The book I’m reading, Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, which I just mentioned in my last post, is forefront in my mind again as I read yet further in Juan Cole’s post from today:

Informed Comment
Iran is no credible military threat to the United States, though US warmongers are always depicting it as such, rather as they manufactured ramshackle 4th-world Iraq into a dire military menace to the US, allowing for a war of choice to be fought against it.

The regime in Iran has not gone away despite decades of hostility toward it by Washington, and despite the latter’s policy of “containment.” As a result, US petroleum corporations are denied significant opportunities for investment in the Iranian petroleum sector. Worse, Iran has made a big energy deal with China and is negotiating with India. As those two countries emerge as the superpowers of the 21st century, they will attempt to lock up Gulf petroleum and gas in proprietary contracts.

The pattern of U.S. intervention often followed the same path: a foreign country moves to nationalize its own natural resources, to keep them from the grubby paws of outside powers who would exploit them. The “arrangements” the U.S had become accustomed to tended toward sucking most all of the profits away from just wages and keeping that money in the local country’s economy. When countries , out of their own national interests, sought to loose themselves from such a lopsided state of affairs, the U.S. severely punished the country, and often ended up deposing the leaders responsible for such an “outrage”, casting them as villians and threats before the American people, so the way weould be paved for nationalistic support in the name of “free enterprise” and “civilization”.

The above descriptions of Iran seem to fit as a “later chapter” ; indeed, the 50’s overthrow of the Iranian government in the 50’s is seen by many Middle Eastern experts as a huge turn for the worst in U.S.-Middle East relations, a nd the root historical chapter that fuels the Muslim animosity toward the West, and the United States in particular.