wilson not winston
Irrespective of where you stand on the current US/Iran conflict, I think everyone’s pretty much agreed that it has been kicked-off in a half-cocked, cack-handed manner. Advocates would charitably claim it has two aims: the first to weaken, if not remove, an unarguably oppressive and evil regime, one which thinks little of slaughtering upwards of 30,000 for protesting on the streets; the second to reduce the regime’s ability to threaten its neighbours, from both a ballistics and nuclear perspective. In reality, the ultimate endgame has yet to reveal itself.
It seems that the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran, who end their speeches and sermons with the chant ‘Marg bar Amrika/Death to America’, have been at each other’s throats forever, but has it always been this way, and why?
Iran’s antipathy towards the US in the events of 1953, when the CIA and our own MI6, orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected, left-leaning, Iranian PM, Mohammed Mossadegh, replacing him with the Shah as head of state. The action was justified at the time as an initiative against communist expansion, though it’s now accepted it had far more to do with the PM’s nationalisation of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company than any high-brow international political ideal. Unsurprisingly, Western access to oil was immediately restored.
Undeniably corrupt and dysfunctional the Shah’s hold on the country remained tenuous and widespread unrest eventually forced him to flee to the US in January 1979 and he was replaced by the returning exiled fundamentalist cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini. Later in that year, Iranian students broke into the US embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomates hostage and holding them hostage for 444 days. Peanut President Jimmy Carter immediately ordered a rescue mission, which went spectacularly wrong, killing eight US servicemen. Carter severed diplomatic relations, and although the hostages were eventually released unharmed, the situation has never thawed.
During the Iran/Iraq War, the US actively supported Iraq. In 1983, two truck bombs killed 241 US service personnel in Lebanon and Iran was designated as the ‘state sponsor of terror’ within the region. Later, the US navy mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing all 290 people on board. Post 9/11, George W Bush labelled Iran as central to the ‘axis of evil’ and initiated plans for regime change as Iran made good on its threat to arm and fund the proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. Not good.
When President Obama took office in 2009, he sought to calm tensions, ratcheted-down the warmongering rhetoric and eventually reached a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme, seen as the gravest of threats to its main regional ally, Israel. In return for the lifting of sanctions and the release of more than $50bn in frozen assets, Iran agreed to slash the number of uranium centrifuges and submit to independent, unfettered investigations. The deal was designed to prevent Iran from enriching large amounts uranium until at least 2031. In coming to office for his first term eight years ago, President Trump dumped this and here we are today.
It’s clear that neither side is blameless but diplomacy appears to have been long abandoned and The Don is the man with a hammer to whom every problem is a nail. With his playground boastfulness we have learned that “America is winning without mercy”, its weapons are “exquisite” and the Iranians are “toast and know it”. Winston Churchill ‘s famous maxim “jaw-jaw is better than war-war” emphasised that sensible dialogue and mature negotiation were always preferable to armed conflict. Furthermore, in his 1961 inaugural address, JFK wisely stated that “civility is not a sign of weakness”. Never has such rationale been needed more.
PS And for once Trump is quite correct about Keir Starmer being no Winston Churchill. However, he can be compared to former Labour PM, Harold Wilson, who, in the 60s, refused to collaborate with Lyndon B Johnson in the Vietnam War and sent no troops. Facing great public disquiet at the time, history now sides with his non-participation. It takes thick-skin to oppose Trump but time will tell who is right.
