Iran History Revisited: Part 28

(See parts 1-27 below)

On April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

And an article by Sheera Frenkel that was posted on the London Times website on April 18, 2009 also stated:

“The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

“Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“`Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,’ one senior defence official told The Times…

“`We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel's willingness to act,' said another official from Israel's intelligence community.

“He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America...”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

In addition to providing the Iranian government with a pretext to repress secular anti-imperialist proponents of more democratization of Iranian society during the 1980s, the 1980 to 1988 Iraq-Iran War that Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime in Iraq started in September 1980 also produced great suffering for the people of both Iran and Iraq. Almost one million Iranians were maimed or killed, for example, as a result of the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s; and many Iranian cities were extensively damaged during this war.

But on July 18, 1988, the Iranian government agreed to accept UN Security Council Resolution 598 which called for a cease-fire with Iraq; and the 1980 and 1988 Iraq-Iran War finally ended. Six days later, however, the People’s Mojahadeen guerrilla group launched a military incursion into Iran.

Iranian government authorities apparently then used this military attack as a pretext to carry out another round of mass executions of both imprisoned secular anti-imperialist left Iranian activists and imprisoned People’s Mojahadeen activists. According to the Human Rights Watch web site:

“In 1988, the Iranian government summarily and extra-judicially executed thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails…The majority of those executed were serving prison sentences for their political activities…Those who had been sentenced, however, had not been sentenced to death….”

Dissident Iranian activists and Amnesty International estimated that between 2,800 and 4,481 Iranian political prisoners were then executed in 1988 by Islamic Republic authorities. Although most of the executed Iranian political prisoners in 1988 were members and supporters of the People’s Mojahadeen group, hundreds of imprisoned members and supporters of the Tudeh Party, the Peoples’ Fedayeen group and the Kurdish Democratic Party were also apparently executed by the Iranian government authorities in 1988. (end of part 28)