>>The Iranian economy was "open" at the time of the revolution.<<
No it wasn't, you clown. It was ruled by our puppet dictator, the Shah, that our CIA installed in place of their democratically elected president.. He ran a ruthless police state enforced by his secret police, Savak. Anyone that disagreed with the Shah disappeared.
en.wikipedia.org
History[ edit]1957–1970[ edit]After removing the populist regime of Mohammad Mosaddeq (which was originally focused on nationalizing Iran's oil industry but also set out to weaken the Shah's power) from power on 19 August 1953, in a coup, the monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, established an intelligence service with police powers. The Shah's goal was [6] to strengthen his regime by placing political opponents under surveillance and repress dissident movements. According to Encyclopædia Iranica:
A U.S. Army colonel working for the CIA was sent to Persia in September 1953 to work with General Teymur Bakhtiar, who was appointed military governor of Tehran in December 1953 and immediately began to assemble the nucleus of a new intelligence organization. The U.S. Army colonel worked closely with Bakhtiar and his subordinates, commanding the new intelligence organization and training its members in basic intelligence techniques, such as surveillance and interrogation methods, the use of intelligence networks, and organizational security. This organization was the first modern, effective intelligence service to operate in Persia. Its main achievement occurred in September 1954, when it discovered and destroyed a large communist Tudeh Party network that had been established in the Persian armed forces [7] [8]
In March 1955, the Army colonel was "replaced with a more permanent team of five career CIA officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence, including Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf who "trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel." In 1956 this agency was reorganized and given the name Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (SAVAK). [8] These in turn were replaced by SAVAK’s own instructors in 1965. [9] [10]
SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, "and according to reliable Western source,[11] use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents".[12] After 1963, the Shah expanded his security organizations, including SAVAK, which grew to over 5,300 full-time agents and a large but unknown number of part-time informers.[12]
In 1961 the Iranian authorities dismissed the agency's first director, General Teymur Bakhtiar; [13] he later became a political dissident. In 1970 SAVAK agents assassinated him, disguising the deed as an accident.[ citation needed]
General Hassan Pakravan, director of SAVAK from 1961 to 1966, [13] had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining with the Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was under house arrest on a weekly basis, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini's execution on the grounds it would "anger the common people of Iran". [14] After the Iranian Revolution, however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.
Pakravan was replaced in 1966 by General Nematollah Nassiri, a close associate of the Shah, and the service was reorganized and became increasingly active in the face of rising Shia and communist militancy and political unrest.....
...During the height of its power, SAVAK had virtually unlimited powers. It operated its own detention centers, like Evin Prison. In addition to domestic security the service's tasks extended to the surveillance of Iranians abroad, notably in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, and especially students on government stipends. The agency also closely collaborated with the American CIA by sending their agents to an air force base in New York to share and discuss interrogation tactics.[22] Teymur Bakhtiar was assassinated by SAVAK agents in 1970, and Mansur Rafizadeh, SAVAK's United States director during the 1970s, reported that General Nassiri's phone was tapped. Mansur Rafizadeh later published his life as a SAVAK man and detailed the human rights violations of the Shah in his book Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal: An Insider's Account of U.S. Involvement in Iran. Mansur Rafizadeh was suspected to have been a double agent also working for the CIA.
According to Polish author Ryszard Kapuscinski, SAVAK was responsible for
Censorship of press, books and films.
[23]Interrogation and often torture of prisoners
Surveillance of political opponents. |
