[THS] BPs Other Gifts to America—and to the World

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25793.htm



BP’s Other Gifts to America—and to the World

By Lawrence S. Wittner

June 22, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The offshore oil drilling catastrophe in
the Gulf of Mexico brought to us by BP has overshadowed its central role over the
past century in fostering some other disastrous events.

BP originated in 1908 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company—a British corporation whose
name was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company two decades later. With
exclusive rights to extract, refine, export, and sell Iran’s rich oil resources, the
company reaped enormous profits. Meanwhile, it shared only a tiny fraction of the
proceeds with the Iranian government. Similarly, although the company’s British
personnel lived in great luxury, its Iranian laborers endured lives of squalor and
privation.

In 1947, as Iranian resentment grew at the giant oil company’s practices, the Iranian
parliament called upon the Shah, Iran’s feudal potentate, to renegotiate the
agreement with Anglo-Iranian. Four years later, Mohammed Mossadeq, riding a tide
of nationalism, became the nation’s prime minister. As an enthusiastic advocate of
taking control of Iran’s oil resources and using the profits from them to develop his
deeply impoverished nation, Mossadeq signed legislation, passed unanimously by the
country’s parliament, to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

The British government was horrified. Eager to assist the embattled corporation, it
imposed an economic embargo on Iran and required its technicians to leave the
country, thus effectively blocking the Iranian government from exporting its oil. When
this failed to bring the Iranians to heel, the British government sought to arrange for
the overthrow of Mossadeq—first through its own efforts and, later (when Britain’s
diplomatic mission was expelled from Iran for its subversive activities), through the
efforts of the U.S. government. But President Truman refused to commit the CIA to
this venture.

To the delight of Anglo-Iranian, it received a much friendlier reception from the new
Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had worked much
of his life as a lawyer for multinational corporations, and viewed the Iranian challenge
to corporate holdings as a very dangerous example to the world. Consequently, the
CIA was placed in charge of an operation, including fomenting riots and other
destabilizing activities, to overthrow Mossadeq and advance oil company interests in
Iran.

Organized by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt in the summer of 1953, the coup was
quite successful. Mossadeq was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, the
power of the pro-Western shah was dramatically enhanced, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company was once again granted access to Iran’s vast oil resources. To be sure,
thanks to the key role played in the coup by the U.S. government, the British oil
company—renamed British Petroleum—henceforth had to share the lucrative oil
extraction business in Iran with U.S. corporations. Even so, in the following decades,
with the Iranian public kept in line by the Shah’s dictatorship and by his dreaded
secret police, the SAVAK, it was a very profitable arrangement—although not for most
Iranians.

But, of course, actions can have unforeseen consequences. In Iran, public anger
grew at the Shah’s increasingly autocratic rule, culminating in the 1979 revolution
and the establishment of a regime led by Islamic fanatics. Not surprisingly, the new
rulers—and much of the population—blamed the United States for the coup against
Mossadeq and its coziness with the Shah. This, in turn, led to the ensuing hostage
crisis and to the onset of a very hostile relationship between the Iranian and U.S.
governments.

And there was worse to come. Terrified by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism on
their southern border, Soviet leaders became obsessed with fundamentalist revolt in
Afghanistan and began pouring troops into that strife-torn land. This was the signal
for the U.S. government to back an anti-Soviet, fundamentalist jihad in Afghanistan,
thus facilitating the growth of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who eventually turned their
weapons on the United States.

Furthermore, as part of its anti-Iran strategy, the U.S. government grew increasingly
chummy with Iran’s arch foe, Iraq. As Saddam Hussein seemed a particularly useful
ally, Washington provided him with military intelligence and the helicopters that he
used to spray poison gas on Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq War. Might not such
a friendship, cemented with a handshake by Donald Rumsfeld, have emboldened
Saddam Hussein to act more freely in the region in subsequent years? It certainly
didn’t improve U.S. relations with Iran, which today is headed by a deplorable
government that—consumed by fear and loathing of the United States—might be
developing nuclear weapons.

At this point, we might well wonder if it was such a good idea to overthrow a
democratic, secular nationalist like Mossadeq to preserve the profits of the Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company (now renamed BP). Indeed, given the sordid record of BP and
other giant oil companies, we might wonder why we tolerate them at all.

Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His
latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear
Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press)

First posted at www.PeaceVoice.info