From Oakland to Tehran Part 1 – The History of Iranian/American Emnity

From Oakland to Iran – Part 1

Press TV (2024)

Film Review

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2025/02/15/742838/Imam-Khomeini-Iran-colonialism-US-Abbas-Muntaqim-Revolution-1979-Documentary-PressTV

Abbas Muntaqim, an African American instructor at Berkeley, became curious about the 1979 Iranian Revolution after converting to Islam. It intrigued him that the Iranian students released all women and African Americans after taking over the US embassy on November 4, 1979.

In Part 1, Muntagim visits with Iranian historian Khoshrow Motazed to better understand the origin of Iran’s hostile relationship with the US. According to Motazed, Iranians greatly admired Americans in the 19th century for freeing themselves from British colonialism. In 1835, their country admitted the first American missionaries to start a hospital to treat plague, typhoid and malnutrition. One of them, Dr Howard Baskerville, was killed during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), fighting alongside Sattar Khan, Iran’s national hero.

As late as 1909, only the country’s central region enjoyed any autonomy, as the Russians controlled northern Iran and the British the south. Seeking to free themselves from foreign occupation, Iran’s parliament asked the US to send an economic advisor, William Morgan Shuster, who the parliament appointed as Treasurer-General in 1911. When both Russia and Britain threatened to occupy the entire country, they were forced to expel him. Britain acquired their first Iranian oil concession in 1901 and began exporting oil in 1912.

Following the onset of World War I, the entire country came under joint British and Russian occupation. British confiscation of Iranian foodstuffs for their troops resulted in death by starvation roughly half the population (8 to 10 million people). With Russian troops withdrawing following the1917 Bolshevik revolution, Iran became a full fledged British colony in 1921. In 1925, the UK instigated a coup to install a new king, Reza Khan, despite Iran’s 20-year status as a constitutional republic.

During World War II, Russia invaded Iran from the Northeast and Britain from the the Southwest. Reza Shah was deposed and his son Mohammed Reza became king. At British invitation, the US assisted in occupying Iran with 30,000 troops. According to Motazed, they created a little Detroit, took over the Iranian railroad (which they virtually destroyed with their heavy movement of troops and equipment), drank and fought a lot and molested Iranian women.

Based on America’s anti-colonial history, Iran expected the US to support the strong grassroots movement that forced the British to leave Iran and led to the election of Mohammad Mosadegh (who favored nationalizing Iran’s oil) as Iranian prime minister. Although Truman supported Mossaddegh, following Eisenhower’s 1952 election, the US (via the CIA) opted to support Britain’s Operation Ajax. The latter incited Iraq to invade Iran, kidnap Iran’s police chief and their highest ranking military officer and kill them.

Afraid of being deposed like his father, Mohammed Reza dismissed Mossadegh on August 19, 1953 and on October 21, 1954 signed new contracts granting the five American oil companies a 40% share (divided equally among the five of them) of Iran’s oil revenues. British Petroleum, in turn, granted a 40% share and Royal Dutch a 14% share. This arrangement continued until the 1979 revolution.

On December 7, 1953, during a student protest against vice-president Nixon’s visit to Tehran, the Iranian military stormed the University of Tehran attacking and killing three students. With the assistance of the US and Israel, Shah Reza formed the Savak, a secret police that kept order by brutally repressing Iranian civilians. All Savak operatives were sent to Israel for training in torture techniques.