28 September 2010
By Kourosh Ziabari
Almost 20 years have passed since the
conclusion of 20th century's longest, most
erosive war which was brutally imposed on the
defenseless people of Iran by a belligerent and
aggressive dictator who was finally pushed to death by
the same people who had once persuaded, funded, aided
and supported him in attacking and invading the
new-born Iran of post-revolution days.
The expansionistic ambitions of the
beloved puppet of the White House who was granted the
honorary citizenship of Detroit as a reward for his
unconditional subservience to the United States,
transpired to be a deadly pandemic which claimed the
lives of more than 400,000 innocent Iranians who
witnessed the most breathtaking years the country had
experienced contemporarily.
With the intention of revitalizing the
forgotten pan-Arabist sentiments of the 1950s,
confronting an emerging Shiite power in the Persian
Gulf region and taking over some of the strategic
parts of Iran including the Arab-speaking province of
Khuzestan and the triple islands of Abu Musa, Lesser
Tunb and Greater Tunb which were handed over to Iran 9
years earlier in a trilateral agreement between Iran,
the protectorate of Ras Al-Khaimah and the
representatives of British forces in the Persian Gulf,
Saddam Hussein unilaterally nullified the 1975 Algiers
Agreement in 1980 and attacked Iran.
At that time, he was enormously
supported by the United States and its European allies
who had seen the post-revolutionary Iran an
ideological threat to their liberal democratic values
and feared of the growing embrace of Islam by the
international community that was inspired and
attracted by the charisma of Iran's revolutionary
leader, Imam Khomeini.
Following the victory of 1979 Islamic
Revolution which put an end to the era of U.S.-backed
monarchy in Iran, White House frantically realized
that it had lost its stooge in the Middle East, so it
should have replaced Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with
an ambitious leader whose greed for power could serve
the interests of Washington in the region.
Consequently, the United States backed Saddam Hussein
in bringing down President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, as it
had done the same in coup against
Abd al-Karim Qasim by
entrusting Hussein the mission to assassinate the
Iraqi Prime Minister. The assassination plan was
designed with the cooperation of the CIA and Egyptian
intelligence. Although the 22-year-old Saddam failed
to kill the Prime Minister on October 7, 1959, he was
killed in a February 1963 Baath Party coup.
In the case of
confrontation with Iran, Washington did not spare any
effort to support the Iraqi dictator who was armed by
the United States to the teeth. In order to strengthen
Saddam Hussein in war with Iran which started in 1980,
the U.S. State Department first removed the name of
Iraq from its list of state sponsors of international
terrorism in February 1982.
From this point onward,
United States took several steps to normalize its
already strained relations with Iraq. One of these
steps was pressuring the Export-Import Bank of the
United States to provide Iraq with financing,
enhancing its credit standing and enabling Baqdad to
obtain loans from other international financial
institutions.
Although the United
States had publicly promulgated that it would take
neither sides in the Iran – Iraq war, it was revealed
later that Saddam Hussein pulled the first trigger
with the direct support and encouragement of the
United States. United States officially announced the
normalization of its ties with Iraq in November 1984,
the fourth year of Iran – Iraq war, while the U.S. had
previously begun providing Iraq with military support
and intelligence training in accordance with the
directives personally issued by President Ronald
Reagan, pursuant to his March 1982 National Security
Study Memorandum in which a revision of U.S. Middle
East policies was sought.
In the summer of 1983,
Iran lodged a set of complaints against Iraq to the
United Nations, informing the international body of
Iraq's employment of chemical weapons against the
Iranian civilians in violation of Geneva Convention.
Influenced by the United States and its European
allies, the United Nations did not heed the calls, but
the secret documents of the U.S. Department of State
confirmed Iran's allegations against Iraq.
Intelligence documents revealed that Iraq had used
chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish
insurgents as well.
In a U.S. Department of
State Information Memorandum dated November 1, 1983
signed by the United States Navy Admiral addressed to
the Secretary of State, it was clearly stated that
Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranians: "we also
know that Iraq has acquired a Chemical Weapon
production capability, primarily from Western firms,
including possibly a U.S. foreign subsidiary."
Another U.S. Department
of State unclassified document, an Action Memorandum
signed by Jonathan T. Howe and Richard W. Murphy, the
United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near
Eastern and South Asian Affairs, addressed to the
Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, shows that
the two high-ranking U.S. officials demand a serious
and immediate action on the side of State Department
with regards to the possibility of Iran's complaint
being raised in the United Nations and the Security
Council. They confirm that some of the European firms
are selling Chemical Weapons to Iraq and this issue
should be discussed with the European governments: "In
October (1983) Iran accused Iraq of using CW and on
November 8, it required the UNSYG to investigate. Iran
also stated it would soon submit a report providing
information and evidence on Iraqi CW use, but has not
yet done so. We do not know whether or when this issue
will develop further at the UN. It is important to
make our approach to the Iraqis on this issue as early
as possible, in order to deter further Iraqi use of CW,
as well as to avoid unpleasantly surprising Iraq
through public positions we may have to take on this
issue."
The extent of U.S.
support for Iraq during the war was so broad that
needs an all-encompassing investigative research to be
explained. On May 25, 1994, the U.S. Senate Banking
Committee published a report in which it was stated
that "pathogenic (disease producing), toxigenic
(poisonous), and other biological research materials
were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and
licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce."
The Iraqgate scandal
revealed that an Atlanta-based branch of Italy's
largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro,
which was predominantly reliant on the United States
for its funding and budget, transferred over US$ 5
billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989.
As said by the German newspaper "Die
Tageszeitung", more than 150 foreign companies,
including American firms, supported Saddam's Weapons
of Mass Destruction program during the 8-year war with
Iran. Saudi Arabia dispatched hundreds of
U.S.-manufactured Mark 84 general purpose bombs which
entered the global service since Vietnam War.
President Reagan assigned Donald
Rumsfeld as his special emissary to Saddam and
conveyed to him America's willingness and decisiveness
in supporting Iraq in war with Iran. In a nutshell,
the United States and its cronies all around the world
came together to support Saddam and defeat the
independent Iran which was defiantly resisting the
arrogant powers.
Now, 20 years have gone since those
bitter days and Iran is marking the conclusion of
8-year war with Iraq from September 22 for one week.
This week is named the Week of Holy Defense in honor
of the magnanimous, righteous and praiseworthy
resistance of Iranians against a congregation of
bullying powers who supported a bullying dictator to
dissolve the manifestation of Iranian nation's will.
Iranians defended themselves nobly and their moral
resistance against the coalition of global tyrants
deserves to be called a holy defense. - Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance
journalist and media correspondent. He has interviewed
political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky,
member of New Zealand parliament Keith Locke,
Australian politician Ian Cohen, member of German
Parliament Ruprecht Polenz, former Mexican President
Vicente Fox, former U.S. National Security Council
advisor Peter D. Feaver, Nobel Prize laureate in
Physics Wolfgang Ketterle, Nobel Prize laureate in
Chemistry Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize laureate in
biology Robin Warren, famous German political prisoner
Ernst Zündel, Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff,
American author Stephen Kinzer, syndicated journalist
Eric Margolis, former assistant of the U.S. Department
of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts,
American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud and the
former President of the American Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences Sid Ganis. Comments 💬 التعليقات |