The CIA brought chaos to Iran in 1979. And on 20 January 2011, police are still firing 'warning shots' in Tunis
Russia's former ambassador in Tunisia Veniamin Popov commented on the situation in Tunisia as follows:
"
The protests of the Tunisian people remind me of the Iranian revolution in 1979, when the Shah's regime was overthrown."
(Is Tunisia a messenger of a big crisis?)The Shah was modernising Iran, giving land to the poor and cracking down on heroin.
But he criticised Israel and he was not always cooperating with the USA on oil.
The CIA wanted a feudal Islamic Iran that could be used against Russia.
So, the Shah had to be demonised and toppled.
Ben Ali made Tunisia the most successful country in Africa, but he was not cooperating fully with the USA.
Tunisia supported neither the 1991 Gulf War nor the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Ben Ali supported the Palestinians.
Ben Ali in Tunisia had to be demonised and toppled.
Ben Ali was popular, until there began a campaign of demonisation. (We have been to Tunisia).
1. In September 2010, Tunisia ratified the international treaty banning cluster munitions, becoming the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to do so.
Tunisia is not believed to have used, produced, stockpiled, or transferred cluster munitions.
(Tunisia: Government Ratifies Cluster Munition Ban Human Rights Watch)
2. The 2010 Corruption Perception Index was released by Transparency International on 26 October 2010.
The report shows that Tunisia is the least corrupt country in North Africa.
(2010 Transparency International Index: Tunisia most transparent ...)
3. Tunisia's ratings in 2010.
August 2010: The 2010 report of the Oxford Business Group on Tunisia referred to the stability and social peace prevailing in Tunisia.
4. September 2010: Tunisia holds the top rank in Africa (and the 32nd world position out of 139 countries) of the most competitive world economies, according to the report on world competitiveness 2010-2011 published by the World economic forum of Davos.
It thus moves ahead of numerous EU member states such as Spain (42nd), Portugal (46th), Italy (48th).... Tunisia's ratings in 2010.
5. January 2010: Tunisia is ranked best Arab state as regards quality of life with 59 points out of 100, moving up 3 points compared with 2009, by "International Living'' magazine , out of 194 countries. Tunisia's ratings in 2010.
Starving ragged tools of the CIA?
6. August 2010: US "Newsweek" magazine ranked Tunisia first in Africa in its "100 best countries in the world'' ratings based on social, economic and political data.
Tunisia's ratings in 2010.7. 2010: The report on human development published by the UNDP ranked Tunisia 7th out of 135 countries in terms of 'long-term development indicators'.
Tunisia's ratings in 2010.8. September 2010: Tunisia is ranked first in the Arab region and 6th in the world as regards the access of handicapped people to ICTs, according to ratings announced in Vilnius (Lithuania) by the United Nations at the 5th forum on the governance of the Internet (IGF 2010).
Tunisia's ratings in 2010. 9. July 2010 Tunisia's foreign trade registers 31.1% growth.
10. Tunisia is considered to be Africa's most competitive economy. (World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report.)
Tunisia has a very low crime rate. In 2002 Tunisia's murder rate stood at 1.22 /100 000, the lowest in Africa. (Country Profile: Tunisia)
Mohammad Pahlavi Coronation
According to Time magazine, 28 Nov, 1977 (Greetings for The Shah - TIME):
The Shah of Iran represented 'oil price hawkishness.'
In 1973, the Shah of Iran, whose nation was the world's second-largest exporter of oil, told the New York Times:
"Of course (the world price of oil) is going to rise. Certainly! And how...; You (Western nations) increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement...; You buy our crude oil and sell it back to us, refined as petrochemicals, at a hundred times the price you've paid to us...; It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil. Let's say ten times more."[3]
The Shah met President Carter in Washington in November 1977. The Shah agreed to help the USA by keeping down oil prices.
"Said the Shah, in polished if patronizing Americanese: 'We decided to give you a break.' (Greetings for The Shah - TIME )
The Shah had enemies.
When interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes by reporter, Mike Wallace, the Shah criticized US Jews for their control over US media and finance.[18]
According to 'A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, by William Engdahl, a German historian:
1. In 1978, "negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement.
"By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil.
"With their dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany, France, Japan and elsewhere...
The Iranian Shah meeting with Alfred Atherton, William Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977.
2. "In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski.
"Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini.
"Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.
"Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis, then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States.
"Lewis's scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines.
"Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.
"The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence..."
3. "Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's defeat a year later."
4. "London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day.
"This imposed dramatic revenue pressures on Iran, which provided the context in which religious discontent against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and U.S. intelligence. In addition, strikes among oil workers at this critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production.
"As Iran's domestic economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.
"At the same time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human rights' under the Shah.
"British Petroleum reportedly began to organize capital flight out of Iran, through its strong influence in Iran's financial and banking community.
"The British Broadcasting Corporation's Persian-language broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC 'correspondents' sent into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah.
"The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran during this time."
According to the Shah, in his memoir Answer to History, General Robert Huyser, a top NATO official, came to Iran, unannounced, with the primary mission of paralyzing the Iranian the army.[27]
Allegedly, according to some supporters of the Shah, the leaders of US, UK, France, and Germany, in a summit held in Guadeloupe in 1979, came to an agreement with the US to remove the Shah. (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
On 19 January 1980, the International Herald Tribune reported that the Shah had said, two years before he was overthrown, that he had heard from two different sources connected with oil companies that the regime in Iran would change.
‘We believe that there was a plan to ensure less oil was offered to the world markets in order to bring about a price,’ said the Shah. ‘One country was to be chosen for the sacrifice... It seems that the country chosen to drop its oil production was mine.’ (webgardian: Shah:Oil Companies Helped to Oust Him)
Reportedly, the CIA and MI6 toppled the Shah because he had become too much of a nationalist, like Nasser, and was not following instructions on oil.
The CIA did not want left-wing democrats taking over from the Shah as they might not be easy to control. So, reportedly, the CIA allowed the Ayatollahs to take over.
Radio Free Iran claimed that while at Qom, the Ayatollah Khomeini received a "monthly stipend from the British, and he is in constant contact with his masters, the British."
The British, Muslim Terrorism and September 11
The Shah's nationalist policies worried the CIA and MI6.
The Shah signed petroleum agreements with ENI, the Italian oil company.
The Shah pushed forward popular reforms known as the White Revolution.
Opium production was ended.
There was a nuclear programme.
The Shah seemed like a nationalist Nasser and the Anglo-Americans wanted him out.
The role of the Moslem Brotherhood and the Ayatollahs
The following is taken from http://www.redmoonrising.com/Ikhwan/BritIslam.htm
(Sources used in the article: The Biography of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, jebhemelli.org
Killing Hope - U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, 1995
MI6 - Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Stephen Dorril, 2000)
Prior to World War II, British Intelligence cultivated ties with the Brotherhood through agent Freya Stark, the British adventurer and writer... The Muslim Brotherhood spread throughout the Muslim world and has evolved into something like a Muslim equivalent of the West's Masonic brotherhood...
"According to CIA agent Miles Copeland... the CIA began to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim mass organization founded in Egypt but with followers throughout the Arab Middle East... This signalled the beginning of an alliance between the traditional regimes and mass Islamic movements against Nasser and other secular forces." (Blum)
Prior to the British-sponsored massive public relations campaign on behalf of the Ayatollah the government of the Shah was loved by the vast majority of the population.
The Shah evolved into a nationalist:
- He bought land from the upper classes and, along with the crown's own land, sold it back cheaply to tenant farmers, allowing over one a half million people to become land owners and ending the old feudal system.
- He allowed women the right to vote, and brought an end to the wearing of the veil, which were "Westernizing" moves unwelcomed by the religious sector.
- He pushed forward on a $90 billion nuclear power program.
- He moved to shut down the lucrative opium industry that had been created during the days of British Empire control that had been running for a hundred years....
The attack on the Shah's government came through the Muslim Brotherhood and through the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran, supported and manipulated by British Intelligence...
Source http://www.redmoonrising.com/Ikhwan/BritIslam.htm
On February 1st, 1979, two weeks after the Shah's departure, Khomeini made a triumphant return to Iran. The BBC's John Simpson was on the plane that carried him back from Paris. aangirfan: BBC links to MI6?
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