22 Bahman 1357 (February 11, 1979):

What It Meant Then
and
What It Means Now

By Shirin Neshat of Sarbazan

February 8th, 2006
To The People of a Future Free Iran and to the Entire World

22 Bahman 1357 (February 11, 1979) must be marked as the darkest day in the history of the Iranian nation. The return of Khomeini to Iran from France on that ignominious day in history launched the manifestation of a demonic evil upon the land that continues to eradicate human rights and to murder the innocent with apparent impunity. My father, General Ali Neshat, the Supreme Commander of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's Imperial Guard, was martyred on April 10, 1979. He was not the first patriot to give his life for a Free Iran. Neither will he be the last.

The story of some of the brave pilots of the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) who refused to bend the knee to Khomeini and his cabal of Mullahs is worth retelling to a new generation of young Iranians not yet born when the malignancy of the Islamic Revolution first began, and for the world at large. One may access part of this story at IIAF. This moving testimony must be read as an eternal testament to a patriotic resistance unto death to the parasitic criminals of theocratic fanaticism who worked to destroy the 2500 year Persian Monarchy, the human rights of the average Iranian, and any principled opposition to their Reign of Terror. The public record of the laundry-list of the crimes of the Islamic Republic in Iran (IRI) regime in the years which followed this initial principled resistance to their tyrannies, is simply too voluminous to recount here. A simple look at their outlandish thievery at the expense of the Persian Nation, recently published by Iran Focus at click is entitled, "Iran's Rulers Amass Fortunes Through Sleaze." It summarizes what was stolen from the Iranian people over a quarter of a century ago on 22 Bahman 1357. And as we approach the 27th anniversary of this unspeakable tragedy, may we be recommitted to the recovery of the Iranian Nation from this turbaned cabal, even as we are sworn under solemn oath before God to never again experience what Islamic theocracy has wrought in the homes and communities of the Land of King Cyrus the Great.

It is essential that Iranians and Westerners learn the truth about Khomeini, Khamenei, and Company. These Mullahs were brought to power by sinister forces in the Western World, specifically identified today by William Bowles in Countercurrents at http://www.countercurrents.org/iran-bowles080206.htm This record of betrayal must be repeated and retold. It can never be forgotten. The historical responsibility for this horror must be chronicled for eternity past. When understood in its proper context, decent Americans and Europeans will recognize their moral imperative to support freedom-loving Iranians around the world in the achievement of victory over the Mullahs, and the reclamation of their homeland in this righteous struggle with radical evil.

It is a story that shadowy Western political and economic elites do not want their people to read, to hear, or to act upon.

Who are the forces cited by Mr. Bowles? His article today states the following:

By 1978 Iran had the fourth largest nuclear power programme in the world and the largest by far among Third World nations. The [then] Shah’s plan called for the installation of 20 nuclear power reactors by 1995, to provide some 23,000 megawatts of electricity. The Shah saw nuclear electricity as the rational means to diversify Iran’s dependence on petroleum, and as a means to counter the enormous pressure from Washington and London to recycle his petrodollars to New York and London banks.

The contracts were made not with US corporations but with German and French companies, and the US government—which up until this time had been the Shah’s main backer and had installed him following the US/UK overthrow of the anti-US Mossadegh government, did everything in its power to try and block the deals—not surprising considering the role of Iranian oil in the US economy and continuing the hegemony of the petro-dollar.

We must not lose sight of the fact that since the late 19th century, Iran’s vast oil reserves, at first the exclusive domain of British imperialism and its joint government-business owned company, British Petroleum, and later the US when it took over the reigns of empire, has been the major motivating force behind Anglo-US machinations in the region.

The question to ask is why the Shah Pahlavi should have fallen out of favour with his Anglo-US sponsors? To answer this question we have to look at the central role of the petro-dollar in propping up Anglo-US imperialism.

<>There is no doubt that the US and the UK were behind the removal of the Shah. The problem for the US/UK was that the leading force inside Iran working to remove the Shah were progressives, led largely by the Iranian Socialist Workers’ Party. Therefore, in November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalist Islamic opposition of Ayotollah Khomeini.

Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis "Lewis's scheme" was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanisation of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines… The chaos would spread in what he termed an ‘Arc of Crisis,’ which would spill over into the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.

The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public ˜credit" for getting rid of the ˜corrupt" Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background.

The major reason for removing the Shah was the oil. During 1978 negotiations were underway between British Petroleum and the Shah to renew the 25-year old extraction contract, negotiations which collapsed and with the collapse, Iran was for the first time since 1953, once more in control of its oil resources. Cross the imperium and experience their wrath.

In September 1978, the Iranian publication Kayhan International stated in its editorial:

"In retrospect, the 25-year partnership the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran … Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle all operations by itself."

"The British retaliated by cutting the amount of oil they bought from Iran by 2 million barrels a day. At the same time it is alleged that British Petroleum was organising capital flight from the country and the BBC, through its Farsi service, gave Ayotollah Khomeini a major propaganda platform. The Iranian economy was in dire straights and in January 1979, the Shah went into exile and in February the Ayotollah was flown in from exile in Paris. In May 1979 Khomeini cancelled the nuclear power programme."

"As a result Iran was once more totally dependent on the sale of oil to the West, for what was and still is, at stake here, is the right of developing countries to pursue an independent course."

Now, in the aftermath of the evil unleashed upon Iran and the world on 22 Bahman 1357, which resulted in the horrors of the 8 year Iran-Iraq War beginning in Shahrivar 1359 (September 1980)--and every horror of the IRI regime thereafter--we see the road of Iranian history in the last 27 years strewn with the body and blood of the innocent and the defenseless. How many more will die in our Nation--and around the world--at the hands of the Mullahs, Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Khamenei, and the unseen actors in the international shadows who support these murderers for their own purposes, and who have nothing in common with the peace-loving and the law-abiding, either in Iran or on the entire planet?

One thing is sure on this night that I write this message from the City of the Angels in Southern California. A cosmic struggle with evil is coming. And as surely as the sovereign God of history controls the times and the seasons--and deposes despots and vindicates the innocent--I can assure you of yet another great truth:

Those of us who oppose evil in this coming cosmic struggle will win. Join us and help us, in any way you can, wherever you may be in this present moment in time.