A lession from history (that repeats itself…)

The 20th January is an very important date for all of America. It’s the inauguration date of the new president, of course! But today’s day, exactly 36 years ago, there happened something else, and these events are very much connected as well. On this day, the so-called »Iranian hostage crisis« ended, where the Iranian government, after 1 year, 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days, released 66 American embassy hostages. Convinced numerologist would find a good symbolic meaning in those numbers, a conspiracy theory of some sort or supernatural forces at work, but one has to keep in mind that such a crisis always happens much earlier before it escalates. Like my midlife crisis, for example, that started right after I graduated secondary school, but after I hear words of my close friends all the time, it still holds on. But let’s go back to Iran and let us look at what the conditions even were to start this hostage crisis… The Iran politician Mohamed Mosadek was a democratically elected president of the Iranian government, who ruled in the years 1951-1953. His reign fastened a number of political reforms on social security, ownership of land, but he also nationalized his country’s oil industry. Oh, how strangeJ, that oil represented the base of economic interests and the Western political influence in the country. Of course, Mosadekova democracy was not such a democracy that the Westerns liked it, that’s why they removed him with the help of the leading American CIA and the British MI6 coup d’état in 1953. In the name of democracy, of course… Mosadek was imprisoned in solitary confinement for 3 years and then imprisoned at his home till his death. That was the import of a good dose of Western (and only democratic) democracy! With the help of America, Reza Pahlavi soon came to power and pronounced (very democratically) himself as the absolute leader of Iran. And surely everybody followed his words diligently, as the Western democrats told him to. Especially dictating about the vast, endlessly seeming oil supplies Iran had… Very fast he became a cult personality and methodically started to oppress the political opposition, his governance soon started to suffer because of growingly louder accusations of corruption and boundless excesses. At the very front of this revolt came Ayatollah Khomeini, but although the government violently oppressed these kind of acts of rebellion towards the state, the revolt did not subside. January 1979 Shah Pahlav, through the advice of his colleagues, left the country with his family, so the situation would calm down. A temporary government took over, which allowed the exiled Homeini to come back, but also started to release political imprisoned oppositionist. Shah never returned again and Homeini started to take over authority with the help of the people. Iran became an Islamic republic. Soon after, 4th November 1979, a group of protesters, mostly students, barged into the American embassy and took 66 employees hostage. The marines, who were guarding the embassy, could not hold back the sheer mass of the demonstrators and the residing workers had only time to destroy important documents (probably very incriminating documents?) and electronic spy equipment. By the way, amongst the protesting riot was also the now more known Ahmadinejad , who gathered his first government-leading experiences from there. The Iran people demanded Shah to be handed to them and for USA to stop interfering with the Iranian politics. As expected, the then current American president, Jimmy Carter, declined these demands. And when the American administration found out that the hostage situation would not solve itself in a democratic way, they prepared a military rescue attempt. The “Operation Eagle Claws” began 24th April 1980, but because of a series of military errors and bad weather situations, it failed. In the claws (not the eagle claws) of the Iranian terrorist 8 American specialists and one Iranian civilian were lost forever. And how did the hostage situation end? On the 20th January 1981 the hostages were released, and it was no coincidence that this happened a few minutes after a new American president took over the White House, Ronald Reagan. Of course, Raegan shoved the success for this event to his movie-like, cowboy-hardline administration, who, allegedly, with their reputation alone put fear into every Iranian citizen and their leaders alike, thus ending the 1-year long crisis. But the truth, of course, lies somewhere else. Raegan started to negotiate with the Iranians even before his election and promised them (and also delivered) large quantities of modern weapons, which came just right to the Iranians, because about a half year later there started a bloody, 8-year long war between Iran and Iraq. The war claimed over one million victims on the Iranian-side and half a million on the Iraqi-side… But because the defense of democracy is still a holy duty to uphold for every Western citizen, America quickly aided to help Sadam Hussein in Iraq, who, very democratically, attacked Iran without any warning. They helped him with weapons as with detailed spy information’s about the Iranian armament. But probably it wasn’t even that hard to do, since they only had to look into their documents, which were supplied from them to Iran 1 year before that. The price of the military aid Iran, naturally, paid with oil… The winners of this war were none (except the veeeeeery richer western oil companies!) and everything still circles on and on, on a very same basis as it did years ago. What deals they are making today, with the business-obsessed Donald Dump (no, I didn’t spell it wrong), I don’t even want to know, because I would get too scared. And you should be too…   After all the decades that passed after the fought-out Iran-Iraq war, I still felt it very present when I visited Iran myself. Maybe just conscious, but if that shows on my photographs, you decide for yourself…