On this day in 1953, the U.S. and British governments initiated a coup d'état against the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had been preparing to nationalize Iran's British-owned oil fields.
Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), later re-named British Petroleum, and to limit the company's control over Iranian oil reserves. When the AIOC refused to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.
In response, the British began a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically and engaged in subterfuge to undermine Mosaddegh's government.
Judging Mosaddegh to be unreliable and fearing a communist takeover, Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration overthrew Iran's government. The coup action was also supported by the Iranian clergy, who opposed Mosaddegh's secularism.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired mobsters to stage pro-Shah riots and paid people to travel to Tehran and take over the streets of the city. Between 200 and 300 people were killed in the ensuing mayhem.
Mosaddegh was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. Many of his supporters were imprisoned, several received the death penalty. Mosaddegh himself lived the rest of his life under house arrest, dying in 1967.
After the coup, the Shah ruled as a monarch for the next 26 years until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
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The Iranian coup, 1953 libcom
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All my friends are pretty anti China and it puts me in this weird position where like, if they say something casually anti China I usually can't help but say something. But they all kinda have the same perspective (standard liberal western perspective on china), and then I look like some unreasonable person. Like I had a friend bring up the uygher genocide, the social credit scores, and tbh idk how to even respond to this without coming off as a crank. Part of me is like whatever, it's just not worth it. But now they make comments to me whenever china is brought up and I think they've already started seeing me as a crank. It kinda suck.
Obviously to me this is somewhat immaterial anyway. Like, being pro or anti China doesn't make a huge difference in my day to day. My perspective though is that US is a major aggressor towards China and like, I don't want to be a part of that in my day to day. But pushing back against propaganda is kinda hard and damaging because people basically see me as a Holocaust denier
I openly tell friends who are into politics that Im a communist and go on communist forums. The libs ones usually dont like to talk about politics after I say that
Also tell em to take a flight to where the “camps” are and come back n tell you all about them
Ironic since all your friends got their info from crank German evangelical anthropologists and oligarch run media. That sounds like a very unfair situation to be in. If your friends aren't willing to listen to evidence as to why they're wrong than that could bleed into other areas of your friendship with them.
I wonder if you ask those same friends about Palestine they'll have a non
response. If they do have a principled stance on Palestine then you can bring up how China is a peace negotiator in West Asia and how the US has been stoking the flames of violence through invasion and funding of terrorist groups. Why would China be interested in peace in the mostly Islamic West Asia when they apparently commit genocide on Muslims for just existing?
If they have a bothsides to Palestine you might need to find better friends though.
See I'm just complaining though. Because the more I argue the more like a crank I seem. They are pro Palestine though.
One thing about the whole Uygher situation is that, whatever was going on with it, it's basically over.
Just tell them to look up which countries have condemned the "genocide" and pay special attention to Muslim majority countries.
Yemenis are literally welcoming being bombed for their support of fellow Muslims in Palestine but they have nothing bad to say about how China treats Uyghur Muslims.
All the countries that condemn the Uyghur "genocide" support isisrael's genocide.
I lost friends over this, extremely epic.