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They felt their revolution to oust the so-called Shah was taken back by the religious extremists who personified it. I rather fancy that the revolutionaries imagined themselves to be modern day sans-coulottes, but were undermined by the Shia clergy, who had the most organization.
They suffered under Reza Pahlavi's delusions of grandeur and his SAVAK, aided dollar for oil by the US and the West. Once Saddam's Baathist revolution got fully underway, he was the US's darling in the Iran/Iraq war. The West had frozen billions of Iranian money for weapons, power plants, and other infrastructure that had already been contracted out to the US, UK, France, Germany, etc.
Once that war was over, at tremendous human cost on both sides, but mainly Persian, the country was in dire straits. Iraq decided to play Napoleon and "liberate" Kuwait from the monarchy and its oil for all the greater Arab Nation which would result in due time (the Baathist doctrine of a pan-Arab nationalism, secular, democratic (yeah, right) Arab Socialist single state. This would have been the beginning until all Arab speakers were absorbed into a single Baath Party led state. Of course, Saudi Arabia and the other monarchies were dead set against this! The monarchies love their dwindling OPEC oil and the fact that they control the flow thru their literal and proverbial tap, and the Western capital actually loves the stable limited supply of relatively cheap oil....
Then was the chance for rapprochement with Iran, but we still wanted revanche over the hostages held during the revolution. Then came the Sunni al Qaeda to Afghanistan and from hence to Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, Bali and Madrid. War time.
Why not approchement with Iran on the old enemy of my enemp doctrine, if the US actually wanted more than a permanent presence in Iraq? The most dangerous thing in Iraq was Saddam Hussein, but not his military machine, rather his threat to open the tap wide and undercut everyone else in the oil racket... A trumped up war against Iraq gave the establishment in DC the Iraq they wanted: in OPEC, not a danger to the monarchies and unstable to the point of requiring US stablilizing forces -- but just enough to keep the Straits open and the Iran from opening their taps wide open...
Iran had already proposed joint Iranian/French and Iranian/Russian enrichment. Iran has a lot of natural Uranium. It cannot easily enrich it very rapidly or safely (threats of war from US and Israel constant). This is a win-win situation. This shows that the Iranians only want power reactors and the French get a massive contract and a lot of enriched Uranium for their own reactors.
Iran feels surrounded, and for good reason: Pakistan is a mainly Sunni state and near Iran is wild tribal areas bordering on Sunni Afghanistan and both are nominal US allies/occupied. Iraq is occupied. The US Navy rules the Indian Ocean and so Iran, save a few miles on the far north, which is US allied former USSR territory, or NATO as neighbors, what are they to do? Play hardball.
One does not even know how much power the executive in Ahmadminajad even has, as the Supreme Council has to OK all his government's actions. We don't know if he is a ribbon cutter and speech giver or an actual executive.
All told, this is just stupid: Iran feels trapped and is turning to friendlier states to get relief. Look, Poland did it in the Triple Alliance in 1939. When you have Russia on one side and Germany on the other, what would one do except turn to France and the UK? Well, Iran has Pakistan on one side and Iraq on the other... Where are they to go? Hell?
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