Covert Action Essay

Furthermore, the Shah purchased billions of dollars worth of weapons of security from the US. In 1979 the realm was overthrown by extreme Islam’s that were followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. The intention of the Iranian students was to display their displeasure against the Shah. Their demand was the return of the Shah for a trial followed by his death. In addition, they asked that the US stay out of their country’s affairs. Carter’s approach required the safeguarding of American hostages but also guaranteed an alliance with Iran. Carter’s tactics on the situation had devastating effects on his run for re-election (Hamilton, 1982).

All the Shah’s Men details the Iranian coup of 1953. The British, as a colonial power, ran the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which provided much of the oil Britain needed during World War II. Not only that, but it provided large amounts of revenue for the nation. Meanwhile, the Iranians were not benefiting from the arrangement, as the British mistreated the Iranian workers and paid only a minute amount of the profits to the Iranian government. A politician, Mossadegh, arose who would work to nationalize Iranian oil production, taking away economic and political power from the British. Obviously, the British were unwilling to accept this, and, incensed at

The 1953 coup in Iran undoubtedly led to a politically destabilized nation and negatively affected the Iranians opinion of a democratic country. From the beginning, the U.S. has always supported democracy, until they sided with Reza Shah. Reza Shah was a tyrant and evidently very fond of using brutality and violence to attempt to make the citizens of Iran fear him to such an extremity that they would not consider

After the successful overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh, the Shah was back in control of Iran and was supported by the United States, even though he was extremely brutal to his citizens. The Shah used United States military trained Iranian police force, called SAVAK, to carry out his orders. This caused a strong dislike for the Shah by the citizens of Iran and a strong Islamic uprising. This uprising ended with the Shah being exiled from his country and the radical Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini gaining power over

He encouraged his supporters to engage in massive but peaceful protests, that spread through the country in 1978. The Shah and his forces responded by attacking the protesters, killing hundreds. This caused the protests to grow until it callumated in Black Friday on September 8th 1978. The Shah declared martial law and his forces killed thousands of protesters. Losing international support from the United States, the Shah fled to Egypt and the Ayatollah returned back to Iran. Protest continued with many blaming the United States for the Shahs actions and taking hostage workers at the US Embassy in Tehran. They would be held as captives until January of

Various factors influenced the 1979 Iranian revolution, but at the core of this significant event was Islamic fundamentalism. The Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, led this movement to end the thirty-seven-year reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, also known as the Shah of Iran (Diller 1991, p.152). The revolution was a combination of mounting social, economic, political and religious strains. The nation of Iran was never colonized, unlike some of its bordering countries, making its people intolerant of external influences. The Shah had gradually westernized and secularized his country, creating a strong American presence that was being felt

To begin, a few key events that caused the Iranian Revolution must be known to understand the politics and major changes that Satrapi grew up with in Tehran. The Iranian Revolution began on February eleventh, 1979 when the Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was succeeded by the Islamic Republic. This took place partly due to an event that occurred about a year earlier; on January ninth, 1978 in the city of Qum,

Conrad applies an apparently crystal clear literary narrative technique in the tradition of conventional realism, a narrative method that appears deceptively simple. The Secret Agent holds great deal of the social concerns. It is considered supreme masterpieces, it is a brilliantly depicting an ironic narrative of London's seedy and dispossessed underworld of revolutionist and anarchists.

The people of Iran became angry that the United States would allow the Shah to seek medical treatment in the US, and overtook the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Many of them feared that the United States planned to return to Iran and reinstate Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as their leader, because of the close diplomatic ties that had been established with him. The United States had helped him to overthrow Iran’s Prime Minister during a power struggle in 1953 and modernize Iran (“The Hostage Crisis in Iran”). The Iranian protesters- many of whom were college students- took hostages, 66 of the hostages holding American citizenship, and refused to release them until the Unites States stopped helping the Shah and turned him over to them. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decided to support the actions of the student protesters, and dissolved treaties that had been made with the Soviet Union and the United States, preventing international intervention towards the violent protests in Iran. Premier Mehdi Bazargan and most of the

On August 19, 1953, the American CIA helped to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister in Iran-Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who was elected in 1950-and restored the Shah to his Monarchical leadership position (“A short account of 1953 Coup”). The Shah was a modernizer for Iran in many respects, promoting the growth of a modern economy and a middle class, and championing women's rights. He outlawed the hijab, which is the full-body veil that women are to wear, according to Islamic law; encouraged education for women up to and including at the university level; and championed employment opportunities outside the home for women. The Shah was restored to his Monarchical leadership position

for cancer treatment. The specific reasons for the Iran Hostage Crisis were the oil conflict, Iranian Revolution, U.S. overthrow of government, and forced modernization. These things created a lot of tension between Iran and the U.S. The oil conflict was the start to creating tension between the United states and Iran. The United States controlled Iran's oil, and Iran's minister wanted to nationalize the oil supply. The US and Britain did not want that to happen so they created a plan to overthrow the prime minister and get someone who would support their interests in oil. Finally, the Shah was their new leader and had close ties with the US. The Shah was replaced by Ayatollah Khomeini and the United States started to get away from Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini formed anti-American groups that held more than sixty people hostage from the American embassy. The people from Iran did not like Americans getting involved with their government. Since the Shah was able to come to the United States and get his treatment, it made the Iranian’s think that the United States was helping him out. That was the final straw to cause the students and militants from Iran to

The Shah arrived in New York City on October 22, 1979, and the response in Iran was nothing out of the ordinary. However on November 4th, 1979, 3,000 Muslim students, some armed, took control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran and took 65 American Diplomates as hostage. The hostage takers that were muslim students urged that America releases Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back to Iran, to which he would have been put on trial and possibly executed. The United States was not going to and did not had over the Shah as he was in America for medical attention. The hostage takers also wanted the U.S to apologize for the interference in Iran's internal affairs. One example of America's interference was it was primarily responsible for the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh; this was not necessary. The last reason for the attack is that Iran wanted their frozen assets in America to be released

Hostility against the U.S. was extremely high when the Shah, who was suffering from cancer, came to America for treatment in October 1979 (Smith). On November 4, 1979, thousands of young Iranians, many of them college students, overran the United States embassy's 27-acre compound in Tehran, seizing the 66 Americans inside. "They seemed to be kids about 20 years old . . . kids from small towns with rather strict upbringings," one hostage, John Limbert, recalled. "Many of them had never seen an American before." The 14-month standoff that followed frustrated and humbled President Carter. During this hostage crisis, President Carter launched, on April 24, 1980, a risky military rescue operation, which

Before the revolution, Shah Reza Pahlavi was the ruler of Iran. Under his leadership power was clustered and concentrated among his close allies and networks of friends and others with whom he had close relations. By 1970s, the gap between the poor and the rich was widening and huge distrust about his economic policies grew. Resentment towards his autocratic leadership grew fuelling people to dissent his regime further. Shah now was considered an authoritarian who took full control of the Iran government preventing the Iranians from expressing their opinion. The government has transformed from the traditional monarchial form of government to authoritarian with absolute authority replacing individual freedom of the Iranians. This transformation to Iranian was unacceptable because they needed to control their own affairs. They wanted self-government where they could take control as opposed to what Shah was doing. Shah was seen as a western puppet for embracing authoritarian form of government (Axworthy, 2016).

However, the ideas had already spread throughout the Iranian people and religious protesting escalated continuously. People’s ideas of recreating a religious based government persisted to an unstoppable level. Khomeini, whom many protesters felt to be a hero, said in a speech in 1979, “Do not try to westernize everything you have! Look at the West, and see who the people are in the West that present themselves as champions of human rights and what their aims are. Is it human rights they really care about, or the rights of the superpowers? What they really want to secure are the rights of the superpowers. Our jurists should not follow or imitate them” (Ayatollah Khomeini: speech on the uprising of Khurdad 15, 2010). Based on this quote, the “voice” of the protesting Iranians was that westernization was not a good thing because the west does not care for human rights and freedoms of the lesser powers in the world and that the way to change for the better is to impose the Islamic values that already existed into society. In January of 1979, the Shah fled the country under the pressure of the people and Khomeini returned to Iran to be greeted as a hero (Bentley & Ziegler, n.d., p. 1117). Fighting erupted between Khomeini’s supporters and remaining military officials and on the eleventh of February the government fell. On the first of April, Khomeini proclaimed the beginning of the new Islamic republic (Islamic