Australia needs to rethink its position on Iran

A US news broadcast recently announced "President Donald Trump's move this week to send 1,000 troops to the Middle East has ratcheted up tensions with Iran that have been building since the White House scrapped the nuclear deal last year." The Harvard University Belfer Centre says Iran began to escalate its tactics in early May. They are both wrong. The conflict between Donald Trump and Iran is a long drawn out affair, initiated by the United States, and has lasted almost ¾ of a century. The two countries broke off diplomatic relations almost 40 years ago. Australia should not be drawn into this possible war. In fact, it should try to rectify the conflict.

The Morrison government has left the door open to joining a co-ordinated international effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran, saying at the recent G20 meeting that Australia is "in consultation with our allies and partners" as tensions mount between Washington and Tehran. It is not Iran where the pressure is needed. It is the United States.

This writer spent several years in international consulting. Included were several weeks in Iran with the World Bank, during the time of the Shah. I am fully convinced Trump has no basis for his threats against Iran. In support of this thesis, I will detail the following history of a dispute lasting almost 70 years . And why Iranians, we in Australia, and the world, should be fearful of the United States actions in the Gulf.

The US backed overthrow in 1953 of Mossadegh Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratically elected Prime Minister was the origins of the dispute. In 1941, the UK and Soviet Union had forced the abdication of the Iranian monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi (who they considered to be friendly towards the Axis powers), and replaced him with his eldest son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1951, Mosaddegh became prime minister and set about implementing socialist and nationalist reforms. The Shah agreed after intense pressure from the Iran parliament, the Majlis. Mosaddegh's overthrow was organised by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom's MI6. The reason was Mosaddegh's proposed nationalization of the Iranian oil industry (approved by the Majlis).To this writer it was a perfectly legitimate move. The oil was Iranian. Mosaddegh was sentenced to three years in prison and then kept under house arrest until his death in 1967

In 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged its role in the coup. According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots. Other CIA-paid men were brought into Tehran and took over the streets of the city. Between 200 and 300 people were killed in the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court.

· The SAVAK secret police was established by Mohammad Reza Shah with the assistance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli MOSSAD. SAVAK operated from 1957 until the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This writer, as a World Bank employee, discovered that public servants in Iran were unwilling to talk openly. This is the reverse of practice in other countries. Normally, civil servants in developing countries open up to members of a World Bank mission, for the visitor presents a rare opportunity for resolution of their many problems. The prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar ordered the dissolution of SAVAK during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This revolution brought in Ayatollah Khomeini and ended a 2500 year old Persian dynasty. It was welcomed however, by most Iranian people

The Shah fled the country when Khomeini took over. He went to Mexico, but no offer of asylum was forthcoming. Jimmy Carter allowed him to come to the US for cancer treatment. In response, insurgents took over the US embassy in Iran, leading to the hostage crisis, and Carter's eventual defeat. He died of cancer while in exile in Egypt in 1980.

The US had helped Iran to establish its nuclear programme in the late 1950s, providing the country with its first nuclear reactor and, later with weapons-grade enriched uranium.

The country's 1979 Islamic Revolution is celebrated as Victory Day. Hundreds of thousands of people poured out onto the streets of Tehran and other cities and towns across Iran, on the recent celebration of the 40 th. anniversary. Trump's national security adviser John Bolton declared that "U.S. policy should be to end the Islamic Republic before its 40th anniversary."

US and Iran severed diplomatic relations in 1980, over the hostage crisis. It is the main reason why "the US has been so unrelentingly hostile to Iran over three decades," Switzerland currently serves as the protecting power for U.S. interests in Iran

Flight_655 was a scheduled Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas, that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by a missile fired from USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser of the United States. All 290 people on board, including 66 children, were killed. The blame, among several possibilities, was attributed to Captain William Rogers of the Vincennes, who was criticized for being overly aggressive by Commander David Carlson, commanding officer of the USS Sides, a second guided missile ship tin the area at the time.

By way of comparison Malaysian Airlines MH 317 was shot down on 17 July 2014 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board

Voter turnout hit a record high at 80% in the 1997 elections which delivered a landslide victory for reformist President Mohammad Khatami. Women and young people were key to the vote. Incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate seeking a second term, was elected with a 70% turnout. Iran's official estimates have 10.2 million people lined the 32-kilometre (20 mi) route to Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on 11 June 1989, for the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Western agencies estimated that 2 million paid their respects as the body lay in state. The ayatollahs were initially supported but have not been successful in building a strong economy, notes Al Jazeera.

In 2017 US President Donald Trump disavowed the international nuclear deal with Iran, calling it weak and poorly constructed. estranging the US from its allies in Europe, as Britain, Germany and France who have declared their backing for the deal.

Then there is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Trump administration recently took the unprecedented step of designating the elite Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization. The United States now blames on the organization the deaths of close to 260 Americans - killed in separate bombings on U.S. compounds in Beirut in 1983 and 1984. Islamic Jihad had claimed responsibility for the bombings at the time and said that the aim was to force the peacekeeping Multi National Force out of Lebanon. In a September 2001 PBS interview, Casper Weinberger, Defense Secretary at the time, stated that it was not known who did the 1983 bombing. The 1984 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy annex in East Beirut was carried out by the Shi'a militant group Hezbollah.

Recent conflicts in the Gulf – the explosions on the four tankers, the shooting down of a US drone, the commitment to war and sending of troops by the US President , and then his withdrawal, have put the Middle East and the world on edge . This writer believes that a backdown by President Trump is the preferred solution. Should he not, Iranians will fight for their country. It is, after all, their country with a long history, of which they are proud. With a long history of US aggression, they have no love for the United States.

The escalation of tensions is drawing in US allies. A recent Washington Post article noted that U.S. allies risked becoming collateral damage in Iran fight. The escalations of tensions between Iran and Britain began when British forces assisted local law enforcement in apprehending an Iranian supertanker in the Mediterranean Sea near the British territory of Gibraltar on July 4. The British government later asserted that the vessel was violating E.U. sanctions on trade with Syria. A dispute between Britain and Iran would be welcomed by the Trump administration, which has struggled to convince European nations that its hard line on Iran is necessary. "Excellent news," White House national security adviser John Bolton tweeted last week when Britain detained the Iranian tanker.

Trump's Iran strike, incidentally would have been illegal. It is illegal for one country to use force against another, unless it is either (a) authorised by the UN Security Council, or (b) in self-defence. There is no other possible circumstance.

The US /Australia alliance does not only concern our relations with Iran. Marines have rotated through a United States military base outside Darwin since 2012, starting with 200 troops. From July 2019 the size of the deployment is due to expand to its intended maximum of 2500 marines. The Australian Foreign Affairs Journal reports (26 June 2019) that the increasing military presence is due to the heightened US tensions in the area and world-wide. On the Iran conflict, however, Australia would be best advised not to support Trump's belligerency, but to attempt to convince him to rejoin his European allies in the Iran nuclear deal that he abandoned.

We should never forget the invasion of Iraq, in which Australia was a member of the Coalition of the Willing. That invasion, based on false information, was the direct cause behind the creation of ISIS, easily the most barbaric jihadist group of all.

Should the conflict with Iran escalate, the military disparity between the two nations needs to be noted. The US has 7200 nuclear warheads, Iran has none. The US spends on it military budget four times what Iran spends. It has has two and a half times as many personnel in uniform. Should Trump declare war, it would entail massive slaughter. Australia should try to stop it.