“The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants that the world’s most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship.” - Stephen Kinzer, “All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots Of Middle East Terror
In 1953, under the name Operation Ajax, the US — along with the help of its typical cohorts such as the United Kingdom —initiated a coup to depose the democratically elected Iranian leader Muhammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the monarchical power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The primary cause of the coup was Mossadeq’s attempt to nationalize the Iranian oil fields, which threatened the oil profits of Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The U.S. — protecting its ally’s petroleum monopoly — helped plan the return to power of one the world’s more insidious dictators, the shah. Operation Ajax resulted almost directly in the 1979 Iranian revolution that created an anti-West Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Today, not much has changed.
The Pivot To Iran
A few weeks back, Trump all of a sudden pivoted back to Iran, stating, devoid of any accompanying facts, that 'they were not living up to their nuclear deal,' which we showed, on a previous show, that they clearly were. This was an obvious attempt to both distract from Syria and the Middle East, as well as to keep Iran in the cross hairs, as we have known for decades that Iran is one of the next countries soon to be “liberated with democracy.”
However, Iran’s nuclear deal quickly feel off the very crowded schedule of talking points of supposed “world-ending threats to our democracy” as it was completely unfounded. This was because Iran made damn sure they lived up to their end of the deal, and independent media quickly showed that Trump’s claims were pure fantasy.
With that carefully laid out plan disrupted with some simple observation and due diligence, the establishment was forced to create a different pretext on which to see its longterm plan to fruition. And it clearly involves Saudi Arabia, the world’s leader in human rights violations, and the new funder of American infrastructure.
Saudi Hypocrisy
That alternate pretext took shape in the form of a pact, named the Riyadh Declaration, which was recently signed by representatives from 55 Islamic nations that have vowed “to combat terrorism in all its forms, address its intellectual roots, dry up its sources of funding and to take all necessary measures to prevent and combat terrorist crimes in close cooperation among their states.” The original text of the document was heavily infatuated with Iran but has since been amended. The original text also said that troops from this pact would be deployed to Syria and Iraq “when needed,” which is — again — clearly aimed at countering Iranian influence as Iran is heavily tied to both countries.
Mainstream media is clearly pulling all the stops to create an air of the “Iranian Threat.” The Washington Post just released an article entitled “How Trump could deal a blow to Iran — and help save Syria,” with the conclusion that the battle for al-Tanf is “a fight that the United States cannot and should not avoid.” Showing us yet again that despite the heavy anti-trump rhetoric, mainstream media is on the side of the State when it matters, regardless of who is sitting in the oval office; when their true agenda is at stake.
Incidentally, Iran has just held a free and democratic election where they yet again elected a moderate who supports peace and cooperation with the US. This is the country accused by Mr Trump, on the world stage, of being behind much of the current terrorism across the world, all while signing a 350 billion dollar arms deal with a country that verifiably fosters terrorism. Ironically enough, the election had a much higher turn out than that of the United States, and is widely regarded, outside Western corporate media, as one of the most democratic counties in the region. Saudi Arabia on the other hand, executes one person every two days, according to Raif Badawi, a blogger who dared to call for democracy, and was sentenced to 10 years and 1,000 lashes.
Sadly, the Trump administration is well aware that there is no current nuclear threat from Iran. One of the main reasons it chose to look for alternative modes of hyping up the Iranian threat was in order to justify the recent arms deal, which also includes restocking and future commitments over the next ten years. In addition, or rather, quid pro quo, Saudi Arabia is “going to hire US companies” as a result of the defense deal. According to a White House press pool report, the goal of the deal is “to invest a lot of money in the U.S. and have a lot of U.S. companies invest and build things over here[Saudi Arabia].”
The US Destabilization Of Venezuela
As we warned last week, we are now going to see an unprecedented level of involvement with Saudi Funds in American infrastructure, further aligning the US with Saudi Arabia, in which the US is beholden to the totalitarian state, giving the Saudi’s even more control over the US and its foreign policy decisions. The world is currently watching one of those Saudi/US foreign policy moves play out, and that is the destabilization of Venezuela with the intentional lowering of oil prices. The true intentions behind this move are up for debate, yet, history has a way of repeating itself, especially in US policy, as Michael Reagan(Ronald Regan’s Son) bragged that his father did the same thing to hurt the Soviet Union during the 1980s:
“Since selling oil was the source of the Kremlin’s wealth, my father got the Saudis to flood the market with cheap oil.”
“Lower oil prices devalued the ruble, causing the USSR to go bankrupt, which led to perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Empire.”
Many seem to have a lot invested in convincing the public that Venezuela's socialist policies are single-handedly responsible for the nation's current economic collapse. However, it seems quite obvious that the most damage has come from the manipulation oil prices, which is a concerted effort led by the US and its ally Saudi Arabia. The artificial lowering of oil prices presents several benefits for the US-Saudi alliance due to the economic harm it inflicts on the Saudi’s oil-producing competitors – chief among them Iran, Russia and Venezuela. These are all countries that the U.S. seeks to contain. Seeing as oil represents 90% of Venezuelan exports, its economy has been especially hard-hit.
The involvement of the US, in both Venezuela and Syria, is largely driven by the US’ intention of keeping key fossil fuel resources out of the hands of Russia. In the case of Venezuela, the recently introduced Senate bill to give $20 million to the Venezuelan opposition makes this abundantly clear. Despite what corporate media is vehemently pushing in regards to these developments, the true intentions behind these western geopolitical moves should be glaringly obvious for those who are paying attention.
Welcome to another episode of TLAV Political Roundtable where we break down the week of American politics, and discuss the implication on American life, and the world.
This week, we discuss the US' unfounded military focus on Iran, how that plays into the current US geopolitical goals, and how much of what we are currently seeing, such as the Seth Rich story and the Manchester attack, are oddly interconnected with this topic. We will break down the recent hypocritical moves taken by the US in regards to Saudi Arabia, the intentional destabilization of both Venezuela and Syria, and the recently proposed "Geoengineering Act of 2017," and much much more.
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Written by Ryan Cristián
Founder, Editor
The Last American Vagabond
Sources: Within Video