Jackson Pearson
May 18, 2015
USH
I Pledge
Relationship with Iran
Many
People have no idea of the history between the United States and Iran. Most
people think that the United States and Iran have never had good relations, and
that Iran has been the one in the country’s relations causing all the issues.
This is mostly true, however, the United States has played a role in molding
the country’s relationship into what it is today. Many past issues and more
current issues have developed the relationship into how it is, starting with
the overthrow of Mossadeqin in 1953, to present day with the United States
being pressed with the issue of allowing or not allowing the Iranian government
to have a nuclear program.
In 1953,
the United States’ CIA joined with the British Intelligence Agency to devise a
plan to remove Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq. They orchestrated
Operation Ajax and after it had been executed, the Prime Minister was no longer
in control of Iran. The reasoning for the removal of Mohammed Mossadeq was
because he had intentions of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry. This would of
course be very costly for the United States and Great Britain. Whether it was
right for the United States to intervene in another country’s government is
debatable, if we had not came into their nation’s affairs there is a
possibility that the relationship would be much better than it is today.
However, if the United States had not taken the Leader out of power then the
costs of the oil would have sky rocketed and caused the U.S. economy to enter a
downward spiral.
The years
following Operation Ajax went as the United States had planned, they would back
a new leader to lead the country and essentially do as the U.S. wished. But in
1979 this period of rest came to an end. The Iranian population had finally
forced the Shah to leave the country. The people of Iran had been on strike for
months opposing the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. Majority of strikers were
religiously oppose to him being in power and many of the people wanted him to
be in exile. When he left the country it was very bad for the United States,
this is because they not only lost their “puppet” but they also did not know
who would be the leader to come into power.
Not even a
month after the Shah was forced from the country, Ayatollah Khomeini returned
from exile to create the Islamic Republic of Iran. There was not only a new man
in power but in the same year 52 United States servicemen were taken as hostages.
However, they were not taken as hostages for no reason, President Carter had
allowed the old Shah to enter the U.S. to receive medical treatment. The
Iranians did not see it as okay that Carter had allowed him to enter. Once the
people of Iran heard of the United States doing this they immediately stormed
the U.S. embassy taking all but the 13 women as hostages. The U.S. military
took action, executing Operation Eagle Claw, but due to a sandstorm the plan
ended in a disastrous 8 servicemen dying.
After 444 days the hostages were
released after Ronald Reagan was elected as president. After the Hostage Crisis
the U.S. went nearly a decade without another horrible issue. The quiet time
between Iran and the United States came to an end when the U.S. naval vessel,
The USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane. Not only was it
horrible that all the innocent people were killed, but it was also horrible
because Iran did not believe at all that the act was an accident. The Iranian
government and Iranian people both believed that the naval ship had purposely
shot down the passenger plane, even though the ship claims they warned the
plane and thought it was a fighter plane. The idea that the U.S. shot down a
passenger plane on purpose spread like wild fire. Sparking more opposition to
the United States by the people in Iran. By this point in history, the
relationship between the two countries was at a new level of tension.
After the
passenger plane incident there was not much that had happened up until years
closer to the present. In the past decade the Iranian government has been
accused of the development of a nuclear program. The UN and the U.S. have been
unsure of the intentions of the development of a nuclear program, whether it is
strictly for nuclear power and research, or for the development of nuclear
weapons.
I
believe that many of the issues that have risen in the past sixty years have
been preventable. Many things could have been stopped, many tension creating events
could have been avoided, and many lives could have been saved if the Iranian
and United States governments had worked differently when dilemmas arise.
In more
than half a century of events the relationship between Iran and the U.S. has
been changed and put under an unbelievable amount of stress and tension. What
has been done by both countries cannot be undone and whether the decisions made
were morally right or wrong are always up for discussion. From the removal of a
leader to the shooting down of a passenger plane, the U.S. has destroyed the
chances of the relationship the two countries could have had.
******************SOUCES AND PICTURES ON PREVIOUS POST*******************
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