– #A shoot from the hip –
One day I attended a book party for an older Iranian woman who had written her memoirs. She spoke for an hour about her eventful life. Although she never touched on politics, she mentioned in passing that her family was related to the family of Mohammad Mossadegh, who served as prime minister of Iran for twenty-six months in the early 1950s and was overthrown in a coup d’etat staged by the Central Intelligence Agency.
After she finished speaking, I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask a question. “You mentioned Mossadegh,” I said. “What do you remember, or what can you tell us, about the coup against him?”
She immediately became agitated and animated. “Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?” she cried out. “We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again.
I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953. Why, why did you do it?” (Stephen Kinzer, All The Shah's Men - An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror)
TO WHOM NO MORE TROUBLE MAY CONCERN
Frame of Reference
Cal's Annotations | * Dear Reza
Cal's Annotations | * The Golden Age Of "Terror Forever"
Cal's Annotations | * To Whom "Kismet" May Concern In Turkey
Cal's Annotations | * Reminders On Faces Of Fundamentalist Islamic Terror(ism)
Faces Of Fundamentalist Terror(ism)
Taken Hostage: The American Experience
When Mike Wallace Confronted The Ayatollah (1979)
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