major consequence of the Mexican Revolution was a provision in the 1917 Mexican Constitution that asserted Mexican ownership of all "subsoil," including any natural resources discovered below the ground, which included oil.
Mexico became the world's second-largest producer of oil in the 1920s. Most of the oil produced in Mexico was exported to the world market with oil companies keeping most of their profits. The fact that the oil companies paid Mexican workers half of what they paid other workers in the same capacity led to the inevitable resentment that caused President Lazaro Cardenas, on March 18, 1938, to nationalize Mexican oil.
The U.S. oil industry was livid. So was Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, consulting with his cabinet, sided with his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, in allowing Mexico to nationalize its oil.
Roosevelt and Morgenthau felt it best to keep warm relations with Mexico. After all, Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy was in effect. As a Good Neighbor, the United States did not oppose Mexico's expropriation of foreign oil.
Mexico kept its end of the bargain of being a good neighbor by paying a $29 million compensation to American oil firms. The United States avoided its penchant for invading Mexico.
Every March 18, Mexico celebrates Oil Expropriation Day.
Truman, Eisenhower, and Iran
The 60-year D'Arcy Concession had granted the British one-sided control over Iran's oil. Both houses of the Iranian Parliament took the opportunity to claim control of oil within its borders and, in March 1951, voted to nationalize all its oil — not unlike Mexico in 1938.
British Petroleum (BP) met with President Truman to seek help in overthrowing the government of Iran. Prime Minister Churchill wanted America's help in forestalling the dwindling power of the British Empire wherever he could, especially in Iran, which bordered an expansionist Soviet Union.
Iran's Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mosaddegh, came to the U.S. in October 1951 to make Iran's case before the United Nations and appeal to the American public.
Mosaddegh first stopped in New York to deliver a speech to the United Nations, then moved to Philadelphia. The Iranian prime minister addressed the American public in a speech, symbolically, in front of Independence Hall. In part, he spoke with an eloquence similar to what an American president expressed in defense of his country's commitment to its young democracy 90 miles away, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania:
"If my contrast of your own abundant freedom with our shackled liberties is touched by envy, it is because we share with you a love of liberty and because we have been less fortunate than you in wrestling our prized freedom from that country which in 1776 had to yield it to you."
After the speech, Prime Minister Mosaddegh walked over to touch the Liberty Bell. The next day he was to meet with President Truman at Blair House (the White House renovation was not yet complete).
The world emerging from World War II was a world of a rising Soviet Union along with nations yearning to toss off the yoke of their imperialistic masters. Under the circumstances in these changing times, Harry Truman met with Mohammed Mosaddegh on October 23, 1951. The meeting resulted in the United States taking a stance of neutrality with regard to the differences between Iran and the United Kingdom. While not the total win Iranians craved, Mosaddegh, for his efforts, became a hero in the Persian world and beyond.
Presidential elections matter. With Truman soon out of office, the arduous diplomatic efforts of the Truman administration's chief diplomat, Averell Harriman, to settle differences between the UK and Iran, were quickly tossed aside by the Eisenhower administration. The British Petroleum Company found favor with President Eisenhower along with his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen Dulles, the new director of the CIA.
Swayed by the British arguments, in August 1953, the CIA, coupled with British intelligence, orchestrated a coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected government and sent Dr. Mosaddegh to prison for three years.
With Mosaddegh sent away, and with the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, the Pahlavi dynasty, founded in 1925 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, returned Reza's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power as the Shah. The new Shah proceeded to establish the Bureau for Intelligence and Security for the Imperial State (SAVAK). Censorship of the media began. The Shah's reign lasted until his overthrow in 1979 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Consistency in United States foreign policy, and democracy's forward march, often become bogged in the smog of oil.
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2 comments:
And I thought we were the good guys. No wonder education is such a bad thing for some who want what they want when they want it. [A criminal mind set.]
I asked Gemini AI what the United States’s motive was to overthrow the Mossadegh regime. Here’s what it said. In the context of the Cold War situation in 1953, those motives sound quite rational to me.
Hindsight may tell us a different story, but no one has hindsight available before the fact.
———
The US Motive: The Cold War and Communism
Initially, the Truman administration was sympathetic to Mossadegh, viewing him as a legitimate nationalist and urging Britain to compromise. However, the situation changed dramatically with two events: the election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, and the economic toll of the British embargo on Iran.
The US reasoning shifted entirely toward containment (stopping the spread of Soviet influence):
* The Tudeh Party: As Iran's economy spiraled due to the embargo, Mossadegh relied more on the political support of the Tudeh Party—Iran's highly organized communist party.
* The "Domino Theory": Washington panicked that an economically desperate Iran would slide behind the Iron Curtain. If Iran fell to communism, the Soviet Union would gain a massive strategic foothold in the Middle East and control over vital oil supply lines to Western Europe.
Preemptive Strike: The US decided that replacing Mossadegh with a firmly pro-Western monarch—Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—was a necessary geostrategic move to secure the region against the Soviets.
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