Watch this Happy American Film about Iran, Made Around the Time the C.I.A. Staged Its Coup

Long before the href="http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/15/israel-s-leaked-sales-pitch-for-attacking-iran-sounds-like-an-amazing-tom-clancy-movie">current saber-rattling in the Middle East and “credible” talk of Israeli-US href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/wanted_a_truly_credible_military_threat_to_iran">attacks on the country’s enrichment facilities, Encyclopedia Britannica made this film about a happier Iran. Shot in 1953 and aimed at school children, the film begins with a look at Iran’s dire water situation (since then, the population has nearly quadrupled, and water supply per capita has fallen from 7,000 cubic meters to 2,000 cubic meters.) It goes on to explore Iran’s political history, beginning with Reza Shah’s reforms in the 1920s, and it closes with the splendors of the architecture of Shiraz. “Change is coming,” declares the narrator, as he departs into a discussion of Iran’s valuable oil supplies.

Here lies a glaring omission. In 1951, the Majiles elected Mohammed Mosaddegh Prime Minister. At the same time, massive strikes at Iran’s refineries were calling for the nationalization of the oil industry, under which Iran made less than a quarter of profits from sales. Mosaddegh favored nationalization, and he would revoke treaties with Britain granting the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which in 1954 rebranded itself as British Petroleum, the right to extract Iran’s vast petroleum resources. In response, the UK used international influence to isolate Iran and to prevent it from selling its nationalized oil on the world market. In href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19520619&id=6YtaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gE8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2769,1116867">June of 1952, the British Navy went as far as stopping and detaining an Italian oil tanker in the port of Aden, on the grounds that the oil in the ship had been stolen by Iran. This tactic effectively frightened off other would-be buyers of Iranian oil.

A year later, in June of 1953, around the same time this film was made, President Eisenhower authorized a class="caps">CIA-executed coup of Mosaddegh, called href="http://cryptome.org/iran-cia/08.pdf">operation Ajax. Using bribes and convoluted propaganda, the class="caps">CIA managed to destabilize Mosaddegh’s government, return Shah Pahlavi to power and have Mosaddegh exiled to Egypt, thus eroding the democratic, constitutional government of Iran in favor of international treaties that benefitted British oil interests. In href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8-a9Bpq471PDjYA2z6WazPmIZqw">2009, President Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to publicly admit U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup.

The film follows its total omission of Iranian political reality with a rose-colored portrait of cities and culture. Finally, it shows the “new man of Iran,” boldly stepping forward for industry. The vision of happy industrialization is highly inaccurate. The Shah’s government oppressed political dissent, with the help of U.S. arms and expertise, and the Iranian people developed a powerful resentment of the Western influences they perceived to be meddling with their national interests. This resentment fueled the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the rise of Islamic Republic of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. The 1979 Iranian constitution describes the new Islamic Republic as a “devastating protest of Imam Khumayni against the American conspiracy.” Fast forward six decades, and now we’re worried about href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/02/us-iran-nuclear-uranium-idUSBRE8910VJ20121002">another kind of energy being made by the new new men of Iran.

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