JFK vs Trump on Iran
As many cynics have queried, including the late Alexander Cockburn and the current Noam Chomsky: What relevance does the murder of President Kennedy have to today’s world? Well, what is going on in the Middle East right now is an object lesson to that relevance. In fact, I don’t think one can get much more relevant.
Joseph Kennedy encouraged his children to travel widely and to experience different cultures and political systems. Young John Kennedy did so, and he did it more than once. In 1939, he visited Palestine and wrote a letter to his father about what he saw there. In this insightful letter, he immediately notes that the British had made different claims to each side about who the land would eventually belong to once they left. One claim pledged the area to the Arabs through Sir Henry McMahon in 1915. The other one was the Balfour Declaration about a Jewish homeland, made in 1917. Today, one hears much about the latter, but almost nothing about the former. That Kennedy knew about McMahon back in 1939 at the age of 22 tells us something about his education and curiosity.
In this letter, Kennedy states that neither claim will work since they are both vague and indefinite. With the advent of the Great Depression, the organized Zionists tried to send many expatriates into the area. And they gave them money to buy up the best land. This initiated a real resentment on the side of the Arabs. They felt that the basic idea was to dominate their country both numerically and economically.
The British solution was a partition plan. But the first design insisted on a continued British presence, which the Zionists objected to. The other aspect they objected to was a limit on the influx of Jewish refugees into the area. The Arabs felt that the plan relied too much on Zionist cooperation and trust, which they felt was pretty much not merited. They also wanted the inclusion of an Arab assembly spelled out, and no more immigration.
These were the technical objections which Kennedy articulated. But JFK then added something that he said was not meant to be publicized. He wrote that the Zionist side had a desire for complete domination, “with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey….” Kennedy saw the present proposals as pretty much impractical under the polarizing circumstances. He thought the only workable solution was breaking up the area into two autonomous districts with self- government, and Jerusalem as an independent city. Kennedy said this would be difficult, but it was the only path he saw with any hope of solving the problem.
Young Kennedy then transitioned to something that is important to note. He begins to describe what he suggests are false flag operations. In one night, there were 13 bombs that exploded, all set off by the Zionists, in their own areas. They then would phone the British to repair them.
He concludes by writing the following:
The sympathy of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs. This is not only because the Jews have had, at least some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude, but they feel that after all, the country has been Arab for the last few hundred years and they naturally feel sympathetic. After all, Palestine was hardly Britain’s to give away. (Italics added)
The above letter is included in the book JFK and RFK’s Secret Battle against Zionist Extremism, by Ken McCarthy and Rick Sterling. (pp. 55-62) I include these excerpts because they show that Kennedy was on the ground and saw how this Arab/Zionist dispute was forming. He had firsthand experience in the midst of it. And at the age of 22, he was intelligent enough and had the background to try and make sense of the whole struggle--and even formulate a solution.
II
Kennedy did not forget about this issue when he became a senator:
What we clearly need in the Middle East…is a final entente, a permanent settlement of all major problems which reasonable men and nations can accept—a settlement based not on armed truce but on comity, accepted not out of fear but out of civic friendship. (Monica Wiesak, America’s Last President, p. 14)
He pointed to the Palestinian refugee issue as a humanitarian tragedy which had to be acknowledged and addressed:
Their impoverished and tragic existence in makeshift camps near Israel’s borders offers a constant source of national antagonism….Let those refugees be repatriated to Israel…who are sincerely willing to live at peace with their neighbors, to accept the Israeli government….Those who would prefer to remain in Arab jurisdiction should be resettled in areas under control of governments willing to help their Arab brothers. The refugee camps should be closed. (ibid)
In 1952, Congressman John Kennedy went on a television interview program and talked about the state of those countries emerging from colonialism, stretching from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. He said that, due to colonialism, there was much resentment against the Western Powers. One reason being that colonialism had exploited them economically, and the colonizers had also left them in a state of illiteracy. He said there existed some corrupt native oligarchies which are also uninterested in the welfare of the people. He added that he would support the aspirations of the natives in Iran even if it appears to be against Western interests. The point for Kennedy was that America should be supporting independence movements as a counter to the appeal of communism. (Click here https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVCny3EE5tI/) Elsewhere, as Moncia Wiesak has noted, Kennedy said we had allied ourselves too closely with the British in the Middle East:
We have appeared too frequently to the Arab world as being too ready to buttress an inequitable status quo, whether it be the imposition of foreign controls, the safety of foreign investment not too equitably made, or a domestic regime heedless of the crying need for reforms. Our intervention in behalf of England’s oil investments in Iran, directed more at the preservation of interests outside Iran than Irans’s own development, our avowed willingness to assume an almost imperial military responsibility for the safety of the Suez, our failure to deal effectively after these years with the terrible human tragedy of the more than 700,000 Arab [Palestinian] refugees, these are things that have failed to sit well with Arab desires and make empty the promises of the Voice of America. (Op. Cit. Wiesak, p. 8, italics added)
What Kennedy is referring to with Iran is, of course, the infamous CIA coup of 1953. This was the overthrow of the republican leader Mohammad Mossadegh, and the return to power of the corrupt monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, otherwise known as the Shah of Iran. Winston Churchill had nothing but scorn for Mossadegh, calling him “Mussy Duck”. He then said he was “an elderly lunatic bent on wrecking his country and handing it over to communism.” (The Untold History of the United States, by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, p. 259)
III
Mossadegh had announced plans to nationalize the British oil holdings in Iran. And for very good reasons. The Anglo-Iranian company kept 84 % of the revenue for itself. It paid taxes in Britain, not Iran. The Iranian workers lived in poverty, earning south of a half dollar per day. With no benefits or vacations. In the face of all this, Mossadegh, a former finance and foreign minister with a doctor of law degree, decided to compensate and then take over Anglo-Iranian. (ibid, p. 258)
The British first went to the Truman administration and Secretary of State Dean Acheson for help in deposing Mossadegh. The Iranian ambassador, Henry Grady, wrote that Acheson and Truman took so long to decide the issue that, even though they ultimately declined, London was encouraged. Since they knew the incoming GOP administration would now accept the proposal. When he published an article on the subject, Grady was then replaced by Loy Henderson, who was much more amenable to an overthrow. (Arash Norouzi, The Mossadegh Project, 7/23/20)
The Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sanctioned an attempt to overthrow Mossadegh, which was successful. It was called Operation Ajax. When presented with the plan by CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Foster Dulles reportedly said, “So this is now we get rid of that madman Mossadegh” (The CIA: A Forgotten History, by William Blum, p. 67). The problem was that Mossadegh was popular and had the support of the people. (ibid, p. 73) When it was over, the Shah said to Roosevelt, “I owe my throne to God, my people, my army—and to you.” (Stone and Kuznick, p. 260)
Did he ever. Palhavi had his security forces trained by the CIA and the Mossad. They were called SAVAK. They did not just operate domestically; they were worldwide. Their torture techniques and rates of execution were reportedly off the charts: “No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran.” (Blum, p. 76) In addition to the torture, there was bribery. Payments to ayatollahs and mullahs began right after the coup. It continued until 1977 when Jimmy Carter ordered it stopped. One report pegged the amount of money in use in the hundreds of millions. (ibid) As we shall see, Carter’s decision might have been pivotal to the Shah’s overthrow.
IV
After the coup against Mossadegh, for the next quarter-century, the Shah was our close friend in the Middle East. He literally placed Iran on bended knee to the American military and the CIA. In 1955, Iran joined up with the Baghdad pact against the USSR.
From President Eisenhower to the fall of the Shah under Jimmy Carter, there was only one exception to our acceptance of Palhavi. And that was President Kennedy. The Kennedys really did not care for the Shah’s autocratic rule. In fact, Attorney General Robert Kennedy truly resented it. In the State Department, there had been a debate over whether or not the USA should continue to support the Shah, or foster a nationalist government. (Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, p. 225)
There was even talk of bringing back Mossadegh. John Bowling, the Iran specialist at State, wrote a detailed paper in which he dissected the opposition to the Shah. In that document, he went about, “…discussing the advantages of a Western policy shift of support for a nationalist, more popularly based, Mossaddiqist coup.” (ibid, p. 224) JFK’s reservations about the Shah were so deep-rooted that he even considered making him resign “…in favor of rule by regency until his young son came of age.” (ibid, p. 225)
But there was a problem with these proposed solutions. There was no wide constituency for a revival of Mossadegh’s party by then. SAVAK had pretty much taken care of that. The only real alternative left at that time was the clergy. And, as he noted in his milestone Algeria speech in 1957, Kennedy did not want any part of Islamic Fundamentalism.
So what the Kennedys settled on was the White Revolution. (ibid) These were attempts at democratization within the system. This included land reform, progress in public health, granting of women’s rights, and profit sharing for workers.
V
When Carter was elected, the Shah was alarmed. Why? He feared another Kennedy in the White House. (Dreyfuss, p. 224) In retrospect, he should not have feared Carter. Because the man who won a power struggle in the White House was National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski did two things which ignited Islamic Fundamentalism throughout the Middle East.
First, he convinced Carter to stand by the Shah, even when his regime was collapsing. Carter was supposed to be strong on advocacy of human rights in foreign policy. He somehow overlooked this in the case of the Shah. On New Year’s Eve 1978, Carter toasted the monarch in Tehran, as protestors demonstrated against him in both nations’ capitols. This outraged much of the populace. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 411)
Second, in a 1998 interview, Brzezinski revealed that Carter had signed a directive to authorize CIA secret aid to the opponents of the Moscow backed regime in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Dreyfuss, p. 264) This included employing Muslim fundamentalists--including Osama Bin Laden-- against the regime. (See the Adam Curtis documentary, The Power of Nightmares, episode 2)
Once the Shah fled, the act that cinched the rise of Sharia Law in Iran was Carter’s succumbing to the designs of former Warren Commissioner John McCloy. As outlined in Kai Bird’s book The Chairman, McCloy was commissioned by David Rockefeller to get Carter to let Pahlavi into the USA for medical treatment. Carter did not want to do it. So McCloy picked off every one of his principal advisors until Carter was alone and cornered. As Bird wrote, before he caved, Carter turned and said words to the effect: Alright, but what are you guys going to advise me to do when they invade our embassy and take our employees hostage? We know what happened as a result. Ruhollah Khomeini took complete power in Tehran. And this hostage situation helped bring us Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. The mullahs have had almost half a century to cement their power.
Would this have happened if Mossadegh had not been overthrown? I doubt it. Would it have happened with Kennedy in the White House? Again, I doubt it. But it shows a lack of judgment for Donald Trump to try to overthrow the religious theocracy in Tehran. Because Ruhollah Khomeini used the pernicious American influence in Iran to rally the populace around him. Unlike what the Pentagon said, the Iranians did not hate America because they envied our freedom. They hated Americans because of what the CIA had done in their country.
To the point that they prepared for thirty years for this war. JFK would never have been such a sucker for someone like Benjamin Netanyahu.
