The Iran Conundrum
Weeks of nationwide anti-government protests in Iran spurned by the ever-deepening economic crisis have fostered renewed focus on the nation’s pre-revolution history, including SAVAK, the bloodthirsty, Shah-era secret police.
SAVAK formed in 1957 with the help of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, initially targeted Communists and leftists in the wake of the 1953 CIA-backed coup that overthrew elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh and reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. What has been kept under wraps until recently is that the CIA gave money to the Mullahs as a payoff to get them to let the Shah be reinstated. Through paying off the Mullahs the CIA solicited their cooperation in reinstating the Shah.
Overtime, SAVAK became notorious for its extensive surveillance, repression, and systemic torment of political dissidents. The Shah used SAVAK to arrest, imprison, exile, and brazenly abuse his opponents, leading to widespread public resentment. In 1978 a seething cauldron of rebellious discontent was leveraged by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Paris, to build popular support for his exhortations of Islamic ideology.
All to soon torture became widespread especially at the Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee Prison. A 2019 February AP article titled “Torture still scars Iranians 40 years after revolution” described the horrors that thousands of Iranians endured as SAVAK prisoners. One former prisoner described how SAVAK madmen used electric cables to flog his feet while blindfolded. He explained, “The first hit was very effective; you felt your heart and brain were exploding.”
Another former prisoner explained how SAVAK psychopaths clamped his fingers and toes between the jaws of vises then viciously whipped the soles of his feet with a metal bucket secured over his head to amplify his screams.
Still another former prisoner recounted having pins heated by candles hammered under his nails.
https://apnews.com/article/072580b5f24b4f8ea2402221d530257e 2/6/2019
SAVAK agents also had free reign in the United States where they spied on, threatened, and harassed Iranian students in America.
From 1953 until 1977 millions of CIA dollars were used to subsidize Iran’s Islamic religious affairs in an effort to maintain support for the Shah among the ayatollahs and mullahs. The payments were abruptly terminated in 1977 – at the direction of President Jimmy Carter – despite CIA warnings that the cutoff would undermine the Shah. The religious upheaval that spread in the months thereafter ended in, February 1978, when the Iranian monarch was forced out.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000302910010-7.pdf
When the Shah fled Khomeini returned from exile in Paris, at the time of Khomeini’s arrival, the Shah had been giving the Chase Bank of Manhattan oil deposits from daily oil sales. This gave the Chase bank a float of about $80 million dollars per day. Khomeini swiftly terminated the daily oil deposits to Chase denying them their lucrative $80 million per day float.
But there was more potential trouble brewing. According to the Wall Street Journal Iran was lent hundreds of millions of dollars through a consortium of bankers led by Chase, even though a strong case could be made that the loans were illegal.
According to a March 28, 1980 Wall Street Journal article, “In the final years of the Shah’s reign, many major international banks, led by Chase Manhattan, quietly disregarded the Iranian constitution and lent hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran without specific approval of the loans by that nation’s parliament.”
Caveat Lender: Chase Bank And Others Face Court Challenges On Huge Loans To Iran.
Bill Paul Wall Street Journal March 28, 1980
Chase Bank was saying that Iran was owing a lot of money to western banks, but the truth was that Chase had contrived some illegal loans. These loans were hanging out there, and Khomeini could possibly challenge them as being illegal, and not pay.
After being forced out of Iran in February 1978 the Shah and his wife fled to Mexico and then, eventually, to the United States in August 1979 allegedly so that the Shah could receive emergency cancer treatment. While it is true that the Shah was stricken with cancer he had already been receiving successful medical treatment since 1974. In fact the entry of the Shah into the United States appears to have been more of a visa crisis than a medical crisis.
On March 7, 1980 national columnist Mary McGrory wrote:
“The public will want to know why the President [Carter], having first resisted the nagging of Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, ultimately gave in and admitted the Shah for medical treatment that was obviously available elsewhere.”
The entry of the Shah into the United States triggered a fierce backlash in Iran. On November 4,1979, 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 53 of them being held until January 20, 1981 – a total of 444 days. The incident occurred after an angry mob of Muslim militants stormed and occupied the building.
During Thanksgiving November 1979 Congressman George Hansen (R-ID) flew to to Tehran on his own expense. Hansen was not acting in an official capacity, in fact he explained to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Banir Sadir, that he had no authorization to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government yet, eventually, Hansen was allowed access to the Iranian militants occupying the Embassy and their American captives.
The Iranian militant captors provided Hansen with secret CIA cables and other sensitive documents that they snaffled after taking over the Embassy. They also agreed to release the hostages if the U.S. Congress would hold public hearings to expose atrocious human abuse crimes perpetrated by the Shah and his dreaded secret police, SAVAK.
The deal was that the Congressman would be allowed to take half the hostages home if he could secure an agreement with appropriate members of Congress to hold hearings. Once the hearings commenced the remainder would be released. Accordingly Hansen contacted Henry Reuss chairman of the Banking Committee. Reuss agreed to hold hearings. Unexpectedly when President Carter found out he immediately announced that the Shah would not be the subject of any federal investigation. Result? Carter doomed any chance of early release for the hostages.
Among the top secret documents purloined by the militants was a secret eyes-only U.S. State Department document dated August 2, 1979 signed by the Office of Iranian Affairs Director Henry Precht addressed to L. Bruce Laingen U.S. Charge d’ Affairs in Tehran titled: “Planning for the Shah to come to the United States.” It states in part:
“We should make no move towards admitting the Shah until we have obtained and tested a new and substantially more effective guard force for the embassy.”
The super-secret document indicates that the Shah’s entry into the United States was part of long range plans rather than a medical emergency. Incredulously Embassy security was not increased which left the Embassy vulnerable to takeover which indeed happened three months later on November 7, 1979.
Indeed 24 hours before the Shah arrived in New York Iranian Foreign Minister Ibrahaim Yazdi warned the U.S. State Department, “You are playing with fire. There will be a very drastic reaction.”
The Embassy take over in Tehran provided Carter the pretext to freeze $12 Billion of Iranian assets being held in the United States. In fact the new Khomeini regime had the legal right to withdraw its assets from the U.S. and deposit the gold and notes in other foreign banks.
Patrick Tyler, explained in his book, World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East from the cold war to the war on terror, explained the machinations:
Carter froze Iranian assets in the United States, including the hundreds of millions of dollars in Chase accounts. The freeze enabled Chase to declare Iran in default on its loans since the Iranian central bank was no longer able to move money between accounts to make interest payments. Chase then seized Iran’s cash reserves in the amount of the outstanding loans and walked away clean from the disaster.
The record shows that Iran never did withdraw its assets and its central bank continued to make payments on the loans from the Chase-led consortium. Nonetheless after the Embassy was seized and Carter froze Iranian assets in the U.S. Iran’s central bank was unable to make payments on its outstanding loans. As a result of the freeze the Iranian central bank was unable to move money from its accounts to the Chase bank accounts.
This sleight of hand gave the Chase-led banking consortium the leverage it needed to declare Iran in default of its loan obligations.
For his part Congressman Hansen submitted much material to the Congressional Record that delved into the strange facts that encompassed the Iranian hostage crisis that lasted 444 days.
One entry bore the headline:
THE HOSTAGES – TRAPPED BY BIG BANK POLITICS.
“The hostage crisis began over a banking crisis and it ended when the banking crisis was resolved by the bankers, not the State Department. … The State Department sat back and watched the bankers get their satisfaction and then the crisis was over.” – Congressman George Hansen
How many people realize that the State Department did not participate the 1981 negotiations to free the hostages rather it was the bankers that controlled the narrative. A February 2, 1981 Time Magazine article explained it like this:
“Government officials participated very little in the discussions. There was no exchange between the government and us, said one moneyman. They took what we gave them.”
https://time.com/archive/6854831/iran-hostages-how-the-bankers-did-it/
Only after the bankers were satisfied were the hostages released ending a 444 day long nightmare.
– Mark Adams National Security Commentator