Most people,who are interested in world politics have some knowledge of the 1953 coup in Iran by the CIA and the British Intelligence Service that ended up overthrowing the democratic Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, restoring the Shah, the dictator, who had escaped to Europe, back to power.
Well, the bad blood between the US and Iran has not stopped. I dare say most people are not aware that, SEVENTY years later, the CIA, and other Western powers, using over sixty TV/radio stations, mostly in the Los Angeles area, broadcast their lies and propaganda day after day while they attempt to poison and frustrate any effort by Iranians to improve their finances and their lives. To be precise, the target of such conspiracies are the people of Iran who dared to rise up and overthrow the Shah’s regime in 1979.
After the coup d’état, the US suggested to the Iranian dictator that it would be mutually beneficial to create a secret police organization. The Shah who owed his throne to the CIA, accepted and the work of creation of a repressive secret service started with the financing of the United States, and training, by Israel.
Before we continue with this story, I would like to backtrack and mention one other fact which could have some bearing with the rest of the story: Reza Shah, the Shah’s father and the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty had fascist tendencies and wanted to follow the Third Reich, and so, even though he was put in place with the help of the Allied Forces, he was also removed from power by them, and replaced by his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who until his final days called the Iranians Aryans. ATTENTION ZIONISTS WHO LOVED THE SHAH. I guess dirty politics makes strange bed-fellows.
As the work of building the SAVAK (called by its acronymes, Sazeman Etela’at Va Amniete Keshvar, meaning Organization for Information and Security of the Country) got underway, a man by the name of Parviz Sabeti was brought on board who quickly moved up the ladder of promotion to eventually become the director of the SAVAK. Sabeti had the job of handpicking the torturers, sending them to Israel to be trained on interrogation techniques, and choosing or designing the tools of torture. A good amount of vicious beating at the time of arrest, and flogging using thick, electric cables by psychopathic torturers constituted the poor victim’s introduction to SAVAK. In addition, there were special tools, such as “Apollo” and the burning bed that would bring nightmares to their potential victims. The prisoners would be hung upside down, their heads inside a metal container that would echo their shouts and cries as they were beaten by maniac torturers. The burning bed was a heated, metal bed on which the prisoner would be placed, their hands and feet tied to the bed as it became hotter and hotter as the back of the prisoner was being burned and cooked. The victim’s cries could be heard by imprisoned writers, poets, activists, waiting for their turn. The stories about torture by the SAVAK were so horrific that many dissidents, even outside the country did not dare to speak against politics in Iran. “The walls have mice, and the mice have ears” was a common saying by Iranians, in reference to the SAVAK and its agents.
Allow me to say this article could have been alternatively titled “The Shah’s SAVAK, The CIA, And Their Crimes Against Humanity.” How would you react if I told you this Iranian Eichmann, the torturer and murderer of thousands, lives in, and freely travels around the United States? There was a time when US administrations paid a lot more lip service to “freedom and democracy”, here and around the world, but no more. Am I having a nightmare, or is this today’s reality? Here we encounter total impunity on the part of the US government that allows torturers and mass murderers to freely go to live where they like.
In response to such impunity I would suggest what is needed is an international commission to arrest this man – not to smuggle him outside the country, as Adolf Eichmann was, but to put him on trial right here in the United States, along with the American intelligence for their crimes against humanity.
This needs to be done today, while the victims of such crimes are still alive, and there are many victims and witnesses. Some have become totally paralyzed as a result of floggings with the electric cables. Many have died. What we cannot allow to die is their ideals, the cause for humanity, fairness, and equality.
The post Many Things You Did Not Know About Iran-CIA first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Andres Kargar.