The Price of Meddling: A Century of Western Interference in Iran

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A short time ago, the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for do naans and esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's. Nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror.

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Irans key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East. Musts now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.

to talking about the massive [: 00:01:00

Now, whether the mission was as successful as he claims is still an open question. You have tons of reporting across foreign and even domestic sources indicating that. Really nothing was done in terms of delaying the Iranian nuclear pursuit.

Let's keep in mind that this whole sequence of events has only occurred because of Trump's ego getting in the way in his first term and eliminating the nuclear agreement that Barack Obama, along with a number of other countries had negotiated and had set up.

So taking all of that into account, and we'll come to some of this a little bit later. How did we actually get here? There's a lot of different ways that you can answer this question.

If you zoom out, we are here.

e of over a hundred years of [: 00:02:00

when you look at the story of Iran, you have a nation that's sandwiched between two different imperial powers in the late 18 hundreds and the early 19 hundreds. You have Russia on one hand who is seeking to gain influence within the Iranian territory.

And. You have the British who are also looking to gain influence within Iranian territory as well. All of that shifted with the Bolshevik revolution. When that happened, Russia was in a state of chaos and the British saw an opportunity to expand their influence within Iranian borders, specifically with the interests of expanding their oil interests through British petroleum.

When you start [: 00:03:00

Wanted to audit the revenues that were being generated from the oil industry.

When the British refused to do a full and comprehensive audit the Iranians threatened to. Nationalized the entire oil industry so that the Iranian people could benefit more from the revenues that were being generated.

By the: 1950

From the oil industry. Now, this was something that the British refused to do and refused to deal with. So the British in conjunction with the US and particularly the CIA, installed the Shah of Iran, who was more western friendly and extremely repressive to the Iranian people. And you fast forward to.

The Islamic Revolution of Iran, you have decades of interference by the US and the British that comes. It came to a head, and the Islamic Revolution led to the ayatollah taking power. And now Iran has gone from a pro-Western puppet government to an extremely anti-Western.

all of this happening in the [: 00:05:00

But we know that historically this has never been the case.

You have centuries of British interference all across the global south, and then they passed the baton after World War II to the United States. To handle that same sort of interference anywhere where you're looking at the global south, whether it's Africa, whether it's Asia, whether it's South America.

that the West needs to live [: 00:06:00

The comfort that they've become accustomed to

when it comes to this pattern of behavior by the British and by the United States. This is pretty consistent. You can look through the history of the 19 hundreds. You can look through the history of the 18 hundreds and see the interference that has happened at the hands of both of these imperial powers and the damage that it's caused the global south.

When we asked the question, how did Iran become public Enemy number one, the top reason that you have to point to is repeated interference and meddling by the United States,

and you've seen that happen throughout the entire Middle East. Think about all the different countries that are pro propped up by. US interests and Western interests. Every single one of those countries at one point or another had a leader in place that was at some level supporting US interests.

these people in power, they [: 00:07:00

The Iran Iraq War is a perfect example. You have to keep in mind that before the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein and that.

Regime that was in place in Iraq was a US ally. In fact, the war between Iraq and Iran was largely funded by the US through overt and covert means. And there's even evidence that indicates that the US funded both sides in the hopes that it would create permanent chaos to the benefit of the military industrial complex and defense contractors that the US relies on.

When you think about the US' history, for a country that often talks about the beacon of freedom, this is a country that has in effect been waging war almost its entire existence. There's roughly a period of 12 years where the US hasn't been at war with some country or another and hasn't been meddling in some other foreign affairs.

When we [: 00:08:00

The US has done such a great job of. Propagandizing to its people that these precision strikes hit the ears of the general American public, as if it's some sort of video game that these are completely targeted with no collateral damage, [00:09:00] with no records. That happens to civilians and none of that actually exists.

You've seen evidence of this double speak even in this regime's leadership

VP Couch Humper: what we've said to the Iranians is, we do not want war with Iran. We actually want peace, but we want peace in the context of them not having a nuclear weapons program. And that's exactly what the president accomplished last night. I really think there are two big questions for the Iranians here.

Are they going to attack American troops or are they gonna continue with their nuclear weapons program? And if they leave American troops out of it. And they decide to give up their nuclear weapons program once and for all. Then I think the president has been very clear. We can have a good relationship with the Iranians.

We can have a peaceful situation in that region of the world.

warranted attacks on foreign [: 00:10:00

Of what happened in the second Gulf War. We've seen all of this before. Remember the language that came out of the post nine 11 era. Here's George W. Bush talking about his worldview in the post nine 11 aftermath. How he justified his illegal war that dragged us into a 20 year foreign adventure.

d all the world to know that [: 00:11:00

We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.

Dr. Jim 2.0: When we listen to all that, we need to listen to it with a critical ear. Here we are talking about the message of freedom and democracy, and in the, all the while throughout our history, we've propped up every sort of dictator around the world who completely savages their people, but. The resources keep coming to American corporate interests and it feeds the capitalist engine that drives America.

And the mythology of all of that is that we're driving freedom through the world and we're making our standard of living in the US even better.

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What's happened to the rest of us? Where have the bottom 90% been? You've heard me talk about how the bottom 90% has in experienced a 50 trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the top 1%. Perpetual war enables for that to happen.

Now when we look at what's happened in the Middle East over the last 40 years, we have to be honest about what is driving that. Certainly American military interests and energy interests are driving a lot of it, but there's also the fact that this plays right into the agenda that Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted to have happened for.

ontage of Benjamin Netanyahu [: 00:13:00

Benjamin Netyanhu: The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely, is extremely close, and Iran, by the way, is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seaboard of the United States within 15 years. By next spring, at most, by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.

From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough rich uranium. For the first bomb. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough rich uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons that would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the fist all material.

re arsenal of nuclear bombs, [: 00:14:00

Dr. Jim 2.0: So what you've heard is Benjamin Netanyahu. Singing the same song in the same verse for a period of almost 40 years, and he finally was able to have somebody dumb enough to fully act on his behalf.

Now, you had Kamala Harris tell you exactly what was gonna happen if Donald Trump got in power, every dictator around the world would love to have Trump in power because he's too stupid to know that he's being manipulated. And what just happened? Trump did Netanyahu's bidding and brought us to the brink of World War iii,