The joint partnership of the American government and media elite squelched all the bad news, successfully keeping US citizens in the dark. But the truth eventually leaked out in 1979, when the Iranian citizens rose up in unison against the Shah and overthrew him, bringing in the fiercely anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini with fantastic jubilation. Unfortunately, the US government could not stand the combination of a virulently anti-American leader with the overwhelming allegiance of his people. He was a perfect scapegoat for the US, which immediately piled false condemnations upon him and a year later we helped Iraq to fight a war against Iran, partly to punish the latter for its breakthrough to democracy.
The Constitutional Revolution of Persia, the overthrow of Ahmad Shah, the election of Mohammed Mossadiq and the joyful welcome given to Ayatollah Khomeini are all classic examples of a nation’s people asserting their right to self-government—what G. K. Chesterton called democracy—despite external pressures and intervention. As Thomas Jefferson alluded to in his remark quoted above, fallen human nature tends to obscure and threaten true democracy. We Americans must be on our guard for the evil of a relentless transnational mega-corporate greed disguised as the good of an unselfish worldwide spread of democracy.
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