A few hours before Iran hit the American military base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation for bombing three nuclear objects, US President Donald Trump said that some experts can lead to a repeat of history.
In a post on his social platform, Truth Social, on Sunday afternoon, Trump wrote: “Why would he not change the regime ???”
For Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, a professor of a close and Middle East civilization at the University of Toronto, the answer is existential.
If the United States overthrew the Iran-Revakoli-Targhi government, “it would be a greater chaos in the Middle East than you could imagine.”
This scenario is now less likely after Trump's claim in the post on Monday evening that Iran and Israel – which began to bombard the nuclear and military places of Iran on June 13 – have reached a weapon suspension agreement. But it would not be the first time the US got involved in the conflict in Iran.
Richard Haas, a former official of the United States Department, says that President Donald Trump did not make the US, thinking about changing the regime in Iran. Haas claims that this is not a real strategy and can invite more retaliation from the nation to the east.
What happened in 1953?
In 1953 CIA coup He forced the first democratically chosen Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh to spend the rest of his life in the arrest of the house. According to experts who talked to CBC News, with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the repressive government that runs the country today.
However, they say that the replacement of this government by external forces would plunge the region more confusion.
“I just don't understand the game plan,” said Lucan Way, a professor of democracy at the University of Toronto. “My intestine is that it would make a regime that is more unpopular.”
Documents declassified by the CIA in 2013 It was revealed that the American intelligence organization overthrew Mosaddegh, Prime Minister Iran, in August 1953 by staging the riots that were nice for Mohammad Rez Pahlavi, Shah Iran.
Mosaddegh was arrested, then judged and convicted of treason in the Shah military court. Pahlavi restored power to his monarchy, which was nice to Western interests, namely British control over oil reserves.
Mosaddegh was chosen to promise the nationalization of Iranian oil. At that time, the British English oil company (currently known as BP) shared only a small amount of profits with the country, growing dissatisfaction.
From the 1950s Red Stars
While the US initially supported Mosaddegh's aspirations and his liberal government, it began to fear that he could be forced to communism by the Soviet Union, with which he competed for power in the global world order.
Initiatives, whose goal was to give people, especially in previously colonized states, were easily perceived by Western countries as steps towards communism, and therefore a threat to their interests, said Wilson Chacka Jacob, a professor of history at the Concordia University in Montreal.
“The United States sees its efforts after World War II, that in a sense, allies in defense of what they would call” freedom “, the freedom of capital to move around the world,” he said. “And of course most of this capital rested in the United States at the end of World War II.”
The 1950s were also sometimes when the decolonization “is not complete,” said Jacob. Old colonial powers, like Great Britain, tried to maintain power over foreign countries. “It (was) mainly defense of global capitalism.”
Today, Israel is perceived by many as maintaining US interests in the region. Others, however, see President Benjamin Netanyahu as causing more confusion because of his own expansion actions, such as enabling the development of settlements on the west bank of Israel, and now he is trying to take control of gauze.
“The heart of the conflict (between Israel and Iran) is the ideological and political involvement of the Iranian states in the creation of the Palestinian state. Otherwise Iran is far from Israel (I) there is no reason to worry about Israel,” Tavakoli-Targhi said.
Fears of nuclear development
While the threat from the 1950s, in the eyes of the USA and Great Britain, could be communism and the Soviet Union, Tavacoli-Targhi said that the perceived threat evolved into “Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and nuclear weapons.”
Israel perceives the Iran nuclear program as an existential threat, but both he and the University of Toronto method notice that Israel has not signed a treaty on the lack of nuclear weapons, which entered into force in 1970, but Iran.
Although “it makes sense” that Israel would like to go through Iranian nuclear abilities, Way said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a growing sympathy for countries that do not have nuclear weapons.
“Unless you are a large country with a large army that can defend the border, nuclear are a much cheaper option as a kind of insurance policy against foreign invasion,” he said.
After Pahlavi, Shah Iran, regained control of Iran's parliament in 1953, he fought for an ID card within his borders, and the religious movement supported by Rhoollah Khomeini began to gain acceptance – which eventually led to the Islamic revolution in 1979.
“Part of what led the current regime to power was this kind of anti-Americanism, which was very well established in 1953,” Way said.
Hamed Esmaeilion, former president of the Flight PS752 Film Association and the Canadian Iranian human rights activist, shares his thoughts on the escalation of the conflict of Israel-Iran. Esmaeilion lost his wife and daughter when the Islamic Corps of the Revolutionary Guard shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 with two surface-air shells, killing all 176 passengers in 2020.