Iran History Revisited: Part 2

(See part 1 below)

Democratic Party politicians now control the U.S. Congress and the White House. Yet the U.S. military-industrial-media complex’s troops and private contractors have still not been immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Israeli government allies of the Democratic Obama Regime also may still be threatening to order the Israeli War Machine to use U.S. government-provided weapons to eventually attack Iran before the November 2010 U.S. congressional elections.. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of people in Iran since foreign imperialist powers began illegally and undemocratically intervening in Iran’s internal political and economic affairs in the late 1800s.

During World War I, an increased number of Czarist Russian army troops occupied Iran in the north, while an increased number of UK troops occupied Iran in the south. Following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, Russian troops were soon withdrawn from Iran. But in 1918, British imperialist troops occupied all of Iran, created a puppet Vosugh al-Dauleh government on August 6, 1918 and forced the puppet government to sign an even more exploitative Anglo-Iranian Treaty than the ones that previous feudalist Iranian governments had signed.

In reaction to these moves by UK imperialism in Iran, Iranian tribes in rural Iran, predictably, began an uprising between 1918 and 1922 in which they attacked British occupying troops. By early 1919 the anti-imperialist Iranian mass uprising had forced the Iranian puppet regime to revoke its Anglo-Iranian Treaty; and by 1920 some Iranians had even formed the country’s first communist party.

After the now-deceased Shah of Iran’s father, Reza Khan, pulled a coup in February 1921 that overthrew the previous puppet government of UK imperialism in Iran, the anti-imperialist revolt in Iran began to wind down. A constituent assembly in Iran was then established and, by December 12, 1925, Iran’s constituent assembly had stripped the Qajar royal dynasty members of their royal family privileges. Reza Khan was, instead, then proclaimed “Shah of Iran” and renamed “Reza Shah Pahlavi.”

Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled Iran between 1925 and 1941. During his reign, workers and peasant movements were persecuted and, in the 1930s, strikes of Iranian workers at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s refineries were suppressed by his regime. After Soviet Union troops and British government troops both marched into Iran during World War II in August 1941, Reza Shah Pahlavi was compelled to abdicate because of his previous expressions of support for a Nazi Germany military victory. His son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (who wasn’t considered as pro-Nazi), however, was allowed to replace him as the new Shah of Iran. For most of the years between 1941 and early 1979, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi would rule Iran as a dictator, with the bipartisan support of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s government. (end of part 2)