Anglo-Persian BP past is present

Re-reporting, excerpting, editing with minor comment by Carolyn Bennett

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Service joined together to protect the interests of the oil company now known as BP, to overthrow the democratic government in Iran, and to cause consequences occurring in Persia over the past half-century [Stephen Kinzer]

Author Stephen Kinzer on today’s Democracy Now program contextualized BP in a bloody British-U.S.-Iranian hegemonic history. This is some of what Kinzer had to say.

BP
The history of the company we now call BP traces, over the last hundred years, “the arc of global transnational capitalism. In the first decade of the twentieth century, this company began as a kind of a wildcatting operation in Iran.”

What is today called BP was then “entrepreneurial and risk-taking,” a company with “a bunch of geologists running around in these very forbidding steppes and deserts.” Then “they struck what was the greatest find up to that time in the history of the oil industry.”

Stole Iran’s oil
“They discovered Iran was sitting on an ocean of oil and they decided they would take it. Under a corrupt deal they struck with a few representatives of the old declining Iranian monarchy, all of whom had been paid off by the company, this concession [later known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company] guaranteed itself or won the right to own all of Iran’s oil [What of U.S. and Iraq oil today?].

Given this deal, nobody in Iran had any right to drill for oil, extract oil, or sell oil.

The British government, soon after the find was made, decided to buy the company ─ [the company now known as BP]. “The British Parliament passed a law and bought 51 percent of that company.”

Stolen oil built British way of life
During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, “the entire standard of living that people in England enjoyed was supported by oil from Iran.

“All the trucks and jeeps in Britain were being run on Iranian oil.
Factories all over Britain were being funded by oil from Iran.
The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, was run 100 percent on oil from Iran.
That became a foundation of British life.

Iran wanted its oil back
“After World War II, when the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism were blowing throughout the developing world, Iranians developed the idea that they had to take back their oil. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the most prominent figure in the democratic period of Iran during the late 1940s and early 1950s, desired to nationalize what was then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; and with Iran’s democratically elected parliament voting unanimously, they nationalized their oil.

British/U.S. retaliated
“The British and their partners in the United States fiercely resisted Iran’s nationalizing of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and when these giants failed to prevent nationalization, they set in force (1953) the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh.

“This overthrow forced the end of the Mosaddegh government and the end of Iran’s democracy. Longer-term consequences of UK and U.S. violent aggression against Iran followed.

“The authoritarian Shah of Persia ruled for twenty-five years with increasing repression. His rule produced the explosion of the late 1970s, which produced the Islamic Republic.

“The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Service [had] joined together to protect the interests of the oil company now known as BP and to overthrow the democratic government in Iran and to produce all the consequences we’ve seen in Iran over the past half-century.”

Sources and notes
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (b. 1919-d.1980 in Egypt) was the Shah of Persia. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and succeeded on the abdication of his father, Reza Shah, in 1941. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reign brought “many years of social reforms” but during the latter 1970s, religious fundamentalists waged rising protests against “western-style ‘decadence’” In the 1979 Revolution, the Shah was forced out of Iran. The United States admitted him for medical treatment, which provoked Iran’s detention of 52 U.S. diplomats.
The Iranian Revolution is cited as “one of the great revolutions of modern history.” Like the French or Russian revolutions, the Iranian Revolution “confronted the West with a disruptive new political order. The consequence of widespread discontent at rapid socio-economic change and the authoritarian rule of the Shah of Persia, the revolution took the exiled religious scholar Ayatollah Khomeini as its figurehead.”
As the Shah bore down, his security forces in Qom killed six theology students (January 1978). Demonstrations ensued and hundreds of protesters were massacred in Tehran’s Juleh Square (September 1978). Unable to stem the protests and regain control, the Shah went into exile (January 1979). On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to lead the revolution and establish the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Stephen Kinzer on the History of BP/British Petroleum and Its Role in the 1953 Iran Coup,” Democracy Now, June 14, 2010, [http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/14/steven_kinzer_on_the_history_of
Stephen Kinzer is author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, looks at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Mosaddeq (b. 1880 - d, March 5, 1967 in Tehrān, Iran)
Mosaddeq [also spelled Masaddiq , or Mossadegh] was an Iranian political leader who nationalized the huge British oil holdings in Iran. As premier in 1951–53, he almost succeeded in deposing the shah. Mohammad Mosaddeq was the son of an Iranian public official who grew up as a member of Iran’s ruling elite. He received a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Reference sources: Cambridge Encyclopedia (third edition); Britannica (Deluxe edition 2008)