Understanding America's Problem with Iran

          It has always been difficult for any citizen of earth to know for sure what the underlying truth is behind any geopolitical event that involves the country they live in. Such is side effect of "government", almost like an automated mechanism of government, whether dictatorship or elected; the only thing one can rely on is that the official story they hear regarding just about anything of significance from their government is usually fraught with deception and misdirection. Anyone over the age of 12 recognizes this sad fact of life on earth at this time in our specie's short history. Nine times out of ten there is always a far more sinister reason or cause behind almost everything that transpires around us; if it involves our government that is. Iraq and those mysteriously vanishing WMDs is just one of the many great examples of this. So too is the current situation with Iran and their alleged "evil plot to overthrow the world with their nuclear weapons". 
          The United States citizenry for whatever reason has a reputation around the world for being the most out of touch with reality and ignorant world affairs or even of what's "really" happening in their own country. Maybe it's the people. Maybe it's just that the government of the U.S. is the best at manipulating facts, distorting the truth and blackmailing the mainstream media. Who knows really? But regardless of how many times the American people have been flat out lied to by their government -- think the assassination of JFK, MLK and RFK or the Gulf of Tonkin story -- most American people still take their government's word for it anyway and then go about their business. Sometimes one conjectures this might be more due to an underlying feeling of helplessness, rather than sheer ignorance. A fear that there is nothing they can do to changes things even though they know "the truth", and worse, a fear that if they did attempt to do something that they could endanger their life or the lives of their loved ones. After all, the United States government has never been shy about using brute force, fabricated criminal charges, economic terrorism or any other means necessary to shut up dissenters, no matter how upstanding a citizen that person might be. So rather than admitting that there just might be more to what really happened on 9/11 for example, it is easier for average Joe to play dumb, keep quiet and go about with his day to day life. THIS was the inspiration for the theme of the song "Blind Eye" from the Transcendence album All Your Heroes Become Villains.
          On the other hand, with the advent of independent media, one could also assert that more and more
people in today's rough and tumble, highly propagandized horror film called "life on planet earth" are recognizing that their respective governments have no intention of telling them the truth regarding anything that is happening of significance. Turn to mainstream media and it is no different of course. Once able bodied journalists hungry for truth and integrity behind all the fiction ran most media outlets. Now mainstream media is little more than a slightly more colorful and vocal mouthpiece for the governments and corporations that they serve, repeating whatever they are told to regardless of it's veracity. Many are "unplugging from the Matrix" -- a term that refers to disconnecting entirely from the lies and fictions perpetrated by national governments and mainstream media, and doing so at an exciting and alarming rate. 
          But I would personally venture to respond to that option with that infamous Godfather quote: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer." In other words, no, one should not have any expectations that anything they read or hear in the mainstream press has an ounce of truth to it. But at the same time, it is important to know just what the "official stories" are that are being told to the masses. You don't want to be so disconnected from collective society that you cannot relate to your fellow man on the issues of the day. And besides, how else can you help those around you understand what is really happening if you are not at least aware of the bull they are being fed?
          Understanding America's current "problem" with Iran is one of the most glaring examples of the above ideas. The United States publicly claims that "the world will be a far more dangerous place if Iran were to get it's hands on a nuclear weapon." (Forget the fact that they themselves have made the world more dangerous than any nation on earth since Hitler's Germany fell in '45.) Just as they demonized Iraq as a member of an imaginary "axis of evil" in order to drum up support to invade that country, they have been on fire to do the same to Iran over the last few years. And for good reason. The United States has had hundreds of thousands of military troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan for almost ten years now, destroying their cities with weapons of mass destruction only to rebuild them for huge profits to the highest bidding American companies (coincidentally always the same "bidders"... Halliburton (a company Dick Cheney ran before becoming Vice President, just a coincidence), Bechtel and The Carlysle Group (a company the Bush family owned shares in for eons). But more important than the billions made from the destruction and rebuilding of these nations' towns and cities is the fact that the primary focus of the United States military forces in both of these countries is the construction of giant military bases and oil wells. 
          If one looks at a map, they will notice that the country of Iran sits smack dab in the middle of these two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States, having lost nearly all the oil in Africa to the Chinese, is frantically running pipelines from the Caspian Sea down to the Persian Gulf, but they are having to go hundreds of miles out of their way in order to go around the country of Iran. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why the United States might have a stake in making the Iranian people seem somehow "evil" or a threat. It would be a hell of a lot easier if the Iranian government would play ball as they used to -- and as the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan currently are -- and just let the Americans come on in and grab all that oil as in times past.
        Which leads to the real problem the United States government has with Iran. Everything to do with oil and very little to do with nuclear energy. The United States, as one will see by the examples listed below, does not like when other countries don't do what they want them to. But they don't sit on the sidelines and cry about it. They take action. Such was the case with Iran since the moment the United States won World War II. 
          After the war, Great Britain still "owned" Iran, as it had for decades. But in 1951 Iran's first democratically elected president, Mossadegh, decided that British and American oil companies should start paying "fair market price" for Iran's oil. So the CIA went into Iran and created a fake coup, kicked their president out and reinstalled the Shah (which simply means king in Farsi). They cut a deal with the ousted Shah that if they "reinstalled him" that he would in turn give Britain and the US as much Iranian oil as they wanted for pennies on the dollar. The deal would be a crushing blow to the Iranian economy and set the country back decades in the progress they had made as a new democratic republic. But Great Britain and the United States don't like democracies. They like monarchies and dictatorships that they can easily bribe, swindle and manipulate. Never mind how it affects the people of any given country. As long is serves their interests. This is why the United States has been so busy "nation building" all over planet earth over the last sixty years. The only problem is that it is under the guise of "building democracies", when in fact it is almost always the exact opposite. Destroying democracies and reinstalling dictatorships.
          With this new found nearly free and stolen oil the US and Great Britain started a new company to begin processing, refining, shipping and selling their oil. They called that company British Petroleum, or BP for short. It took the Iranian people 26 years to free themselves from this US/British tyranny -- in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Not happy with Iran's new freedom, the Unites States then hired and militarily supplied CIA bank-rolled dictator Saddam Hussein of Iraq to invade Iran in 1981, in an effort to regain control over Iran and their oil once more. They killed over 200,000 Iranians in the process. After Iraq proved unable to win the war, the Reagan White House became impatient and then decided to start funding both Iran AND Iraq with money and weapons so both countries would obliterate themselves and their oil could easily be taken over; hence Reagan's infamous Iran Contra Affair.
          But this didn't work either. Iran is a country of very strong, proud, perseverant and resilient people. They did whatever it took to defend their country from powers much greater than themselves. The war ended and the two countries decided to make nice and become allies. Ever since Iran is still trying to defend themselves against the America's tyrannical lust to get their hands on their oil supply. This time it's the threat of Iran's nuclear energy program that the US is using as its newest excuse. God help these strong lovely poetic people.                      Of course Iran unfortunately wasn't the first nor the last country to be treated this way by the United States government. They just happen to be the only one who has been able to hold out and defend themselves against U.S. tyranny and terrorism for this long. There was the CIA coup of Guatemala in 1954 (over fruit), the invasion of Vietnam killing 3 million of them (over their natural resources), the 1981 CIA assassination of Ecuador's president (over oil), the 1981 CIA assassination of Panama's president (over the Panama Canal), the US led coup toppling Nicaragua's democratically elected Sandanista government, the 2002 CIA coup in Venezuela (over oil), Grenada, Cuba, Bolivia, and most recently Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan.
          The list goes on and on. If the United States didn't have such a tainted and blood stained history in toppling foreign nations one might be able to believe their assertions that "Iran poses a threat with their nuclear program". The problem is that we've heard that story one too many times from this country's government in the past when in the end it always turns out to be a lie for ulterior motives. All one need do is repeat these three words -- "W M D" -- and any potential case against Iran is quickly closed. What the American people DO about this dire situation for the Iranian people is another story. The United States has already nearly bankrupted the country over the last few years with their economic sanctions, creating such high inflation -- some estimate it to be over 1000% -- that the average Iranian needs to carry around 500,000 Tumans to buy an airline ticket. As compared to the average American who would only need spend 500 dollars. This is not just "a natural thing" and has nothing to do with Iran's normally robust economy, but instead a direct effect of UN Security Council sanctions against the Iranian people based on the very convincing demands of the United States.
          The term for this tactic is called "economic terrorism." As bad as that is, and it is bad -- (the United States did the same thing to Iraq throughout the 1990s and was responsible for the deaths of over one-million people, more than half of them children), the most frightening aspect of the whole charade is that the United States has a very clear and historically proven pattern that they follow when a country does not follow their orders. If bribery doesn't work, they start economic terrorism. If that doesn't work then they send in what they call "the Jackals", hit men and assassins, as they did in the countries listed above. If the Jackals don't work, then they send in the military, as they did in Iraq in "The Gulf War". This is what the world is witnessing at this moment in time. Nothing has worked so far to veer the country of Iran off their path of sovereignty, so the United States is gearing up for yet another military invasion. They will need an excuse as always. It is obvious to everyone what that excuse will be.
          The question one need ask, more than any other in this moment, is this: are the American people and the citizens of earth from all the other countries that populate it going to once again sit on the sidelines and watch the United States invade yet another country? Or are they going to finally stand up and do something to prevent it? THAT is the million dollar question. It is up to each and every one of us to answer this question on our own, and THEN come together to create a globally collective strategy to move forward. One hopes we choose to do the right thing, rather than the most comfortable.