Early Intervention Quotes
The Prime Minister feared an insurrection if his economy collapsed and had shared that fear with the U. S. Ambassador. the informal response was that he should settle his dispute and negotiations with Great Britain over the oil contracts before the U. S. would move. He then sent this letter. Mohammad Mosaddegh had been elected President of Iraq. However, he was left leaning in the midst of the Cold War and some of our policy strategists thought that he could hurt the U. S. interests which were large there. Iran had huge oil reserves and American and British companies were active in operating the oil drilling and export. The Shah, with CIA support, fired Mosaddegh, but that backfired and the Shah had to flee the country. This was when Smith sent this note to the President. We were prepared to try and work with Mosaddegh. However, our chief ally did not agree and wanted to oust Mosaddegh. At the request of the British MI6 intelligence service, the CIA implemented a “spontaneous” coup d’etat to overthrow the popularly elected Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh. This enabled the Shah to return and take over. Ironically, although he was anti-Communist, he threatened the American and British Oil Companies and forced them to “renegotiate” their contracts with Iran and pay the Shah more money. The Shah was very unpopular and over the years the Iranians who opposed the Shah, blamed the United States for the fact that Mosaddegh had been overthrown and the Shah returned to power. See {637008} and {637007}.
Ideally problems of government would be prevented by good planning and anticipation. Once the political problem becomes evident, it is usually too late to resolve it well at reasonable cost. Machiavelli warned against waiting. However, he never imagined that a political problem would become evident, and the government officials or legislators would not deal with it and delay attempted resolution. However “kicking the can down the road” became very common in the latter part of the 20th century. By the beginning of the 21st century, the extreme political polarization of Congress had caused so much gridlock that almost no problem could be legislated upon, even well after it had been recognized.
