Why do they hate us?

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, it became commonplace to hear the question: "Why do they hate us?" Even though the "they" and "us" were never really defined, the Bush administration put forth the brilliant theory that they hate our "freedom". This seemed to strike a chord with the American people: a concise, almost unchallengeable explanation; end of discussion, that's the answer. If someone wanted a somewhat a slightly broader explanation, there was always the nearly as cryptic answer that they "hate our way of life".

It seemed implicit in this question and answer that there must be some mystery as to why "they" hate "us". I have even explicitly heard some people say that there's no substantive political reason for the hatred, because we "never did anything to them". To people who say that, I would suggest that perhaps they should find and read a good, unbiased (and recent) history book.

In November 1979, Iranian student militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, and took 53 Americans hostage. I, like many Americans, was shocked and dismayed that Ayatollah Khomeini's new government didn't intervene in this blatant kidnapping of innocent Americans. In December of that same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. That winter/spring, I observed some Iranian students in the lobby of Kern Building on the PSU campus, both defending Khomeini's government as well as decrying US policy in the region.

I stopped to talk with them, and expressed my concern about the actions of their government. I believed then, and believe now, that Iran's action wasn't in their best interest: It led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with Iran as their ultimate prize, because the Soviets ultimately wanted a port on the Mediterranean. I believe the Soviets decided, in part, to invade because the US and Iran were preoccupied with the hostage crisis, and maybe wouldn't react. (Ultimately, I believe that the Soviets' actions in Afghanistan had far more to do with the eventual fall of the Soviet Union than anything Ronald Reagan ever did, but that's a topic for a future blog.) I further think that the hostage crisis isolated Iran in a way that is still causing them internal political problems and unrest.

The Iranian student I talked to in Kern Building didn't accept or seem to understand my Afghanistan theory. But he did do something that ultimately made me see the excesses of American Mid-East policy: He handed me a few typed, stapled sheets of paper. He said it showed the reason why so many Iranians disliked the American government. I read with interest, but also with skepticism, about the CIA participating a coup in Iran in 1953 in conjunction with the British government. I no longer have the literature the student gave me, but I believe it stated something about the CIA harassing or trying to remove Shiite mullahs. That part may or may not be totally accurate, although perhaps US animosity toward the mullahs was. But the essential tenet of the students' literature was: That the US and British led a coup in Iran in 1953 with the intent of installing pro-Western Mohammad Rezi Pahlavi as the absolute leader (the "Shah").

The Shah's 26 year reign of terror in Iran, carried out by his secret police (SAVAK), is well documented.

The main reason for initiating the coup was maintaining US and British control of Iran's oil. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh led a successful movement by the Iranian Parliament to nationalize the oil industry, effectively removing US and British royalties. It took the US a couple years to get on board with the British desire for a coup, but, as in many things Middle-Eastern, oil interests were all-powerful. Within the Eisenhower administration, the coup was further justified by implicating Mosaddegh as a Communist sympathiser.

This literature was a revelation to me. Although I didn't know for sure it was true, it did have that ring. This was something I had never heard in any history course. But, for then, I just tucked away these conjectures in my mind.

Fast forward a decade or more -- It was becoming apparent from international and Middle East scholarly journals that the Iranian students' claims were essentially true. Then, in the 90s, three different CIA directors agreed to release hundreds of pages of documents related to Project Ajax (the CIA's code name for the Iran coup). At present, only one sentence has been released. Fortunately for the truth, the NY Times leaked many of these documents in 2000:

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

The documents pretty much corroborated what the Iranian students had told me in 1979-80.

There have been other incidences of the US breaking promises with the Iranian government: According to a PBS documentary, George H. W. Bush promised, after some concessions were made to the US by the Iranian government, that he would release during his presidency assets frozen during the hostage crisis. When the political winds changed later in his presidency, the first Bush Administration reneged on those promises. Why would Iran trust the US now?

In these cases, the "they" (the "haters") are the Shiite Muslims in Iran, and the object of their hatred (the "us") is mostly the US government. I have read that Iranians don't generally dislike the American people, and are fair enough to realize that we don't always know or completely understand what our government is doing (which I'm sure is also true in Iran).

I hope to cover the perceived grievances of Sunni Muslims in a future blog post.

I am thankful that we live in a country that would allow Iranian students to protest their grievances against us, fostering the enlightenment of at least one US citizen. As we saw on news reports last year from Iran, that is not a right widely shared in Iran. Although we are far from perfect, we do live in a great country with a multitude of rights, privileges, and freedoms, and we should always cherish that.