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It is a disease of the Western mind - and particularly Western academia - to deny agency to others, especially people in the Middle East, as you're doing here with your painfully unsubtle attempt to link US support for the Pahlavis in 1956 to the 1979 Islamic Revolution 23 years later. Worth noting that the Pahlavi dynasty started out as autocratic as it ended, well before the US ever showed up.
This is a lazy reverse Orientalism, where people in the Middle East are othered and cast as a perennial victim incapable of taking any role in, or responsibility for, what happens in their own countries. It's disempowering racism in academic garb.
Iranians caused the Islamic Revolution and only the Iranians can undo it. I wish them the best of luck in doing so.
“Support”. Hah. The word you’re ham-fistedly avoiding there is “coup”. You got the year wrong as well. The US and UK self-admittedly engineered it to support their national interests.
If you believe not one but two superpowers can’t engineer a coup in a financially poor but resource rich nation then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Why stop there? France engineered and supported an anti-British coup in the underdeveloped but resource rich American colonies in the late 18th century, setting in motion the train of events that led to the Islamic Revolution!
And the Polish General Kosciusko fought valiantly for the Americans, on account of the partitions of Poland. Were it not for those partitions, he'd have been at home! So it is the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian Empires - the partitioning powers of 18th century Poland-Lithuania - to blame for the Islamic Revolution!
But why did Austria desire to get involved in the partitions of Poland, and what long game was it playing vis-a-vis the Shiite scholars of then-Persia...
Hold up, we need a corkboard and some pins. Where's Pepe Silvia in all of this? Who has the Jack Ruby?
You can draw the bowstring all the way to Mars if you want to, but the only people to blame for the monstrous regime of Iran are the people who put that regime in place, and that certainly wasn't the Americans. No amount of "well this encouraged that, which caused blowback to this, leading to that" Substack-level motivated reasoning is going to change that fact.
The gay kids being executed by Iran are not cursing the name of America, or Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, they're cursing the ghouls who are hanging them, who are their countrymen.
Let’s put it this way: if we where to stack rank all the countries that where directly involved in the creation of the modern Iranian regime, Iran would be first and America would be second.
This isn’t some theory, it’s a pretty clear/succinct cause and effect.
It’s not clever, patriotic or even a good take to ignore that and hide behind “well it’s their fault for having a regime change orchestrated by us that installed an unpopular authoritarian monarch who curtained freedoms because he would oppose Russian interests and support western ones, ultimately leading to someone worse taking power after decades of human rights abuse supported by the west in return for continued alignment”.
Yes, ultimately the person who pulls the trigger is responsible, but the person who gave them the gun and told them where to shoot is also responsible.
