Did We Pull the Plug on the Shah?

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The secret history of the world was his pastime.  His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive, with the public pretext, of transactions.  -- Benjamin Disraeli, describing the sage Jewish financier Sidonia in his classic novel, Coningsby.

“Surely, your majesty, you’re not telling me that the Jewish lobby in the United States pulls the strings of the presidency.”

Thus begins an extraordinary 1976 interview by the Jewish Mike Wallace of CBS of the Shah of Iran. It’s really quite amusing to hear the tone of fake incredulity in Wallace’s voice as the Shah makes observations about Jewish power in the United States that most people these days would accept as fairly commonplace, though seldom spoken so openly. Powerful Jewish interests controlling the media and banks and pressuring politicians? Heaven forfend!

Now consider that this was America’s “great ally” in the Middle East, a man widely regarded as our puppet, whom we installed in power after orchestrating, along with the British, the overthrow of the elected president Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It certainly looks like he was straying pretty far off the reservation here.

Listening to the Shah’s words in retrospect, we can’t help but think of what happened to CNN anchor Rick Sanchez when he made a much more cautious statement about Jewish media power in an unguarded moment, before a far smaller audience. He was gone in a heartbeat, as if to prove the truth of what he had to say. Could the Shah’s words to Wallace have sealed his fate in a similar way?

But the Rick Sanchez newsreader types of this world are a dime a dozen and easily replaceable, I hear you say. The Shah was the bastion against the menace of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Look at what replaced him.

Exactly! Look at what has replaced Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq and would no-doubt replace Bashar al-Assad in Syria should we have our way and he were to be brought down. The very fact that the United States has been instrumental in bringing down two strongmen who had been our allies when it suited us, as we were more consistently with the Shah, is another powerful reason for taking a more serious look at what really happened in the fall of the Shah of Iran.

That more serious look, to my mind, virtually begins and ends with a trenchant essay entitled “The British and U.S. Governments Installed Khomeini into Power in 1979,” posted on a web site called The Excavator on November 3, 2011 by Saman Mohammadi. Everyone who desires a better understanding of what is going on in the Middle East currently, and is likely to happen in the future, should read that essay. The article begins:

The thesis that the British and U.S. governments drove out the Shah and replaced him with Khomeini destroys the clash of civilizations myth that has dominated the global conversation between Islam and the West for over a generation.

For years I thought this thesis was too "out there," and a baseless conspiracy theory. I did not want to believe that there was any truth to this. It changes my entire view of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the relationship between Iran and the West, and the history of our times.

The implications of the thesis are too frightening to think about. The level of the treason and betrayal that is taking place against the people of every nation is beyond most people's imagination.

But I always try to keep an open mind because anything is plausible in this crazy world. So, last month I finally decided to actually look at the evidence that is available on the Internet about this thesis and dig deeper into history.

The first clue that caught my eye was the Shah's own words. "If you lift up Khomeini's beard," he said, "you will find Made In England written under his chin."

More clues come from more of the Shah’s words in the article, from an interview with David Frost when the Shah was in exile in Panama:

Do you think that Mr. Khomeini, an uneducated person . . . could have planned all this, masterminded all this, set up all the organizations. I know that one man alone could not have done it. This I know.

I know that tremendous amount of money was spend [sic]. This also I know.

I know that top experts in propaganda were used to show us like tyrants and monsters, and the other side as democratic, liberal revolutionaries who wanted to save the country.

I know how mean the BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, had been towards us. This I know. Because we have all the files. If you monitor the broadcast towards our country you would see that it was full of venom. So it seemed that it was really a very well orchestrated conspiracy.

Going right to the heart of what actually transpired, the article gives us this quote from historian F. William Engdahl:

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 [Zbigniew] 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 was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public “credit” for getting rid of the “corrupt” Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.

Speaking of “safely in the background,” one can’t help but notice what a boon to Israel all this balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East would certainly be. This policy of fracturing and destabilizing Israel’s biggest potential enemies bears a striking resemblance to “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared by a neocon study group led by Richard Perle for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. It is also in complete harmony with Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.”

That securing Israel’s realm should be the foremost concern of noted Orientalist Bernard Lewis should be no surprise. In the following quote, M. Shahid Alam, contrasts a newer school of Oriental studies with that led by Lewis:

They make an effort to locate Islamic societies in their historical context, arguing that Islamic responses to Western challenges have been diverse and evolving over time, and they do not derive from an innate hostility to the West or some unchanging Islamic mindset. The second camp, now led mostly by Jews, has reverted to Orientalism’s original mission of subordinating knowledge to Western power, now filtered through the prism of Zionist interests. This Zionist Orientalism has assiduously sought to paint Islam and Islamic societies as innately hostile to the West, modernism, democracy, tolerance, scientific advance, and women’s rights.

This Zionist camp has been led for more than fifty years by Bernard Lewis, who has enjoyed an intimate relationship with power that would be the envy of the most distinguished Orientalists of an earlier generation. He has been strongly supported by a contingent of able lieutenants, whose ranks have included the likes of Elie Kedourie, David Pryce-Jones, Raphael Patai, Daniel Pipes, and Martin Kramer. There are many foot soldiers, too, who have provided distinguished service to this new Orientalism. And no compendium of these foot soldiers would be complete without the names of Thomas Friedman, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, and Judith Miller.

Alam, whose essay is entitled “Scholarship or Sophistry: Bernard Lewis and the New Orientalism,” notes the irony of the fact that before the rise of Zionism, it was Jewish scholars who were more likely to give a more balanced view of Muslim and Middle Eastern societies.

Yet the vigor of this early anti-Orientalism of Jewish scholars would not last; it would not survive the logic of the Zionist movement as it sought to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Such a state could only emerge as a child of Western imperialist powers, and it could only come into existence by displacing the greater part of the Palestinian population, by incorporating them into an apartheid state, or through some combination of the two. In addition, once created, Israel could only survive as a military, expansionist, and hegemonic state, constantly at war with its neighbors.

“They Hate Us for Our Freedom”

If the view of Muslim societies as hopelessly backward and riven with sectarian violence did not fit the facts, it was not the view but the facts that had to be changed. Iran under the Shah was not good for that worldview, which meant that he was not good for “the realm.” Returning to the Excavator article, here is a summary of why he had to go:

1. Nuclear Power. The Shah was modernizing Iran in a significant way, and this had to be stopped. The Bilderberg and Club of Rome elite are notoriously anti-growth, and anti-economic development because keeping nations poor is the best way to control them. The British policy towards her colonies in Africa was based on under-development, keeping the people poor, and putting a tiny elite in power. This policy was also used against Iran.

2. Oil Production. The Shah's decision to increase Iranian oil production angered U.S. oil companies and others who wanted to maintain artificial scarcity in the international oil market in order to keep prices high and make more profits.

Specifically, the Shah said that a couple of years before the Revolution he "heard from two different sources connected with the oil companies that the regime within Iran will change. . . If just in imagination, we believed that there was a plan that there must be less oil offered to the world market in order to make the price of oil go up, one country should have been the one chosen for this sacrifice." (This quote is from an article called "Shah Retains Claim to Iranian Throne" that appeared in 'The Fort Scott Tribute' on January 18, 1980).

3. Opium Profits. The Shah took serious measures to stop the flow of opium into Iran, which greatly damaged British interests. The Rothschilds and London's financial empire depend on the world opium trade to retain their power and influence.

4. Economic Threat of a Modern and Independent Iran to Interests of British-U.S. Elite. The Shah was building up Iran into a modern state by enriching the country and strengthening the middle class. He was not a perfect ruler, but he was not the tyrant that the West made him out to be.

The Shah's original sin was siding with the U.S. and British against Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. He should have known that if you make a deal with the devil and then spit in his face you will be treated accordingly.

But, this is not about one man or one nation. Nations around the world are treated like colonies by international banks and multinational corporations, including America. America and Iran have lived under puppet leaders for most of the 20th century.

When a true leader acts in the interest of his country and his people the elite secret societies get rid of him. They either kill the patriotic leader, like John F. Kennedy in 1963, or they instigate a revolution against him, like the Shah in 1979.

5. Create A Clash of Civilizations. The destruction of the modern world economy, the nation state, and the current world order are three stated objectives of the Anglo-American power elite. They have created an artificial conflict between Islam and the West to achieve all three objectives.

This global conflict came into being as a result of two world events. The first event was the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution which was the product of the MI6, CIA, Bilderberg Group, Club of Rome and other secret global organizations. The second event was the September 11 terrorist attacks that was orchestrated by the Mossad and the Anglo-American shadow government.

Iran was set up in 1979 as the representative of Islamic Civilization, and ever since then its extremist clerical oligarchy has used the language of Islam to pose as the leader of a resistance bloc to Western powers. Influential Iranian clerics are most likely in the fold of the same Western powers that turned Khomeini into "Time's Person of the Year," in 1979.

He might not have been as important a leader, but the killing of James Forrestal could also be offered as an important assassination in the context of U.S. policies in the Middle East. One might also question the closing assertion that the current leadership of Iran is as much in the hip pocket of the Western secret governments as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appears to have been. The example of the Shah, himself, shows the difficulty of keeping puppets in line after they have been put in place. If they are responsive to the needs and wishes of their own people they need to use less repression to remain in power.

Even the mainstream media admit that the Israelis were instrumental in the creation of Hamas, they say as a counterweight to the PLO, but perhaps also in furtherance of their “clash of civilizations” strategy. It is difficult to believe that Hamas remains in Israel’s fold, but one at least must wonder who has been behind those pinprick rocket attacks from Gaza, twice providing a pretext for Israel to rain wanton death and destruction upon the region.

It has also been argued that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was an inside job involving the Western banks and secret agencies, but the man hand-picked, according to this thesis, by Western stooge Boris Yeltsin to preside over the further looting of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has apparently turned out to be too much of a Russian patriot, which explains the vitriol that is heaped upon him by the Western media and governments.

Whatever one might speculate about Iran’s current leadership, the evidence appears quite strong that Khomeini, himself, was not what he appeared to be. Drawing from various sources, with links provided, an anonymous poster on AANGIRFAN argues that Khomeini was not even Persian, that he was actually the son of a British Middle East adventurer and British Petroleum named William Richard Williamson and that his mother was a Punjabi from India. Whether it is photo-shopped or not, the depiction on the site of the Grand Ayatollah without a turban and beard and wearing a necktie is certainly enough to give one food for thought. We also find there many similar arguments to those at The Excavator for Khomeini having been a creature of the Western intelligence agencies.

Continuing the “Clash of Civilizations”

The ever more cartoonish character of the supposed opposition faced by the Western military behemoth in the Middle East further encourages us to go back and look critically at what happened in the overthrow of the Shah. As black-hearted villains, the wanton beheaders known most commonly as ISIS are everything that the Western secret agencies, their military-industrial complex, and the Western imperial creation of Israel might wish for. As Sunni Muslims opposed by the governments of both Iraq and Iran and Israel’s next-door enemy, Hezbollah, they might muddle the clear civilization-clash lines a bit, but such fine distinctions are probably lost on most Americans. The important thing is that Muslims are the enemy.

This latest Muslim enemy, one must admit, is absolutely the strangest one yet. Armies are expensive, what with the need to feed, clothe, train, and transport them and to keep them supplied with functioning weapons and ammunition. Where is ISIS getting the wherewithal to wage modern warfare?

James Corbett has done what seems to me to be the most thoughtful inquiry into that question on the Internet with his Corbett Report entitled “Who Is Really Behind ISIS?” He might have left the “Really” out of his title, because it suggests that we are being told one thing when the reality is something else. The really odd thing about ISIS is that the propagandists don’t even seem to feel the need to put out a story about who’s backing them. Who would want to back the very incarnation of evil, anyway?

In the absence even of a cover story, Corbett in his researches comes down to a list of the six likeliest candidates for ISIS creators and backers. They are Israel, NATO, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Corbett came to that conclusion in late September 2014. Now, at the end of May 2015, we have a newly declassified Pentagon document concluding that “the West, Turkey, and the Gulf States” are behind the creation of ISIS, which accords quite closely with Corbett’s findings. Certainly the case is at least as strong that the U.S., Britain, and Israel were behind the fall of the Shah of Iran.

David Martin

June 3, 2015

Addendum

I have received this very thoughtful response from one of the people on my mailing list. He clearly knows a lot more about the web site in question than I do. If, as now seems likely to me, the article referenced is disinformation, it almost reinforces the central point of my article. If the spooks find it necessary to muddy the water in this way, it suggests that there must be something to the charge that Western intelligence was behind the replacement of the Shah with Khomeini. Think of all the garbage theories they’ve put out with respect to the JFK assassination and 9/11 to put the public off the scent:

Regarding the article “Did we pull the plug on the Shah” I believe there could be a lot behind the contention that western interests covertly supported the overthrow of the Shah. The writers quoted in the article impressed. There was one exception. This was the part that purported to provide biographical information on Ayatollah Khomeini.

If he were really the son of an Englishman this information would be widely known in Iran. Middle Eastern societies place a greater importance on familial relationships. If he were the son of a non-Muslim and a westerner this fact would have to be acknowledged for it would be to his disadvantage within the Shia religious hierarchy. To try to keep such information secret would be foolish and detrimental.

The two juxtaposed photos of him where one has him in western garb appear to be based on the same original where photo-shopping has produced a new version. It looks as though the original has been rotated a few degrees and then either brightened or darkened. Then new features are built in around the core of the face. I presume the one on the left is the original but maybe not!  

So the alleged side-by-side photos of Khomeini in Shia religious and western garb are very highly suspicious. The notion that he secretly was not of Iranian parentage is most dubious.

Perhaps the aim of this fairly obviously questionable story about Khomeini is to discredit the idea that his overthrow of the Shah had western backing. Who knows?  

An “anonymous poster” on AANGIRFAN is not what could be called a trustworthy source. This website has a history of putting questionable material under the noses of readers. On July 30, 2005 it carried a story from Arctic Beacon where the Bin Laden brothers in 1987 told two NASA research scientists about US government plans to cause 9/11. [1]

Arctic Beacon is a website which accuses “The Jesuits” of enormous malfeasance in world affairs. Draw your own conclusions.

On July 31, 2005 AANGIRFAN had a story about a Kay Giggs, a woman who claimed to be the wife of a senior US military officer. She heard all the details from him 'usually while he was drinking before going into one of his drunken stupors'. There were stories of strange goings on, strange rituals and secret societies. In connection with 9/11 she manages to mention a host of guilty parties including, believe it or not, one “Basil Cardinal Hume”. It was all so very confused and incoherent. [2]

On Dec 22, 2010 AANGIRFAN tackled the question as to whether Julian Assange was gay. [3]  

On the other hand the story for Dec 06, 2010 provokes thought. It deals with Wikileaks and the question as to whether it may actually be a construct of the intelligence world. It is a coherent piece. [4]

On Feb 09, 2011 the website referred to an article by Michael Collins Piper posted on American Free Press which dealt with how instability and turmoil in the Arab world played into the hands of Zionism. The AANGIRFAN piece went on to attack long time critic of Zionism Ralph Schoenman and suggest he was a “disinformation agent” and a “deep cover CIA agent”. The article also referred to the 1969 moon landing as a hoax. [5]

It is furthermore important to mention that there is no person or organisation identified in its profile as being responsible for the site. So, here is a mystery.

One must note there is a disclaimer at the top of the site to the effect that views expressed on the site are not necessarily endorsed by whoever runs it.

There is some very thought provoking and valuable material posted on AANGIRFAN. However, there is also some classic disinformation placed before the public. The professionally run disinformation operation contains a mix of truth and untruth. The truth is there to provide a carrier signal for the broadcast of the untruths. Disinformation on the web works by salting valid information with untruth so that actual reality becomes discredited in the mind of the viewer or so that the viewer becomes confused or else disillusioned with the search for verifiable fact.      

It is hard for a current events/history website to be always 100 percent accurate in what it presents. However, the quality of the material on AANGIRFAN is very uneven. Profundity is set side by side with nonsense. We can not be assured the website has been set up deliberately as a disinformation source. However, nonetheless, this is a valid presumption. Even if it were not deliberately set up as a disinformation ploy it inevitably functions as such because of the mix of material it contains and the effect this will have of readers/viewers.

Even if we understand a website as a disinformation source this does not necessarily mean we avoid it at all costs. Instead we may decide to use it but with due care and discretion. For example AANGIRFAN contains many wonderful and thought provoking and well-presented articles. If we were to avoid accessing the site altogether, we might miss some of these treats. If an individual has a deep knowledge of the subjects that interest him or her then they can develop skills for recognizing disinformation. With these skills misleading articles and video presentations can be mentally cast aside and relieved of their power to cause harm.

We may discover a worthwhile article at a disinformation site and trace it to where it was originally placed online. If we want to reference it in an article of our own then we can reference the site where the article was originally put online. This will avoid the negative connotations of referencing a web resource tainted by an association with disinformation.

[1]       http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/30199.htm

http://aangirfan.blogspot.ie/2005_07_01_archive.html

[2]      http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/29982.htm

http://aangirfan.blogspot.ie/2005_07_01_archive.html

[3]      http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/12/assange-is-gay.html

[4]      http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/12/assanges-wikileaks-is-fake.html

[5]       http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2011/02/piper-schoenman-truth-lies-on-egypt.html

David Martin

June 29, 2015

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